dorothy brady, margaret reed. you recount in the book that friedman even called himself a feminist at one point. why do you think he was sort of so far ahead of the rest of the profession? was it the ideas about human capital theory from the university of chicago? was it something else? was it his background? what do you think explains that? >> you know i think part of it is that friedman lived a life in ideas, and that almost all of his closest relationships were people who shared his interest in economics and often shared his particular more free- market economic orientation. so what he saw first about a person really was their ideas rather than say their personality or their sense of humor, or also their gender. it kind of washed out for him. of course he knew these women were women but he didn't automatically assume, as many of his peers seemed to, that therefore they had nothing interesting to contribute to economics. so that's one piece of it. the other piece of it is that he's married to a fellow economist,

they've been having and to write them up in a memo to convince his colleagues that they should hire margaret reed. he would also like them to hire dorothy brady. so eventually, margaret is hired. brady gets like a one or two year position and then from there they move the the project moves forward. there's one last facet of his interest and his connection with women economists, and that goes the way friedman was always interested in approaches, economic life approaches, economic analysis that were established and was much slower than rest of his colleagues to say now that economics is becoming more quantitative and mathematical and model driven, we can sort of set aside all the other work that's been done and. typically, women economists worked consumption. they were figuring out who bought and sold what they were deeply empirical, adding up who, how many yams did this household buy? what did they for a funeral? do they have a larger border? so they were immersed in this sort of empirical research that most economists of friedman status had decided was sort of old news. but friedman was like, wel

they've been having and to write them up in a memo to convince his colleagues that they should hire margaret reed. he would also like them to hire dorothy brady. so eventually, margaret is hired. brady gets like a one or two year position and then from there they move the the project moves forward. there's one last facet of his interest and his connection with women economists, and that goes the way friedman was always interested in approaches, economic life approaches, economic analysis that were established and was much slower than rest of his colleagues to say now that economics is becoming more quantitative and mathematical and model driven, we can sort of set aside all the other work that's been done and. typically, women economists worked consumption. they were figuring out who bought and sold what they were deeply empirical, adding up who, how many yams did this household buy? what did they for a funeral? do they have a larger border? so they were immersed in this sort of empirical research that most economists of friedman status had decided was sort of old news. but friedman was like, wel