What Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson Have in Common? (Update)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Freakonomics Radio - "What Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson Have in Common? (Update)"

Release Date: June 25, 2025
Host: Stephen J. Dubner
Produced by: Katherine Wells, updated by Dalvin Abuaji
Produced for: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

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Introduction to the Episode

In this intriguing bonus episode, Stephen Dubner delves into the unexpected similarities between medieval nuns and the legendary athlete Bo Jackson. Originally aired in 2013, this updated version explores the theme of spite and its manifestations across different contexts—from historical acts of martyrdom to modern-day economic behaviors.

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Segment 1: Medieval Nuns and the Origin of "Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face"

Key Discussion Points:

• Historical Account of Saint Ebba:
  Stephen Dubner recounts the harrowing story of Saint Ebba, a medieval nun who, faced with barbarian attacks, mutilated herself by cutting off her nose and upper lip. This act of self-harm was intended to preserve the chastity of the nunnery and deter the attackers.

• Quote Highlight:
  “The abbess, with an heroic spirit, took a razor and with it cut off her nose, together with her upper lip unto the teeth...”
  – Lisi Oliver [03:07]

• Implications of Self-Mutilation:
  Dubner ponders the extreme measures taken by nuns like Saint Ebba, questioning whether such acts were genuine expressions of martyrdom or rooted in spite—a desire to punish others even at great personal cost.

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Segment 2: Understanding Spite Through Economics

Key Discussion Points:

• Definition of Spite:
  The episode transitions into an economic analysis of spite. Spite is characterized as actions taken to harm others even when it is costly to oneself, diverging from traditional economic models that emphasize self-interest.

• Expert Insights:

  • Steve Levitt:
    “When I think about spite, as an economist, the way I would think of spite is that it is the response of an individual who has been wronged in some way by another...”
    – Steve Levitt [06:16]

  • Benedikt Hermann:
    “Spite as a behavior where an individual is ready to harm him or herself at own cost, to harm somebody else without creating anything good for a third party...”
    – Benedikt Hermann [07:14]

• Ultimatum Game Experiment:
  Levitt explains the ultimatum game, an economic experiment demonstrating that individuals often reject unfair offers despite personal loss, indicating actions that align with spiteful behavior.

  • Steve Levitt on Ultimatum Game:
    “Empirically, what we see is that rarely will anyone accept an offer that's less than 20%.”
    – Steve Levitt [09:34]

• Benedikt Hermann's Experiments:
  Hermann conducted experiments revealing that approximately 10% of participants would sacrifice their own gains to harm others, labeling these individuals as "difference maximizers."

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Segment 3: Spite in Real-World Contexts

Key Discussion Points:

• Case Study: Bo Jackson's NFL Draft Decision:
  The episode draws parallels between medieval acts of spite and Bo Jackson's controversial decision to reject a lucrative NFL contract to pursue a baseball career.

  • Bo Jackson's Story:
    After being drafted first overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL with a $7.66 million contract, Jackson chose to sign with the Kansas City Royals for a significantly lower bonus, a move seen as spiteful toward the Buccaneers.

  • Quote Highlight:
    “It's interesting because I think Bo would say that he did the honorable thing and that he has a code.”
    – Dave O'Connor [24:15]

  • Impact of the Decision:
    O'Connor suggests that Jackson's choice adversely affected the Buccaneers by forfeiting a top draft pick and showcased the broader implications of spiteful decisions in high-stakes environments.

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Segment 4: The Nature of Spite and Human Behavior

Key Discussion Points:

• Biological vs. Learned Behavior:
  The discussion shifts to whether spite is an innate human trait or a behavior learned through societal interactions.

• E.O. Wilson's Insights:
  Biologist E.O. Wilson, as presented by Katherine Wells, asserts that true spite—hurting others without any personal gain—is virtually non-existent in the animal kingdom and rare in humans.

  • Quote Highlight:
    “If we define spite as doing harm to someone else at the cost of harm to yourself... That might not exist in nature.”
    – Bo Jackson [32:29]

• Altruism vs. Spite:
  The conversation compares spite to altruism, suggesting that both may be driven by underlying self-interest, such as emotional satisfaction.

  • Steve Levitt on Altruism and Spite:
    “Altruism is exactly the flip side of spite in the sense that there are acts which very well could be altruistic, but equally could be done in a perfectly self-interested way.”
    – Steve Levitt [39:18]

• Human Complexity:
  Bo Jackson emphasizes the conflicted nature of humans, balancing moral impulses with selfish tendencies, suggesting that true spite may not be a distinct motivator but part of a broader spectrum of human emotions and actions.

