Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 2026 Nobel Prizes

Starting point is 00:00:00 In his will, Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, left most of his fortune to establish a prize honoring achievements in various fields. Except during the World Wars, the Nobel Prizes have been given out every year, and 2026 continues his tradition. This year, the Nobel Committee awarded 10 men and women for their contributions to peace, literature, physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics. Learn more about the 26 Nobel Prize recipients and the work that they were recognized for, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. There are probably a lot of people listening who are on these medications,

Starting point is 00:00:53 and specifically SSRIs, these selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. How would they know if they're on the right medication, should they continue to be taking it, or should they start thinking about deprescribing or tapering? How would you talk them through that? If Consumer Reports called you tomorrow and wanted your appraisal of this, product, what would you say? I'm often struck by the times in which people will struggle with that.

Starting point is 00:01:18 That's not very compelling. I mean, if you're going to be putting a molecule in your system, you want to be able to say, this helps me think, this helps me separate from feelings of anguish. It restores my sleep. Listen to chasing life. Streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts. I've been having a hard time trying to explain what Midnight Burger is. How about I let them give it a shot? Your podcast is amazing. It's such an amazing show altogether. Guys have actively ruined all other audio dramas for me. You can't get people to understand the humaning that happens in this damn show.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Keep doing what you're doing because it's awesome. You might not think it, but you are far more important than you realize. Thank you. At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. Look for Midnight Burger on your favorite podcasting app, or just go to we open at 6.com. It's October, which means the Nobel Prizes have been announced, and once again I'll go over each new Nobel laureate and why the Nobel Committee has honored them. And if you've been listening for a while, you know that the Nobel Prize is far from perfect.

Starting point is 00:02:24 There have been prizes given out for research that's proven to be out right wrong. There have been major snubs of people who should have received a Nobel Prize, but didn't. Almost every year, most people have no clue who the recipients are, which is kind of to be expected. And every year, there's also controversy over who received the award and why. So with that, let's turn our attention to what I think is the softest of the awards, the Nobel Prize in Literature. I call it the softest award simply because it feels out of place compared to the others, and it's so subjective.

Starting point is 00:03:00 Moreover, the award has to consider literature from other countries and languages around the world, and I'm not even sure how any committee can do that accurately. What ends up happening is they spread the award out to writers from different countries, most of whom are older and have had careers that are known only to a country's literati. The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient is Canadian Anne Carson. According to the Nobel Committee, she received the award, quote, for her bold and inventive uvra that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature, end quote.

Starting point is 00:03:35 Her most notable works include autobiography of Red, which was published in 1998. It's a novel written in poetic verse that reimagines the Greek myth of Giron, a red-winged monster killed by Hercules, has a modern story about growing up and unrequited love. It reportedly sold at least 25,000 copies by the year 2000, which is an unusually good number for contemporary poetry. The Beauty of the Husband was published in 2001. It's an experimental narrative about marriage, betrayal, and desire, organized as a series of poetic movements. Knox, published in 2010, is an unusual book-length elegy for her brother, presented as an accordion-fold collection of fragments, photographs, translations, and personal recollections.

Starting point is 00:04:19 She didn't have the sort of commercial success of like a Stephen King, but she was successful within her niche. The funniest thing in the aftermath of her announcement is that Princeton University sent out a congratulatory tweet, as she taught there in the 1980s. And they denied her tenure. reports are that her book sales have exploded since the announcement, which is sorted to be expected. The winner of the 26 Nobel Prize for Peace is Navanitham, aka Navi Pillay from South Africa. According to the Nobel Committee, she was honored for, quote, her efforts to promote peace and international law,

Starting point is 00:04:56 particularly through her lifelong commitment to human rights and accountability for serious international crimes, end quote. A South African of Indian descent, Navi Pillay was born in Durban during the apartheid era. She became a lawyer and challenged the apartheid system representing political prisoners and advocating for people subjected to racial discrimination. She also worked on legal matters involving prisoners such as Nelson Mandela. After apartheid ended, Palais became an influential figure in international law. She served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which prosecuted individuals responsible for crimes committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. She later served as a judge at the International Criminal Court, which

Starting point is 00:05:38 investigates and prosecutes individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression within its jurisdiction. Between 2008 and 2014, she served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. As I've noted in previous episodes, the Peace Prize tends to go to one of three types. Someone who negotiated a peace treaty or ended a war. someone who resisted a totalitarian government or someone in the general do-gooder category. Last year's award went to the second category, and this year's goes to the third. The winners of the 26th Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred

Starting point is 00:06:17 Nobel are Americans Robert Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University. According to the Nobel Committee, they were given the prize, quote, for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization. End quote. For much of the 20th century, macroeconomists studied broad economic quantities such as GDP, unemployment, and inflation. Hall and Woodford helped advance approaches that explain those aggregate outcomes by examining how individual people and businesses respond to incentives and expectations.

Starting point is 00:06:51 Robert Hall made important contributions to understanding consumer spending, unemployment, and economic fluctuations. One of his influential ideas concerns how people decide when to spend money. Traditional economic thinking often assume that when someone's income increases, their spending will increase as well. Under certain assumptions, Hall's research showed that people should find it difficult to predict changes in consumer spending using information they already have. This became known as the random walk hypothesis of consumption.

Starting point is 00:07:22 One of Michael Woodford's key research areas, concerns expectations. Consider a business that has to decide whether to raise its prices. Its decision may depend not only on present costs, but also on what it expects will happen to inflation, interest rates, and consumer demand over the coming months. Likewise, consumers deciding whether to buy a house may care as much about future expected interest rates

Starting point is 00:07:46 as current borrowing costs. Whitford helped explain how these expectations influence the economy. He also investigated sticky prices, meaning prices that do not adjust immediately when economic conditions change. Together, Holland Wolford helped build a more detailed understanding of how individual economic decisions and expectations drive economy-wide fluctuations, giving policymakers better tools to study inflation, recessions, and monetary policy. The 26 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three men. Carl Dissaroth of Stanford, Peter Hegeman of Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel of the University of Worsburg, Germany. The Nobel Committee recognized them, quote, for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, end quote.

