#457 – Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Jennifer Burns, a historian of ideas, including the evolution of economic, political and social ideas in the United States in the 20th century to today. She wrote two biographies, one on Milton Friedman and the other on Ayn Rand, both of which I highly recommend. This was a super technical and super fascinating conversation. At the end, I make a few comments about my previous conversation with President Zelenskyy, for those of you who may be interested. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got brain.fm for focus, github for programming and AI, element for delicious electrolytes, Shopify for merch and AG1 for health. She's wisely my friends. Also, if you want to get in touch with me, go to lexfridman.com/contact. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors. If I can only speak English, I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. Click the links, buy the stuff. Glory shall be ours. This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm, a platform that offers music specifically made for focus. I talk about listening to brown noise a lot. It's actually funny, but I don't believe Brain.fm has brown noise. But that's not what I use it for. I usually play brown noise because basically everything has brown noise. YouTube has brown noise. Spotify has brown noise. I use that as one layer. And as the second layer, I'll use music from Brain.fm. So there's all kinds of almost like ethereal soundtracks. Maybe there's a bit of like a techno beat. I like the stuff with the beat. Just very light where the beat does not have this kind of edge that distracts me. But there's still a rhythm to it. So I'll have that plus a bit of brown noise. And that's like a really beautiful focus. I believe these ads are for the episode with Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman. Did you know that he wrote Capitalism and Freedom in just six months while teaching full time? Also, did you know that Brad Naik wrote JavaScript in I think a week, maybe 10 days? Passion and focus, ladies and gentlemen, gets a lot of stuff done. And you should try to increase yours by trying brain.fm for free for 30 days by going to brain.fm slash Lex. That's brain.fm slash Lex for 30 days free. This episode is also brought to you by GitHub and GitHub Copilot. The super amazing AI that helps you to program. If you don't know what GitHub Copilot is, ladies and gentlemen, you are missing out. I'm going to be doing a lot of programming podcasts coming up. And I mean, I really just don't even program without AI anymore. It is true, it is fully an assistant at this point, but not a kind of guide. So I've not really have had success with anything agentic. Really, the thing I'm interested, especially when I'm actually trying to get work done, I'm interested in maximizing my productivity. And for that, the difficult things that an agent is supposed to be able to do, I still do faster and better. Those difficult decisions. I don't like the task of fixing decisions made by agents, but fixing code generated by a copilot, for example, that is much more pleasant, it's much more fun, it's much more efficient, especially because the mistakes are not that numerous. Anyway, I have a lot of people writing to me trying to get into programming. One of the things you should definitely get to know is GitHub, and you should get to know GitHub Copilot and all the suite of developer tools they have to help you write code with the help of AI. It's great. To try out GitHub Copilot for free, go to gh.io/copilot.
That's gh.io/copilot.
This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. Did you know that Ayn Rand's daily diet was black coffee, french fries and cigarettes? Well, she should have been consuming some element. I mean, listen, let's not be judgmental here. Churchill did quite a few impactful things in the world and his diet and liquids, substances he consumed were just atrocious and the guy was out of shape and it was just a mess. But he lived a long life and a productive life and one of the most impactful and influential humans in history. So there you go. But this is not like element makes you not impactful. It just is a little boost, but it's not gonna get your shit done for you. You still need to take big risks and take on the world and do epic shit, but might as well be a little healthier for it. Especially when you're doing like crazy physical endurance event. Your electrolytes need to be on point. Get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it at www.drinklmnt.com/lex.