Stuff You Should Know - How the Nobel Peace Prize Works

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

The Nobel Peace Prize is perhaps the most prestigious award in the world, yet there are plenty of other similar awards. What is it about this one that makes it so honored? And how did the guy who invented dynamite end up creating a peace award? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryan is with me as always. Jerry's here too. And if you put the three of us together, stir us around, shake us up a little bit,

put in a raw egg white, shake us again, add some ice, shake us a third time until your hand can't stand the outside of the shaker any longer. Pour us into a coupe or coupé, depending on where you are into the world. Coupe. Put a real deal maraschino cherry, not the kind you buy at the grocery store in us, and a nice little swizzle stick. You've got stuff you should know. I just added a little egg white to my Chuck B drink. What's your Chuck B drink? It's my spin on a B's knees. It's the Chuck B. It's in B-E-E. Yeah, sure. Neat. So there's honey in it, whiskey and creme de menthe, right? No. I do a shot of gin out of Laundard. You got Laundard at your house? No. You want to send me some? Sure. It's a local, it's from Old Fourth Ward distillery.

It's a ginger lemon liqueur. That's pretty cool. And then I add a little pineapple gum syrup, just a little bit, because that goes a long way. I can imagine. And then what else do I add? Add ginger bitters. You got to have, oh, lemon juice. What about honey? Honey syrup. Okay, right. Like I make my own honey syrup, not my own honey, because then it just sits at the bottom, like a dumb viscous thing. Right. So you don't look at me. And then I shake the crud out of it. I got these beautiful vintage 70s coupes. Then I add a little lemon twist, but I've added the egg white this last time, and it just, you know, it gives it that lovely little foam on top. It really does. Do you add the egg white first and then shake for a few

seconds, and then add the ice? No, I add everything together, and I just, I shake till my arms fall off, and it foams up really lovely. Gotcha. You don't have to shake as hard if you shake for a little bit first without ice, and then add the ice. It's way faster, and your arms will thank you. I shake for the temperature, not so much for the foam. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it to be, and I freeze my glass like 10 minutes ahead of time, because I like it to be so cold. It's like that's the key to the Chuck B. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you, man. I want one right now, now. Yeah, for real. Right now, now. So I think Chuck, you deserve a Nobel Prize and awesomeness for coming up with the Chuck B and naming it too. That's a great name.

Thanks. Okay. You couldn't get a Nobel Prize in awesomeness if you wanted to, because it doesn't exist. Although something similar does, it's called the Nobel Peace Prize, really. Yeah, and that's the focus of this one. I mean, we could probably put out a four-part series on the entire Nobel slate. We're not going to do that. But we're not going to do that. This is mainly about the Peace Prize, because Peace is where it's at. Ask anybody. Anybody. Ask Bono. Sure, he'll say I hate the name you too, and Peace is where it's at. He doesn't like the name you too? Yeah, that just came out this week. He said he's never really liked the name. Who came up with it, the Edge? I think so. No, no, no. I think it was maybe a manager at the time suggested it,

and they went with it, and he didn't love it, and now he says he doesn't like it. I don't know. Come on, Bono. Shut up. It's a great name. He's like, I haven't been in the press for a while. What can I say? Yeah, exactly. That's probably about right. I haven't been on the cover of Catholic magazine in months. He's probably won a Nobel Peace Prize. He is not. Yeah, okay. No, but I'm sure he's won some other humanitarian awards, but the thing is, I'll bet he has too, because we'll see like anybody, anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. There's no great honor in that. I mean, there is some, especially if the person nominating you genuinely means it, and you're actually nominated by more than one person. But as far as the Nobel Peace Prize

committee is concerned, a group of Norwegian people who take this very seriously, there's no real honor in that. You have to really win the prize or at least make it onto the actual short, short list to really kind of be significantly within the warmth glow, the warm glow of the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah. I mean, we'll get into nominations later, but several hundred people are nominated, and people like Mussolini and Stalin and Hitler have been nominated. Yeah. I'm going to nominate us one day. I'm going to become a political science professor. I'm going to nominate us for a joint award. And how about this? We'll throw out a bit of mystery here that we'll explain later. Maybe we'll find out if Bono was nominated in 50 or so years. That's great. Good foreshadowing there.

