#91： How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life With Russ Roberts
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, we take a look at the Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Adam Smith, the father of economics, and discuss what it can teach us about living a good and virtuous life, and why few people know about it.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well all of us
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know or probably should know who adam smith is he is the scottish enlightenment economist who
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wrote the wealth of nations who made famous the idea of the invisible hand of the markets and
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talked about the butcher and the brewer and the baker and all that stuff anyways before he wrote
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the wealth of nations he wrote a book called the theory of moral sentiments that's not really about
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economics it's about how to live a good life and how to maneuver and manage the relationships that
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are closest to us like family community and the like and the end goal is to to live a good and
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virtuous life that's what he's trying to explore in the theory of moral sentiments our guest today
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has written a book about this little known book of adam smith his name is russ roberts and his book
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is how adam smith can change your life russ is a research fellow at stanford university's hoover
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institution he's also the host of the podcast econ talk and in today's episode we're going to talk
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about what adam smith can teach us about living the good life right how to live a good and virtuous life
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and how insights from 300 years ago from an economist the first economist can teach us about
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how to live a good life now why celebrity culture is bad for the soul why we often deceive ourselves
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in our goodness and how that can get in the way of our moral progress we're going to talk about why
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we're so attracted to buying the latest gadget even though we know it's not going to bring us
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happiness so it's a fascinating podcast i think you're really going to like this so let's get on with
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the show rush roberts welcome to the show great to be with you okay so your book is called how adam
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smith can change your life we're talking about adam smith the father of economics the invisible hand
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guy and he's most famous for his book the wealth of nations but you took a look at a lesser known work
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of his called the theory of moral sentiments for our listeners who aren't familiar with this work
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could you just give a brief background of the theory of moral sentiments so it was his first book he
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wrote it in 1759 he were it was reprinted six times it was printed six different editions during
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his life including the last year of his life 1790 when he made some significant edits to it uh the
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wealth of nations came out in 1776 so this is the book that he wrote before the wealth of nations and
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kind of after it so i call it the book that was ever with him it is a book of what smith called
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moral philosophy that doesn't help us much what it's about it's a book about how we behave with
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each other it's a book how we what makes us tick what motivates us what brings serenity and tranquility
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and happiness to our lives how do we interact with other people why is it that even though we're
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incredibly self-interested we do selfless things which seems like a surprise and smith's really trying to
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understand our interactions at a micro micro level as opposed to his more famous book the wealth of
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nations which is really about markets and our commercial lives and how we trade and what that
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trade implies for standard of living and for specialization and the whole range of economic
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activity in this book the theory of moral sentiments he's trying to explain and understand how we behave
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with each other and uh in doing so he gives us a lot of advice and surprisingly perhaps it's very
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relevant for our lives today why do so few people know about it uh it's hard to read it's it's not
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organized in a particularly easy way to read uh it's written in 1759 and and so the sentences tend
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to be a little bit long it's a little bit like jane austin i sometimes call smith the jane austin of
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economics he has a beautiful prose style he's still readable but it's a style that most of us are not
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so accustomed to in 2014 and it's not very well organized he could use that editor but he didn't
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have one i guess so when i first read it which i didn't do until quite late in my career i found it
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very daunting and i put it down pretty quickly after i opened it i said this is this is hard uh and i but
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i stuck with it and it it's um it's a beautiful book it has wonderful insights into our our nature and
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wonderful advice uh for life okay so you just kind of alluded this to a little bit so the wealth of
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nations is about how we're inherently selfish but those selfish uh interests sort of coalesce to
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something that it all works out in the end right with the invisible hand um but the theory of moral
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sentiments has this sort of contrary idea that we're also altruistic so how does the theory of
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moral sentiments complement the wealth of nations and how does adam smith make these two ideas that
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we're selfish and altruistic jive together at the same time well i wouldn't use the word selfish i
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would use the word self-interested or self-centered self self-focused we put ourselves first and smith
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says so he says you know we think of ourselves as the center of the universe uh but he then says if we
