Science Friday - Best Science Books For Kids, Indigenous Science, Ignobel Prizes. November 25, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

From Tiny Krill To Concrete Jungles: 2022’s Best Science Books For Kids The holidays are right around the corner, which means for those who give gifts in December, now is the time to start putting together that shopping list. If you have a young person in your life who loves science, why not expand their library and get a book or two? Joining Ira to give their recommendation for the best children’s science books of the year—both fiction and nonfiction—are Melissa Stewart, science book author based in Boston, Massachusetts, and Kristina Holzweiss, education technology specialist based on Long Island, New York. See the books at sciencefriday.com. Indigenous Knowledge Is Central To Climate Solutions As the United States observes Earth Day this year, many will be thinking about their personal relationship with—and responsibility to—the planet. But in an era of multiple planetary crises, including extinctions, global warming, and contaminated water, what about the Indigenous peoples whose millennia-old relationship with their land has been disrupted and sometimes severed by colonialism and other displacements?  Indigenous environmental scientist and author Jessica Hernandez talks to Ira about the harms the Western science has perpetuated against colonized people, as white environmentalists created national parks on Indigenous lands and “helicopter scientists” continue to do research in the global south while using the wealth of Western institutions. And she explains why greater recognition of Indigenous science, and partnerships that center Indigenous peoples and their research questions, is good for the entire planet.   Prizes For Science That Makes You Laugh, Then Think Prizes went to researchers for analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand. And for creating a moose crash-test dummy. And for explaining, mathematically, why success most often goes not to the most talented people, but instead to the luckiest. If that sounds like a strange set of awards—that’s because it’s the Ignobel Prize Ceremony. This year, for the 32nd year in a row, laureates gathered (virtually) to be recognized for their unusual contributions to the world of science and engineering. In the words of Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and awards ceremony ringleader, “It’s not about good or bad. If you win an Ignobel Prize, it means you’ve done something that will immediately cause anyone who hears about it to laugh, and then to think about it for the next few days or weeks.” Abrahams joins Ira to talk about the backstory of the awards, and to introduce some highlights from this year’s online prize ceremony.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I am Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, we'll get an indigenous perspective on conservation and environmental restoration, plus our annual Ig Nobel Awards coverage. But first, with the holidays right around the corner, that means, you know, it's gift-giving season. And if you have a young person in your life who loves science, you might be thinking about what to get them for Christmas or Hanukkah. Well, why not kick it old school? Get them a book. Yeah, a whole bunch of science books for kids. and young adults came out this year. And joining me are two people who are going to tell us all about their favorites. Melissa Stewart, science book author based in Boston, Massachusetts, Christina Halswice, Ed Tech librarian based in Syracet, New York. That's out on Long Island. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much.

It's great to be here. Thanks for having us. Nice to have you. A quick note, this conversation was recorded in front of a live Zoom audience. And for more information about how you can join a future live stream, head over to science friday.com slash live stream. All right, let's get right to our questions. Melissa, you write science books for kids,

so I know you're very involved with this world. Can you give me your top three recommendations of science books for kids that came out this year? Sure. Thanks for having me. I'd be happy to share. So the first book that I wanted to talk about is one of the most highly anticipated science books of the year. It's coming out next week.

It's called The Universe Inesionable, You, a microscopic journey. And it is written by Jason Chin, who has won the Caldecott Medal and the Cyber Honor Medal in the past. And it's actually a follow-up to a very popular book from a couple years ago called Your Place in the Universe. And so your place in the universe sort of started with a person and then went out into the planets and the galaxy in the universe. This new book goes in. It starts with a person and it looks at the insides of our bodies, cells and then molecules and atoms and then all the way down to corks and gluons. So Jason Chin is really well known for his beautiful life-like illustrations. And so this is a book that I think kids will really

love. And the second book I wanted to share is called Footprints Across the Planet. This is by Jennifer Swanson. And this is a really great book. It's a really great book. It's beautifully illustrated. The photos in this book are top-notched, and it ranges all the way from footprints of some of our favorite animals, from elephants to birds all the way down to tiny little flies. It also looks at footprints from fossilized dinosaurs and everything from footprints that have been left permanently by people on the moon to digital footprints. And then the third book that I wanted to talk about, this is called Yoshi and the Ocean. And the subtitle of this book is A Sea Turtle's Incredible Journey Home.