So, I'm pretty sure everybody who has ever heard of the Nobel Peace Prize is aware that it's named after Alfred Nobel. And I would say that a significant portion of those people probably know that Alfred Nobel is one and the same as the Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite, wouldn't you say? Yeah. That's one of those, I think, early cocktail party facts that people like to throw around. Yeah. Because it kind of stands out. Alfred Nobel created an explosive that was probably killed a lot of people in his lifetime, but then upon his death, bestowed an endowed a prize that was dedicated to promoting peace in humanitarian issues and keeping things nice and chill, I think, is how we put it in as well. Yeah. Although the One New York Times article

you sent said that during his lifetime, dynamite wasn't really used for war yet. More operation plowshare type purposes? You know, blast diggin' tunnels, John Henry style. Right. So, okay. All right. But he was an industrialist and there is at least a story that we'll get to that suggests that he was equated with warfare. At the very least, he was following in a family legacy of creating things that if weren't directly used for warfare, certainly could be. His father, Emmanuel, kind of kicked the whole thing off when he moved the family to Russia and started creating weaponry for the Russians at the time, I think in the late 19th century. Yeah. They were, I mean, it was kind of, he was kind of Tony Stark in a way and his dad was,

oh, no, I can't think of, who was dad? Tony Stark's dad? Oscar from the Odd Couple? No, I can picture the actor. I can't think of the Elder Stark. Anyway. Felix from the Odd Couple? Sure. Felix Odd Couple Stark was his name. But the point is, his dad made a lot of money in the, you know, sort of munitions business, in the arms business, like a ton of money, and moved his family from Sweden to Russia, where his children were raised with a silver Russian spoon in their mouth, in their mouth had private tutors. And it was a little bit of a Tony Stark thing, like he, the kids ended up brilliant because they had the money to sort of pay for that. You know, I just as a little side note, Chuck, I read an article recently, I cannot remember

where, where I read it, but it was basically like critiquing the Iron Man franchise. Yeah. Yeah, for promoting the military industrial complex, because they really glorified him as this kind of like, you know, weaponry industrialist, advanced weaponry kind of guy. And like, that's his whole jam. And I thought that was a pretty interesting take, because I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who are Iron Man fans who hadn't really stopped to think about that, you know, that's just like part and parcel with it. Well, I mean, that's a major plot point. And the very first one was him going back against all that and realizing that he had led to so much war and devastation.

And now that's why he kind of changed his tune and started the Avengers and started blowing things up in a very private way. Really? Okay. I wonder if the person who wrote the article like me hadn't seen the first one. Maybe. I don't know. Interesting. But so, so Alfred was following in his father's footsteps, right? Eventually. He was a very worldly, very well educated person. He was tutored by the best tutors that St. Petersburg, Russia had to offer. He spoke five languages. He was very well versed in literature and chemistry. Apparently, he said

once that he could digest philosophy as well as he could digest a meal, maybe even better. But he was also... And then he farted. Yeah. But he didn't really fart. He made the arm farting noise. Because that's physics. Right. Right. So he was an odd duck in a lot of ways. And he lived too long ago to pin down in today's terms, but you could call him that. He kicked around in Europe. He was a very wealthy person, kicked around in Europe, kind of was a dilettante and stuff he was interested in. But he was also very brilliant, but apparently described himself as a misanthrope and a bit of a loner, I think.

Yeah. I mean, he never got married, never had kids. I think when he described himself as having a pitiful half-life, the quote in full is pretty sad because he basically says the doctor should have killed me right after I was born. I know. It's just very hard on himself. Yeah. Despite being a brilliant guy, he eventually started to work in nitroglycerin along with his brother Emil. And there was a tragic accident in 1864 where Emil and I think four other people died in an explosion. And for a while there, in fact, you could not... In Sweden, you could not work with nitroglycerin for a while and experiment with it because of that. Yeah. Because I think his family was Swedish in background, so they must have moved back to

Sweden at this time or else the people in Russia would have been like, why did you... That was a weird law, Sweden. Just mind your own business. But I guess Alfred was living in Sweden at the time because in response to that law, he moved his lab off short. So think about this. His friend, his brother, and other people who he probably knew all died in an explosion. That's a grisly death at the very least for the survivors who have to clean up afterwards, right? That's a big deal. Yeah. And he still was like, I'm going to keep pursuing nitroglycerin studies and did so by moving his lab out into a barge on a lake somewhere in Sweden. Yeah. I'm not going to pronounce that lake because then I'm going to do it wrong. Malarin.

