Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Nobel Prizes

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/podcaster Matt Kirshen (Probably Science, The Jim Jefferies Show) and comedian/podcaster Andy Wood (Probably Science, 4-Time 'Jeopardy!' Champion) for a look at why Nobel Prizes are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Nobel Prizes. Known for being awards. Famous for being smartness awards. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Nobel Prizes are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined today by Matt Kirshen and Andy Wood. They are the co-hosts of a great podcast called Probably Science. Also, Matt and Andy are both stand-up comedians. They're both comedy writers. And Andy Wood is a recently minted four-time Jeopardy! champion. So we'll have two of those

on this show. And that's no joke. He did it this past November. You might have seen it if you watch Jeopardy! and it was really exciting to see his very fun run. It was really cool. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Matt recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Matt recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Andy recorded this on the traditional land of the Noah and Yojaviatam and Ma'arangayam peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode.

And today's episode is about Nobel Prizes, which are probably the most famous award in the world. Maybe that and Olympic medals, which are more of a sports thing, obviously. I think those are the two. Everyone has heard of them. Almost nobody knows all the particulars and stories and quite funny things that we're going to get into today about how those things work and how they have worked in the past. So please sit back or consider a career in rocket science, because along with Nobel Prizes, that and rocket science, those are like the stereotypical markers of geniusness. Like if you drop something or if you don't understand something, I think those get brought up. Anyway, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Matt Kirshen

and Andy Wood. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Matt, Andy, thank you both so much for doing this. You do one of my favorite science podcasts. It felt appropriate to the Big Big Science Award, as far as I know. It was great. Oh, well, thanks for having us. Thanks for being on our podcast the other day. You were great. You were always great.

It was a treat. And Andy, congratulations again on winning Jeopardy four times. That's a thing that's near and dear to my heart. I love it. Thank you. Yeah, I was just trying to copy you at every turn and I almost did it. But you're much better at drawing as well. So like it's many, many skills. I got a couple, I got a couple of Final Jeopardy drawings. And then that was one of the biggest

surprises of the experience was how hard it is to use that pen. Wow. That was really tough. They had to, they make, they made me do it over multiple times because mine were so bad. Oh wow. Really? The producers had me rewrite my name because I'd messed it up. Yeah. I'm thinking of, I think my main error was the way the podiums were set up when I did it. You were like hooked to a little lav mic that was on a cord. And they were like, listen, after the game, you're going to want to step right off the podium and it'll yank the mic out of the podium in a bad way if you do that. And I was like, OK, I won't do that.

And they were like, you'll probably forget after the game. So don't do that. I was like, sure, sure, sure. Then I almost did it, I think, three times. Like I just kept and like the crew would all be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like every time it was an issue. Do you also drive away from the gas station with the pump still in your tank? Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's my signature. Yeah. Well, and today we're talking about Nobel Prizes, which is another institution in the world. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start. But how do you feel about the Nobel Prize? Well, we've sent in our podcast in most categories every year and so far nothing. You know, I figure like at least like one of the easy ones, like economics. You'd think. Right. Easy.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's I mean, that's all made up, isn't it? There's no real thing. Yeah. Sometimes it just goes to someone who's the best coupon cutter that year. Right. The Nobel Prize in Thrift.

Yeah. Just put every time you get a coin, just put it in the jar. That's all I'm saying. You will be surprised. Over, sir. I am putting this medal around your neck.

Oh, this is a big one for the jaw right yeah i'm a fan as well i think it's awesome that someone managed to and i'm sure we'll get into this later but managed to successfully turn around their legacy to the point that if you mentioned nobel to somebody the first thing they think is prize it's one of the all-time great image image scrubs sort of you know right amazing pr like right top pr in 1895 you're talking about the fact that alfred nobel invented dynamite well i didn't want to like uh you know spoiler alert i'm assuming we'll get into all that at some point in this hour maybe we won't but um yeah it's great as a rebrand it's pretty powerful i can't think of anybody else has pulled that off as well. I don't know who's a person with a slightly tarnished but intact...

I don't know. Is Dane Cook going to have the Cook Prize come out later or something? Bad example, but you know what I mean. The Cook Prize in thrift. That's why you do the job. The Cook Prize in thrift. That's what you're after. Yeah.

In a more specific way on our podcast we've come close to having nobel prize people really on the show and we might have a nobel prize winner on the show next year but i don't want to jinx it we've had scientists from from the ligo project whose leaders won the nobel prize a few years. But the people we had on the show were not the lead people on the project, but were still great. So we've had that. And then I did an episode of StarTalk with a Nobel Prize winner, who was also from the LIGO project.

He was one of the three creators of that project. That's awesome. So I've met a physics Nobel Prize winner. And so it's a kind of thing where it's not like you're just trying to book every winner after the announcement is made. It's like you book these amazing scientists like you do, and then hopefully it turns out later. Well, we email Malala every year as well, just in the hope that she'll come on and talk

some nonsense about science for an hour or so. And she's like, I'm already busy with Chapo, but thank you very much for the email. Every week. And I and Andy, I love you getting into that right away of yeah, it's Alfred Nobel was this Swedish industrialist scientist who invents dynamite and then decides he doesn't want that to be his legacy. And if I remember right, Joseph Pulitzer was kind of famous for junk journalism and then started the Pulitzer Prizes. That's the only other one I can think of. Oh, that's another great example.