It's written by Lindsay Moore. And it tells the remarkable story of an injured loggerhead sea turtle that was rescued by some Japanese fishermen and then rehabilitated for a period of 20 years and then eventually released with a radio tag. and scientists who are able to watch it swimming a total of 25,000 miles all the way back to his home in Australia. So it's a really beautiful art and really well written. That's something really cool and some great books. Thank you, Melissa. Christina, you're named the 2015 Scholastic School Librarian of the Year.

So I imagine you're clued into what kids actually like and they seek out. And I know you're also heavily involved with the makerspace world, which I think is terrific. So give me, please, your top three recommendations. Well, thank you, Ira. Well, I'm going to give you some recommendations that I love. They could be appropriate for, I would say, maybe intermediate elementary school, middle school is where I spend 23 years of my career. I'm now in the high school. But I love photos in any books, and I think any kids would love this.

This one is called Copycat. And I love connecting nature with technology. And I love doing that in my maker space, very low tech and high tech. And this book is Nature Inspired Designs. So basically, it has photos of nature and how we have adapted those items in our design. So here we have an image of a snail and its home and then a home that looks like that in the desert. My second book is called Octopuses Have Zero Bones. Now, it is a counting book, but it is not a typical counting book.

I would not use this for little kids to learn how to count from one to ten. Because as you find out when you go through the book, it doesn't just talk about numbers 1 through 10, but it talks about bigger numbers. So, for example, we have our 0, but we also have our 1. And then the 1 turns into a 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 all the way up. So basically, the author takes zeros and puts it at the end of numbers to really scale up the counting. So there is only one heart in your body, but then we talk about if we place a zero behind the one, we have a 10. So it's not a traditional typical counting book. And also we think

of STEM books as traditionally nonfiction. Well, I love fiction books as well. And I love the intersection between fiction and nonfiction with science. This is called the First Rule of Climate Club. And the author is Carrie Firestone, who wrote the book, Dress Code, and that was a middle school book. And this book talks about a group of students and they are activists and they're talking about climate change. But it's not just about activism. Not only is it about science and climate, but how relationships build. So I love learning about the global goals by the United Nations. There are global goals that students around the world are talking about, like climate change and equity

in education, and there's zero poverty. This one is all about climate change. So it's really good to inspire our young youth activists. That's great. And what kinds of science books do you find kids at your school gravitating? Does that change based on grade level, Christina? Well, I work in a high school now. So a lot of the science books that our students are reading are really driven by the

curriculum. But I find that students of all ages love books that have to do with, pop culture. So books that have to do like the science behind toys or the science behind their favorite brands, the science behind everyday technology that they use. So their connection with the science and their passions, that's what I'm finding. It's more what they, would they gravitate to. I love those kinds of books. That's why I read kids books because there's so much good stuff, right? They don't take that you know anything for granted. And I like that. Yeah. Melissa, you just got off a book tour for your own book and to tell us about that book.

I did. I actually had two books that came out within the last month or so. So the first one is called Tree Hole Homes. And it's about creatures that live in trees. It includes the usual suspects like birds and squirrels, but also some amazing animals from all over the world like iguanas and crabs. And my favorite thing about the art in this book is that it actually was painted on real pieces of wood. So when you look at the trees, what you're seeing is the grain of the actual wood pieces that the illustrator Amy Heveron used. Beautiful stuff. Just gorgeous. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful art.

And then the other, which is wholly different, is called Mega Predators of the Past. And this book is not about dinosaurs. It's about the other mega predators of the ancient world. So it includes everything from giant ripper lizards, which are on the cover here. Ripple lizards. Don't think we ever heard of that. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't want to run into one in a cave, that's for sure.

And one of my favorites is these giant terror birds, which are as tall as giraffes. And so this book really takes a fun look at some of these amazing creatures. It includes a little comparison illustrations that show you the size compared to humans and also some other more common animals that are alive today. Kayan has a question about books for aspiring astrophysicists. Go ahead, Kayan. Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Hi, Ira.

So I have a nine-year-old grandson, and he is an aspiring astrophysicist. He loves everything about space. So I'm looking for books that you could recommend on space, planets, nebula. He really loves nebula, stars, and he's so into the James Webb Space Telescope, but I don't, I need something that's at his grade level. Or, you know, he could probably read about, like, fifth, sixth grade level. And of course, pictures are always good. So any recommendations you have. I think a really great place for him to start would be the book that I was mentioning a little bit earlier, Jason Chin's book that came out in 2020. It's called Your Place in the Universe. I think he would really enjoy that book. One of the nonfiction categories that I loved as a kid was biography. I remember reading books about Einstein or books of Louis Pasteur, all kinds of folks. Even Anthony Fauci has a book about him out this year. And that's what our, one of our listeners wants to know.