There you go. Malarin. Yeah. Because there's a umlaut. That's right. But he eventually came up with dynamite because it was a bit more stable of a form of explosive and sold a lot of it, made a ton of money selling it to Australia and the states and all around Europe, Western Europe. And I think he ended up with more than 350 patents to his name. So he was a consummate inventor inventing all kinds of things and making tons and tons of money along the way. I think in the end he died with, and this is very important, we'll get to his will and how it was used, but he died with close to 10 million bucks, which for back then was like 300 and change today. Yeah. Like a lot of money.

Million. 300 million. Yeah, not $300. Inflation doesn't go backwards. It didn't deeply. Yeah. Um, he subscribed to that Garfield poster from the 80s where Garfield's standing in front of a mansion in front of a Lamborghini, et cetera. It says, he who dies with the most toys wins. You remember that poster? Yeah. I was in the Garfield. I was too, but even at the time I was like, this is a, this poster is wrong. Yeah. I don't know about that message and what's the deal with lasagna. It's strange. Plus also it was all live action too. Like it was a real photograph and then they just drew Garfield over it, which is not a good combination. No, that never looks good. So, um, here's where we reached this point where that I referred to

earlier where there's a, a kind of a lore, a legend around Alfred Nobel and why he went from inventing stuff that make things go boom to, to bestowing or endowing a major award, the Nobel prizes and in particular the Nobel Peace Prize. And there's a really great story that may or may not be true about an obituary that was accidentally printed about him before he died. And how about this cliffhanger style? We'll get to that story right after a break. Yes. This is quite a cliffhanger. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at

the end of the road. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye,

bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology,

my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. I'm on the cliff. I'm hanging there like Tom Cruise. Admission impossible, whatever. As the story goes, some people say it's myth. I think it's a pretty good story either way is that when Alfred's brother Ludwig died in 1888, a French newspaper got it all wrong and thought that Alfred had died, which is a very interesting experiment to think

about if you could read your obituary while still alive. Like, what would that look like? I thought about that a little bit. Then I was like, no one would even write an obituary for me. That would be the saddest thing is in New York Times to be like, who? But at any rate, or maybe a French newspaper would get it wrong. But they called him the merchant of death and that said his wealth came from the invention of new ways to mutilate and kill. The fact that they may not have used dynamite specifically for war during his lifetime, if the New York Times is correct, he still had his hand in many kinds of munitions at the very least. So the reason that people are suspect about this maybe being apocryphal is that historians have

been unable to actually locate an original copy of that article. Which is not to say it did not exist, but even if it didn't, it's definitely a story worth relating because at some point, Alfred Nobel definitely did go from misanthrope who was a loner who just liked to kick around Europe to dying and in a very big shock to everybody, in particular his heirs who were expecting to inherit that $350 million, saying, this is what I want you to do with my vast wealth. I want you to set up a prize that promotes the arts, the sciences, and peace. Here's how we're going to do it. That's right. Other people say, and this was a pretty pivotal relationship in his life, but at one point he hired a woman named Bertha Von Sutner to work for him.

I guess it would be sort of like an executive assistant these days. And that was for a misanthrope, ended up being one of his closest friends, worked for him until she got married. And she was a peace activist writing a book called Lay Down Your Arms. And some people say that he may have been not trying to curry favor, but just influenced by her. Yes. And she actually won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 in part because of her influence on the Nobel Peace Prize even being created. So I think they definitely even thought contemporaneously that she definitely had a huge hand in his kind of change of heart. Because apparently before he was one of those mutual assert destruction types where he's like,

no, no, if you could use dynamite to blow everybody up at once and everybody realizes that you can blow everybody up at once, they're just going to stop fighting, which kind of works, but that's not really a very peaceful stance. And apparently he changed his team before he died. And there were many more weapons to come. He didn't know that at the time, but he didn't think about like, oh, wait a minute, but what if they made something worse than dynamite? It might, I don't know, escalate to nuclear arms one day. So he passed away in 1898, December 10th. I think so, right? Sure. Let's go with that. It's definitely December 10th.