  • Bo Jackson:
    “We are constantly wrestling with our conscience and with a tendency to deviate from social norms in a risky way and to do wrong, to be selfish.”
    – Bo Jackson [36:09]

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Segment 5: Conclusion and Reflections

Key Discussion Points:

• Reevaluating Spite:
  The episode concludes by challenging the notion of spite as an independent motivator, proposing that actions perceived as spiteful may have underlying self-serving motivations.

• Personal Satisfaction from Actions:
  Both altruistic and seemingly spiteful actions may derive from personal satisfaction, blurring the lines between pure self-interest and genuine desire to harm or help others.

• Final Thoughts:
  Stephen Dubner reflects on the insights shared, underscoring the complexity of human motivations and the difficulty in categorizing behaviors strictly as spiteful or altruistic.

  • Steve Levitt's Perspective:
    “Forget about what's going on inside of other people's heads. You'll probably never know what it is and focus on what they're actually doing.”
    – Steve Levitt [38:34]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

1. Lisi Oliver on Medieval Nuns: “The abbess, with an heroic spirit, took a razor and with it cut off her nose, together with her upper lip unto the teeth...”
   – [03:07]

2. Steve Levitt on Spite in Economics: “When I think about spite, as an economist, the way I would think of spite is that it is the response of an individual who has been wronged...”
   – [06:16]

3. Benedikt Hermann on Defining Spite: “Spite as a behavior where an individual is ready to harm him or herself at own cost, to harm somebody else without creating anything good for a third party...”
   – [07:14]

4. Steve Levitt Explaining the Ultimatum Game: “Empirically, what we see is that rarely will anyone accept an offer that's less than 20%.”
   – [09:34]

5. Bo Jackson on Human Nature: “We are constantly wrestling with our conscience and with a tendency to deviate from social norms in a risky way and to do wrong, to be selfish.”
   – [36:09]

6. Steve Levitt on Altruism vs. Spite: “Altruism is exactly the flip side of spite...”
   – [39:18]

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Conclusion

This episode of Freakonomics Radio offers a fascinating exploration of spite, juxtaposing historical acts of valor with modern economic behaviors. By examining both medieval strategies for survival and contemporary economic experiments, Dubner and his experts shed light on the intricate motivations that drive humans to act against their own interests to harm others. The discussions challenge listeners to rethink traditional economic models and consider the deeper, often subconscious factors influencing human behavior.

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Further Resources

• Podcast Archive: Accessible on any podcast app or via freakonomics.com, which also hosts transcripts and show notes.
• Related Episodes:
  • "What It's Like to Be Middle Aged in the Middle Ages"
  • "People I Mostly Admire" with Steve Levitt

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Produced by:
Katherine Wells
Updated by: Dalvin Abuaji
Mixed by: Jasmine Klinger

Freakonomics Radio Network Staff:
Alina Coleman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jeremy Johnston, Morgan Levy, Sarah Lilly, Teo Jones Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski.

Theme Song: "Mr. Fortune" by The Hitchhikers
Composer: Luis Guerra

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content segments to focus solely on the core discussions and insights presented in the episode.

Transcript

[Stephen Dubner]

Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Dell introducing the new Dell AI PC. Powered by the Intel Core Ultra processor, it helps do your busy work for you so you can fast forward through editing images, designing presentations, generating code, debugging code, summarizing meeting notes, finding files, managing your schedule, and responding to long emails. Leaving all the time in the world for the things you actually want to do. Get a new Dell AI PC starting at $749.99 and at Dell.com AI PC how those ahead? Stay ahead. Freeconomics radio is sponsored by Redfin. Whether you're searching for your next place or you just want to scroll through some dream homes, use the Redfin app. Redfin makes it fun to search all the homes for sale and apartments for rent in your neighborhood. And if you find a place you love, Redfin makes it easy to go see it in person. You just schedule a tour right from the app. So whether you're looking to buy or rent, Redfin has got you covered. Download the Redfin app to get started. Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. We heard from a lot of listeners who really liked our most recent episode, which was called what it's like to be Middle Aged in the Middle Ages. So I figured you might want a little bit more medieval programming. Here is a bonus episode. It's an updated version of an episode we first published in 2013. It's called what Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson have in Common? The answer is probably not what you think. As always, thanks for listening.

[Lisi Oliver]

It probably was pretty darn painful because you're not living in a world with good razors. The chances are what they're using is kitchen cutlery, I would imagine, and that that is not necessarily all that sharp. I can't imagine how painful it was.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's LC Oliver. When we spoke with her for this episode around 12 years ago, she was studying medieval law at Louisiana State University, and what do you think she's talking about that was so darn painful?