What new science biographies should we be watching for? One of my favorite from the year is called Blips on the screen. It's by Kate Hannigan. And the subtitle is how Ralph Bear invented TV video games and launched a worldwide obsession. So this is a book about a Jewish refugee who really he was so incredibly persistent. he immediately, when TV was first invented, he wanted it to be more interactive and he had the skills and the expertise to figure out how to create those very first video games that have developed into one of the pastimes that kids love more than anything today.

Christina, I have one last question for you. We're running out of time. I'm wondering if there are topics that you find are connected. If your kids likes topic X, they may like topic Y. some sort of connection there. What do you think, Christina? Well, video games is definitely a hook. There's a book called Gamer Girls that talks about women in the video game industry. So any way you can give, like I said,

connect something, like an actual toy or a game with a book. I think that's a really great idea. Robots, artificial intelligence, cell phones, learning about social media, and how to be safe on social media. All those things can really help. help our students and our children. Some great book suggestions. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today. Melissa Stewart, science book author based in Boston, Christina Halsweiss,

Ed Tech Librarian, based in Syosset, New York. Thank you for taking time to be with us again. Thank you. Thank you so much. And maybe you were driving during the segment and you can't quite remember the title of one of our recommendations. That happens a lot. We've got you covered. Go to our website, ScienceFriday.com slash kids books. And you can find you. find all the STEM books for kids that we talked about today, plus a few extra recommendations that we couldn't quite fit into this conversation, Science Friday.com slash kids' books. We have to take a break and when they come back, an indigenous perspective on conservation and environmental restoration. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato.

Over the last week, we've been hearing from negotiators at the COP 27 summit, but how nations need to come together to address climate change, and about compensating developing countries for the loss and damage involved with climate change. But consider when your entire culture is built on your relationship with the environment you live in. That's the case of indigenous people, many of whom have been displaced from their ancestral lands, first by colonization and now increasingly by a shifting climate. Earlier this year, I spoke with Dr. Jessica Hernandez, an indigenous environmental scientist, community advocate, and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington. She's the author of a book about how environmental science, as practiced in Western institutions,

should be paying more attention to the knowledge of indigenous people if we want to solve environmental crises. The book is fresh banana leaves, healing indigenous landscapes through indigenous science. Jessica, welcome to Science Friday. Yeah, Wendell, Paducci. Thank you for having me. Nice to have you. Do you think indigenous people view Earth differently from settlers in the U.S.? I think so. And I think that when we trace that back, it kind of is traced back to the separation from humans from nature. When we look at conservation, when we look at how we practice environmental sciences, we are, you know, always told to kind of remove humans from the equation. And I think that, yeah, as a result of that indigenous communities, we see our plants and our animals as our relatives as opposed to, you know, economic resources or something that we can extract from.

So what you're saying is that Western conservation views people as the enemy of nature where you're saying that we should be living in harmony with nature. Yes, especially, you know, when we look back at our creation stories, our history since time of memorial, we have always had a close relationship with nature. But because, you know, colonization and all the organizations and frameworks that introduced, so we have, you know, been taught to extract from nature. So as a result, yes, we have become the enemy of nature, but we need to kind of reclaim those relationships

so that we can holistically steward and caretake for our lands and our landscapes in this world. Let's go back to the title of your book, Fresh Banana Leaves. You start this book with the story of your father who grew up in El Salvador and his connection to the banana trees. Why is this story important to this question of indigenous people's relationship with land?

Yeah, I think the stories is very important because oftentimes, right, as indigenous peoples, we are told to get over our past histories, especially when we talk about genocide. And for my people, especially indigenous Mayan nations across Central America, genocide can be traced back to our parents or our grandparents' generation

because, you know, genocide occurred during the Civil War that targeted indigenous communities that, you know, killed a lot of, of our children. And I think that tying it back to his story, he taught me that if we protect nature, nature protects us. And, you know, I laid the foundation of his story and how a banana tree actually saved his life when his guerrilla encampment was bombarded. He saw a bomb drop on this banana tree. And instead of, you know, the bomb igniting, he saw how the banana leaves kind of wrapped themselves to prevent the bomb from igniting. And I think that, you know, oftentimes we

talk about our ancestors pray for us, but sometimes, you know, those ancestors are our plant and animal relatives. That was a story he always told me as a young girl, and I think that as I grew older, I started to comprehend the importance and the message behind that story and how it's manifested in my life today as an indigenous woman in the environmental sciences. And that message is if we protect nature, nature protects us. Yes. Dr. Hernandez, when I introduced you, I gave a list of things you're up to, but how do you describe yourself and the work you do as an indigenous scientist who's also working with Western institutions? Yeah, so why I, you know, use a persona of an indigenous scientist is because I use the Western sciences, the training that I have in the physical and environmental sciences to advocate right for the inclusion of indigenous ways of knowing that I refer to as indigenous science. And I think that oftentimes the term that we use a lot is traditional ecological knowledge.