Yeah. I think it was 1898 because it took a few years to get to the very first prize in 1901 because he had lived sort of all over like you were talking about when he was young and even when he was older, he had a place in France. He lived in Sweden some, he spent time in Russia, he spent time in Italy. So there was a lot of legal wrangling to do when he changed his will toward the end in a, I don't know if it was haphazard, but it definitely had some holes in it enough that his family could complain about it and sort of tie it up legally for a few years. Which they definitely tried to. And there's another great story too that his executor, the executor of his estate was very worried that some of the French were going to

try to put a claim on his fortune. And so he actually gathered his money, millions of dollars. So this is about $350 million today in cash, put it on a stagecoach and drove it through the streets of Paris to the Swedish embassy to deliver it safely to make sure it made it to Sweden with a revolver on his lap. Because apparently people would crash into you at the time with their carriages like a bump and run kind of thing. Right. In a carriage and they would have had quite a payday had they realized that this guy had $350 million in sign. Heck yeah. And you know, word gets out and all of a sudden it's crash city. That's right. So the first prize finally gets awarded. Like they figured this out. One of the other reasons that it took so long to choke was

not just the legal wrangling by the heirs, but the fact that Nobel basically said, here's what I want you to do with the money. You go figure it out. And so it took a little while to figure it out. Like he, I saw it put that he endowed an institution that didn't exist yet and that he left it to his heirs to create it. And there was actually a potential that it just wasn't going to be followed through that it was going to be too much of a headache or that his heirs really should have the money. But finally they got it worked out and they started releasing the first or giving out the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. And apparently from the outset, it was a very well known prize. It didn't start quietly and then build over the years. From the

get go, people knew about the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah. I mean, from what I saw just doing something like this, a large cash prize was very unique for the time. Now to give out a big prize with an award like a cash award attached to it is, you see that a lot these days. But back then it was just the fact that it was a cash prize was a big deal. And a couple of that with the fact that this along with the other Nobel Prizes, this was a peace award and it was the creator of dynamite. And we make big hay about that now, but they also did the same back then. Yeah. And that it was a huge cash prize too. I mean, even out of the get out of the gate, it was worth about a million dollars. So I mean, like it was a lot of money that was suddenly given for people promoting peace.

So yeah, I think it was innovative. And then it was, you know, the it was a big cash prize. And then the inventor of dynamite is the one who did it, who was already a very well known figure internationally too. So the way he went about funding it too was interesting. He didn't just assume that that nine million bucks would be forever money. So he said, here's what we're going to do. I want you to invest this money. And then the prize money will be doled out from the money that that money makes from the interest. And so over the years, it's not like a set amount has sort of varied over the years, depending on how his investments went. But like you said, in today's dollars, it started off at about a million. And it's usually, I think since like the 80s,

it's been about that every year. Yeah. And so like one, I think one of the original intents possibly was that is kind of like a genius grant where you're, you know, you get a million dollars for your work. And you're meant to continue on with this work. You don't have to worry about running around getting grants or you can just focus on the work part because you're doing such a good job. But and I think that some people keep the money with the other Nobel prizes, the ones for like literature and physics. But I do know for a fact that for the peace prize, it is customary and traditional, although it's not, you're not obligated to, but it's customary to donate that money, which is pretty cool. It seems right. I mean, wouldn't you just immediately question your

decision as the Nobel committee if the recipient just kept the money like, thanks for the money. This is, this is going to go a long way to paying off that RV I crashed. They would question that. But as one of the rules will probably pepper in rules here and there, there are no takesies, backsies. No. No matter what you do, you could, you could get the Nobel peace prize and, and some people have gone on to do some not so peaceful things and they're sort of admonished, but no takesies, backsies. No. And there's no appealing it. Like if you knew that you were nominated and you think this was BS Nobel committee, it's totally passed me over. I was the right one. They won't even hear it. Like there's no process for you to appeal it.

That's just not, not. They would do that. I don't know. There's some people out there who would do that. I think I should have won. Forget Moala. Yeah, right. What would she ever do? No way. So one of the other things, there was like a positive feedback loop that happened too between the awards and the people that received the awards over time is that the, the awards started to become associated with some like towering figures on the international stage, heads of state, people who essentially founded modern humanitarian secular religions, like just really important people. So on the one hand, the Nobel peace prize, being awarded the Nobel peace prize just puts a huge glow over you for the rest of your life. Olivia helped us with

this one. And she put it like, it's, it's the, having been awarded the Nobel peace prize is usually in the first line of a famous person's obituary who received it, right? Like they don't save that for the middle or the end. That's like the first thing. It's that important. But at the same time, as you're kind of bestowing this honor onto huge figures that go on ideally to become even bigger figures, they kind of in turn reflect that glow back onto the Nobel. So it's this positive feedback loop where it just keeps becoming more and more important, which is really saying something, because there's a lot that has been criticized over the years and rightfully so. And to the Nobel committees, peace prize committees credit, they've accepted this criticism and, you know,