But it's rare. That's almost a better example because that's a straight like for like. That's a direct changing of your legacy. Right. It's like if it was the nobel prize and not dynamite like it's exactly the just putting cliff faces back together repairing minds well and uh and we have a lot of stuff about these awards and prizes so let's get into it and

on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And that's in a segment called Number the Bridge Downtown is where I count stats up. Statistics are real fun. Some are real big and dumb. Is Anthony Kiedis filling in his host today anthony i'm trying to do the song get out of here anthony i have read his memoir is that weird it's called scar tissue it's good time oh i have also read that book it was a long time ago it's a good book it's a good time. I have also read that book. It was a long time ago. It's a good book.

It's pretty good, yeah. Very fascinating. I won the Kiedis Award for in-tune singing. And that name was submitted by at Wapplehouse on Twitter. His username is Christy Yamaguchi Main. And thank you for that. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. We got numbers and stats here. The first number is money. It is 10 million Swedish krona, which is a currency, and that is the cash award given for a 2020 Nobel Prize, which is about 1.195 million US dollars. That's what you get if you win a Nobel. God, what a racket. I'd be doing scratch cards like an idiot when I should really have been doing particle physics. Yeah, I think it's more than I expected.

No, the piece that you achieve is okay, but that sweet, sweet Kroner stash is really why you want to be uh too good in the world so far my best attempt at peace has just been sort of going into bar fights and fights in the street and just saying lads cut lads easy easy lads all right leave it leave it is that is that just british roadhouse is that the film? Is that what happens in it? Very much so. Oi, lads, calm it. Leave it. And I guess speaking of the UK, according to the internet, there are eight European Union countries that do not use the euro. It used to be nine when the UK was in it. So the Swedish

krona is what you were paid in. For your Nobel, you also get a medal and a diploma, which is, there are pictures of them online. It's sort of a very fun looking, it looks like a medieval invitation or something, but the diplomas are very fancy. Do you hang it up in your study so that people know that you're to be trusted? Yeah, I think so. Like the way dentists do. Next number here is more money. It is 31 million Swedish krona. That was 31 million Swedish krona in 1895 when Alfred Nobel signed his will, putting that amount of money into starting the prizes.

And today that would be almost 1.8 billion krona or 214 million US dollars, which is kind of less than expected. I thought it took more money to start a Nobel Prize. I don't know. That's a lot. It is a lot. Yeah. Does that mean that it's a trust or it's a whatever the word is for all of the prize money has over the years just come out of the interest of that initial investment? Yeah, I believe that's the approach. And because they've also changed the amount the prize is over the years to go with inflation. Like it used to be much less than it is now. Yeah. Yeah. It's just sort of a hard amount of money to think about, too. It's just once you get enough digits on it, it's silly. It's whatever it is. Yeah. But also, you know, you think about if it is in today's, you said it was today's dollars only about 200 and something million. Was that right? Yeah. 214 million modern American dollars. Yeah.

Then I guess, yeah, there are tons of pretty evil people who have way more money than that where giving that much money really wouldn't even be any skin off their back. Like, why not just hedge your bets and every like, I don't know, Roger Stone, he's not rich enough,

but you know, someone like that. Yeah, the Bezos prize, the Bezos prize for labor rights. I mean, seriously, if it's that trivial amount of money for a Scrooge McDuck style billionaire, why not just start it and see if it takes? It wasn't all the prizes at first, right? I'm thinking more have been added over the years. That is a perfect segue into the next number. The next number here is six, because that is the approximate number of categories for Nobel Prizes. They started with five of them for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. And then they added a sixth one in 1968 that is technically run by a central bank in Sweden.

And it's called the Sverigesiges riksbank prize in economic sciences in memory of alfred nobel which is a very long name but so there's six of them and technically only five are the originals so yeah i don't want to i wouldn't want to win the economics one then i've won one of the og ones right it doesn't count yeah forget it forget it. Yes, it's just not as, I mean, it counts, but it doesn't, you know, it counts-ish. The other thing with the categories is there's no math prize, which I think I learned from the movie Good Will Hunting, because they're obsessed with the Fields Medal, because that's a math award. But apparently, Nobel did not start one for unclear reasons. did not start one for unclear reasons. According to Mental Floss, the silliest rumor is that Nobel did not like mathematics

or that his wife was cheating on him with a mathematician. But the most likely actual reason is Sweden had a major math award given by a journal there called Acta Mathematica. So he just felt like that was already covered. Didn't need to do it. Okay. Also, there's the Abel Prize. Oh, no, he's Norwegian, norwegian i think arbel oh i've never heard of it yeah which is a major math prize yeah i guess there's a ton of math prizes and i don't know because i don't do it but yeah

there's it's like very covered and albella was like don't worry about it let's do other stuff that that was my degree but apparently you need to do a little bit better than just scraping through an undergrad to get one of them i majored in peace and it hasn't done anything for me i can't believe the parents paid for that whole four years uh you did but you've got a minor in carousing and that's i think they've counted each other out yeah it is norwegian the arbel prize oh it looked that's great the norwegian mathematician arbel yeah a lot of a lot of scandinavian prizes too it's a whole thing i guess when you've got the long dark winters you know you need a medal to see you through it's it's really it's a neck warmer to the swedes is

