The topics I study are unusual for an economist. Things like cheating and sumo wrestling,

a link between abortion and crime, the perils of walking drunk. But on the scale of weirdness,

I can't even be keen to compete with my guest today, Pete Leason. The list of subjects he

studied till to depure absurdity, everything from the practice of wife-selling in industrial

revolution era England, to trials in Italy in the 15th to 17th century, in which insects were

the defendants. And even what are called ordeals, the medieval practice of determining innocence

or guilt by plunging someone's hand into boiling water. Welcome to people I mostly admire,

with Steve Levitt. But the amazing thing about Pete Leason is that he takes these crazy topics

and through a brilliant mix of meticulous historical research, data gathering, and creative

economic thinking, he shows that these seemingly nonsensical practices actually make a whole lot

of sense once you understand them. I can't think of another economist whose work has so consistently

blown my mind. And I'm pretty confident he will do the same to you.

Way too much time has passed since we last spoke. Has been a decade and more?

It's been about 10 years if you can believe it, Steve. Let's wait too long and even if we haven't

been talking, I've made a point of following your research because I can honestly say there's

nobody else like you in the field of economics. So before we do anything else, I think we need to

give people a few examples of your research. Could you provide a little history lesson?

What were ordeals and when were they used? Absolutely. For about 400 years between the

night century and the early 13th, the most sophisticated legal systems in Europe conducted physical

tests in criminal cases to determine the guilt or innocent of accused suspects. In the classic

medieval judicial ordeal as these things were called, the priest or the cleric who was overseeing

the trial boiled a pot of water into which he threw a stone or ring. He then asked the criminal

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