[Lisi Oliver]

Between the 5th and the 12th century in early modern Europe, barbarity swept through the continent and also the island of England. And often the targets of these attacks were monasteries and nunneries. But nunneries, you had the added incentive of rape to add to sort of pillage and destruction.

[Stephen Dubner]

For a nun, rape was especially problematic. Aside from the obvious reasons, rape violated a nun's chastity, which meant that as a bride of Christ, she might be forbidden entry into heaven. So what do you do if you are a nun and there are barbarians at the gate in the 9th century, one nun, an abbess, who came to be known as Saint Ebba, came up with a plan. Here's Lisi Oliver reading from a history by Roger of Wendover.

[Lisi Oliver]

The abbess, with an heroic spirit, took a razor and with it cut off her nose, together with her upper lip unto the teeth, presenting herself, a horrible spectacle to those who stood by filled with admiration at this admirable deed. The whole assembly followed her maternal example and severally did the like to themselves. When this was done, together with the morrow's dawn, the pagan attackers came on, beholding the abbess and the sisters, so outrageously mutilated and stained with their own blood, from the sole of their foot unto their head, they retired in haste from the place. Their leaders ordered their wicked followers to set fire and burn the monastery with all its buildings and its holy inmates, which, being done by these workers of iniquity, the holy abbess and all the most holy virgins with her, attained the glory of martyrdom. There's a very graphic picture of Saint Ebba cutting her nose and lip off and all of the women around her looking thrilled at the concept. In terms of pain, it must have just been dreadful to cut your nose off at night and then wait until the morning with that pain wracking your body. But that is the pain of martyrdom. It's the crown of thorns.

[Stephen Dubner]

I know it's hard to transpose oneself to a different time and place, but it's. If you could put yourself back in a nunnery, do you think you would have followed suit and gone ahead and cut off your own nose, despite your face?

[Lisi Oliver]

Probably.

[Stephen Dubner]

Why?

[Lisi Oliver]

I think that there is a wave of hysteria that follows that kind of action, where I don't think I would have been number two, but I probably would have been number 20. I mean, it's the happening thing, man. We're all cutting our noses off right.

[Stephen Dubner]

Now. Why are we telling you this grisly tale? Because the theme of today's show is spite, as in cutting off your nose to spite your face. Scholars aren't certain, but this phrase quite likely originates with the practice of medieval nuns like Saint Ebba, women who mutilated themselves in an attempt to preserve their chastity. Now, economics is all about trade offs. Everything has a cost and a big benefit. What do you make of the nuns trade off? Was it worth it?

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

Today's show is about spite. We're going to look at why people sometimes try to Hurt others, even when it's very costly to themselves. It struck me that spite is in some ways an economic concept. So I called up the economist I know best, Steve Levitt. He's my Freakonomics friend and co author and host of the podcast People I Mostly Admire.

[Steve Levitt]

So when I think about spite, as an economist, the way I would think of spite is that it is the response of an individual who has been wronged in some way by another, who then is willing in the future to pay a large cost in order to punish the person who wronged him in the first place. So in a strange sense, it's not a very economic concept because in general we don't think that people are going to be overly willing to pay a lot of costs themselves to punish other people.

[Stephen Dubner]

Yeah, I think what you described is more revenge than spite, though.

[Steve Levitt]

All right, so maybe I don't even know what spite is. What is spite?

[Benedikt Hermann]

Excellent question. Well, it's not so easy indeed to define spite.

[Stephen Dubner]

And that's Benedikt Herman. He is also an economist, originally from Germany. Today he works as a research officer for the European Commission. He has done a lot of research on antisocial behavior. You might even call him a scholar of spite.

[Benedikt Hermann]

Let's have an easy start here and define spite as a behavior where an individual is ready to harm him or herself at own cost, to harm somebody else without creating anything good for a third party, for anyone outside. Because you could sometimes be nasty to somebody just because he or she has misbehaved and you would like to do it in a kind of educational way, which then I would not call spite.

[Stephen Dubner]

Because it's not costing you anything.

[Benedikt Hermann]

No, if I'm punishing somebody who has misbehaved to the community, to our group, if I punish him or her at own cost, it could look like spite, but it's not spite because it's an educational momentum. You try to get somebody who has done something bad to behave better in the future. So it's a kind of moralistic way of punishing, a moralistic way of being aggressive. And so it's not the kind of spite I'm after. I'm after the kind of spite or kind of behavior where somebody would harm others for no reason, for no moral reason, apart from something that might satisfy him or herself. Only.