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act that way you know nobody's going to like us because they understand that there are other people
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around including themselves so what his argument is is that we're not inherently altruistic or
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compassionate not particularly he calls that the feeble spark of benevolence he says it's that's
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not a very uh a powerful way to get us to do the right thing or to be nice to other people he says
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what the reason we're nice to other people the reason we don't always put ourselves first is we
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care what other people think of us and we look at the world around us we see that when people do kind
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things they're people smile at them or nice to them when people do selfish and mean things they're not
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so nice to them and they're not so pleasant and cheerful and we learn from that what's good and
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where uh what what our culture expects of us what other people expect of us and we try to conform to
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that and he says we act as if we have an impartial spectator watching us we act as if someone who's not
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on our side not on the other side but someone just keeping an eye on us what would that person say
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about us if we if that person would disapprove that puts pressure on us not to be selfish not to do the
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the self-interested thing all the time so he's not he doesn't say we're saints and he says in the
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heat of the moment we forget about the impartial spectator we kind of do what often what what what
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pleases us at the expense of other people but he says nature has given us this way this and by
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by this way he means this desire to be approved of and to avoid disapproval is a very powerful way
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which we sort of regulate ourselves where people regulate each other um he says man naturally desires
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not only to be loved but to be lovely and by loved he meant honored respected admired and praised
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and by lovely he meant worthy of honor respect and praise and admiration and so what he says
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what he's saying is that what really brings us happiness is that when other people respect and
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honor us and when we earn that respect and honor honestly through our actions not through what we
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imagine we're doing not by deceiving other people and it's a really beautiful idea for how we dance
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uh with other people in this great uh society that that we swim in right we have all these people we
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interact with on a day-to-day basis our family our friends our colleagues at work and smith's trying
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to understand what we do in those settings and his his answer is is that there's a tension between our
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self-interest and the fact that we want other people to to respect us and that is what encourages
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sometimes at least to do the right thing okay so is the the impartial spectator like a conscience or is
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like a sense of honor like what would be like is it is it driven by driven by guilt or shame well
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since we're on the art of manliness you know in a way it's really smith was i think for his time which
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was a very male-centric time uh he was thinking about what's it take to be a gentleman right so
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you're you're not the art of gentlemanliness doesn't sound so good but i think smith was talking
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about what it takes to be a good person in his time and it was his he was thinking about a conscience
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but what's distinctive about smith's approach he's telling us where that conscience comes from
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and the obvious place is when if you ask somebody you know why do people do the right thing why do
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they have a conscience where's it come from i think people would say well they have religion
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they have their parents and certainly religion and parenting matters has an impact on us but smith
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was saying that we don't really rely on that what we really rely on is those people around us to keep
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us in line through their judgments and vice versa we judge the people around us and so he's really
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explaining where our conscience comes from in a very unusual way okay so it does sort of seems
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like we care about what other people think about us we do good and there's sort of a self-interested
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motive in that right because if you are lovely there are benefits that come with that correct
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that's right but unlike the standard economist way of looking at the world which is it's all about costs
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and benefits i don't think smith was really saying that that was the way we behave you could say that we
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act as if we were behaving that way but what smith really saw i think was a different kind of
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way of looking at human nature and what motivates us when we face moral dilemmas and decisions about
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how to spend our time the crucial things that make up our daily existence he's really saying you know
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we don't always say oh what's it what's in it for me he's saying i might say that when i get on
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on on the web and shop for something what's in it for me but when i'm interacting with you and you're
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saying to me can you give me a ride to the airport and i said oh gee i gotta finish that thing for work
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i said i'm just because you're my friend i'm gonna do it not because i'm saying oh well later he'll do
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it for me i'm i'm just doing because i think it's the right thing to do and yes i'll feel good about
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it it's good to feel lovely but smith's saying that's not why we do it we do it because it's just
