The Surprising Origins of Modern Freedom

Today'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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0:00 – Intro
1:15 – Main arguments from “The Age of Choice”
4:03 – Earlier conceptions of freedom
7:37 – The reformation and religious freedom
10:32 – Capitalism and market freedom
15:37 – Consumer choice and femininity
20:00 – Choice as freedom in the 20th century
26:07 – Abortion rights and the choice debate
31:26 – Choices versus mandates
36:50 – Overwhelmed by choice

Today's Sponsor:
Future of Freedom: If you're tired of cable news debates and Twitter shouting matches, and you're looking for serious, good-faith conversations between people who actually care about liberty, then it's time to check out the Future of Freedom podcast. Each episode dives deep into a single topic—tariffs, campus speech, the Department of Government Efficiency—and brings together two guests who disagree on the best path forward. But here's the twist: This isn't a debate show. No interrupting. No dunking. If you believe the future of freedom depends on more than just winning arguments and you're ready for something deeper than the usual echo chambers, check out the Future of Freedom podcast. Real disagreement. Real ideas. Real conversations. Subscribe to Future of Freedom wherever you get your podcasts.

Producer: Paul Alexander
Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser
Graphic Illustration: Eddie Marshall