what it is it's mostly yeah yeah and they give them out in december like they announce october give it in december it's it's exact climate stuff. That's probably why it's a medal and not a cup or a trophy, because you can wear a medal around your neck. You can ski with a medal. Like a trophy, the metal is going to get really cold. It might stick to your hands. It's going to be uncomfortable to hold. Right, right. They've thought it through. I think my favorite physical award is the Stanley Cup because people bring it everywhere and do silly stuff with it. It's a hockey trophy for people who don't know uh but i hope the nobel medals are that way too

that's great yeah it's also really large the stanley cup yeah it's crazy have you guys touched the stanley cup i have not i haven't i presume you have otherwise you wouldn't have posed that question yeah it was at some point some friends of the family brought it to some, um, I'm from Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is a big football town. And my family is, is our big football fans. And somehow on one of its tours, the Stanley cup ended up at our family's tailgate at a Michigan football game. And everyone's getting pictures with it. Yeah.

Yeah. It just travels the world. It's just, that's really funny. The exact opposite of that is, are you familiar with the Ashes? The cricket award? Like the trophy? Yeah, the cricket.

Every few years or so, it's a tournament between England and Australia. And the award is the ashes of the first bales from the first tournament that were burnt and then put in this tiny little pot i didn't know that so the winners are basically holding up this thing that's like smaller than a teacup just in triumph and it stays in a museum the rest of the year and it's like fragile or something too right like they can't oh incredibly so so yeah it it does not

go to anywhere like it stays very firmly in the hind glass most of the time because every other trophy gets like waved around while a guy gets sprayed with champagne but that one you have to be like yeah don't mess up like it's very uncomfortable and nearly always broken as well like it's always a joy when the team sort of lifts up the trophy and then the base comes apart from the top one and it falls off and hits someone like i love seeing athletes being clumsy because they're they're so much more physically gifted than i ever was and ever will be so it's always it's always enjoyable to see them having just achieved the pinnacle of their sport and then be unable to pick up a piece of metal without it breaking oh that reminds me, I have a piece of trivia that

I don't think is telling tales out of school about award trophies. So this is very name-dropping. I'm sorry, whatever. My cousin is married to a former NBA player who won a couple titles with the Miami Heat. Oh, awesome. When a player wins a title, players don't get any trophy. So he and a bunch of other players, I don't know if this is common throughout the league or just on their team. It might even be because he had a relationship with China because he used to play with Yao Ming, the Rockets, but everybody had these Chinese knockoff trophies made. So I've been to his house and he has two Chinese knockoff NBA championship trophies that have misspellings that I don't think were intentional. And I think that's, I think other teammates have done the same thing.

Wacky misspellings is like the joke you do about that trophy. That's amazing that that's how it is. National Biscuit Bowl Association. I got an MBA. Okay, that's fine. That's a weird diploma for it. I'm the NBA champion? That's good to have a fullback when the whole sport thing runs out.

Well, also with these Nobel Awards here, there's an amazing article we'll link from National Geographic called, Who are the Nobel Prize winners? We've crunched the numbers. And there's a bunch of numbers here on like, who wins them? And in particular, how many times Americans win them? Because the United States is the top country for Nobel winners, followed by the UK, Germany and France. Those are the top four. But the US has won like a lot of Nobels since 1901 the first year. USA, USA. I mean that sounds about right because that if it started right at the beginning of the 20th century that coincides with the rise of America becoming a superpower. And also a lot of immigration working for the US because let's see percentages for

the US winning prizes 47% of physics Nobels, 51% of medicine Nobels, 41% of chemistry, 78% of economics, and then 19 piece and only six literature. But also with the science awards and economic awards, we'll have the numbers, but about a third of the winners who were American were also people born elsewhere who then came to the United States. It varies a little bit for each of them. So were a large number of them, I'd imagine a large number of them were the ones who were at one point in either Russian or Nazi controlled areas and then found themselves on the other side of the Atlantic. It seems to be America's strategy for this award. Yeah, is just come over here and we'll, you know, help you out.

Yeah, we'll set you up at MIT or Princeton and Caltech. You'll have a lovely time. And also for all the winners, these are the average ages of Nobel winners. Here we go. Physics winners are 56, medicine 58, chemistry 58, 58, economics, 67, peace, 61, literature, 65. So if you're in your fifties or sixties, you're in the prime Nobel winning age, no matter where you're from. That makes me feel better about having not won it yet. Right? You've got plenty of time.

Yeah. I've got decades on that one. I mean, it's like what I do with my comedy career, where you start looking at what age various people made it i've i'm i'm now transitioning from louis ck to ricky gervais and then eventually rodney dangerfield right as i say all the nobel winners are the rodney dangerfields of of sciences yeah they were all aluminum siding salesmen until they ended up winning their saleswomen also yeah and they all have the ability to somersault from one diving board to another with the triple lindy fall under physics yeah which prize do you get absolutely definitely not literature yeah i think it's a clean sweep basically it's just all of them you get a hat trick or whatever six of them will be. Yeah, and the other number that's frustrating about winners is 900 individuals have won Nobel Prizes between 1901 and 2018.

