Today’s podcast is titled “Free Speech: Campus Arrests and Deportations.” Recorded in 2025, host Jim Falk is joined by Paul Butler, a First Amendment attorney and partner at Jackson Walker, and Jeremy Suri, presidential historian and Mack Brown Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Together, they examine the growing pressure on free speech and academic freedom in the United States, from the detention of foreign students to the defunding of universities that resist government demands. Their conversation explores what the First Amendment does — and doesn’t — protect, and what’s at stake when those rights go undefended. …
Wages Are Prices, Too
The federal minimum wage hasn’t budged since 2009. Meanwhile, rent has gone up, groceries have gone up, everything has gone up. A full-time worker at $7.25 an hour can’t make ends meet anywhere, the argument goes, and certainly not in any major city. It’s a damning comparison, and it gets made constantly. Before accepting it at face value, though, it’s worth asking: who exactly is earning the federal minimum wage? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the answer is almost nobody. In 2024, workers earning at or below the federal minimum represented exactly 1 percent of hourly workers, down …
Episode 267 – Classical Liberals: Our Founding Fathers’ Philosophy (Podcast)
Today’s podcast is titled “Classical Liberals: Our Founding Fathers’ Philosophy.” Program host Dennis McCuistion continues his 2024 conversation with Richard Epstein, Tisch Professor of Law at NYU and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, as they discuss the philosophy of classical liberalism that shaped America’s founding and how the Constitution’s structural safeguards were designed to limit government power and protect individual liberty. Listen now, and don’t forget to subscribe to get updates for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.
Philanthropy Is One of Capitalism’s Products
Every year or so, a report comes out detailing exactly how much money Americans gave to charitable causes the previous year. And every year, without fail, it kicks off the same conversation. According to Giving USA, Americans donated $592.5 billion in 2024. Nearly $600 billion-with-a-B. In a single calendar year. Only in the United States. That figure represents a 3.3% increase in real, inflation-adjusted dollars from the previous year—an increase driven pretty much entirely by individual donors and corporations. And yet, every single time reports like these come out, there’s inevitably some accompanying commentary boldly declaring that it isn’t enough. …
Ben Francis on Focus: Why Doing Less Makes You Worth More
When Gymshark expanded into swimwear, hiking gear, and general sportswear, Ben Francis thought he was making a smart business decision. More products mean more customers, and a broader appeal should equal bigger revenue. He was wrong. In his conversation with Simon Sinek, which you can watch below, the 33-year-old Gymshark founder describes how his company stopped chasing every opportunity and contracted back to one thing: making gymwear for people who actually go to the gym. Francis means that literally. Gymshark designs gear specifically for lifting and bodybuilding, built for people who want to show the results of their hard work. …
Episode 266 – The Supreme Court: Its Power, Influence, and Impact (Podcast)
Today’s podcast is titled “The Supreme Court: Its Power, Influence, and Impact.” Richard Epstein, Tisch Professor of Law at NYU and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution joins host Dennis McCuistion in this episode from 2024 to examine the critical Supreme Court cases that could reshape the balance of power between federal agencies and the courts, redefine property rights, and determine how the First Amendment applies to social media platforms. Listen now, and don’t forget to subscribe to get updates for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.
Do Businesses Really Need to Be Socially Responsible?
You’ve probably seen the headlines. Data center construction projects face protests and legal challenges from residents worried about noise, water usage, and property values. Social media platforms defend themselves in court against claims they’ve failed to protect teenagers from harmful content. Every major corporate expansion seems to trigger questions about environmental impact, community displacement, and social responsibility. And amid all this clamor, it’s a question that bears thinking about: What is the social responsibility of a business? And of course, there’s a bare legal minimum that needs to be met. Was the property acquired through legal means? Is the marketing …
Episode 265 – Will Federal Government Debt Destroy the Dollar? (Podcast)
Today’s podcast is titled “Will Federal Government Debt Destroy the Dollar?” First recorded in 2024, host Dennis McCuistion is joined by David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General and head of the Government Accountability Office, for a discussion about America’s mounting fiscal crisis as federal debt reaches $34 trillion and threatens the nation’s economic future. Walker emphasizes that the real concern isn’t just the debt amount but the debt-to-GDP ratio, which stands at 120% and is projected to reach 192% within 30 years. Listen now, and don’t forget to subscribe to get updates for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.
Is It Greed to Keep What You’ve Earned?
There’s a certain type of argument that surfaces whenever someone does well for themselves. You know the one. The successful business owner, the surgeon, the software engineer who took a risk on a startup that paid off. They’re making good money, maybe even great money, and someone inevitably steps forward to say: “Sure, but do they really need all that? Isn’t it a little greedy to keep so much when others have so little?” The framing is tidy. Almost intuitive. After all, if someone has more than they need and refuses to share, that sounds an awful lot like the …
Demis Hassabis on Solving the Whole Problem at Once
Every entrepreneur faces decisions about scope. Should you start small and test the concept? Build infrastructure for gradual expansion? The conventional wisdom says yes—move incrementally, validate as you go, scale carefully over time. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and 2024 Nobel Prize winner, took a different approach when his team solved one of biology’s biggest challenges. “So proteins are what everything in your body relies on. They make biology possible and living possible. And what’s important about them is their 3D structure,” Hassabis explains in the interview below. “So in the body, they fold up into kind of 3D …