Starting point is 00:08:37 So what exactly does that mean? For centuries, scientists have struggled with a fundamental problem in neuroscience. How can you determine exactly what individual cells in the brain do? The human brain contains roughly 86 billion neurons. These cells communicate using electrical signals. If scientists stimulate one part of the brain, they may activate millions of cells simultaneously, making it difficult to determine which specific neurons control a particular action or behavior. The solution to this problem came from an unexpected source, green algae.

Starting point is 00:09:13 Certain single-celled algae can detect sunlight and swim towards it. Researchers discovered that these organisms contain special proteins called Channel Rodopsons. These proteins act like microscopic doors in a cell membrane. When light strikes them, they open and allow electrically charged particles, aka ions, to pass through. Because moving ions creates electrical charges, these proteins can act as light-controlled switches. Peter Hegman and Georg Nagel helped discover and characterize these light-sensitive proteins, demonstrating how they could control electrical activity. Carl DeSaroth and his collaborators subsequently developed techniques for inserting genes

Starting point is 00:09:56 that produce these proteins in mammal neurons. And the result was revolutionary. Scientists could shine light on selected neurons and cause them to become active with extraordinary precision. This technique has allowed researchers to investigate how memories are formed, how the brain controls movement, and how different neural circuits influence behavior. It's also opened up new possibilities for studying Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and psychiatric disorders. The 26 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Andre B. Kagan at the University of Paris Soud in France, and Kensosoi of the Tokyo University of Science.

Starting point is 00:10:35 The committee recognized them, quote, For the discovery of non-linear effects and auto-catalysts in asymmetric organic synthesis, end quote. So what does that mean? One of the strangest facts about chemistry is that some molecules can exist in two forms that have exactly the same atoms and chemical bonds but are mere images of each other. The easiest way to understand this is to look at your hands. Your left and right hands have the same basic structure, but no matter how you rotate them, you cannot make them perfectly overlap. Certain molecules behave the same way. Chemists call this property chirality from the Greek word for

Starting point is 00:11:18 hand. Although two mirror image molecules may look almost identical, they can behave differently when interacting with the human body. This is because biological systems are themselves highly dependent upon molecular handedness. Kagan was an important pioneer in asymmetric catalysts. Kagan investigated how specially designed catalysts could encourage a chemical reaction to produce more of one mirror image molecule than the other. He also helped demonstrate and analyze non-linear effects in asymmetric catalyst. Ordinarily, one would expect that a small imbalance in the handedness of a catalyst would create a similarly small imbalance in the product. However, in certain reactions, this relationship is not proportional. A catalyst mixture containing only a modest

Starting point is 00:12:08 excess of one type of handedness molecule can sometimes produce a much larger excess of that form in the final product. This demonstrated that relatively small molecular differences could be amplified through chemical reactions. Kenzo-Soai made a closely related discovery involving asymmetric auto-catalysts. Autocatilus occurs when a substance produced by a chemical reaction helps accelerate the same reaction. Soi discovered reactions in which the product not only helps produce more of itself, but also favors the production of molecules with the same handedness. This can create a remarkable chain reaction. Suppose an initial reaction produced 51% right-handed molecules and 49% left-handed molecules.

Starting point is 00:12:54 Under suitable conditions, auto-catalysts can amplify that tiny imbalance until the mixture consists almost entirely of right-handed molecules. Our last award is the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics. The recipient is Francis Halzin of the University of Wisconsin. The committee recognized him, quote, for decisive contributions to the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory and for the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, end quote. And before I explain why Francis Halzin was awarded the Nobel Prize,

Starting point is 00:13:28 I should note how rare it is for a person to win the Nobel Prize in physics alone. This is the first time that this has happened since 1992. Everything we know about the universe has historically come largely, from observing electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, radio waves, and x-rays. But you can study the cosmos in other ways, and one involves particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are incredibly small particles with almost no mass and no electrical charge. Nuclear reactions, including those inside the sun and some of the universe's most energetic events, produce them. Trillions of neutrinos pass through your body every second without you noticing.

Starting point is 00:14:13 They interact so rarely with other matter that most pass through the entire Earth without hitting anything. And this makes neutrinos extremely difficult to detect. However, it also makes them valuable to astronomers. Unlike light, neutrinos can escape from dense environments and travel vast distances without being absorbed or significantly deflected. Francis Halzen helped lead the effort to build an enormous detector capable of discovering neutrinos arriving from deep. space. The result was the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory. Ice Cube consists of thousands of extremely sensitive light detectors suspended on long cables in Antarctic ice, reaching depths of roughly 2.5 kilometers. The surrounding ice acts as an enormous natural detector. Although most neutrinos

Starting point is 00:15:05 pass through the ice without interacting with anything, occasionally one will strike an atomic particle. This collision can produce a fast-moving charged particle that generates a faint blue flash of light, known as Cherenkov radiation. In 2013, Ice Cube researchers announced the first compelling evidence of extremely energetic neutrinos originating from beyond our solar system. In 2018, researchers linked a high-energy neutrino detected by Ice Cube to a distant blazer, a galaxy containing an actively feeding supermassive black hole whose jet happens to point towards the Earth. By creating the Ice Cube Observatory, researchers were able to open up

Starting point is 00:15:46 a whole new method of astronomy. Predicting who will win a Nobel Prize is very different. So the only way to know who's going to win next year's prizes is to pay attention next October. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 2026 Nobel Prizes

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