And of those 900 individuals, only 50 have been women. That is pretty poor. There's also been a few more women the following two years. But it's, I think, well known that it's just tough. Well, half of them Marie Curie. Yeah. Like Marie Curie and her family members. Yeah. Some of whom are women. That's a decent chunk of it, actually. Yeah. They're a dynasty, aren't they? They're a real Nobel. Has anybody topped their family's

medal hall? No, I don't think so. There is, there's one story. I got to find the, I'll link the names, but a father and son won it together, which is very cute. But otherwise it's pretty rare, yeah. Well, and just a few more numbers here. The next one is 100 years.

And 100 years is the length of time Nobel banquets were required to serve special ice cream. Oh. From 1901 to 2000, every banquet featured a very specific ice cream dish that's called Nobel ice cream. It's layered ice cream and fruit sorbet formed into a bomba shape

and then an edible letter N for Nobel on it. And it's this like secret treat everyone got at the things. It's a whole thing. What made them stop doing it in 2001? I guess it's this Atlas Obscura article says that chefs were just allowed to make other desserts. So maybe they still did it.

But there was some kind of, I don't think it was a Nobel's Will level, but there was some kind of ironclad rule where if you ate at this banquet, that had to be the dessert for you. I don't see what the point is of bequesting a prize that will last for as long as humanity hopefully that doesn't come with some weird rules right like if it's not a weird food that gets served at the awards ceremony maybe it's a dance that everyone has to do or a catchphrase that the presenter has to say at some point here's your sign as they put it around your neck yeah i hope it's like it's like you might be a nobel winner if and then they fill in

if you've done groundbreaking work in the field of studying radioactive elements the course of doing so put put your health in danger. You might be a Nobel laureate. By the way, speaking of forced desserts or obligatory desserts, I would have rather had it be the case that the first few years they put the medal on and then you're like,

wait a second, is this? And then you just peel off a layer of gold wrapping and it's just a big chocolate medallion. And then they tell you that you don't officially have the prize until you've eaten it all. There's another prize

which is that wall you get your name on if you can finish it in one sitting. It's like, as he said in his famous Nobel lecture, yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum. He's messily eating chocolate up there. At first, all the winners were really big guys, but then a really skinny Japanese winner

came along and just wiped the floor with all of them. Groundbreaking. Yeah, you dunk it in water first. That's the trick. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Goes faster. And, like, you train your stomach muscles that's

it's a big secret oh my god i i want i wish it were the earlier days of wikipedia when like a person could make an edit that would live for a little while because i don't know why things have changed but like to go in and be able to do an edit to the table of the wick of the nobel laureates and just add just add a seventh column on the right that just says hot dog and then just have the Nobel prize in hot dog for years. Oh, if only. Well, we have one more number here and it takes us into the first big takeaway of the episode.

There's a couple of takeaways. Here we go with takeaway number one. we go with takeaway number one. If you live in North or South America, the Nobel Committee basically tells you you won with a late night crank call. Because there's a bunch of shenanigans here. The number is between 2 and 3 a.m., which is the approximate time you'll receive a phone call telling you you won a Nobel if you live in the Pacific time zone in the United States. It's kind of the worst time to get a phone call. That's when they tell you. Yeah, that would make sense. Because that would be that would coincide with mid morning or in Sweden.

Exactly. Yeah, they Sweden and Norway are both in the Central European Standard Time time zone, which is GMT plus one. And they try to tell people you know around like 11 or 12 o'clock sweden time which is the like the worst time in the pacific yeah yeah they are nine hours ahead of california and then six hours ahead of new york so that's also that's probably even worse because it would be nearer sort of five in the morning that they'd be calling. Exactly, yeah. Are they late sleepers over there? Is that the issue? Yeah, I guess they decided they want to do it within the hour before the official noon Sweden time announcement.

And that works basically everywhere except the four main U.S. time zones and similar for other countries south of us and north of us. Like it's around, I was just curious, it's around seven o'clock in Beijing, around 10 o'clock PM Sydney, like most of the rest of the world, that's a good time. But if you live here, it's like you either think an emergency happened or someone is messing with you, but it's the Nobel committee calling you. Yeah. How do you even check to make sure it's legit? Because you can probably really mess with some prominent

scientists if they know the announcement's coming up. Because also, I think I'm right in saying that generally the winners win for work that they did years earlier. Yes, that's also a thing. So you kind of have an idea of who's in the mix.

So you've probably got like, okay, this person did some really important work years back and they haven't got it yet. So this could be the year. And then if you can master your Swedish chef impression, just make sure you use that when you call the person just for legitimacy. I'm calling from Sweden. It's that I feel like I've just disparaged a great country and I'm sorry. And we can edit that out if that is. It's you do the impression and you chase a rooster around the room with a big like a big car. Yeah, that's that's how you get them.

Because it's what people do in Sweden. Fact. Linda, there's a few sources for this, but the main one is the New York Times has done just wonderful work on the article, Nobel Prize winning scientists reflect on nearly sleeping through the life changing call by Claudia Dreyfus. And they just talked to a bunch of people about the experience of getting this really irritating phone call in the United States. It's the worst. First story here is Martin Chalfie, who's at Columbia University in New York and co-won the 2008 Chemistry Award. He apparently works in molecular biology and genetics.

