This is thinking in public a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Zena Hitts is tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.

After receiving her master of philosophy at Cambridge University, Professor Hitz earned her

PhD at Princeton University, where she studied the political and philosophical works of Plato in Aristotle.

She has taught at Auburn University,

the University of Maryland,

was a visiting fellow for the James Madison

program at Princeton University,

and a visiting research professor the Center for

Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. Her most recent book

Lost in Thought The Hidden Pleasures of an intellectual life makes a moving argument about the life of the mind and that

book is the topic of our conversation today.

Professor Zina hits, Welcome to Thinking in Public.

It's so great to be here, Dr. Mueller. I really enjoyed your book. I

know I would from the title because it's a pretty courageous title in the year

2020 to write about the hidden pleasures of an intellectual life because the very

subtitle of your book the title being lost in thought it runs counter to the idea

that a hidden life is an unimportant life, but that's really pretty central to your argument as I read it.

You're absolutely right, it is central, and at the time when I began this writing, you know, it began with a short essay for first things about five years ago.

I thought I was the only person in the world who thought this way.

...