 One of the interesting aspects of the Free to Choose project is my being introduced to Milton Friedman. Prior to Free to Choose, almost prior to Free to Choose, I was not interested in those kinds of ideas, or maybe putting it more correctly, I was interested in them, but I didn't spend any time at it. When Alan Wallace suggested Milton Friedman as the host of the series, I think I would have to say I did not know whom he was talking about. I don't even know if I recognized the name Milton Friedman at that point in time. The concept came about probably when Alan Wallace and I were talking about PBS and PBS programming in 1975, but in effect the concept in one sense really was shaped in November of 77 when I first met with the people from video arts for an extended discussion of what the programs were going to be. Now if you take that as the point of concept of the program, and the fact that it was essentially then a little less than two years because it was finished in August of 79, Milton Friedman up in his entire life up to the broadcast of Free to Choose had personally personally answered every letter he received from anyone. He would write a personal specific response. About three weeks into Free to Choose, he explained to me, he said, Bob, the reaction and the number of comments I've received in letters is so large that I've had to do something I just have resisted my whole life. I created a standard form letter response in which I explained to people that I was sorry I could not respond in person in a personal way, but I'm sending this form letter to tell you how much I appreciated your writing me, but I've had so much mail I can't respond to each one. And then finally he had similarly, and by the way this says something about the man's character, as does this next point, in his entire life Milton Friedman was somebody you could call on the telephone. If you wanted to reach Milton Friedman, you just looked at the Chicago phone book and there he was and you call and he'd answered the phone. And the same was true when he moved to San Francisco where he'd lived for about three years when Free to Choose went on the air. And again, three to four weeks into the TV series, which was ten weeks long, but it was only three to four weeks in, he called me to say, Bob, I've had to do something I just never wanted to do, and that is I had to change to an unlisted phone call because I couldn't get anything done. I was getting so many phone calls. But he said it really isn't an unlisted number. It's listed under Rose's maiden name. So if you forget it, first he told me what the number was, then he says, but if you forget it, just look up Rose Director in the San Francisco phone book and that's our number. So those are some indicators. It was phenomenally successful. One of the interesting things about Free to Choose is because of the process, because of the way it was done. The fact that Milton was just not, he wasn't a television actor. Not at all. Our goal was to capture him as an individual. By the way, my own assessment is that the reason Free to Choose was much more successful, phenomenally more successful than the John Kenneth Galbraith series was because stylistically, the age of uncertainty was produced like a staged performance. And Galbraith was put in a position which was not his normal way of doing things. In our case, Freedman was essentially given the opportunity to continue lecturing what she'd done all his life. Only do it in all these interesting locations. So when you see him at the Library of Congress talking about the federal register and showing how it grew year after year after year with the big stacks of books, it was like giving him candy, like giving a kid candy. Because he was so excited about, look at how could I illustrate to my class the growth of government? What better way? He would have said, gosh, if I could bring into class copies of the federal register and show how it grew year to year. And here we did it on TV and he could walk around and at the end, the stack, the pile of books was nearly as tall as Milton. So he loved, loved that, really did. But what does that say in terms of how much time was involved in preparing? It was a different thing. Milton had, I'll answer the question this way. Milton Freedman spent 65 years preparing for that TV series. He didn't start producing it until he was 65. But every step of his life he had been preparing for that. In thinking through ideas, researching them, developing his view of the world. And then because he had loved engaging in debate and love giving speeches, and then he started writing the Newsweek column, he also had had years of experience of learning how do you communicate with people who do not know the science of economics? Milton and Rose, they were looking at the program from the point of view of, well, if the program results in the sale of a lot of books, it will be a success. Boy, did it result in a sale of a lot of books. I don't know the final totals for the past entire 30 years. Free to choose is still available. It's still in print on the paperback. And that's pretty good for a book of that kind. The age of uncertainty kind of sunk into oblivion by comparison, which of course pleases me personally. Give you a couple of examples. Free to choose was the first, and I think it may have been the only book. But it certainly was the first book that Milton wrote that the New York Times book review ever reviewed. They had not reviewed any of his other books. Number two, hardback sales in the United States was in excess of 400,000. Hardback sales in Japan were in excess of a half a million, and it just went up from there. So millions of copies of the book were sold. And that of course, was a huge success in the eyes of the Freedmen.