>> washington journal continues. host: welcome back, we are joined by noel king who is the cohost and editorial director of "today, explained" the podcast. welcome to the program. guest: thanks for having me. host: tell us about your role and your podcast, what is it about? guest: it is a daily new show that runs for about 25 to 26 minutes and we take one top news story of the day and we explain what is going on. i covered daily news for a long

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 elore wilson friedman's booke to choose. will be part of a series of oks that changed america. that series will shis 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 way to fix it is by taxing people at the top of the pyramid. many of whom are actively dodging taxes. host: bob is calling in from logan, utah on the democratic line. caller: yes, whether we like it or not, this is a capitalist- socialist country. take the federal, the county, the teachers, all the contractors working on the highways. how any people depend on social security?

what the republicans say is government is bad, let private enterprise deal. how are they going to do that? they can't. we hear now that democrats are communist. they don't even know when a communist is. like it or not, this is a capitalist-socialist government. host: he makes the point which lots of people do that even though we live in a capitalist society we have some socialist elements. caller: -- guest: that is right and we don't have completely free markets either. i like to bring it back to milton friedman because i think he was one of the greatest thinkers of his age. he would look at america today and say this is not capitalism, this is some distorted version

where companies are behaving in a capitalist manner, but many of us are not employed by corporations. many of us are employed by the government. to say america is a purely capitalist society it is not. there are many people who are glad that that is the case. there are famous examples in the united states. i think of sandy springs, georgia. they privatized all social services. there were no more government employees. people in sandy springs would tell you things were working 1000 times better. i think about that a lot. not because i know it was right or wrong but because i cannot imagine that happening in atlanta. i can imagine new york city were nobody works for the government. i live in washington, d.c. saying that if elected president

he will cut the workforce into smithereens. i say, how? how do you plan to do that? many people work for the government. tha tmight b -- that might be a good thing. the caller is right. there are aspects that are not truly capitalist and never have been. host: jerome calling on the republican line. caller: on the environment, i live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant. in visiting with them guys, they say they can run the power plant for hundreds of years with all of the trees that are burnt up in california fires. host: ok, noel.

this is a response to this idea of corporations harming the environment, i'm guessing. guest: once upon a time the environment was a nonpartisan issue in the united states of america. the majority of the americans agreed that preserving the environment was a good thing. this is before we move into the ideological battles of more or less government, before we move into a period that many label as neoliberalism. i believe that caller cares deeply about the environment. fundamentally most of us to. those of us who have been in rural areas, we don't want to see the environment destroyed. it is when it comes down to people in my community might lose jobs if we don't do, x y z,

that it changes into a different discussion. i can admire the beauty of the american west but i am not a person whose job is dependent on a certain type of extractive industry. oil, coal, copper. people tend to operate in their own interests first and foremost and i think there is a lot of nonpartisan respect toward the environment and for the environment but unfortunately our politics have become very complicated. host: michael in plainfield, illinois on the independent line. caller: some of the previous callers stole my thunder here. i think i know the answer to this one but did your guest ever read anything written by karl marx? the reason i'm asking that is

that people confuse communism as it developed in the old soviet union under lenin and so forth and the bolsheviks with what marx was actually talking about. my first question. the second one is the system that we have has totally failed. you have previous programs where you'll mention that half the working population cannot lay their hands on $500 in an emergency. half the population has negative net worth. my point is, obviously, this system is not working for the average person. it's only working for the 1% and

the few around them that they sweep the crumbs off the table to. the rest of us are s.o.l. what does your guest proposes the way out of this? host: two questions, did you read marx and the differences between marxism and communism? and what is the way out of a broken capitalist system? guest: i think a person would have to be nutty to talk about capitalism without having read marx. what the collar is pointing to is an interesting point, marx was a philosopher and a thinker. his philosophies were implemented by people who were in many cases bad people. stalin did read marx. he decided that he was going to run the soviet economy the way he decided.

