to avoid the september 30 shutdown deadline. on wednesday attorney general merrick garland testifies, examing the justice department, then pete buttigieg testifies before the house transportation and infrastructure committee on his department's policies and programs. also wednesday, jerome powell holds his quarterly press conference. watch next week life on the c-span networks or on c-span now our free mobile video app, also head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video live or on-demand any time. c-span your unfiltered view of government. >> a healthy democracy does not just look like this, it looks like this, where americans can see democracy work and citizens are truly informed in a republic thrives. get informed straight from the source on c-span, unfiltered,

unbiased, word for word from the nation's capital to wherever you are because the opinion that matters the most is -- this is what democracy looks like. c-span powered by cable. >> >> welcome back. we are joined live by the nose and editorial director of the podcast. welcome. time and i started to realize that people could tell you, including me what was happening but what it was a lot harder to explain why. in this longer format, we call on experts and reporters in the field and reporters who really know the stories and we have them walk us through not just what is happening but why it is happening. host: there are so many topics that hit the headlines. how do you choose which topic to really dive into? guest: there are a couple of different ways.

if something is breaking news and it is the biggest story in the universe that we will probably call -- probably cover that. my cohost and i are longtime hard news journalists. we have been working in journalism since we were basically infants. what we want to do is not make people despair about the world. we all have a lot of news coming at us these days. at certain times it can feel like too much because it is all bad news. if we have the opportunity to cover something with some positive aspect or is a little bit fun. maybe it is in the culture. we will do that as well. we have a young audience, remarkably young. i think they have come to expect that. it is not always all bad news. if there is something that requires you to analyze it to understand it. there is breaking news where you can understand it by talking about it for a minute or two and then there are stories that are

complicated and you do need 25 minutes to understand. those of the stories we are drawn to. host: with that younger audience in mind, how do you selection -- how do you select which guests. how do you pick the people that are going to help you explain these topics? guest: this is something i learned when i went to vox, and i had been at npr for a long time. there is an idea that experts are a certain thing, who have been around for a long time and they know the story inside and out, usually of an older demographic. when i got to vox i realize that younger listeners like those experts too. they want to hear from people who they believe understand the story. they are very focused on where is the person coming from. so if we are doing a story on a situation -- let us say rural alabama. we are going to get a reporter or analyst in the town in rural

alabama, not somebody who is a couple of states away in atlanta and looking at it through the lens of academia or through a microscope. we want people in the field and on the ground. that is something that young listeners tend to appreciate. they have grown up in a world where everything is at their fingertips so finding a guest in rural alabama should not be that hard. there are people on tiktok and twitter. we take seriously that we want people who have expertise because whether you are younger or older, you know what that is and you know what it sounds like. we do also try to get as close to the story physically as we possibly can. host: on "today, explained" you started a series on capitalism. talk about it and why you decided to focus on that right now. guest: i covered economics first from 2013 to 2019 for some of the biggest radio programs.

i worked for marketplace and then npr's "planet money." so my mind was consumed by economics all the time. i began to realize i never used capitalism on air. i would talk about housing, oil prices and markets, always. jobs and unemployment, but the system was not something we discussed. it was not even something we discussed behind the newsrooms. in the summer of 2017, i was watching a friend's podcast taping and she was a cultural reporter and they were -- and her guests were cultural reporters and they talked about capitalism. it -- they were talking about jay-z's new album and his bravado about money. what does he mean for the culture when he exhibits this sense of time rich, i got rich and i want to get richer? and they just -- and they

started discussing capitalism, not just jay-z, bankers or money itself, but the system. i realize that that summer i had been hearing an awful lot about capitalism but not about it in my newsroom where i was covering economics. i went running back to my colleagues and i said i think people are out here talking about capitalism and we are not. they were very dismissive and said that is just something that college kids do. they want to complain about capitalism, it was normal. and i thought that and said these are not college kids but smart young culture critics and they are taking on the system in ways that we are not. from there i became obsessed with why is culture reporters talking about it when we are not. so this is six years of me trying to figure out what has happened with the system that has made especially young people lose faith in it and then talk about it openly how we have lost

