Make Me Smart With Kai And Molly

Over the last 50 years, an ideology known as neoliberalism has transformed the American economy — for better or worse. The concept is often associated with Ronald Reagan, free markets and deregulation. But legal scholar Mehrsa Baradaran says there’s a lot we get wrong about the origins of neoliberalism and its true impact on society. On the show today, Baradaran, author of the new book “The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America,” explains what neoliberal ideology promised to do for the American economy, what it actually did and why she believes that looking to the free market might, ironically, be the only way forward. Then, why actress Scarlett Johansson isn’t cool with OpenAI’s new chatbot. And we’ll hear the sounds of cicadas! Here’s everything we talked about today: “Opinion | The Neoliberal Looting of America” from The New York Times “What is neoliberalism? A political scientist explains the use and evolution of the termR