Are science and religion incompatible? It’s a conversation that tends to get heated very quickly. Science has answered several of our questions about the universe, but the theological debate keeps returning to one point, the beginning. As you could expect, a balanced discussion on the topic eventually leads to more questions than answers. “How the earth formed, how life arose from the earth, how man evolved. All of that is explainable in a very satisfying way. Does that prove that God does not exist? The trouble with drawing that conclusion is that when you step back to look at the whole picture, you run up against this problem of the beginning and the end again. Now, the fact that science can’t make any comment on that issue, does that prove that God does exist? Where are we in this? It matters so much to so many people.” Join legendary broadcaster Hugh Downs as he talks with globally renowned astronomer and former director of the Mt. Wilson Institute, Robert Jastrow in the latest episode of the Free To Choose Media Podcast, Science and Religion.

What effects did world events, such as world wars and depression, have on the economies of nations such as Germany, and the former Soviet Union? As hyperinflation raged, the real value of currency in these nations became a question mark. Countries today are still ravaged with the same problem. As revolutions erupt and regimes change, the effect on purchasing power is hard to ignore. How can the problems of “out of control” inflation be solved? As Milton Friedman describes the issue, “Country after country has seen its monetary system blow up in its face, and subsequently, it’s had to do something about it. And we’ve had a kind of revolution. Now, right now, this is a very interesting subject because of the problems of the other kind of revolutions that have been taking place… in Eastern European countries. Where all of a sudden a communist system which has lasted, in Russia’s case, for seventy years, in these other countries for forty years, has blown up in their faces. They had a monetary system which was part of their whole centrally planned, centrally designed system. And now they are desperately seeking what to do about that monetary system.” Join Milton, along with Daniel Gressel, to dig into this problem in detail during this episode of the Free To Choose Media Podcast, Monetary Revolutions.

Money, wealth, and capital can move around the world in mere seconds. Within any economic structure, capital is the building block of prosperity. With relatively new ease of access to resources, how has that changed our society? Developing nations no longer need to start from scratch, or wait long periods of time to meet demand for certain items. This has fundamentally changed what is considered capital along with the way our world and our governments function. Author and Professor Richard B. McKenzie puts it in these easy to understand terms, “The big difference is not so much the need for capital, although capital is becoming more important in production processes than labor. Capital has become transformed; it’s become brain-powered; it’s become information. It used to be that capital was concrete and steel and mile-long plants. These plants were very immobile; very difficult to get up and move. As a result, governments could think of this form of capital as something like an oil well. They could put a head on it and drain it dry. When capital is in the form of brain power and information, it basically can be transformed into electrical impulses that can be sent around the world at the touch of a few keys on the computer, and at the cost of a telephone call.” How else has this technological surge transformed our world? Listen to the full discussion in the latest episode of the Free To Choose Media Podcast to find out.

Despite general agreement on the academic theory behind economics, the implementation of those findings into society usually leads to disagreement. There are simply too many variables within a society to achieve a consensus. So with the unpredictable nature of individuals, how can economists even begin to predict the results of their theories? Milton Friedman reflects on his process, “What we insist on is that you’re not able to predict random, irrational behavior. And therefore, the only kind of behavior that you can hope to predict is behavior that has some regularity. One individual may behave any way at all. But we’re not really concerned with individual behavior. That’s the role of the psychologist or of the physician. We’re concerned with group behavior. And if I take a lot of people many of them may behave in all sorts of crazy ways. But the group as a whole, the common tendency, the thing that’s going to come out of it is something which will be as if it were rational behavior.” Find out more about why economic theories differ so much with economists Milton Friedman and Walter Heller in the latest episode of the Free To Choose Media Podcast.

Welfare programs are often touted as the saving grace of those living in poverty. But, as with any governmental program there tends to be unintended consequences despite noble intentions. How have welfare programs changed the overall culture of those living in poverty? It’s a question that most people have never posed to themselves. Social scientist Charles Murray has researched that very question for years. He poses that these programs have changed the perception of those who have money and those who work hard. “One of the most tragic things that you encounter are the stories of the 16-year-old who goes home to his father who has been working all his life as a janitor and says that his father is a chump. He is a sucker. And that he, the son, is certainly not going to be a chump the way his father was. What we have done to let the son think that, I think, is one of the greatest sins that we committed in social policy in the last 20 years.” What other implications does the welfare state have on our society? Listen to the full interview in the latest episode of the Free To Choose Media Podcast to find out.