publicly wrestled with it from time to time. But despite like some really big stumbles, like that prize is not diminished in stature one bit in the general public's eyes. Right. No. And, you know, they've even said that they hope that it will continue to inspire people to do well. Like you can't win the Nobel peace prize. There's a lot of pressure on you after that to keep that train rolling, you know? Yes. Yes. And one of the reasons that they're doing that too, or that's, I should say, that's one of the reasons they have the rule that it can only go to living people because the hope is that you're going to take this prize and do even bigger stuff, which there's a critic, I can't remember his name, who basically said, that's

great. And like that's a really good thing to do, but it's also very risky business because people don't always, you know, grow into the expectations of the Nobel committee, you know, as far as the Nobel prize being bestowed on somebody early in their career goes. Come on. I know who that was. That was J. Alfred Poopypans. Mm-hmm. That guy. What a disappointment. But out of left field too, everybody had such high hopes for him. So, as far as the process goes, the technical definition is that it should go to the person who has done the most or best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace Congress. And it is decided upon by what's known as the Norwegian Nobel committee,

which in itself is five people appointed by the Storting, which is Norway's legislative body. And this is just one way that it differs from the other awards. The other awards, they are Swedish committees. They're given out in Sweden. This is, he went all Norway with the Peace Award and all Sweden with the others. Yeah. And he never explained why, but historians, including people on the like permanent Nobel staff, Nobel Peace Prize staff, have kind of suggested that at the time, there was a union between Sweden and Norway, and they were starting to split. And apparently to Nobel and probably a lot of other people, Norway seemed to be the more democratic, the more peaceful and peace oriented of the two nations.

So, he just kind of either trusted them more or maybe wanted to shine a spotlight on that. Or maybe in that way, he was trying to create public expectations for Norway to continue along that way. Oh, maybe so. That's a good point. If you are selected as a committee member, you're there for six years, unless I guess you quit, but you have a six-year term. You can come back for another term and get reelected. And so far, everyone has been a Norwegian national on the committee, even though you don't have to be. No, it's not a rule. There's also assistance, lots and lots of research assistance. There's some that are appointed. There's some permanent ones too. And you need assistance and advisors because there's a lot of people

that get nominated every year. I think on the order of usually 300-something people get nominated. As part of the process, you have to research those people. You can't just be like, well, I've heard some good things about that guy. I heard that guy doesn't tip very well, so we're not going to give it to him and just leave it at that. There is thorough research. The recipients are thoroughly vetted, not just to make sure that they are worthy of the prize, but I think also because the Nobel committee wants to protect its reputation too. They don't want to miss anything. So there's a lot of research that goes into investigating the nominees who make that shortlist. Yeah, I actually got my hands on Malala's case file.

There are pages and pages and pages, and at the very end, it just said, also, great tipper. That put her over the edge. That's great stuff. I believe it too. I didn't get my hands on that case file, by the way. Thank you. Who is on this committee? Used to be there could be real deal politicians, but eventually they said, you know what, that may be a conflict of interest to have active politicians and political leaders. So you can't be an active government leader at this point, so they're mainly retired politicians now. Right, which is a little better, and it makes sense too, because you'd think, you know, they'd be like, well, hey, actually, Norway really needs

a lot from Brazil right now, so make sure that the president of Brazil gets it. You don't want that, and you would hope that retired politicians are a little less like that, but yeah. But again, these are the committees that have the final say, but they rely heavily on the reports written up by the advisors. Yeah, that happens. I think the nominations are due by the end of January, then in February, March is when all this research is going on to where this initial research, and they whittle it down to 20 or 30, they can also nominate their own people if they want as a committee, and then through March and August, the big time research happens, and this is when they're actually deciding the winner from that whittle down list of 20 to 30 from 300 plus.

Yeah, and I guess they announce in October, and then finally on December 10th, the actual ceremony where the winner is bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize happens in Oslo, I believe. That's right, on the anniversary of his death. Also, just little housekeeping here. Can't have more than three laureates win the award in any given year, but you can be an organization. So Doctors Without Borders has won, the Red Cross has won three times, plus the very first one, which went to Henri Dunant, who started the Red Cross. So technically, they've gotten four awards. So you can get more than one award. Yes. The only other thing, the only other rule, well, there's plenty of other rules,