But when I have seen that being introduced into the environmental sciences, a lot of scientists kind of focus more in a traditional. And they continue to speak about indigenous peoples, our ways of knowing in the past tense. And the reason why I use the word science is because our knowledge is have adapted. We have survived, you know, colonization. We're still surviving climate change impacts. as we know, right, climate change is already impacting our indigenous communities. And I see it as a science, especially, you know, the way that science is formulated, we are still making questions, we're still making observations. It's just that the methods or the ways that we pass down our knowledge is very different than,

you know, it's done in Western science where you publish peer review articles, where you collect numerical, you know, data. And I think that is different, but in the same way, it's kind of the ongoing knowledge that adapts and formulates new knowledge as we speak today. That's good to know. One example you write about is Milpas, which is a method of agriculture that your family in Oaxaca used to grow food while also taking care of the local ecosystem. How does this work?

Yeah, so Milpas are more of a holistic agricultural system, right, when we compare it to Western agricultural systems that have introduced monocultural farming. So Milpas have a diversity, a biodiversity, a biodiversity. in terms of plant species that are integrated into that system. And because it's very holistic and, you know, the plants have built a relationship with one another, it doesn't require much human labor. The only human labor that we have is tending it and caring for it. But, you know, with minimal human physical labor.

And I think that Nilpas kind of shows the nuances of indigenous science, right? Because it's our elders teaching us since we're young to kind of, you know, talk to the plans to communicate with the plans to be in ceremony when we're harvesting. And I think that it's an intergenerational experience, right? Because we have our elders and our toddlers working in the milpas and we have our adults. And that is a communal harvest, right? It's not a harvest where we take whatever we want. We only take what we need. And I think that has allowed me to see how in Western environmental sciences is totally the opposite, right? Because we take as much as we want instead of, you of what we actually need.

And in terms of environmental science, I noticed reading your book that one big difference you talk about is how you relate to species that we call invasive, like the banana tree, which is native to Southeast Asia. Why aren't they invasive species as far as you are concerned?

So I was always taught as a young girl that they're not invasive species, that they're actually displaced relatives. And I think that that goes back to the first question, right? How as indigenous peoples, we'd be, our environments where our animals and our plants are also our relatives. And I think that given that, you know, these are plants, they still have a spirit. They have become our displaced relatives.

And, you know, in this case of banana trees, right, they have started to be incorporated into our traditional diets. Like if we have our tamales, we eat plantains. And I think that it shows the nuances and the relationship that as indigenous peoples, we embrace our displaced relatives. we don't, you know, use that rhetoric that can be harmful and that kind of separates humans from nature. Because looking at, you know, the restoration work that I have done, the conservation work that I have done, invasive species are always painted negatively.

But a lot of people who are practicing both restoration and conservation, these are their relatives that they're talking about negatively, right? Because a lot of invasive species have European displacement. And that's something that many people also can tie their lineage and connection. to us well. One of the statistics you mentioned in your book is that indigenous people steward 80% of the world's biodiversity on just 25% of the land. And knowing that indigenous peoples are not all the same, do you think there's an explanation for why they're doing so well at taking care of ecosystems? Yeah, when I always say that statistics, right, if we want to like validate why it's important to incorporate indigenous knowledgees or indigenous science, you know, that's one of the,

data sets that, you know, can prove that point and also the fact that in Latin America, we, you know, are home for 50% of the world's biodiversity. So I think that given that, you know, our knowledge systems have been integrated or generated since time immemorial and we have always looked at our landscapes through a holistic lens, it allows us to kind of store our lands to understand what are the differences that are taking place. How is climate change impacting them? And I think that oftentimes when I talk about indigenous science and how that relates to storing or caretaking of our lands, I like to use the metaphor of looking at a puzzle, right? In indigenous science and ways of knowing, we're looking at the entire puzzle completed versus in Western science or Western Ways of Knowing. We focus only on two or three puzzle pieces.

