We hear a lot about virtue in all kinds of contexts: civic virtue, cardinal virtues, and so on. In today's episode, we look at the roots of "virtue" in the Roman word virtus. It's a word that, at least etymologically speaking, has ties to something like "manliness," but even among our earliest Roman authors, virtus clearly means something different from macho strength. Finally, we look at the essay "Virtue Signaling" but the contemporary writer B. D. McClay. It's a provocative defense of what people sometimes call "virtue signaling," and it reminds us that people generally don't think of virtue simply as a way to show off to other people.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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