Paul Solman

And so I think there's a growing sense, uh, among Americans that everywhere they go they're being monitored, and I think that's part of what you see in some of this backlash against this technology.

Um, Callie, the, uh, my colleague Paul Solman did a story about the controversy around the Flock cameras, and he spoke to a spokesperson for Flock, and they argued this technology i- is wonderful at solving crimes.

I think the, the spokesperson claimed that something like 800,000 to a million crimes per year were solved because a Flock camera was able to catch a perpetrator moving from one place to another or driving or, or in the act.

What do you make of that argument? Because that is the argument that cities and law enforcement argue is why we need these cameras, 'cause it stops crime and it catches criminals.

If I live a normal, quote, unquote, 'legal life,' what do I have to worry about any of this?" How do you respond to that?

I hear that a lot.

Um, and to steal a phrase from my colleague, Jeremy Scott, I think one of the best ways to say that is that privacy constantly gets framed as having something to hide.

It's not about that.

We are truly a people of the book.

The economics journalist Paul Solman, who I always loved, who many of us know from decades reporting on the PBS NewsHour, wrote of the more than a thousand essays that he ran in his online publication Making Sense Business Desk, the third most popular after a pop culture quiz and a retirement prep primer, was Botticini and Eckstein's essay summarizing the book, The Chosen Few, How Education Shaped Jewish History, the years 70 to 1492, which argued that historical Jewish literacy rates led to the economic flourishing of Jews through history.

He writes, in the world of almost universal illiteracy back 2,000 years, the Jewish religious leadership, the rabbis and scholars and the academies in Judea and Galilee required each Jewish individual, child or adult, rich or poor, farmer or merchant, to learn to read and to study Torah.

Instead of restricting learning and study and knowledge to a small elite, the Jewish religious leadership of the time went exactly in the opposite direction.