What Makes Us Free?

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might feel like a squishy term that's hard to define and understand. But this ideology, founded by a group of men in the Swiss Alps, is a political project that has dominated our economic system for decades. In the name of free market fundamentals, the forces behind neoliberalism act like an invisible hand, shaping almost every aspect of our lives. This episode originally ran as "Capitalism: What Makes Us Free?"

Please add the following after each blurb on podcast and webpages: To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:15.5	Hey, it's runned.
0:17.1	One of the things I love about our show is how many of our episodes, past, present, and even future ones,
0:23.5	remain so relevant to current events and questions many of us are asking ourselves.
0:28.7	What's the role of government? Who pays for it? Who decides?
0:33.0	It made us think of this episode about the so-called invisible hand behind it all.
0:52.1	Look at this lead pencil.
0:55.0	Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil.
1:01.0	These people who have cooperated with one another.
1:05.0	Don't speak the same language.
1:07.0	They're people of all different religions.
1:10.0	They may hate one another.
1:12.6	When you go down in the store and buy this pencil,
1:15.6	you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time
1:19.6	for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people.
1:25.6	That's the miracle of the price system.
1:28.3	Everybody has benefited.
1:31.3	There's been no central direction.
1:33.3	It was a magic of the price system
1:36.3	that brought them together and got them to cooperate
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.