So he also was curious about both the Chemistry Prize and the Medicine Prize. And he, I guess, spent the night before the medicine prize announcement, because they do each one a different day. He couldn't really sleep the whole night for the medicine prize and then didn't get it. And then, quote, on the night for the chemistry prize, I heard this phone ringing in the distance, but assumed it was a neighbor's. And then he angrily checked to see, quote, who the schnook was who got it and there i saw my name along with osamu shimomura and roger cn i was the schnook end quote that's great love it he's just like like refreshing the internet mad and that's how

he found out he won a nobel prize it's really awesome that's how I found out. Yeah. Oh, sure. I told you guys I won, right? Yeah. Oh. So about that. If you go back to your Wikipedia page now, you might... Wait, what? Oh, Matt. I'm sorry.

I was bored. I already bought a... What do you display a prosthetic neck to display? One of those tie busks that they have. Trophy neck. Yeah, sure, sure. Trophy neck. I guess prosthetic would be if I lost my neck and needed a...

That's not really the word I'm looking for. Which if you successfully did that, I think you would be in line for the medicine prize. Yeah, neck prostheses. Just something that very successfully connects the head to the torso without any issues. I've got these two parts I'm trying to fit together on this living human. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we'll link, there's more stories here, but it's all just people being like bothered. There's one winner, Carl Wyman, who's at Stanford University on Pacific Time, co-winner of 2001 Physics Award. He said that the Swedes were not able to get his phone number and he claims they proceeded to not call at all because they didn't have it. And so then he got a middle of the night call from his brother because his brother was up all night refreshing the Nobel website and then called him to congratulate him. Then Wieman says, quote,

since it was my brother, my first reaction was to go check the internet to make sure he was not playing a practical joke because that's a brother move. Like, of course, they're going to do stuff. Yeah. joke because that's a brother move. Like, of course, they're going to do stuff. Yeah. There's one winner here. His name's Eric Betzig, and he was the winner for chemistry in 2014. And he works in the United States, but on the night of the call, he was visiting Munich, Germany. So it was actually like a totally normal time. It was fine. But the problem is, quote, when my cell phone rang, I wondered who the heck would call me at 5 30 in the morning east coast time and immediately worried that there was a

problem at home and then he also says quote they had actually called my ex-wife's phone first but my 16 year old told them where to find me end quote so even a guy who's in the right time zone it was still a mess. And like a weird thing. It's kind of nice to know that the custodians of the prize for the smartest people in the world are unable to do a basic telephone directory search. Or even just message their university first and just go like, no reason, but just do you happen to have the guy sell? Yeah, it can't be hard yeah it's all i the abrupt stunt that's how they tell people they won this science and usually tell people in their 50s or 60s or older like like they're they're spooking

an old person with this news yeah it's very. There's one more story of it here, and we will have a little clip that people will hear. But the setup is, this was the October 2020 announcement of the Economics Nobel. So the most recent Nobel for Economics. It was awarded to scientists Paul R. Milgram and Robert B. Wilson for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats. But the point is, they're both professors at Stanford, and they live across the street from each other. And I guess when the two in the morning call came, Wilson received his call, and Milgram had turned off his phone for some reason. And so then, I don't know if they were asked to do this, but Wilson and his wife Mary both walked across the street to Milgram's house

to ring the doorbell and bang on the door and tell him he won a Nobel. And you're about to hear a clip because Mr. Milgram has one of those Google Nest thingies that records people at your door. So here is his collaborator and collaborator's wife telling him this thing. So he's approaching the door. He's trying the door handle, like trying to actually get in there. Trying to break in. Paul?

It's Bob Wilson. You've won the Nobel Prize. And so they're trying to reach you, but they cannot. They don't seem to have a number for you we gave them your cell phone number yeah i have wow yeah okay will you answer your phone you need to let them be able to call you so that's that's how it went like it's his friend bothered him in the middle of the night that's how he found out that's that's great that video is just so perfect it just looks like any movie that has someone trying to do a video call with

their older parents you know it's like that is this uh is this facing the right way i i love the idea of these two Nobel Prize winners living opposite each other across the street. Like, I kind of hope that at bedtime they've got their walkie-talkies and they just see each other through the window every night. Good night, Paul. Good night, Bob. Good night, Auction Theory. Auction Theory's like, good night. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back.

I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty.

This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And from here, we can get into takeaway number two for the show. Takeaway number two. There are major and specific flaws in the process for awarding every category of Nobel Prize. All of them have their own distinct, like, weird things and how the awards are given out. And we're going to split them into, like, all the science and economics and then literature and then peace. Those are kind of the three categories of mistake that we'll have to talk about.