but one of the other big rules is like we've said, you cannot get the award posthumously. It happened one time to Dog Hammer's Guard. Hammer's Skulled. Hammer's Skulled. I mean, that's a tough word. Dog Hammer's Skulled. He was the guy who oversaw the true creation and expansion, and I guess the guy who really set the tone for the United Nations is a sensibly a peace-seeking body. Yeah. And he played black metal too, which was weird. Yeah. Yeah. He always wore that heavy, heavy mascara triangles under his eyes. It was a cool look, but really surprising for 1961. When you look at that name, that's black metal all the way. Hamar's Jeweled.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm sure we're pronouncing that wrong too. Hammer's Skulled. There's a lot of names in here. I think I nailed it. I think you did too. That's not a very good hotel check-in name. It draws too much attention to it. Because they say, how do you spell that? You go, oh. Right. Clark. Can you pronounce that again? No, I can't. Say it any way you want. Oh goodness. So I guess we'll talk a little bit about nominations because we keep saying things like hundreds of people are nominated and it really isn't even an honor. We're not saying it's

not an honor, but we're saying that a lot of, there have been a lot of dicey nominations over the years, so much so that the Nobel committee actually says, hey, just because you get nominated doesn't mean you can imply that you're affiliated with us in any way at all. And there's this weird, I don't know if it's weird, but there's a 50-year rule that we alluded to earlier about finding out if Bono had been elected in 50 years. Supposedly that is under lock and key for 50 years by the person nominated and by the nominator. They're not supposed to say anything either, but you sent those articles that there was a bit of a conflict there. Like one said that if word gets out, it's been leaked, but other people said, no, it doesn't even get

leaked. It's purely speculation, so I'm not sure how it works, but you're not supposed to reveal it for 50 years. No, but there are probably people who qualify as nominators who could care less what the Nobel Peace Prize committee thinks of them, and especially if they're one currying favor with whoever that they've nominated for the peace prize, they're gonna send an email saying like, hey, I nominated you for a peace prize. That could happen. I wonder if you can get that revoked though. I don't know. As a nominator, that should be the punishment. Keep your mouth shut or you're not getting, you can't vote next year. Yeah. What is that? Omerta. What's that? Isn't that the mobs like vow of silence?

Is it? I think it is. I don't remember. Was that for the mob? There's a room loud in there somewhere. Your own life. No, no. It's a little bit of both. Okay. So we talked about nominators, Chuck. There's a lot of people out there who are qualified to nominate somebody for the Nobel Peace Prize. So again, anybody can be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but a small fraction of humanity can actually do the nominating. If you are an elected official at the national level of any government in the world, you can. So if you're a congressperson or president or vice president or secretary of the treasury or secretary of commerce, who cares? You can nominate somebody for the Nobel Peace Prize, right?

Right. Now, is that, what I didn't get is, is that automatic? Yes. Like if you, if you hold an office like that, it's automatic. Yes. Well, what about other ones? What about if like, because I know that some professors can, are they invited to be a nominator? No. They, apparently for the other nobles, the Swedish nobles for like literature and physics and all that, they actually actively seek people out. They recruit people to do the nominations. This is more like, I think you or I could send in a nominating letter. They just wouldn't take it into consideration because we're not qualified with our credentials. So I think part of accepting a nomination is verifying that

the person doing the nominating is credentialed, qualified to, to, to make that nomination. Okay. Fair enough. That's my take on it. That's great. I love it. You should be able to lose those credentials though, I think. I think you're right. I think you should be stripped of them. They should take your saber and break it over their knee and send you out into the, to the frontier to live as a, as a scorned coward. That's right. Revenant style. No, have you ever seen that show branded? No. Oh, that's what I was referring to. There's a great 50s Western, like black and white Western TV show called branded. I think it was Chuck Connors who there was an attack on a fort and

something happened, but he was mistaken as like a deserter. And so he was kicked out of the cavalry and he's basically spending the entire show like getting his, clearing his name and like helping people along the way. But he had this like half saber that they left him with the handle in the first half and that he used, I think he sharpened into like a short sabers. It was pretty, pretty cool show if I remember correctly. And now that I'm saying it, I haven't seen it since I was like 10. So if it's like super racist and I'm just haven't seen it in a while, please forgive me in advance. Yeah, it probably is. Josh likes racist shows. Right. He admitted it. Young Josh. The medal itself is worth talking about. They were until 1980 made from 23 carat gold. Now

it is 18 carat green gold, which is a gold silver alloy plated with 24 carat gold. This is another way that differs from the Swedish medals in that this one is designed differently. It's designed by a sculptor named Gustav Vigland. And on the front has Alfred Nobel's image, which again is different from the Swedish one. And I keep one say Swiss. And they, I think there are three men with some Latin on the back for the peace and brotherhood of men in Latin that would be propace at fraternitate gentium. Pace. Pace. Pro Pace. Did you take Latin? No. You just know that stuff. Somebody, I picked that up somewhere along the way. And for some reason it's always stuck with me. Pro Pace. All right. Well, no, I know. I'll know it forever. Yeah. What? Pace or just the whole thing?