So we miss other things that are important for us to create more holistic frameworks and instill those conservation techniques that will live. at the entire landscape as opposed to focusing on one species or one area that's not the entire landscape in itself. I want to talk about conservation and national parks. You're right that this idea that originated in the United States but spread to countries like El Salvador and has led to even more displacement of indigenous people from their land. Please say more about that. Yeah, so national parks, right, it was a framework created in the United States during Roosevelt's presidency. And as a result of that, oftentimes we forget the history of national parks and that history is embedded in the violent displacement of the indigenous communities and peoples who were living in those lands that, you know, were decided that they were so pristine and beautiful that, you know, they wanted to package it in a national park. And when we talk about conservation and the national parks movement, it has like, as you mentioned, it has spread all across the Americas.

us and in my home country, especially in our Maya Chorti territories, we have national parks that are, you know, embedded in our rainforests. And yet when we look at our, you know, Maya Chorti or other indigenous communities, we don't have access to those national parks because they're being operated to generate tourism, to generate economic revenue for the country without, you know, supporting the indigenous communities who have the knowledge of storing and caretaking of those landscapes and stuff. and Memorial. So we see, again, in national parks, how we're continuing to separate humans from nature. And hopefully, that's a history that, you know, we see in our lifetime being addressed

so that we can actually be, you know, create more just solutions and incorporate indigenous peoples into that framework. You also write that instead of the word conservation, we should perhaps be thinking differently about environmental science, that healing might be a better word. Tell me why. Yeah, so when I look at my native languages, Sapotech, and I talk about conservation, right? There's no word that translates to conservation. Most of our words translate to healing. And I think that as a result of that, right, even as indigenous peoples, we always knew that post-colonization, we had to heal. And I think that, you know, going back to the discussion we were having on how humans have been separated from nature, a lot of us have a lot of healing to do, right?

To reclaim those relationships, to reclaim, you know, living in harm. with nature. And I think that as a result of that, we had to heal a lot of layers, whether it be from colonization, whether it be layers that were exacerbated during the pandemic. And I think that as a result of that, in order for us to heal our landscapes, to heal climate change devastation that's taking place today, we also need to center the healing of ourselves, the healing of our communities and nation as we move forward. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. In case you're just joining us. I'm talking with Dr. Jessica Hernandez, Indigenous Environmental Scientist, Postdoctoral Fellow University of Washington, author of Fresh Banana Leaves, Healing Indigenous

Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. So much to talk about her, so little time. I'm interested in learning a little bit more about what does healing indigenous landscapes look like in terms of practical steps. Practical steps will be like, you know, when we look at our relationship with invasive species, many of us have to. you know, reclaim those relationships with nature. So instead of, you know, just removing the invasive species very aggressively, we have to pray to it. We have to, you know, talk to it so that, you know, that species is okay with being removed. It's also having that intergenerational relationships, right? Because a lot of us are, you know, separated from our elders. We're

separated from our cultures. So, you know, having the elders teach the young people. It's also a way to heal. And also having, you know, discussions, conversations, conversations, being in healing circles when we're doing that restoration work is also very helpful. And I think that through my work, I have been able to implement that. And you may be working eight hours of, you know, physical labor, you know, removing our displaced relatives, those invasive species. But at the end of the day, you feel really relaxed because there was that healing components that were integrated into that, you know, physical labor work that was done. Yeah. You feel satisfied. Yes. You feel like you've made a contribution.

Yes, and sometimes there's crying, right? Because you talk about, you know, especially when I have done restoration work with indigenous communities and my relatives, right? There's a lot of crying because there has been a lot of loss during the pandemic. And I think that, you know, we're able to be in nature and be with our environments when we're doing that healing, right? It's like peeling those layers while being in nature as well. Yeah. Climate change is reaching what many scientists are describing as crisis levels. We call it a climate crisis, right? There is this consensus that action must happen soon if it is to be successful.

Do you think world leaders are ready to take the time that might be necessary to also embark on this healing that you describe? I think a lot of our role leaders are not ready. And I think that one of the discussions that I always bring to the forefront is how climate change is actually displacing indigenous peoples and is displacing them externally, right? And when we look at the immigration discourses, especially from, you know, world leaders that actually have power that, you know, are the leaders of global dominant countries, immigration is very forceful, right? Like the immigration policies enacted are very harmful. We see how a lot of our Afro-Indigenous relatives from Haiti were actually treated when, you know, they have been displaced into the United States.