[Stephen Dubner]

Traditional economics argues that most people try to satisfy their self interest to maximize their profits and opportunities. Economists have a name for this model of self interest, Homo economicus. But within that framework, spite is a bit puzzling. Why would someone pay Outsized costs for no benefit other than to hurt someone else. Well, Benedict Herman thinks that the idea of Homo economicus is a bit archaic. He prefers a different term, Homo rivalis. Yes, indeed, Homo rivalis, meaning that humans are driven at our core by competition rather than simple self interest. Homo economicus wants to get as much as possible for himself. Homo rivalis just wants to make sure he gets more than the other guy. In other words, as much as we like to think that we are absolute animals, we are in fact, relative animals. Now, we know this in part through the experimental games that economists like to play. One of the classics is called the ultimatum game. Here's Steve Levitt again.

[Steve Levitt]

So the ultimatum game is a little experimental game that the behavioral economists have developed in which two players come into the lab and they're completely anonymous, they'll never meet each other. It's a one shot game, and one player is given, say, $10, and they're allowed to divide that $10 however they'd like between themselves and the other player. That other player is then informed about the way in which the division has occurred and is given a choice. They can either accept the division, say $7 for the person who's splitting the pot and $3 for me, or I have another option to say no. I prefer both of us to get zero. So you always face a choice between, as the recipient of the ultimatum is, I can accept what the other person offered me, or I can have us both get zero. And empirically, what we see is that rarely will anyone accept an offer that's less than 20%. So if the person who splits the pot divides it more unevenly than 75, you're almost guaranteed to have it rejected, even though the rejector is giving up the 25 or the 20% of their own money in order to take the 75 or the 80% away from you.

[Stephen Dubner]

Now, to an economist, this might seem perplexing. Why am I willing to throw away two or three of my dollars just to make sure that you don't get seven or eight? Well, maybe it's because I feel you've wronged me by splitting the pot so unevenly. But remember what Benedict Herman said earlier about spite. True spite, as he sees it, is not motivated by a desire to punish someone's bad behavior. So he wanted to see how people behave absent such a moral incentive. He and a colleague came up with an experiment.

[Benedikt Hermann]

So let me quickly try to explain here on the radio how this experiment work. So you would be invited to our experiment, like many other students know each other. You come to our lab. Inside, you have to sit behind computers. You are requested not to talk with anyone during the whole experiment.

[Stephen Dubner]

So you're paired with another player, but you don't see that person. You each get $10, and then you're given an option. If you surrender $1 of your money, you can destroy $5 of the other person's wealth. Now, there's no revenge going on here. There wouldn't seem to be anything for you to gain by destroying the other person's money. But as Benedikt Herrmann found, about 10% of the players did take that option. Herrmann calls such a player a difference maximizer.

[Benedikt Hermann]

That means that we want to maximize the payoff differential between the opponent and us. So maybe in a more picturesque way, being aware that we are losing our trousers for the sake and for the hope that the opponent will lose both the shirt and the trousers.

[Stephen Dubner]

In other words, some people were always willing to cut off their noses to spite the other player. Herman was perplexed by this finding, and he tried the experiment in a variety of versions, variety of settings, different parts of the world, different kinds of societies. But in each case, he found that a surprising number of people would give up some of what was theirs for the sole purpose of taking something away from someone else. And what are you, as the researcher, thinking? Are you thinking? This is remarkably surprising, Sad, strange, irrational? What is your. I mean, on the one hand, you must be excited because for the sake of a paper, it's a fascinating finding, this.

[Benedikt Hermann]

Exactly. These are the two souls of a researcher. Of course, on the one side, exactly as you this said it very nicely, you are very excited. But on the other side, of course, you start thinking, oh, my God, who the heck are we? We the humans. For me, the outcome of all this research is definitely a kind of sadness. And also worry that we can be too fast, we humans, we can get too fast into intergroup conflict, which don't make any sense to anyone. That we start to harm each other, that we start innocent people to kill each other for something that, at the end of the day, could have been decided in a much more reasonable way.

[Stephen Dubner]

Now, as interesting as this may be, as believable as it may be, Steve Levitt warns us not to make too much of lab experiments like these. It's hard to extrapolate from a lab setting to the hurly burley of the real world.

[Steve Levitt]

When people are in the lab, they're completely anonymous. It's the only time we'll ever play. But the real world isn't usually like that.

[Stephen Dubner]

Indeed. So after the break, we'll get back to the real world, see if we can find a story where someone willingly gives up money. And not just a few bucks like in these lab games, but lots and lots of bucks in order to prove a point.