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the right thing to do gotcha okay so this idea of being lovely that's it's a word we don't really
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used that much anymore to describe a person correct your character so i mean what did he
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mean by being lovely so he had two things in mind i think and he again he didn't mean it the way we
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mean it as you say it wasn't uh attractive which is what lovely usually means in our um our language
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in america at least um by although in in in england in the uk lovely is a different is a phrase that
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people use all the time to mean i like it right oh that's lovely uh but we don't we don't use it
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that way we use it to mean oh it's a lovely lovely outfit uh you might say about about somebody's
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clothing but smith meant it in a very um broad way he meant it as i said to to recognize the fact that
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we are worthy of respect and honor and admiration and praise and to be lovely he said there are two
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things you have to do you have to be proper you have to act with what he called propriety
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and by that he for us propriety kind of means stiff and conformist he meant conforming in a good way
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he meant conforming in the sense that if you have a tragedy or a success and you share it with someone
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that person will try to respond in the way you'd like to be responded to and vice versa someone comes
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to you to tell you about a success or tragedy you try to empathize with their tragedy you try to enjoy
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their success with them and he explains that our ability to do that's very limited because we're not
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the other person we're we're a separate person and therefore when we share our successes and tragedies
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with people around us we take into account how close or far away they are from us emotionally
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so it's a very subtle and nuanced understanding of social interaction and what we would call
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perhaps manners or etiquette but again it's much more than that that use of the word so that's the
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minimum standards propriety so if you want to be lovely you got to be proper you've got to behave
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according to the norms of the society around you but more than that you have to be virtuous and
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smith saw three great virtues prudence justice and beneficence prudence take care of yourself
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take care of your body take care of your financial life don't be reckless with either of them
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justice don't hurt other people beneficence help other people when you can and when it actually helps
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them not just it looks like you're helping them so smith had this really beautiful idea of
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loveliness and of course it's easy to say be nice to other people that's very difficult he understood
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that he said the rules for beneficence are loose vague and indeterminate unlike the rules for justice
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which are black and white justice pretty clear don't hit somebody over the head don't kill them
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don't steal their stuff but beneficence helping others is much trickier and he has a lot of interesting
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things to say about that uh it's a lot of subtle and useful things to say about how to be a good
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person uh but that was his that was really his uh his guideline he said you know when because we want
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to be loved he said the easiest way to be loved the way most many people choose is to be rich or famous
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or powerful and he says that's the wrong way he says the pursuit of wealth or fame or power it will
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inevitably leave you unsatisfied and you'll do things along the way to get there that you're not
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going to be happy about or that are that are shameful you'll regret later so the first economist
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the person who wrote the wealth of nations says pursuing wealth is not really a great idea it's
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not really worth it nothing wrong with having it but you shouldn't pursue it for its own sake
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and uh that's i think timeless advice generally good advice and uh it's fun to hear it coming from
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the first economist yeah i thought that was interesting he's like he had like a little bit equation
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for happiness yeah and being lovely was part of that um and money didn't play a role in that i think
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it was just like don't get into debt was yeah he says uh he says what more can be added to the
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happiness of a man who is who is in health uh out of debt and has a clean conscience and uh that's
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a paraphrase but it's close and he's you know what he's saying there is that if you pursue wealth for
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its own sake you're going to end up without a clean conscience or you're going to end up in debt if you
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pursue material stuff so uh that's that that'll get you a long way being satisfied with your health
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and uh and and you're um and being debt free it'll get you a long way did smith have any insights
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because i think one of the reasons why people decide to choose you know pursuing wealth or fame
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because there's something tangible right when you have you can look at your bank account and say well
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my bank account is higher than it was last year but it's hard to say well i'm in my you know i'm
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more virtuous than i was last year did smith provide any insights on how you track your progress
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in your in becoming lovely not really uh but it's a great it's a great observation i what he would add
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to it is that not only do you look can you look at your bank account and see that it's higher than
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it was last year you can look at your car in the driveway and see that it's nicer than your neighbors
