This video is based on the paper by the great Peter Leeson: https://www.mercatus.org/media/document/ordealspdf
Notes:
Thanks to the magic of fair use, I managed to wedge as much Monty Python into this video as legally permissible.
I asked my class of 160 students whether anyone had seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Three hands went up. Three. That’s some awful parenting. If you don’t force your child to watch Monty Python by the age of 12, like… just call CPS on yourself.
To wit! I forced my child to watch it last weekend. A local theater screened Holy Grail for its 50th anniversary. It sold out. That alone was reassuring. Even better: the movie absolutely holds up. Comedy rarely ages well. And yet, to my right, my 9-year-old son was dying. To my left, a 76-year-old woman seeing it for the first time was cackling just as hard. When you can land jokes across a 67-year age gap 50 years after written, that is some Shakespeare level brilliance.
The one flaw—still a flaw—is the ending. The 1970s had a real fixation on breaking the fourth wall (see Annie Hall, Blazing Saddles). Personally, I don’t think it ever works. The one exception I’ll grant is the animator’s death in Holy Grail—that gag is worth breaking the fourth wall.
And yes, props to my son for his acting in the video. Strong performance. Comedic timing to make the Pythons proud. I might be slightly biased.
Recommendations:
Peter Leeson has produced a string of fascinating papers and books over the years. I’d especially recommend his later work on the real witch trials later:
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/128/613/2066/5088765His book The Invisible Hook—on the economics of pirates—is also well worth reading (and yes, that’s the book I’m holding in the video). It’s a sharp, data-driven look at how even outlaw societies developed governance mechanisms to solve incentive problems.