karl marx never called for killing hundreds of thousands of people. he never called for a glock -- gulag. any time that you take any philosophy and apply it to the real world you will see perversions of the philosophy. that's humans getting involved with ideas. the ideas may have great parts. humans get involved and it gets more complicated. this is why sony people are angry at capitalism. -- as many people are angry at capitalism. the percentage is not great. the percentage of americans thrown out of the middle class because of a medical bill, something that was accidental and not their fault, this is why people feel the system is not working. the caller said it is not working for most americans. i'm not sure that i agree with

that but at one time the american middle class was bigger and safer, and that is the american -- that is the system that many americans grew up buying into. i will be middle-class. i will be able to afford a house and if i have chosen put them through college and take vacations once per year. that is what i was raised to expect. what many americans were raised to expect. it didn't happen for millions of us starting with the financial crisis and millions of us justifiably lost faith in the system. host: alanna is calling in from albany, new york. caller: what she mentioned is a good place to start. unions were paying for those gains in their own blood and they fought against them for the

early part of the century. one of the fundamental problems with capitalism is that there is that profit motive that does not go to the workers, but even if you are a person working for a company, you are not a capitalist, you are a worker, and no matter how hard you work, all of the fruit of your labor goes to the company and the shareholders, what socialists want is a system that is not all based on somebody extracting wealth from workers, but where the workers earn what they make. for how hard you work you should get paid more and be able to afford the cars you are making. the same goes for the housing market.

all they are doing is extracting money from people who need a place to live and the product has to go up so the prices keep going up so they can make more money. host: do you have any response to that? guest: when i was doing interviews for the series i asked a smart economist named wendy carlin. mi a capitalist -- am i a capitalist? she said do you own part of your company? i said no. she said, you have aspects of capitalist but you really are just a worker. this is the point the caller is making. most of us are not the capitalists because we are not the ones making the profit off the company. to the caller's point, if we go back to the golden age of capitalism, when companies were interested in taking some of the prophets, they were there to

take care of workers to make sure they are doing well. the profit motive is always there. it is where are the prophets going -- profits going? workers able to pay for health care and go to school and take vacations. the caller is pointing to this interesting and unbelievable transformation in how we run capitalist economies. the uaw strikes -- the workers are saying our ceos had their pay bumped up 40%, why not us. it is still the united states of america and the word socialism

is really difficult for millions of americans. when i spoke to this economist in the u.k., she said, we did have adam smith liberalism, leave everything alone, then we moved into more government intervention. we had cans in economics, the government gets involved. she said, we need a new "ism." this is a woman with a doctorate in economics. she said the inequality has gotten so bad and the system is so broken that we need a new "ism." maybe it is not socialism because americans have trouble with outward, but this economist would call for a new way of thinking about how we do our "isms." host: go ahead on the republican

line. caller: thank you. i'm interested in changing -- the profits. i think the way to help america is, capitalist, commonest, marxist -- communist, marxist. i believe a marxist has actually -- the guy said, the 1%. like the strike of the uaw. they have the right philosophy. sharing more profits. the american people will work. going back to the the democratic

party, they are like th emar -- the marxists. they've gotten so deep into the ownership, they may have started out as capitalists and like to call themselves capitalists, but they're not. they are --they figured out that marxist communism lives continue and they have did -- deceived the working class of america -- host: i think i got your point, carl. i want to give noel a chance to respond. guest: it is a good point. i appreciate that he used the term the 1%. our politics is pre-much split down the middle.

half republican, half democrat. i look back to a time when americans first started talking about capitalism. using the word in the public square. that was during the financial crisis. american capitalism absolutely broke, it splintered our economic system, and along the way it splintered our politics. if you look at the two movements that rose up, the tea party and occupy wall street, which we will cover in the third part of our series. those movements were so focused on this dynamic. 99% of us can look at the situation where we have billionaires who do not pay the taxes they are supposed to pay and say, that's wrong. that should not be happening. ceos should not be making 3000 times what they're workers make.

we started feeling that we really disagree with each other. hearing that caller, it is something almost everybody regardless of party would agree with. there is a problem with inequality. there has been for 40 years. it has been getting worse over time. this is why people are fed up with the system. host: thank you, noel king. the new series is called "blame