Right, right. And also it's exciting that, I think, Matt, you were talking about those LIGO people that you interviewed and met with, because they're a key example of the science awards having a problem of just not going to enough people. There is a limit for all the Nobels on a maximum of three people can share an award. And it's become a problem because most science is done by more than three people working together it's just always a problem now right there's been some really famous admissions over the years also some that have just been from sexism but yeah they're just like well we'll just split it amongst the men who were involved in this science yeah

rosalind franklin can have a chicago college named after that'll be fine that's all you need although in her case was it rosalind franklin who had died just before the award could have been given out um because it's also never awarded posthumously either oh oh right and i think she died she she died quite young and that's the other key uh along with sexism that's the other key science award problem where the Nobel for all of the chemistry, physics, medicine, everything, they've got what's called a breakthrough backlog. And it's for two main reasons. One is that you have to be alive to receive a Nobel Prize. You are like not allowed to get it if you die. And the other reason is they decided in the early days of the Nobel, they said, OK, whoever did the best work in the past year gets the award. And then it led to some issues where Nobel Prizes were given for like faulty science that was not actually accurate. Oh, that makes sense. And so now they do a thing where they wait to see if your work mattered and was solid, which means that there's something called a prize delay. And the economist says for all the science awards,

it's an average of 25 to 30 years between discovering something and getting a Nobel for it. Wow. I know in physics, there's been a few cases where the prize was finally awarded when someone did the theoretical work 20 years earlier, and then eventually the experimental side of it caught up to the point that they were able to affirm that it was true exactly uh like i think

higgs was one of them yeah that's exactly right according to phys.org which is short for physics the 2013 physics prize went to guys who did theoretical higgs boson work in 1964. So about 50 years later, and one of the three people was dead, so he didn't get one. And I can see why they're trying to wait to decide whether the science worked. The most famous example of it being too soon is there was a Danish scientist named Johannes Fibiger, who won the 1926 Medicine Prize for finding that a species of roundworm causes stomach cancer in rodent studies. And then that was debunked roundworms don't cause cancer. That's not a thing,

but he still had a prize like too late. Oh, so that's why they wait now. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're still being too hasty with giving out the literature prizes. Cause it turns out a lot of these novels aren't even true.

Yeah. They've been roundly debunked. Yeah. There just isn't enough time to do the experiments on it. And also, you should have the Peace Prize removed from you if a war breaks out anywhere. Oh, yeah, right? Yeah. Every year, fingers crossed, this is the end of all that. Speaking of those LIGO guys, before we look at the Peace Prize,

the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Rainier Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish for detecting gravitational waves. But all three of them said publicly that way more people were involved than them. And according to National Geographic, the key scientific study for that has 1,011 co-authors, over 1,000 people credited, which means that far less than one percent of the team got a nobel for the thing they all worked on which doesn't make sense but then again if you split the prize up among that many people it's money wise at least what's even the point and after taxes do they all get an ice cream i don't know well and then looking at the peace prize here uh kind of man as you said like

they're one of the peace prize issues it's just it's very difficult to award it to exclusively living people who are often still going to be ahead of state for a while because then they might do a war or do something violent like and that has happened often in the history of the award it's just kind of difficult well i remember the most ridiculous recent one of those was, I mean, when Obama was given it in 2008, it would have been, right? Yeah. But basically not being Bush. Yep. Which is an achievement.

That's an achievement. But then he did other stuff. Yeah. Peace will happen now. Yes, yes. Well done. You won the election. Now we have did other stuff. Yeah. Peace will happen now. Well done. You won the election. Now we have peace.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then other American key ones like that are Henry Kissinger and in some ways Teddy Roosevelt, because they were not necessarily peaceful all of the time, but they already had a Nobel Peace Prize. So then it was like, oh, okay, well, that's just awkward for all of us. All right. What was the impetus for Kissinger's? I didn't know about that. So he and Le Duc Tho, who was a North Vietnamese leader, were given a 1973 prize for peace in Vietnam. And then the war proceeded to keep happening for a couple of years, which was

difficult all around, just as far as the award goes, yeah. I wonder if in some cases like that where something is ongoing, if it's almost like a nudge from the committee, it's like, if we give you this, will you guys be cool? Is everybody going to settle down now? You all get to say you won something now. Yeah. All right, if you promise to keep the peace,

we'll buy you ice cream. I mean, that really is how parents do. Yeah. If you stop fighting, you get an ice cream, but if you carry to keep the peace we'll buy you ice cream i mean that really is how parents do yeah if you if you stop fighting you get an ice cream but if you carry on fighting no ice cream from now on yeah i have won a nobel prize in the dairy queen sense yeah yeah now i feel great when the uh the other issue with the peace prize is that a lot of people are allowed to nominate people. And I don't really have any examples of this going wrong wrong. But there's a huge array of people and organizations who are allowed to nominate people for prizes, such as past winners.

But the main set is any elected member of the legislature in over 170 countries. So think of the worst congressman you've ever heard of. They can nominate someone for the Nobel Peace Prize. And, and, and, you know, anyone else in any other legislature. It's also only chosen by a group of five people selected by the Norwegian parliament from there. So it's not a very like stable or international system. Like five norwegians pick the winner based on nominees chosen by kind of anybody it's very open so that would be also how donald trump was

publicizing last year that he was on the short list or the long list or he was he was nominated yeah he's been nominated repeatedly and in 2018 uh in 2018, there was a joint nomination letter by 18 Republican members of Congress. And then in 2020, a Norwegian legislator named Christian Tybring-Gageta, who I sent you guys a picture of him, but he nominated Donald Trump in 2020, like in the middle of COVID. And like after we did uh like shooting missiles at iranian generals and a bunch of stuff and this guy is in the party in norway that is opposed to muslim immigration denies climate science is white nationalist ish and also kind of looks like donald trump so like that guy's allowed to pick people for the Nobel Peace Prize. There's no limit on it. Again, though, that makes me more encouraged that maybe I could get on the list. All you got to do is befriend a congressman or a member of parliament somewhere.