Just the Pace part. Oh, sure. Yeah. And then you get your name engraved, of course. So it doesn't get mixed up with, you know, in customs or whatever. Right. So, okay. So I think we've reached a point. Oh, you want to take a break before we go on? Yeah. Okay. We're going to take a break, everybody. And then we're going to come back with some more great stuff. So don't go anywhere because you're going to love it. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mange Shatikler and

to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a

skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. So we kind of alluded earlier to the idea that the Nobel Peace Prize committee is, like, when they give a prize, it's not just like, hey, good work. It's, hey, keep doing good work. You know, the world's watching you. So there's actually been, since there's different people who have served on the committee over the years, the committee as a whole has kind of taken different routes to deciding who should get what award. And there's a legal scholar named Roger P. Alford out of Notre Dame. And he says that you can pretty much divide the era or the

history of the Nobel Peace Prize into different eras depending on the committee. And that basically leading up to World War II, it was mostly like pacifist committees or like peace committees, peace congresses, like Nobel specifically called out in his will. And that after World War II, and then into the Cold War, it started to kind of shift a little. Yeah. You know, people who put democracy forward, a lot of humanitarian and human rights individuals and groups, people like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela and Malala. Jimmy Carter got one in the early 2000s for his post-presidency work that he's done. People like that. I think that they can give it to, and many times have given it to, and sometimes to some controversy, people on

different sides of an issue. Like in 93, Nelson Mandela got it along with F. W. DeClerk. You might remember from our apartheid episode, he was the South African president who negotiated to end apartheid with Mandela and other black leaders. So sometimes they'll do something like that and mix it up and say, you know, these two people brokered this even though they're on different sides of the issue initially. Yes. So they've tried that. It was successful with Mandela and DeClerk. At the same time, they had tried it 20 years earlier for the 1973 award. They tried to give it to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who was a North Vietnamese politician. He helped broker the end of the Vietnam War between Vietnam and the United States, although the Vietnam War continued

on. Le Duc Tho actually was the only person in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize to turn it down because he had to share it with Kissinger. He said that the award put the invader and the invader as equal. And I mean, even taking the idea that it was a joint award between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, a lot of people have said like, you can't give a Nobel Peace Prize to Kissinger. Yeah. He was a war hawk. He was a war criminal, a lot of people think. Like he did some really awful stuff, carpet bombings, civilians, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, escalation of the war, like a secret war in Cambodia, all sorts of terrible stuff. We'll have to do an episode on Henry Kissinger one day, but that's a good example of a controversial winner

and also a split Nobel Prize winner and also somebody turning down the Nobel. Yeah. A lot of times they will admonish people in retrospect, even though there are no takes these backsies like we mentioned, they will say, hey, we give you a Nobel Peace Prize and then you went on to do some not so peaceful things. Even admonish Barack Obama who won in his first year presidency for things like drone strikes and overthrowing Gaddafi. So you can get your hands spanked afterward. Again, they can't really do anything, but they can say you're very publicly, you're not living up to this prize that you earned and that's the expectation. Yeah. I mean, and that's a problem with that's part of that thing of giving out awards to people

who are still alive and still in their careers and Song Suki from Myanmar was this huge democratic activist and I guess everybody just presumed that she was also a peace activist too. And when she finally came to power, she actually oversaw a lot of basically war crimes carried out by her troops against minorities within her country, which really surprised a lot of people. And I think it surprised the Nobel committee. There's an Ethiopian prime minister named Abiy Ahmed. He won in 2019 because he helped finally end the civil war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which is a big deal. I mean, that civil war been going on for since the 90s, I believe. But a short time after that, he also oversaw ethnic cleansing in a region where minorities

lived in his own country as well. So it seems dicey to give it to a head of state because there's so much dirty business involved in just being ahead of state in the 20th and 21st century that I just, I can't imagine giving it to, I can't see them giving it to another head of state again, especially after Obama too. They got swept up in the whole 2008 Hope campaign and gave it to him within a few months of him becoming president in 2009. It was premature. Yeah, it was. And they even said it was premature. And even at the time, people, Democrats and Republicans alike thought it was a premature kind of a misstep really.