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and he says that that pushes us to acquire nicer cars and more gadgets because he's correct people who
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are wealthy people who are successful people who are powerful people who are famous they get a lot
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of attention and people like that they want that so there's this natural uh seduction that takes place
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where we are drawn to these things and smith's counseling us to avoid that so you make a great
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point so smith says don't do that be lovely how do you get how do you give yourself that pat on the
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back the way your bank account does with your loveliness account you know a lot of people in this
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business i'm not an expert on it but i've read some of these books you know that encourage this kind
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of thing there are a lot of ways we can do that we can we can keep a notebook we could do a uh a uh
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accounting uh it's a in judaism you're encouraged at the end of the day to think about what you've done
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that day and whether you did the right thing or not so it's not as dramatic as looking at the bank
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account it's not as precise but there are ways that we can keep track of our moral choices and to
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and to encourage ourselves to do the right thing smith of course also understood and he writes
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very eloquently on it that we are prone to deceive ourselves so when we do something not so nice
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we might leave that out of the bank account whereas when we uh spend money frivolously it does leave the
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bank account and we do see that it's gone so it is much harder when we do the moral accounting
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and the kindness the loveliness accounting to do it uh honestly and scrupulously so i encourage that
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you know smith says that self-deception is responsible for half the disorders of of modern life and
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he's he's onto something there we we do tend to neglect our shortcomings and over remember our
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good side so uh that's a just a good general warning yeah he i like the his insights about
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self-deception um i mean how how do you overcome that because we do have a tendency to paint ourselves
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in a positive light even though we might not uh do great you know it's like a cognitive dissonance
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right yeah sure how do we overcome that well what i suggest in the book uh smith doesn't say this but
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what i suggest in the book is that uh you rely on some actual spectators not just the imaginary ones
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that smith says sometimes we have in mind when we're trying to decide what to do when you face
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a moral dilemma at work say or you have a personal issue you know a friend wants you to come visit or
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you have a funeral to go to or you have a project at work at the same time you're trying which should i
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work on your kid needs you to help with the homework but you want to watch the football game
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it's always easy to convince ourselves that the personal benefit thing is the right thing oh i
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need to watch the football game because then i'll be able to help my kids even better later because
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i'll be more relaxed you know we have stories we tell ourselves oh there'll be a lot of people at
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the funeral i don't need to go she won't miss me it'll be okay and i found that you know it's better
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to have uh and smith does suggest something along these lines better to have hard and fast rules
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you almost always try to go to a funeral where a friend has had a loss uh it's true that any one
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time it's not the end of the world if you skip it but you'll often find yourself skipping lots of them
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and then you'll miss a chance to comfort a friend and um smith understood there's a slippery slope in
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life that if you start justifying things as being good when they're maybe just self-interested
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uh you'll often choose the self-interested thing uh without really doing the right thing so
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what i suggest besides having some hard and fast rules is ask people ask ask your spouse ask your
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friend say i'm in this situation what do you think the right thing to do is and a good friend who's
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honest will suggest to you well you know from the outside looks pretty clear you ought to do x uh
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whereas sometimes from the inside you can you're always going to say oh well i'm sure that the best
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thing to do is is why when that that's actually the thing that i want because it benefits me yeah you
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made a good point in the book where you talked about don't deceive yourself that you don't you
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aren't deceivable right like yeah you know i think i have a tendency to do that it's like oh i read all
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these psychology books that i'm like yeah you know we we deceive ourselves all the time okay i can't
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deceive myself but i i know that i'm probably doing it even though i don't know i'm doing it yeah and i
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spend a lot of time thinking about self-deception and i still fool myself sometimes uh of course it's
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a human frailty and it's you know it's very common i was a great uh internet meme this this last
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couple weeks over the election it had a a picture of um obi-wan kenobi from star wars that said this
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is what my my politician looks like and then there was a picture of darth vader this is what the other
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guy's politician looks like then there was a picture of um is it jojo binks is that his name
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says it says that's what he's but that's what they're both like but you know our my guy my guy's