And I think that because climate change is interconnected with displacement and displacement. is negatively, you know, seen as immigration, our role leaders are not necessarily equipped or ready to address the climate change impacts it's having on the global south especially. When people around the world think about how to envision their relationship with the land or with nature, what do you think we should be sure to keep in mind? Yeah, I think that it's important to, you know, learn whose indigenous lands you're currently living on and then doing that research, right? Because we know that indigenous histories, indigenous movements are often neglected, ignore, or silence in mainstream discourses,

and then researching how we can support those indigenous communities directly. And that would be like, you know, amazing reciprocal relationships being built with not just indigenous lands, but also the indigenous peoples of those lands. Dr. Hernandez, thank you for taking time to talk with us today. Yeah, thank you for having me. And, you know, it was an honor to speak with you. Dr. Jessica Hernandez is an indigenous environmental scientist and community activist. Her book is Fresh Banana Leaves Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science. And if you want to read an excerpt of the book, we've got it for you. Go to ScienceFriiday.com slash healing to take a look. ScienceFriiday.com slash healing. That conversation was recorded back in April.

After the break, our annual look at prizes for the strange and unusual in science. Highlights from this year's Ig Nobel Awards. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flito. It's our holiday tradition, a post-Thanksgiving palette cleanser with highlights from the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Awards for Science that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. This is the award ceremony's 32nd first annual year.

And here to navigate the awards and explain the silliness. is Mark Abrams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and Ringleader of the award ceremony. Welcome back, Mark. Hello, Ira. It's nice to hear your voice again. Thank you. Congratulations on 32 years. Yeah, I don't know how this happened. But it keeps on, and we're working hard to keep going. For listeners who are hearing us for the first time, and I find that hard to believe,

what do you have to do to earn an egg? It's a matter of luck. This is a prize unlike any other that I know of, because it's not about good or bad. If you win an Ig Nobel Prize, that means you've done something that will immediately cause anyone who hears about it to first laugh and then to think about it for the next few days or weeks. They can't get it out of their head.

Yeah. And this year you had it online again, correct? Yeah. We normally do it in a big theater with people coming and throwing paper airplanes and all that stuff. But because of the pandemic, haven't been able to do that. So for the third year, we recorded it secretly in bits and pieces. The winners are scattered all around the world, and so are the Nobel laureates who are handing out the prizes.

So this involved a lot of logistics. And I understand that someone who is an Ig Nobel Prize presenter this year is getting his own real Nobel Prize? Yeah, we had, I think, eight Nobel Prize winners handing out the Ig Nobel Prizes to the Ig Nobel Prize winners. one of those Nobel Prize winners, Barry Sharpless, handed out two Ig Nobel Prize winners, and then a few weeks later it was announced that he, Barry Sharpless, is going to be awarded a second Nobel Prize this year in chemistry. Does he attribute it to his Ig Nobel success? I hope not.

He seems completely completely. All right. Now, let's get right into the prizes. First, let me ask you, do you have a favorite award this year? No, I do not. One prize that seems to really appeal to an awful lot of people that I've heard from is the economics prize. It was given to a team of three scientists in the University of Catania in Sicily, Italy, for an

analysis they did that shows that success in life, in professions, in almost anything, success is far more a matter of luck than talent. I'll let them explain it. Our starting point, which is the most important factor to reach success, talent or luck? On one end, talent like IQ and other human features, has a Gaussian distribution. On the other hand, measuring success with money, one finds a power law distribution of wealth with many poor people and a very few billionaires, as discovered by Pareto many years ago. So, could luck be the missing factor to get a very big success?

To answer this question, we simulated a careers of thousands of people in a virtual world full of random lucky opportunities and bad accidents. The simple dynamics of our computational model reproduces the real Pareto's law and also shows that moderately talented but very lucky individuals are always much more successful than very talented but unlucky ones. We also showed that it's possible to adopt efficient redistribution strategies in order to favor the success of the most talented. people and to foster new ideas.

I think that's both sad and wonderful to hear. Louis Pasteur said, luck prefers the prepared mind, which means if you're thinking about something all the time, you're going to be the lucky one who gets the answer. Let's talk about literature prize. I thought that was really cool. Tell me about that one.

This was a team of three people published a paper in which they analyzed. what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand? Why is legal language so hard to understand? We've set out by comparing the language in legal documents, things that people actually read, and what people are actually saying. Turns out, legal texts contain far more difficult to process features than other language.

