David Lang

The ore was smelted from, you know, places and the dye came on ships.

And imagine who made the rope for those ships and who made the sails.

Can I hear you sing some bits and pieces?

Are you willing to sing some parts now or no?

I mean, I'm a terrible singer.

And this is going to be completely the wrong notes and it's going to be out of tune and the wrong rhythms.

Perfect.

The woolen coat

Which covers the labourer As coarse and rough as it may appear

is the produce of the joint labor of a great multitude of workers, the shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the woolcomber or carder,

The dyer, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, with many others must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production

Yeah, I hire real singers because I'm a really terrible singer.

I think it's part of that conversation.

I don't want to get into too political situation here, but it's hard not to look at the world around us at this moment and think that one of the jobs which should be done is to call out hypocrisy where you see it.

And I think this book is really, in a way, trying to say, how does a virtuous person build a moral structure for commerce?

I basically have one hobby, which is reading.

My first thought was there's so much of literature that we love and we revere, and it all ends up being people and money problems.

And so it seems like there would be a way to talk about the world that Adam Smith imagines and then use literature.

So I thought that it would be Dickens' Hard Times and Trollope and Jane Eyre.

And I'm a huge Zola fan.