[Dave O'Connor]

Well, the contract he was offered was five years, $7.66 million.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's coming up after the break. I'm Stephen Dubner and you are listening to a bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio from 2013. We'll be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24 7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. They make it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. And LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you are getting the best. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com freak that's LinkedIn.com freq to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Stripe. AI companies need to launch business models as revolutionary as their products, and they need to do it fast. Stripe billing powers leaders like OpenAI, anthropic and perplexity. In fact, every single one of The Forbes Top 50 AI companies that has a product on the market today uses Stripe to monetize it. So whether you're starting an AI company or just looking for advanced billing software, learn [e-mail] Billing Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Meta AI. Meta AI is a personal AI that's tailored to you now with its very own app. It's built to get to know you, offering helpful answers and inspiration. Just start typing or speaking to get the answers you need wherever and whenever. Because Meta AI is your personal AI. Download the Meta AI app now available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Dave o' Connor is a longtime TV and film producer who's now president of Time Studios. Years ago, he executive produced a documentary film for ESPN called. You'd don't know Bo. Bo as in Bo Jackson. Hey, he's remarkable. And look at that one. Bo Jackson says hello. He's just so. Look at that burst him back leaps.

[Steve Levitt]

And he makes the kick.

[Stephen Dubner]

Nobody catches Bo.

[Bo Jackson]

The answer is no. Bo has a knock.

[Stephen Dubner]

Bo on the charge.

[Bo Jackson]

Bo is there.

[Stephen Dubner]

Bo knows exactly what he's doing.

[Steve Levitt]

Spider Man.

[Dave O'Connor]

Bo was probably the single greatest athlete of his generation. Two sports star, football and baseball. And was just a transformative athlete. And he just physically, there's something about his presence that feels different than normal human beings.

[Stephen Dubner]

Is it a bird?

[Bo Jackson]

Is it a plane?

[E.O. Wilson]

It's super Bo.

[Stephen Dubner]

In the spring of 1986, Bo Jackson was playing his senior year of college baseball at Auburn.

[Dave O'Connor]

He showed signs of being a very highly valued major league baseball player.

[Bo Jackson]

I'm tearing the COVID off the ball. I'm batting over.400. Oh, I don't know how many home runs I was sitting on then.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's Jackson himself from the film. Now. He had just completed his senior season of college football, which had gone even better. Dave o' Connor again.

[Dave O'Connor]

Football. His senior year is one of the all time great seasons of a running back in college football. He rushes for nearly 1800 yards. He wins the Heisman Trophy and basically enshrines himself as a legend of college football. Sort of. The common wisdom was that Bo will be the number one draft pick in football. He will probably not play baseball at all. And if he does, somebody should pick him in the 20th round or 30th round. On a flyer, just in case.

[Stephen Dubner]

Right. You don't want to waste a pick on a guy who's going to be playing football.

[Dave O'Connor]

Right.

[Stephen Dubner]

So while finishing up his college baseball career, Jackson starts getting courted by NFL teams. The football draft happens before the baseball draft. The number one overall NFL pick is held by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who are owned by a man named Hugh Culverhouse. The Bucks have made it clear that they want Bo Jackson.

[Bo Jackson]

I was all gung ho and I had taken a few trips to visit some teams. My senior year, I got the okay to go visit Tampa Bay. Hugh Culverhouse sent his jet to Columbus Airport, drove over, got on the jet, went to Tampa Bay for my visit. It was almost like a college visit when you're a high school senior and you're going to visit a college and they get some of the players to show you around town, to show you the night spots, take you to a nice restaurant and, and entertain you. About four or five days later, I'm back at Auburn getting ready for my baseball game, and I walked out on the field. I have to walk from the athletic department, across the parking lot, across the street to the baseball field. And as I get to the gate to come around the dugout, Coach Baird approaches me. He said, bo, can I talk to you for a second? I said, sure, Coach. He said, let's go. We're behind the dugout. Go sit and talk. So we go behind the dugout, and I'm thinking that he's going to tell me, hey, some big league team wants to sign me. And he said, did you take a trip last week on Hugh Cover houses yet to go down to visit Tampa? I said, yes. And the folks checked and said that it was okay. They checked with the NCAA and said that it was okay to do that. He said, well, Bo, somebody didn't check, and the NCAA has declared you ineligible for any more college sports, so you can't play baseball no more. And I sat there on that ground, and I cried like a baby. I cried like a baby.