To evaluate whether these factors affect people's comprehension and retention, we conducted an experiment. We had people read a simplified contract excerpt or a legalese version. We found that people had worse comprehension and retention of the legalese. While this may not be shocking, it's important to know how difficult these features make language processing and why it's happening in the first place. This way, we can advocate for tractable and beneficial changes to society.

Oh, wow, that is deserving of some kind of pride. Yeah. And now it's got one. Let's move on to another favorite of mine in medicine. A whole bunch of folks from Poland got awards here. They showed through experiments that when patients undergo certain forms of toxic chemotherapy, those patients will suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream is used in place of what were the traditional components of the procedure. This work is about preventing a common complication of Kaido's chemotherapy

that you use prior to the bone marrow transplantation. You can prevent bucozitis by sucking ice cubes. But who wants to suck ice cubes for many hours? We discovered that actually you can use ice cream, cool the mucosal tissue and get the same effect. So we would like to thank our restaurant for providing us with free ice cream for this work. I would like to also thank all of the members of our team,

who first made sure that every patient prior to the transplant got the ice cream to prevent buccasitis and later prepared the publication and were able to publish it with high-impact factor. So thank you all. And remember, ice cream to prevent bucozitis. It's not an ignoble joke.

It's actually evidence-based medicine. Thank you for the award. That's really cool because ice cream, we all scream for. right? Yeah, nice bad pun there about the cool. They say that this really has been helpful. This kind of chemotherapy does damage to the patients and it's really uncomfortable and the patients don't want to go through it and their whole memory of the experience is usually just a horror. But using the ice cream, it turned into an almost pleasant experience. So it turned out to really make a difference and also to prevent some of the physical damage that was happening

to those patients. So yay, ice cream. Tell me how people get selected for this honor, if you will. We had a story recently about cat purring, and one of the researchers had won in Ig Nobel and was very excited to have it. Yeah. The organizers are always looking around at science journals and news reports and talking to lots of people, but mostly we get nominations flooding in every day from around the world. People hear about something. Maybe they know the scientist, who did it. Maybe they are the scientist who did it, or maybe they've just read about it, whatever. And they tell us about it and give us enough information that we can go and track it

down. And in a typical year, we get something like 10,000 new nominations for Ig Nobel Prizes. And then we do a lot of digging and a lot of arguing. We also look at some of the older things because the prize is not necessarily for things during the past year. And we argue a lot ourselves and we choose 10. And for each of those, in most cases, we get in touch with them very quietly. We offer them the prize. We give them the chance to decline the honor if they want to turn it down. But happily, most people who are offered in Ig Nobel Prize say yes. Let's go back to some of the prizes here. There was a prize given to a whole bunch of people for developing an algorithm to help gossipers decide when to tell the truth and when to lie.

Really? Really? It's an algorithm that worked by analyzing what was said? Yeah. It has a lot to do with who you're gossiping to and who you're gossiping about. And whether you're gossiping is liable to simply be a pleasantry or whether it might even help the friendship or whether you might be doing some real damage. to the person you're gossiping about or to the person that you're gossiping too. I have some exciting news.

We want the Nobel Prize for a mobile on honest and this one is gossip. Why us? It must be because a mathematical model on gossip makes you first smile and then think. Gossip is important in social life. It is how we learn about other good or bad actions and it's crucial for human cooperation. The latest gossip is that they received the ID Nobel Prize. Is this gossip honest or misleading? I trust it. Our model proves it! Yay!

Sometimes we will marry to others. Our model shows that gossip can be honest or dishonest, depending on how much the validatorious and the recipients of gossip. Hey, I heard our research got the Ig Nobel Prize. I don't know if I trust us. Yeah, you have too much stake in us believing that. We are friends. I care about you. According to our model, I'll only tell you the truth. Okay. I believe it now. Our paper with Junui got the Nobel Prize! surprise. Wow. If so, we should definitely work with her again. But I know that you value her, Paul,

and this story really benefits her. Is it really true? Well, okay, I may have been slightly dishonest. Overall, Alamano is the most brilliant paper in the last 50 years. Okay, now that's dishonest. Interesting. And one other I want to point out, because I think this strikes me as kind of seasonal, the Safety Engineering Prize for developing a moose crash test dummy. Did we know we needed one until he asked and developed it? Well, maybe you didn't, but if you lived in a place where there are a lot of mooses wandering around, you would know this. He did this about 20 years ago or so.