faith in it. host: we want to hear your thoughts on the series on capitalism or your pots for your guests. -- for our guest. democrats can call on 202-748-8000. republicans on 202-748-8001. the independent line is 202-748-8002. and you can text us at 202-748-8003. we also have social media if you want to reach us there on x at c-spanwj and facebook as c-span. i wants to come back to you. how long is the series going to run? guest: every friday in september beginning september 8. we have four episodes, two of them are behind us and then the other two will be the next two fridays in september. host: when it comes to this series there are so many headlines and we will bring up just a couple, headlines from al

jazeera on u.s. gun violence and from "reuters" which are blaming capitalist greed for workplace accidents and other hear from fox news about liberals blaming capitalism from soaring egg prices. is it really fair to blame so much on capitalism? guest: it is an economic system. at its very core it is an economic system that has three basic parts, one is private property, one of them is firms and one of them is profits. so, if you look at it this way it is simple, this is a symptom -- system that does not have much of an ideology, it is the one we have. but when we see blame coming from all corners that people feel like capitalism is not working for them and that the economic system is not working for them. they are having trouble paying the rent and mortgage, they are on strike were concerned that their job might go away. they are buried in student debt and concerned that they will not

be able to retire or pick -- or caring for a parent who does not have a pension. they want kids, but kids are is too expensive. when we say capitalism we say the economic system is not working for me. i am not able to get a foothold in america today. and i think there is something profound about that and when we started doing that. for years and years, americans would, we would blame bosses or bankers, but after the financial crisis, that is when you started hearing americans on both sides of the aisle use the word capitalism. sometimes to blame it or to praise it. it was at that moment when the economic system became something we could not ignore because we realized it was impacting all of us in profound ways. host: we have a post from tecumseh sherman. "capitalism's proponents like to talk about the numbers that communism has killed.

capitalism has killed more. what the guests like to address that?" guest: it is an interesting point and you will hear it from a certain type within academia or type of ideological perspective. those of us who grew up remembering what the berlin wall was. i covered this in my series. i was eight years old when it came down. i remember being told that communism was the system that we had to beat and it was the worst thing in the world and an existential crisis. the berlin wall came down and i remember everybody saying that democracy is on the march and capitalism are on the march and these are good things. in the west we were not looking. most people were not looking at the evils perpetrated under capitalist systems. slavery happened under capitalism. colonialism happened under capitalism. so the listener makes a good point. capitalism does not

capitalism does not have clean hands. communism does not have clean hands. i don't know if it makes sense in 2023 to say communism did not kill as many people. as an individual i do not want to live in a communist society. i want to live in a capitalist society that we fix so that more of us can thrive. host: david is calling on the democratic line. caller: i want to thank you for this podcast. i love your background on milton friedman and jack welch. i worked for 30 years in corporate america. your people not even making

minimum wage and telling them how to get welfare checks and snap and all of that. we have capitalism untethered. billionaires making too much money. normal people worried about egg prices should have an entire social net helping us rather than giving it to bezos and these people. i want to thank you for your timely podcasted i hope people will listen to it. guest: an important thing to remember is that once upon a time in america, shareholder capitalism existed but it was not like it is today, so for the most part large companies have had shareholders. companies used to look at them as part of the system. the workers and employees were part of the system. the communities were part of the system. i trace how in that 1950's and

1960's, a big company like general electric would issue its report and not talk about shareholders. it would talk about workers, suppliers, the good it had done in the communities in which it worked. shareholders have always existed but it is in the past 40 years that shareholder capitalism has evolved into what it is today. most of us are implicated in the shareholder system because we are implicated by having 403b's and 401k. at one point in time companies cared more about workers and more about paying taxes to give back to society than they do today. shareholder capitalism is on steroids, part of that is because all of us are shareholders.

the focus on shareholders and only increasing stock prices, you can see in a visceral way. i like to watch what happens when a company announces layoffs. and they say we are cutting redundant workers, we are eliminating jobs, the stock price does tend to go up. there is something profoundly distressing about that, people are losing jobs in the stock market says they are eliminating fat and redundant workers so this is a company that will succeed. >> the caller mentioned elton friedman. i want to point out that later this fall, c-span will explore wilson friedman's book free to choose.