Reforming healthcare is something that only gets more complicated with time. Rising costs, increased government involvement, and complex insurance policies only compound the problem further. These are problems that have been going on for decades with no clear resolution. But, what about looking at healthcare from an economic standpoint? Can market forces solve the problem? Noted economists Milton Friedman and Alain Enthoven once sat down to discuss exactly that. The start of the problem, they found, came when employers became primarily responsible for providing healthcare. What started off as government price controls has evolved into the system we have today and there’s no going back. As Friedman puts it, “I’m always fascinated, not about this issue alone, but about so many cases how something gets started for one reason, and ultimately develops into something altogether different and yet, once it develops- you can’t get rid of it. It’s what my wife and I call in the title of one our books, The Tyranny of the Status Quo. It’s much easier to make a mistake then it is to correct a mistake. That’s true for individuals, too. It’s very easy to bang your car up, but it’s not so easy to fix it after you have. So that’s how it got to be the practice of employers.” So how exactly did this problem start and what can the market do to fix it? Find out in the Free To Choose Media Podcast, Healthcare Reform.

What is the most basic unit of our society which our values and norms are built around? For James Buchanan, that unit is the individual. It was his view that individual liberty should be the fundamental building block of a society. Laws and systems should be built around the protection of those individual rights in an effort to preserve liberty. His research and ideas won him a Nobel Prize in 1986, but underwent a transformation over the years. “I didn’t understand- had no understanding at all- of how the economy works or how the market works. I’ve often referred to myself during that period as a libertarian socialist. Now that may seem like a contradiction in terms, but I don’t think it really is. I always place a very high value on individual liberty, but I didn’t understand how the market operated and so I thought somebody had to make economic decisions for us, and it was probably made by an establishment in Wall Street; and therefore I thought it might be better if we had democratic decision-making for the economy. And once I came to understand how the economy worked I flipped over very quickly from being a libertarian socialist to being a strong advocate of the market, allow the market to work.” What influenced these ideas, and how can they still be applied today? Listen to the latest episode of The Free To Choose Media Podcast to find out.

The court system of the United States is supposed to protect and uphold the Constitution, regardless of personal beliefs. Increasingly, over the past few decades more and more rulings seem to fall on the side of those individual beliefs, rather than what is written under law. This type of judicial activism is in direct conflict with what the court system is meant to be. Our government is founded on a system of checks and balances, but when a court has the final decision, who holds them in check? After decades on the bench, Former Solicitor General of the United States, Robert Bork provides some interesting insight, “It’s a long way …, to a majority that consistently rules in the direction of the original understanding of the Constitution. In fact, while there may be a sign of hope here, if you look around the world, judiciary seems to be out of control everywhere. If you looked at the U.K. – the United Kingdom- and who is in favor of instituting judicial review- a written constitution by and large it’s the Left: the unions, academics, and people like that, which means that they expect- based on experience- that the courts will be to the Left of the public, generally, and give them more of what they want, than they would get from elections.” Join the honorable Robert Bork, along with Senior U.S. Circuit Judge, Doug Ginsburg as they discuss their process for decision making, as well as what can be done about this latest surge of judicial imperialism, in the latest episode of The Free To Choose Media Podcast.

Join American economist and columnist Walter Williams as he discusses what influenced his unique, and often controversial, perspectives on economics. Williams is a unique thinker. Despite being African American he opposes the minimum wage, affirmative action, and believes the welfare state has done far more harm than good for those living in poverty. Although those views are major parts of his philosophy now, he didn’t always hold those views. As Walter Williams says about one of those revelations, “I thought that the minimum wage like many, many other Americans who have not really thought about it, was a really good idea, was a good way to help the poor. And it was a real eye opener after I took economics that the minimum wage was, perhaps, one of the most devastating things that you could do to poor or low skilled workers. So I thought that increasing government control would be a good thing or helpful thing to people in general and it was a shock to me as a young economic student to learn that government is the cause of many of our problems as opposed to being the solution to those problems.” So what led him to these beliefs? Listen to the full interview in the latest episode of The Free To Choose Media Podcast to find out.

We live under government domination of the market economy. We have come a long way from a truly free economy. Consider the number of markets to which new firms do not have free access. Consider the erosion of expression for business people. Consider the plethora of government regulations American business must contend with. Can these trends be reversed? It is harder to repeal laws than pass them. Private business is unfortunately shortsighted when it turns to politics. But count among the favorable signs the very inefficiency of government—and the American public’s growing recognition of this fact. Business can do relatively little to reverse this trend (though it can at least become more sophisticated and farsighted in political planning), but business people as individuals, as citizens, must seek to persuade the public that we are already on the road to a collectivist state, that if we continue it, we will lose prosperity and liberty. In Milton’s own words, “Make no mistake about it: human freedom cannot exist- human freedom has never existed-without a viable, healthy, free market economy. And that is what is being destroyed. That is what is being destroyed as much by its alleged friends, as by its announced enemies. This country remains predominantly a free country; it remains the freest major country in the world. There are some minor countries that have a greater degree of freedom, but among the major countries we remain the real stronghold of freedom. And yet, it is worth taking a few moments to look at how far we have come from a truly free economy, a truly free society.” So how far have we come? Find out in the podcast, Milton Friedman Speaks – The Future of Our Society.