This was his master's thesis work in Sweden. And in Sweden, there are a lot of mooses throughout the country, and there are a fair number of collisions between a moose and a car. And when that happens, that's not a good thing for the moose or the car. So he developed a crash test dummy, which apparently worked pretty well. And several car manufacturers around the world now have been using this for 20 years, this dummy. Wow. In tests about how do you build cars so that if they are in that kind of collision, maybe people will survive. Hi, guys. This is Magnus Gens from the Swedish West Coast, really close to the automotive mecca of Gothenburg in Sweden.

First of all, I would like to thank Markwood team for this fantastic recognition and to also tell you how big of an energy boost it is to accept this priced. When I first started out, this was an really important topic that we knew very little about. And what's also important to understand is that the whole outset of creating this moose trash test dummy is to understand what kind of damages can be done to vehicles by these large animals out on the Swedish roads, or not only Swedish roads, but all the parts in the world where these big animals resides. So thanks once again for this fantastic recognition, and yeah, take care.

This is Science Friday from WMIC Studios. In case you're just joining us, we're talking talking with Mark Abrams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and ringleader of the award ceremony who is talking about all the great Igno Bells that were handed out this year. And you can see a recording of the ceremony on our website, sciencefriety.com slash Igno Bell. I understand that you just got a big science communication prize in Europe. Tell us about that. Yeah, this is surprising to me. The Heinz Oberhumor Award is given every year by a group in Austria. And it's for, they say, outstanding science communication.

So they've decided this year they're giving it to the Ig Nobel Prize. And I'm going to go over to Austria. And several Ig Nobel winners are as well. And we will, I expect, have a fine old time. That's terrific. Do you see the Igno Bells as a teaching tool? I hope always the Igno Bell is something that makes people a lot more curious about a lot more things and a lot more eager to do a little bit of thinking on their own about what those things might be

and what those things might mean. One more prize I want to get to the engineering prize for trying to discover the most efficient way for people to use their fingers when turning a knob. This is done by a professor in Japan whose whole career has been in designing objects, including things like door knobs and control knobs. It's something that at least I had never thought about, and I think most people haven't given any thought to about if you're the person who's making the machine or the whatever that has knobs on it, how big are you going to make these knobs and where are you going to put them? because if they're too big or too small or in an awkward place, people are going to have a tough time using them and they're going to hate your machine and maybe not use it.

So that's what this research was about. How in practice, when people not thinking about it, they just reach their hand and their fingers out, how do those fingers and that knob interact? Here's the recording of what they said. I'm very honored to receive this wonderful award. I'm a design researcher and also a product designer. How many fingers do you use to pinch and turn anything of this size?

How about this? How about this? And how about this? We have statistically clarified the answer of these questions. The diameter that changes from 2 to 3 is 10 to 11mm. From 3 to 4 is 23 to 26mm. and from 4 to 5 is 45 to 50mm. Furthermore, aligning the thumb point straight, the other four fingers draw quadratic curves.

In the field of design, there are many researchers studying such an unconscious human behavior. I hope that more designers will receive this award. Thank you very much. The winner was very pleased because, I guess, industrial designers, If they do their job well, nobody who uses the thing they design ever thinks about the fact that somebody went to a lot of trouble to make this easy to use.

Mark, tell me if folks have an idea for someone who deserves a prize, how do they get in touch? Just go to our website, Improbable.com, and you can get in touch with us very easily there. If you do run across, I'm talking to anybody who's listening to this, if you run across somebody or some group that you think deserves an Ig Nobel Prize, tell us about it, please. and also tell us where we can find out the detail information about it, because this is not just a random thing we do. When we choose these people to win the prizes, we really dig into it.

We want to make sure they truly deserve it. Well, Mark, once again, you've enlightened us about your prizes, and I thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you, Ira, and happy day after Thanksgiving. Mark Abrams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and Master of Ceremonies for the Iq Nobel Prize Ceremony. And if you want to see the whole ceremony, you can find it on our website at ScienceFriiday.com slash Igno Bell. Here's Dee Peter Smith with some of the folks who helped make this show happen.

Thanks, Ira. John Dankoski is our Director of News and Audio. Diana Montano is our Experiences Manager. Beth Rami is our controller. Jordan Smudcich and Jason Rosenberg are our grants managers. And I'm Digital Audio Producer Dee Peter Schmidt. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Dee.

BJ Leatherman composed our theme music. and of course, if you missed any part of this program, or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts, or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And earlier in the hour, we had that great list of kids' science books. If you still need to jot that down, you can find the recommendations at ScienceFriday.com slash kids' books. ScienceFriday.com slash kids' books. Have a great holiday weekend. I'm Ira Flato.