it will be part of a series of that series will start this sunday with thomas paine's common sense. noel, you mentioned that there was a moment that all of this shifted. when did that shift happened? guest: i trace this shift to the late 1960's. we were seeing the evolution of several movements. the women's movement and the environmental movement in the civil rights movement all at the same time. women's movement decided to start pressuring companies to take positions on social issues. go back to a classic case, eastman kodak is a big company, everyone who works for kodak is

doing well, they are getting dividends, benefits and vacations but they do not hire black people. black residents of rochester decide to speak out. we are missing out on the golden age of capitalism. they start taking these protests to the streets to embarrass the company. we live in your community but we are not benefiting. eastman kodak does back down. the vow to implement a hiring and training program for black workers. other black residents around the country say maybe we can make man's of companies. as we approach 1970, activists have begun to tell companies you are not doing it right, you're damaging the environment, damaging people and communities. at the time ralph nader was in

his mid-30's and he was targeting general motors in a specific way. he had bought general motors stock and he is saying that companies have too much power in your harming the environment and your consumers. it is at that time that the new york magazine commissions milton friedman to give his thoughts on the purpose of a corporation. is it to be good to workers, to make sure they are well paid, that they can pay mortgages, or is the purpose to make sure that the environment in which it works is safe and healthy, or is the purpose something else? i'm sure that the times knew what they were getting. friedman writes this out and says the purpose of a corporation is to make money. it's a business. why should a business take a

social position on any issue? when you look at what happened with bud light and the furor o ver dylan mulvaney. they sent dylan mulvaney a couple cans of beer. the customers who buy bud light were infuriated. as a result they stop buying it. the share price goes down. a couple months after that bud light is announcing layoffs. we have to lay workers off because the stock price has gone down. i think milton friedman would look at that in say this is why companies should stay out of social issues. you don't have to take a position. your job is to make money for shareholders. make money to pay your employees. you don't have to tell us your thoughts on whether blackmer lives matter for example, or trans rights. you are a company, just be a company. it's an interesting argument. at the time i'm told the essay

did not make much of a splash but a decade later we are entering into a new era of american history. greed is now good. shareholders are king. corporations are pushing for less regulation. they take that milton friedman idea and turbocharge it. you have jack welch. when asked about social responsibility he would say that is ridiculous. my job is to make money. it is not my job to care about how my workers are doing. it is my job to make money for shareholders and employees. you see a profound change in the way americans think about the role of a corporation and i attribute that to milton friedman. host: let's go to martin on the independent line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i will tune into this podcast. it sounds great. noel has mentioned some amazing

things as well as teaching people you cannot badmouth wall street because a lot of us are in wall street for our retirement. there is another good podcast called capital-isn't. they touch on the same topics. the person i called in sadar you a democrat or -- i don't know what i would call myself. probably an fdr obama democrat. most people outflank on the left or right but better is better. we need to make sure people are paying their fair share. the semantics are important. would you say we should have a wealth tax, that is stupid. somebody who is a truck driver making $100,000 thinks they are wealthy. if you think we should have a billionaire tax, that is smart.

we have to be careful. obama wanted a single-payer system but he knew that we were not there yet. it goes back to what is the matter with kansas. until the country is smart enough, we cannot get there. when putin did this incredibly horrendous war and invaded ukraine, i went back and read lenin's tomb by david resnick. it's a great read on many levels but that will show you that the commonest system is probably not something -- communist system is probably not something we want to embrace. host: would you like to respond? guest: it is an interesting point. one of the things i have been so focused on is the generational divide. i get to a young woman who is 24 in america. college-educated but has student

debt and is having a hard time making a living. she sees the system as opposed to her welfare and she identifies as a communist. i couldn't believe that. i'm an older millennial. i remember when communism was the ever present threat. if you are 24, you don't. you look around now and say capitalism is in working, i will always be in debt, i will always be working for people who don't respect me. i'm a communist. usually i haven't studied much commonest history so i don't understand what it means. that is my take. many of them might clap back and say we have read a lot, we have read lenin's tomb, we just think it is that bad. the caller makes an interesting point. i really wanted to speak to the concerns of young people and they really want to talk about things about why they see

communists as a viable alternative one some but he says absolutely not. i called the smart friend of mine who is a man in his 50's and he worked with me and he worked with me in my days as an economic supporter. he said from my point of view there is a solution here, and the solution is people need to pay taxes. billionaires need to pay their taxes. we could solve a lot of problems of people at the very top were willing to pay their fair share. this is a person who will never say let's be a communist country. he looks at it with all of his experience in economics and says something has gone very wrong. the