Ep. 687: Peter Leeson Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Michael Covel's Trend Following

Michael Covel

Investing, Business

4.6 • 730 Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2018

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest today is Peter Leeson, an economics professor at George Mason University and is known for connecting rational choice theory with unusual domains. He looks at human behavior as a series of puzzles that are being solved by those involved. He focuses his studies on everything from bizarre rituals and superstitions to the behavior of Caribbean pirates. Peter’s work has also been quoted as “Freakonomics on steroids.”

The topics are his books WTF?!: An Economic Tour of the Weird and The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Somalia pirates
Anarchy vs. government
Medieval law and order
Trial by jury
Logic of incentives
Street hustlers

Jump in!

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I’m MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I’m proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show.

To start? I’d like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/

You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can’t get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms:
Twitter: @covel
Facebook: @trendfollowing
LinkedIn: @covel
Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Trend Following Radio, where great thinking comes alive.
0:10.9	Nobel Prize winners, legendary traders, bestselling authors, and the pros that know what drive us irrational human beings.
0:21.2	I am your host, Michael Covel, not filtered, raw, honest.
0:27.4	That's my passion.
0:33.5	My guest today is Peter Leeson.
0:36.0	He's the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University.
0:40.7	George Mason University, my alma mater. I don't, however, have an economics degree, but I do thoroughly enjoy bringing on econ professors from George Mason, Tyler Cohen, Robin Hansen, Daniel Klein, Brian Kaplan,
1:00.2	and Peter Leeson. For those of you that are not aware of George Mason University, well,
1:06.2	if you're interested in liberty, if you're interested in economics through a liberty lens, it's hard to miss
1:13.9	my alma mater these days. These guys are out there thinking, acting, and educating us all
1:23.1	on liberty. And damn it, if the entire world could get to the economic perspective emanating
1:31.1	from George Mason University, we would all be at a much better place. Peter is an interesting
1:38.2	guy, a relatively young guy, not even 40 years of age. He's known for extending rational choice
1:43.7	theory into unusual domains, such as the
1:47.7	bizarre study of rituals and superstitions, the behavior of Caribbean pirates. What the heck does that
1:54.1	have to do with us today? Surprisingly, a lot. Stephen Levitt of Freakonomics fame has described his work as Freakonomics on
2:04.1	steroids. And that's where I go today through his newest work, WTF, an economic tour of the weird.
2:12.3	Don't you just love somebody who names their book that? You know it's going to be interesting.
2:19.7	And just because I had a slight bad connection for part of this conversation, I've decided to add on an extra
2:26.3	lecture I was able to pull from YouTube where Peter gets into really, really granular detail
2:32.9	on pirates and Somalia.
2:36.7	Things that you might not think are very useful to us.
	...

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