[Stephen Dubner]

Bo Jackson immediately felt that he'd been wronged. He loved baseball, and even though it looked like he was going to play football professionally, he was distraught about being barred from finishing out his college baseball career. And what's more, he became convinced that Hugh Culverhouse, the Tampa Bay owner, had done this to Bo on purpose.

[Bo Jackson]

Because the officials at Tampa Bay told me personally, yes, we checked, and they said that it was okay. I think it was all a plot now just to get me ineligible from baseball, because they saw the season that I was, and they thought that they were going to lose me to baseball. And if we declare him ineligible, then we got him.

[Stephen Dubner]

Now, we don't know whether the Bucks actually meant for this to happen, but it certainly did seem to work out well for them. They were in line to pick Bo Jackson number one in the NFL draft and pay him so much money that he'd forget about baseball in a heartbeat. It was just one problem. Bo Jackson isn't the forgetting type.

[Bo Jackson]

And I said, there is no way I'm signing with Tampa Bay. And I told Hugh Culberhaus, I said, you draft me if you want. You gonna waste a draft pick. I said, I promise you that. And Hugh Culverhouse, well, this is what I'm gonna offer you as a signing bonus, and you're gonna take it whether you want it or not. I said, all right. They didn't think I was serious. And I sat down. After baseball season was over, I talked to my baseball coach. I said, coach, a lot of people don't think I'm serious about playing baseball. I said, but if Tampa Bay drafts me, I said, on my honor, and I'm looking you in your eye, man to man, I'm playing baseball. So if you know any teams out there that's interested in an outfielder, you let them know.

[Stephen Dubner]

In the NFL draft that April, Tampa Bay did select Bo Jackson with the number one pick, which was attached to a $7.66 million, five year contract. And then a couple of months later, Bo Jackson was selected in the baseball draft in the fourth round by the Kansas City Royals. They offered him three years at just $1 million. The choice would seem obvious, but Bo doesn't know obvious. He rejects a football offer and he takes the baseball offer. How surprising is this? Here's Dave o' Connor again.

[Dave O'Connor]

Unprecedented. It just doesn't happen. You can't. I mean, money talks, right? I mean, you have $7.6 million sitting there and you sign a contract for one. That's a rare occurrence.

[Stephen Dubner]

It sounds like a decision that very few people that I know at least would have made. Do you think that was an act of spite on Bo Jackson's part?

[Dave O'Connor]

It's interesting because I think Bo would say that he did the honorable thing and that he has a code. But when you look at it on its surface, it is spite. There is no rational explanation for walking away from that kind of money. He's not just hurting himself here, he's also doing this to hurt Tampa Bay to some extent. The opportunity cost of losing a first round draft pick isn't just that Bo Jackson isn't playing on my team. It's that every other player I could have selected with that pick is not playing on my team either. So it's a huge impact to Tampa Bay. Not to mention the public relations nightmare of going out on a limb and selecting somebody and not getting him.

[Stephen Dubner]

So Jackson does sign with the Royals. He starts the year in the minor leagues, but by the end of the season, he makes a major league team. He's on track for a nice baseball career, and then the next year he becomes eligible to re enter football. Now, will he play? Nobody knows. But the Los Angeles Raiders draft him in the seventh round. He signs, and suddenly he's playing two professional sports. @ the end of the baseball season, he jumps straight into football, and he became a star in both. He also becomes a household name, in part because of his athletic feats and in part because he was the star of one of the most beguiling ad campaigns in history. Bo knows for Nike.

[Bo Jackson]

Bo knows baseball.

[Dave O'Connor]

Bo knows football.

[Bo Jackson]

Bo knows basketball, too.

[Dave O'Connor]

Bo could surf. Beau could rollerblade. Bo could not play ice hockey. That was the one thing they couldn't agree to let him actually be able to do. Gretzky shakes his head and says no, but pretty much everything else, volleyball, volleyball, tennis, running, lifting weights, aerobics, all kinds of stuff.

[Stephen Dubner]

Bo, you don't know diddly. All right, so we agree that Bo Jackson's athletic career turned out pretty well. Remarkable on some dimensions, but overall not one of the greatest ever. Because it wasn't long enough, perhaps. We agreed that because he was such an unusual athlete in two sports, he became this icon and the focus of a remarkable and probably quite remunerative ad campaign. Right. We agree on this. Of course. Far do we therefore agree that had this catastrophe not happened with him with getting drafted for the NFL by a team that out of spite or something like spite, he turned down, that if that had not happened, that all the rest may not have happened?

[Dave O'Connor]

Yeah, I think that's a plausible argument to make because he probably had. He signed that deal with Tampa Bay. If he doesn't get injured, he probably becomes one of the best running backs in NFL history. But that's probably it.