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great it's that other guy that's awful or we do that in you know with economics you know my theories
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my models they've got all the evidence the other side's evidence that's crummy evidence and we see
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a report or a study we don't like it's really easy to find the things that are wrong with it but
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somehow your study the one that supports your side or my side i go oh no that's that's perfect
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and so there is this terrible temptation to overstate the quality of one's own stuff and be
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skeptical about the other side and we should be more open-minded a little more humble i think okay
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um so i thought this interesting smith had some insight uh over 300 years ago about why we feel
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compelled to buy the latest ipod or the latest you know gadget even though you know we i think we
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know in the back of our mind that we're going to get quickly get used to it yeah so what did smith
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say i have to say about the the you know so he he warned against uh trinkets of frivolous utility is
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what he called them uh things that that we like to show off and and impress people with uh and he says
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they don't really make our lives that much better they we like them because they do their job so
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elegantly they're impressive and i my example that in the book is uh you know i have so many apps on
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my iphone that i bought just because i love what they can do what they do you know i have somebody's
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dna mapped out on my iphone that you can you can get and you think that's just so cool but it really
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doesn't make your life any better it's just a beautiful thing and and if you're not careful you
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could accumulate those things and you can find yourself uh not it's not a tragedy that you have too
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many apps on your iphone the tragedy is when you uh spend money on stuff that doesn't really bring
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much of a return and smith was warning us about uh gadgets as a as a way of um of spending our money
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that might not be a fruitful way to spend our money the interesting question is what kind of gadgets
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that they have in 1759 and he lists an ear picker a toothpick a machine for cutting the nails
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not that exciting and yet in 1759 people showed those things off the way we do and he ironically
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right this is right after the just about a month ago uh tim cook of apple announced the new apple watch
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and he's talking about how uh accurate it is and i think that's kind of funny my book comes out
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comes out right around the same time when smith in his book says this is a crazy thing people will
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spend a premium they'll pay a huge amount extra for a watch it's a little more accurate
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it doesn't make them any more punctual they're still not on time for their meetings or appointments
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and of course we know that's true having the apple watch which is going to be
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accurate to some number some i think it's five milliseconds is not going to make anybody more
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productive as a worker because there's improvement over the iphone which might be off by 20 seconds oh
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the horror so smith was uh he's on to something there even in 1759 yeah i do that all the time with uh
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like my you know using to justify my smartphone like oh you know i can get all these
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apps right and it'll make me more productive and like yeah no it's it's not i could use pen and
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paper and i'd be just as productive a lot of times yeah a lot of times okay so uh right now
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currently into the 21st century we are a celebrity culture i mean everyone wants to be famous i think
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they've done polls on young people and like young people today would rather be famous than you know
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have money or do good or so but no one really thinks about the costs that come with fame
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but smith thought about this yeah what do you say about the cost that comes with with fame so he's
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very eloquent on this and uh he understood that we want to be famous because we want to be loved as
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he said it's it's inside us it's hard we're hardwired to to want attention and uh as we said earlier
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he says the right way to do that to be a good person the wrong way is to get is to try to be famous
00:22:51.640
for example and what he says about it is that you know you get fame by doing a lot of things that are
00:22:59.580
not so attractive that's number one uh in his in his time he's talking about people who you know
00:23:05.700
climbed the ranks in court in the royal societies of his day the it's an amazing uh you know time they
00:23:13.220
didn't have cable television or anything like like we have or talk radio but uh in his day they still
00:23:19.500
had celebrities and still had people who cared about about being famous so he says it's a bad
00:23:23.720
idea he says it's not good for you and one of his best examples i don't use this in the book in my
00:23:28.120
book but it's uh it's a great example he talks about the king of macedon the king of macedon was uh
00:23:34.400
a con was conquered by the romans and he's led through the streets and he says
00:23:38.000
you know he's miserable and he says why is he miserable this is you know he's he's been captured by
00:23:42.600
humane people they're going to take care of him they're going to feed him they're basically
00:23:46.160
going to put him under house arrest he's not going to be tortured he's not going to be killed
00:23:50.160
like the the zarb and the revolution he's just going to be he's going to lose his kingdom
00:23:54.140
and he says boy look how depressed he is about that and why is he depressed he says depressed
00:23:59.280
because nobody's going to fawn over him anymore no one's going to be sucking up to him he's not
00:24:03.420
going to get any of that thrill he used to get whenever i was paying attention to him saying you
00:24:07.180
know he's basically saying is this pitiful it's just so unattractive and so he says if you pursue fame
00:24:12.560
and when you lose it and people don't pay attention to anymore it's just it's the worst because you
