Extras: Jeremy Lott on Comics, Adam Smith, and More

[Smith] opened up with a division of labor. That's how he opens up the Wealth of Nations. It's an extended argument about the division of labor and how important that is. I don't think that was entirely unique to him, but he punched it so hard and so long that he made the point and it really had an effect on policy in a lot of different areas. My colleague Ryan Young argued that the reason though that Smith was successful, as someone who we care about, is because what underlied all of his observations was this idea of empathy. That economics isn't just a study of numbers, it's a study of how humans work together and how they can do it better. And that if he hadn't been a very close observer of human nature he would not have been able to produce that result. (Lightly edited)

[T]he story of the name of your podcast. He talks about how science is the great antidote to superstition, but these days it's also an antidote to a lot of other things. I think you've done a good job to make that more well known, but I think that that's not a thing that he had been known for before you started punching it. (Lightly edited)