[Stephen Dubner]

I mean, honestly, my takeaway lesson here is spite pays.

[Dave O'Connor]

Yeah, you would say. I mean, if you take a look at where he ends up, spite certainly paid in his case.

[Stephen Dubner]

So here's a question worth thinking about. If spite indeed exists, is it something that we humans have always, always carried around in our genetic code, or do we pick it up along the way?

[Bo Jackson]

We are constantly wrestling with our conscience and with a tendency to deviate from social norms in a risky way and to do wrong, to be selfish.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's coming up after the break. I'm Stephen Dubner and this is Freakonomics Radio. Foreignomics Radio is sponsored by fidelity. Fidelity Active ETFs have the flexibility to shift and transform as markets do. So instead of just riding an index, they can seek to outperform it, adapting to market conditions and pursuing new opportunities as they emerge. And while you get the potential outperformance of an actively managed fund, you can still buy and sell on your terms. Like other ETFs, markets can change in real time. Make sure your ETF can. To learn [e-mail] active ETFs. Before investing in any exchange traded fund, you should consider its investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Contact Fidelity for a prospectus, an offering circular, or if available, a summary prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully while active ETFs offer the potential to outperform an index. These products may more significantly trail an index as compared with passive ETFs. ETFs are subject to management fees and other expenses, market fluctuation, and the risks of their underlying investments. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member nyse SIPC Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Stripe AI companies need to launch business models as revolutionary as their products, and they need to do it fast. Stripe billing powers leaders like OpenAI, anthropic and perplexity. In fact, every single one of The Forbes Top 50 AI companies that has a product on the market today uses Stripe to monetize it. So whether you're starting an AI company or just looking for advanced billing software, learn more at stripe.com billing Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Amica Insurance. At Amica, you will receive coverage with compassion. When you choose Amica, they'll take the time to explain your options for auto, home and life insurance. You can feel confident knowing that they'll protect what matters most to you. Amica will provide you with peace of mind. Go to amica.com and get a quote today. So far in this episode we've heard about spite in professional sports, spite in medieval nuns, spite as measured in laboratory experiments. So is spite an innate part of being human or is it something we learn?

[Bo Jackson]

We're a very biological organism and we've inherited an awful lot, in fact most of the basic emotions that guide us from our animal and Paleolithic early human past.

[Katherine Wells]

That is E.O. wilson. He's a renowned biologist and author.

[Stephen Dubner]

And that's Katherine Wells. She produced this episode and she interviewed E.O. wilson for us back in 2013.

[Katherine Wells]

I called him up because I wanted to know where all of this self destructive spite comes from. You know, is this a common behavior throughout nature or are we unusual in it? And I have to say that I just assumed that we would be the meanest creatures in existence given everything we've heard today. But Wilson said that wasn't true.

[Bo Jackson]

Oh no, we only moderately mean.

[Katherine Wells]

Now, E.O. wilson has done a lot of thinking about the origins of human behavior, and he thinks the nastiness that we see in animals might give us a clue to why we act the way we do.

[Bo Jackson]

There's a case that comes quickly to mind, for example, of a kind of spider in which the mother has a brood of spiderlings and when they're born she sits down and lets little spiderlings eat her. There are a couple of cases in the ants where the workers have a huge Gland of poisonous material containing it. And when they get into a tough fight, they are able to contract their abdomens and explode their abdomen. So that sticky poison covers the enemy. It can disable several enemies doing that by giving its life.

[Katherine Wells]

The list of this kind of behavior goes on and on.

[Bo Jackson]

I mean, things that you really don't want to think about too much before you go to sleep. You might have nightmares. But here's the story about spite. If we define spite as doing harm to someone else at the cost of harm to yourself. And that involves a surrender of some advantage or emotional reward on your part. You give it up in order to hurt somebody else. That might not exist in nature. It's very difficult to find any case in the great encyclopedia of animal aggression. Where it doesn't give some advantage to the individual doing the aggression. But it's very rare that an animal would deliberately injure itself. Just in order to create injury in another individual. Without any further gain to itself to deliberately do that. I think spite does not exist in the animal kingdom.

[Katherine Wells]

In the way that it does in humans. Is that right?