00:24:17.740
become essentially addicted to to the attention that other people give you and he also talked about
00:24:22.880
how you sort of uh become restricted uh the more famous you get like your choices become because the
00:24:30.040
more people know about you they'll be more concerned about your security um and like you know where you
00:24:34.880
know who are around you can't be as free roaming as you were when people know you absolutely um so i'm
00:24:40.960
guessing it sounds like fame is sort of a counterfeit loveliness would that be a good way to describe
00:24:46.520
it well it's a counter it's it's not counterfeit it is it it's a he basically says it's the glittering
00:24:56.480
path that that draws us fame and money and power draws us to those things because we as we know people
00:25:03.500
are going to pay attention to us but uh he's you know he's saying stay away from that stuff it's bad
00:25:07.600
okay uh so he had some insights on how us focusing on being good lovely and virtuous can actually
00:25:16.280
contribute to a better world like small actions on our part can you brief i know it's sort of nuanced
00:25:21.240
and complex but can you briefly describe what smith had to say about how just little small actions on
00:25:25.560
our part can contribute to a better world yeah what he's saying is that the culture that we live in
00:25:30.040
the expectations of the people around us and and what we can expect from them uh that all comes from
00:25:36.600
our own personal individual actions and come from anywhere else there's no memo that goes out and
00:25:40.320
says be trustworthy uh and yet we live in a culture in america that's pretty trustworthy and i give
00:25:46.280
examples in the book of when i was in situations where somebody trusted me and i trusted them and it
00:25:51.720
worked out of course doesn't always work out but it's remarkable how often it works out in a world where
00:25:56.180
there's no often no real cost other than shame and embarrassment uh you're not likely to get sued for
00:26:03.020
being dishonorable in those situations and when you i give the example often you buy a house
00:26:07.520
there's this really complicated contract design but there's a lot of things thousands of things
00:26:12.100
that don't go into the contract they're just sort of accepted that you know you leave the house clean
00:26:15.660
you don't there's no details about how clean it has to be because you can't really specify that
00:26:20.120
and yet everybody understands that you can't leave the house a mess when you leave and most people
00:26:24.460
don't they don't take advantage of the fact that it's not in the contract and i think that's a
00:26:28.920
wonderful thing and smith says where does that come from so it comes from the fact that we watch
00:26:33.360
the people around us we see what's honorable we see what's dishonorable and we try to do mostly
00:26:37.900
what's honorable and we're lucky in america to live in a world where what's honorable is to be
00:26:41.600
trustworthy for most people in other cultures being a uh trustworthy is a sucker you know being being uh
00:26:48.420
give it passing up a chance to to take somebody's money it's like you're a fool but in america it's like
00:26:52.840
honored if you don't if you if you give up a chance to steal something from somebody take advantage of a
00:26:58.100
something left out of the contract and that's just a great thing and where that comes from is
00:27:02.480
from us it comes from our choices that we make on a day-to-day basis about how to behave with each
00:27:07.060
other and smith's saying that you know if you want to make the world a better place make a contribution
00:27:11.500
to that be honorable and honor people who are honorable and dishonor people who are dishonorable
00:27:17.200
judge them accordingly don't just let things go sometimes and when you have a chance to do the
00:27:22.320
right thing do the right thing and it's tempting to say any one thing oh what's the big difference
00:27:26.180
but smith says all those actions add up and eventually not eventually together they create
00:27:30.860
a culture and we we have a good one we should honor it and try to sustain it how do you like
00:27:35.920
dishonor i feel like we're kind of uncomfortable with that this day is like making people feel bad
00:27:40.420
yeah we are so i mean how do you do that i mean do you have not as we're not as judgmental as i think
00:27:45.420
people were in smith's time in smith's time if you did the wrong thing uh there's a lot more stigma
00:27:49.640
a lot more shame i think we're encouraged in america to not feel shame not feel guilty uh and
00:27:57.140
i think i don't you know there's something good about that but i do think we paid a price in that
00:28:01.020
it does tend to if we're not careful make us less responsible and to be a little more selfish
00:28:05.540
um but being judgmental is is a strong phrase i think what smith had in mind was very subtle it
00:28:15.180
wasn't just oh if your friend does something uh that's not that's not 100 uh great you should
00:28:21.800
then stop being friends with them that's not what he meant what he meant was you know there's an
00:28:26.960
enormous range of judgment and and praise that we give people we we can raise an eyebrow uh somebody
00:28:33.140
tells a joke that's in bad taste that's cruel say to somebody that we were we know and it's sometimes
00:28:39.820
it's funny and it's fun to sometimes make fun of other people and smith's i think would say you
00:28:44.720
know that's wrong so what do you do when someone tells a joke like that at work or you know hanging
00:28:50.280
out with your buddies you know what should you what should your response be should you say that's a
00:28:54.500
cruel joke shame on you well that kind of language doesn't fly very well in 2014 but you don't have
00:29:00.700
to laugh and you can kind of make a you can raise an eyebrow and say you can make a noise and if
00:29:06.460
somebody does that all the time you can stop hanging out with them so there's an enormous range
00:29:10.380
of ways that we respond socially i think to appropriate and inappropriate behavior and
00:29:15.140
our age has a different set than smith did but it's still the same idea same idea okay um so this
00:29:21.320
has been a fascinating discussion i know we just scratched the surface but uh besides going out and
00:29:25.740
buy your book where can people find out more about your work uh you can go to my website russroberts.info
00:29:31.500
you can listen to my weekly podcast econ talk where every monday at 6 30 a.m uh release an
00:29:38.300
interview we have over 425 episodes that we uh that we keep up there and uh those would be the
00:29:44.900
best ways i'd say fantastic well russ roberts thank you for your time it's been a pleasure
00:29:48.460
thank you our guest today is russ roberts he is the author of the book how adam smith can change your
00:29:54.120
life and you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere and you can also check out his
00:29:59.380
website russroberts.info or if you're interested in economics you can listen to his podcast it's
00:30:05.040
econtalk.org well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips
00:30:12.960
and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and
00:30:17.300
today in the podcast we were talking about becoming virtuous in order to be lovely and happy well we just
00:30:22.420
recently launched a new journal slash record keeper inspired by benjamin franklin's 13 virtues chart
00:30:29.700
it's a really cool journal that's bound in leather really nice looking you can find those in the art of
00:30:36.120
manliness store that's at store.artofmanliness.com makes a great gift for the men in your life for
00:30:41.880
the holiday season so there you go until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly