The Surprising Origins of Modern Freedom
July 9, 2025
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41:05Now PlayingThe Surprising Origins of Modern Freedom
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as posted by the channelToday's guest is University of Pennsylvania historian Sophia Rosenfeld, the author of The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.
Her book explores why we’ve come to basically equate having more personal choices with having more freedom. She stresses it wasn’t always this way--in the past, freedom was often defined as the ability to act in the way God wanted you to act, or to overcome base urges, to be more angel than beast.
Rosenfeld talks about how the Reformation, which enshrined a right to choose among faiths, and the rise of shopping, which allowed us to choose among many options, worked to change all that, even up to our current day, where rhetoric about choice still dominates many political and economic arguments.
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Producer: Paul Alexander
Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser
Graphic Illustration: Eddie Marshall
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