Like I'm sure there's at least one country where I could, you know, donate something to someone's campaign and get. Yeah. Just give me a peace nomination at the very least. at least one country where I could donate something to someone's campaign and get... Give me a peace nomination at the very least. If you know a guy and you help him get elected to Congress in your local house seat, he could nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize. He's allowed.

That's all it takes. You could legitimately put Nobel nominee on your resume if you just got one yeah just a low level congress person yeah yeah and last award to look at here for process things is the literature awards which i don't know it's it's been a story i don't know if people know the nobel prize for literature is like right on the heels right now of a huge scandal involving sex abuse and then corruption. And it's this little club of people in Sweden, and apparently some of them are very gross. And so

it's a whole cascading weird thing to the point where they did not award a 2018 award. We'll link the details about it, but the main perpetrator is a guy named Jean-Claude Arnault, who in 2017 was accused by 18 women of sexual harassment and assault over a period of more than 20 years. And his wife is part of the Swedish Academy for the Literature Award. They run a club funded by the Swedish Academy. And there was basically a cascading series of resignations and further corruption investigation that led to them deciding we just can't we just can't do it like we're too we're too much of a mess here to function so who took over the committee it's also there's also a thing where legally members of the swedish academy are

not allowed to resign so the seats are just vacant until they die. So also they're still working on getting new people in for arranging this award. It's a whole mess. Yeah. But it seems like this year's award to Louise Gluck is just pretty widely lauded. When they did come back with two awards in 2019, they gave one of them to a supporter of Slobodan Milosevic. And so these scandals kind of continued from there because Slobodan Milosevic is a horrible dictator who the writer Peter Hantke thinks is great. And they gave him a Nobel Prize anyway, which is not good. Yeah. So maybe I've got a chance of getting that one. I'm still trying to work out which category I've got the best chance of winning in. Yeah. I think Bob Dylan winning really opened up a lot of people's hopes. were like oh okay cool like i'm no dylan but yeah everything's literature now yeah

what i think from here we can get into the last takeaway of the main episode so here we go takeaway number three in the past 20 or so years nobel prize medals have been getting stolen there's like a rash of Nobel Prize medal theft just going on. And there's nothing linking them, but we have some weird stories of people stealing Nobel Prize medals.

That's okay. Because they are... What's their value as just metal? As M-E-T-A-L? Right, right. They're made of 18-karat gold and they weigh about six ounces. And so I plugged it into a gold price calculator, and I think I got too high of a number. The source about one of these stolen metals said it was worth $4,200, which is money,

but it's not crime-worthy money, I don't think. It's probably worth more as an artifact as yeah as uh in the black mark the same people who would buy stolen art which you can't display in public but you know you get to you get to tell the rest of your crime syndicate that hey look at this look at this renoir it's a real one yeah that is a strange like it's like you're a lover of the arts, but in private and also a criminal. It's just a strange, like. Yeah, you can sort of, you can never show it off. You can never brag in public because you have a crime just happening constantly in your house.

Right, right. I also, I like the idea that your crime flunkies are like, oh, Renoir, boss, yeah. Like, they're really excited about impressionism or something. Look at the use of light. Oh, boss, yeah. Like they're really excited about it. Yeah. Impressionism or something. Look at the use of light. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because they're also, they all very prominently have like Alfred Nobel's profile on them. And like, they're just definitely what they are.

You can't disguise as anything. And there's an exclusive club here of four medals that have been stolen, and each story is weird and different. First one is that in 2004, someone stole Rabindranath Tagore's medal for literature that he won in 1913. And Tagore is the first non-Western Nobel laureate. He's a major figure in Bengali culture, and Bengal is today's Bangladesh and part of India. He wrote the national anthems of both Bangladesh and India. He was a poet, he was a composer, he's this amazing guy. And the New York Times says that it was stolen from its display case in a museum in 2004. And according to experts, there was very lousy security, but also

it's surprising anyone would steal it because you can't sell itousy security, but also it's surprising anyone would steal it because you can't sell it. And to this day, it's never been recovered. They did some investigations. They closed and opened it again based on political pressure. But it's like a cold case of this stolen Nobel medal. Interesting. Sometimes those things are just depressingly melted down.

Someone just got in and was like, you hear those stories where someone just didn't know the value of it as a thing so just went ah you know four grand four grand yeah sending it just sending it off to one of those cash for gold websites yeah if i could buff the bearded guy off of this this would be a nice looking piece of gold tell you what let me just buff the beard off like no nobody had a beard this is a totally different guy yeah it's clean shaven right there's no clean shaven award for peace get out of here stupid and we'll also we'll link a bbc radio show called the museum of lost objects that does an amazing episode by kanish Tharoor about this incredibly significant figure. But the latest evidence they have is they think it was taken by a Bangladeshi national

with help from two Europeans. But that's kind of all they know. And they still are looking for this medal for 16 years now, trying to figure out where it went. And then next theft here is much sillier. This is in 2007, someone stole the 1939 Physics Award won by Ernest Lawrence, which was kept at the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. The museum said it was the first time anything had been stolen in 39 years. And the thief turned out to be Ian Michael Sanchez, a 22-year-old Berkeley biology major with a work-study job at the Lawrencerence hall of science he said he took the medal quote on a whim that's it they found it brought it back just a college dude like grabbed it that was it it was there yeah yeah yeah did did that student get to stay

at the university or because that's that feels like that's an expulsion thing. Yeah. You know, I'd put that even above, like, sort of stealing the school's mascot. It's hard to come back from that. Right, just animal house stuff. Like, well, they rode a horse across the campus. And then they took a Nobel Prize. Stole a Nobel Prize medal. Stole someone's Nobel Prize. The dean's going gonna be so mad.

