WTF?! is a tour through a museum of the world’s
weirdest practices—guaranteed to make you say, “WTF?!” Did you know that “pre-owned”
wives were sold at auctions in nineteenth-century England? That today, in
Liberia, accused criminals sometimes drink poison to determine their fate? How
about the fact that, for 250 years, Italy criminally prosecuted cockroaches and
crickets? Do you wonder why? Then this tour is just for you!
You’ll be joined on the tour by a cast of colorful
characters, led through the museum by me—your tour guide and resident economist.
From one exhibit to the next, you’ll overhear my exchanges with the other tour-goers
and learn how to use economic thinking to reveal the hidden sense behind seemingly
senseless human behavior—including your own. I’ll show you that far from “irrational”
or “accidents of history,” humanity’s most outlandish rituals are in fact ingenious
solutions to pressing problems—developed by clever people, driven by
incentives, and tailor-made for their time and place.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
WTF?! is a tour through a museum of the world’s weirdest practices—guaranteed to make you say, “WTF?!” Did you know that “pre-owned” wives were sold at auctions in nineteenth-century England? That today, in Liberia, accused criminals sometimes drink poison to determine their fate? How about the fact that, for 250 years, Italy criminally prosecuted cockroaches and crickets? Do you wonder why? Then this tour is just for you!
You’ll be joined on the tour by a cast of colorful characters, led through the museum by me—your tour guide and resident economist. From one exhibit to the next, you’ll overhear my exchanges with the other tour-goers and learn how to use economic thinking to reveal the hidden sense behind seemingly senseless human behavior—including your own. I’ll show you that far from “irrational” or “accidents of history,” humanity’s most outlandish rituals are in fact ingenious solutions to pressing problems—developed by clever people, driven by incentives, and tailor-made for their time and place.