[Bo Jackson]

Well, let's take humans. When a person injures himself or herself, say, in reputation, in diminishing wealth, Causing their own early death, whatever it is, in order to harm another person, you would say, oh, that's spite. That's got to be spite. But it really would be true spite in my mind. As opposed to mere risk taking or trade off for one kind of gain in exchange for one kind of loss taken. If you can't see a gain, and that's hard to imagine, Even vengeance has its gain. It has a strong emotional award to it. For example, if you harm yourself and your reputation, you accept that if the damage you can do benefits you in some other way. Or benefit, say, particularly, your own offspring in a particular way. You know, like unscrupulous stage moms, Murderesses of cheerleading champion competitors. I think you get the drift. Even a mass murderer who goes out and harms a lot of people. Is taking some benefit, emotional benefit from that. When suicide is intended. A lot of mass murders are just a terrible form of suicide. In which a person decides to get the satisfaction in advance of committing it. And maybe the satisfaction the person will get in striking out against something they imagined to be their enemy. And diminish them before. So when you add that factor, maybe real spite does not exist.

[Katherine Wells]

So I don't know whether this is a relief or not. I mean, the idea that spite might not even exist seems good. But the fact that we get personal satisfaction out of hurting other people. I told Wilson that was kind of a bummer.

[Bo Jackson]

That just shows you're not a psychopath.

[Katherine Wells]

I'm a total wuss. But here's the Spite is not the only motivation we have for being self destructive. There's actually another altruism. When we hurt ourselves, we aren't always doing it just to hurt someone else. Sometimes we're doing it to help.

[Bo Jackson]

One of the things that makes us human is our internally conflicted nature. Confliction, our ambivalence to our own selves. We are constantly wrestling with our conscience and with a tendency to deviate from social norms in a risky way and to do wrong, to be selfish. The contest within us between doing the moral thing, even the heroic thing on one side, and doing the selfish, perhaps even criminal thing on the other side. That contest is what gives us such a continuously conflicted nature. If we became completely altruistic, then we would be like ants. If we went to the opposite extreme and had complete lack of constraint and it was complete individualism, then we would have chaos. We would not have order. The group would dissolve. So we have to be in the middle. This appears to be the human condition.

[Steve Levitt]

It's funny listening to him talk about that.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's Steve Levitt again. He took a class with Wilson when he. Levitt was an undergrad at Harvard. He's very fond of the way Wilson thinks.

[Steve Levitt]

There could be no two disciplines closer than evolutionary biology and economics. And they studied different questions and they use different methods. But the way that evolutionary biologists think is exactly like the way that economists think. Both are very much a model of behavior, of individual behavior and individual behavior that's motivated by costs and benefits. The other thing is that at its heart, both economics and evolutionary biology strive for simplicity. That the simplest story which can explain a set of facts is the one that we gravitate to, as opposed to other disciplines. History. History is all about complexity. Literature is all about complexity. Even sociology, I think, at heart, is about complexity. But economics is about simplicity.

[Stephen Dubner]

Like E.O. wilson, Levitt thinks that spite, true spite, may not really exist. Because that would mean that I hurt you, even though I get nothing for it. Nothing. And while it may seem that I get nothing, I probably get something.

[Steve Levitt]

What I would say about spite, I would say this. To know that an act is spite, you have to be inside the head of the perpetrator. Because the idea of spite is that it's being done without benefit. But it's interesting because one of the first premises of economics is you can never really know what other people are thinking and why they're doing what they're doing. Instead, we focus on what they do. And so consequently my view is forget about what's going on inside of other people's heads. You'll probably never know what it is and focus on what they're actually doing.

[Stephen Dubner]

Do you see altruism as sort of the flip side of the coin to spite and therefore not quite real?

[Steve Levitt]

Altruism is exactly the flip side of spite in the sense that there are acts which very well could be altruistic, but equally could be done in a perfectly self interested way. Both make you feel really good and it feels good to help other people sometimes, and it feels so good to punish other people who've wronged you. So I think they're both actually completely consistent with the idea of people doing the best they can.

[Stephen Dubner]

And what about you personally, Levitt? Do you get more satisfaction generally from helping people or punishing people?

[Steve Levitt]

I'm a lover, not a fighter, you know that. I like to help people.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'd like to thank Steve Levitt and everyone else for helping us think about spite today. I'm sorry to say that Lisi Oliver died in 2015 at age 63 and E.O. wilson died in 2021 at 92. We will be back soon with a new episode. Until then, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was originally produced by Kathryn Wells and was updated by Dalvin Abuaji. It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Alina Coleman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jeremy Johnston, Morgan Levy, Sarah Lilly, Teo Jones Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app [e-mail] where we also publish transcripts and show notes. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers. Our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening. So, to cut off my nose and to prevent rape by the Vikings. You said they were in this case.

[Lisi Oliver]

No, in this case they're Saracens. I have Viking examples I can give you.

[Stephen Dubner]

I bet you do.

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