Like, that's all they... That stuffed shirt dean, ugh. Just suddenly, like, sending the dean photo after photo of the Nobel Prize in different places around the world on different people. Punches through his

mortarboard. Right. Secretary comes in with a fresh mortarboard that's the third time this week i wish this school didn't have so many specific categories of student the nerds the jocks the nobel thieves and then the uh the other two stories are both just like kind of petty thefts. And one of them is really strange because it was in 2006, the medal possessed by Kay Miller was stolen. Kay Miller was like part of an organization that won the 1985 Peace Prize. It's called the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. So a very nice group. nuclear war. So a very nice group. But she just had a medal because the top people in the org got it. And then she was also renting out her basement as an apartment. And so she had like a tenant named Russell Gillett, 24 years old, who the medal was stolen, and then he moved to a new apartment. And then the police basically caught him for other stuff

and then the person who called in the tip borrowed his car and then found a gun in the trunk and then reported the gun and then when the trunk was searched they found a nobel peace prize medal so it's just like a weird really uh serpentine path with a bunch of petty crimes and thefts that led to the medal being found again. I like the idea of someone who keeps their Nobel Peace Prize next to their gun. Yeah, it's the carrot and the stick. This goes out to people like, alright, which

one do you want? Do you want the peace or do you want the gun? Because I could go either way but it's up to you. That is a very good and very bad cop i tell you what this really it's a really valid use of that wow yeah and then the other theft is in 2017 uh just a home burglar in new delhi broke into the home of 2014 peace prize winner kailash set yarthi and took his medal and then they caught the burglar and brought it back like these these medals are kind of not worth stealing and so a lot of the thefts are like

accidents or just whim stuff it's very weird well yeah again i i would think if you're just an opportunist thief like if if it's a concerted effort to steal one like it sounds like that bengali poet one like that sounds like that was actually the equivalent of a high-end art thief of someone who had a plan of where to put it but if you're just a general thief who normally yeah you got a guy who can fence a stolen tv or uh you know knows what to do with a car stereo but what do you do with a nobel peace prize like yeah you got a guy you know anyone who wants this how much for a nobel peace prize this this thing that is the most recognizable thing in the world and has the entire country's police after it yeah yeah and it like doesn't make you the value is in like being the winner right like you just

have somebody else's thing now it's stupid although now maybe it's like when you people who like grind up rhino horns because there's some you know wealthy businessman who thinks that it's uh so if i eat this medal i'll gain all the power of peace you snored a nobel prize yeah but then it turns out that the medals are actually haunted and they're cursed until they return to their rightful owner. That's the movie. There we go. I can't believe in this whole episode you didn't mention that every Nobel winner has to spend the night in a haunted house before they get their medal. Just survive the ghost of Alfred Nobel.

Like, I have to bother you first. Like, that's it. Dynamite. His catchphrase is dynamite. Yeah. I think that there should be like an honorary Nobel that goes to Jimmy J.J. Walker. Yeah.

With a commendation for ACDC. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Matt Kirshen and Andy Wood for nominating me for the Nobel Prize in learning about Nobel Prizes. Fingers crossed. Hopin'. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one

obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Nobel laureates sneaking Nobel Prize medals past the Nazis. Yeah. Yeah. Beating the Nazis. Heroic capers await you. It's very exciting. So visit SIF pod dot fun for that bonus, for a library of two dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Nobel Prizes with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, if you live in North or South America,

the Nobel Committee tells you you won with what's basically a late-night crank call. Takeaway number two, there are major and specific flaws in the process for awarding every category of Nobel Prize. And takeaway number three, in the past 20 or so years, there's been a rash of Nobel Prize medal thefts. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests they're great matt kershen and andy wood are the hosts of probably science which is a fantastic podcast that we will have linked we'll also link stand-up and comedy writing they've each done if you've heard of stuff like the jim jeffries show and the bridgetown comedy festival you know about their work. It's big stuff. We'll also link, of course,

about Andy Wood's run on Jeopardy! this past November. Won four times. Did it with Alex Trebek. It's just really cool. Like, I take it from me. It's a pretty cool thing to get to do, and I'm so glad he got to do it. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in National Geographic, it's called Who Are the Nobel Prize Winners? We've Crunched the Numbers, and it's by Michael Greshko. A great video from The Guardian, and really from the doorbell of Paul Milgram, where his colleague Robert Wilson and his wife Mary come and ring the doorbell and knock on the door and bug him at like two in the morning about the two of them winning the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Really exciting. Also, a fantastic article from The New Yorker. It's called The Swedish Academy and the Illusions of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's by Alexandra Schwartz. It goes really deep on that literature scandal that we just kind of touched on in this one. You can find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.