Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show.

I'm not the announcer Todd Wilkerson, but I sound so much like him that Eric asked me to take over.

Evidently Todd was caught stealing again.

Oh, it was nothing big, just some toilet paper out of the studio bathroom and little soaps and some poppery. But still, Eric said it was the principal of the thing. So he fired Todd's behind just like that. And now your host, Mr. Law & Order. Eric Woodtax him. I have really no idea what he's talking about, or even if that introduction has any relationship to this program.

This is a sophisticated program, and we frown on Todd and his ilk, generally.

We try to have intelligent conversations with intelligent guests.

Typically we fail, but today we will succeed because I have sitting in the studio

a professor of political science from Boston College. He's had visiting appointments or

fellowships at places like Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago, just to name a few

at the bottom of the barrel. And he's the author of many studies on Enlightenment Political Philosophy, including Adam Smith and the character of virtue.

And actually, it is about Adam Smith.

We will be talking today because there's a new book called Our Great Purpose, Adam Smith on Living a Better Life. Ryan Patrick Hanley, welcome to the program. Thanks very much. It is a joy to be here. I am really so thrilled to have you. I did see a review of this book in the Wall Street Journal, and I read it, and I thought, holy cow, this is exactly the kind of thing that I want to talk about,

that I want to learn about, and that I want my listeners to learn about. I really feel like part

of what we try to do on the show is educate people on the sort of thing they're not going to bump

into on TV or unless they're reading the Wall Street Journal carefully. It is about as central as

it gets, the link between freedom and virtue. So for people who

don't even know who Adam Smith is, if you don't mind, start there. Of course. So Smith is an 18th century

philosopher whose life has sort of afterlife and, comes from his contributions as an economist.

And so Smith is famous as, for economists today, as being one of the founding fathers of their discipline.

And he's particularly famous for having not just been a social scientist and a founding social scientist,

but also his name has come to be associated, at least in the popular imagination and the pages

of the Wall Street Journal, with a particular vision of economics. And that's, it goes under lots

...