So I'll bet they don't give it to another head of state again anytime you and I are still alive. I could see that for sure. I mean, they do their own thing because they can, but they certainly don't love these controversies. The fact that Gandhi never got one is sort of a big stain on the committee. He was nominated either five or six times over the years and never got it. Some people say that Gandhi was too India-centric and he was a nationalist. Other people say that there were violent protests that he certainly didn't call for, but were done because of the things he was doing. Other people say, well, that's just a symptom of this Eurocentrism that the Nobel committee has, which is like up until 1960, I think it was almost exclusively

Americans and Europeans that got it. And then since then, there's been quite a few, you know, non-Europeans and Americans, but people will still criticize and say, yeah, but even when it goes to a non-European or American, it's someone that's probably aligned with their interest in some way. Yeah, because we said earlier that, you know, you can, some people divide the eras of the Nobel Prize up and one of those eras is pro-democracy. And the Nobel Prize committee has definitely like cast their lot among the democratic part of the world order, like their pro-democracy, which does an account for communism and other political ideas that would have them turn a

blind eye, I guess, to people who are doing good, peaceful work, but aren't necessarily pro-democracy, I think is one of the big criticisms. Yeah, that's a slippery slope. It really is. And I hate even saying those two words. Yeah, no, it definitely is. And I don't think anybody's saying like, hey, you should turn your back on democracy. I think what they're saying is, is like, hey, just because somebody's, you know, pro-communist, if they're doing more activist piecework than anybody else on the planet, don't overlook them, I think is the point.

Yeah, like give Putin his day. Right. I wonder how many times he's been nominated. Oh, I'm sure there have been some interests that have nominated him, don't you think? Sure, definitely. Yeah. Or they got the poison. Right. I probably shouldn't even say that out loud. Oh, that's the other thing. We can't, you can't nominate yourself.

Oh, yeah, that seems obvious, but yeah, that's a rule. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, imagine the Peace Prize winner who nominated himself or herself. Yeah, you couldn't do that. There is an alternative award that some people say we should look to, which is the Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Swedish-German writer Jakob von Ukskull. I created this in 1980 after he went to the Nobel Committee and the Foundation said, hey, why don't we add prizes for the environment and one that promotes perspectives from other people that aren't necessarily European or American. And they went, nah. And he said, all right, so I'll create my own

prize and they'll say, great, no one cares. I don't think they said that. They said, well, yeah, I saw that they politely turned it down. Yeah, I'm sure it was all above board, but the Right Livelihood Award is what some people say we should look to. But I had never heard of it, so they're certainly not marketed well. So apparently he funded it and he also offered to fund those two additional Nobel prizes by selling his stamp collection. Oh, really? Isn't that cute? How much money to get for that? He had a million dollar stamp collection apparently at the time. Hey, that's not bad. So that's it. That's the final word on Nobel Peace prizes. What do you think?

I think it was pretty good. Yep, same here. And if you think it was pretty good, then stick around for some pretty good listener mail because Chuck said pretty good. I said pretty good. Then I said listener mail, which of course means it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys, I have to push back a little here on something you said in your cookie podcast. The point was made that brownies are technically cookies, bar cookies. Chuck wasn't on board, but Josh was. And I just can't let it go, you guys. I turned over all night over this one. How can a brownie be a cookie? Cookies are made from dough. Brownies, like Josh said, you can't be a batter like cake, but brownies are definitely better.

Cookies can be made into large pan size treats. Brownies have to be made that way. You can't make individual brownies on a pan because of the nature of the batter. They have to be cut into pieces like cake. Lemon bars are brought up as another example of a bar cookie, but lemon bars have a bottom crust and filling more like a pie and can't be baked individually either. I have to think that the ability to make individual items on a pan and the classification of the pre-baked components, dough versus batter versus filling, are crucial parts of what separates these desserts. Maybe there's something I'm missing in the bar cookie designation that makes it appropriate, but otherwise I just can't get

on board with calling brownies cookies. If anything, I think they belong in the cake family and lemon bars in the pie family. I love you guys, my family, and I will continue to enjoy your work. Daniel from Anaheim, California. Or, man, I'm sorry, this is Daniel. Okay, let me just set it in the French way. Yeah, exactly. Sorry, Daniel, sorry. I think, I don't know if it's going to make you feel better or worse that I've actually come around to the idea that brownies are not cookies. Hey, look at there, everybody. It's true, the batter fact just completely undermines the idea that they're cookies. If they're made from batter, so they can't be cookies, I agree. The batter fact. And I think the idea that lemon bar is actually more

related to pie, as Daniel put it, is pretty persuasive too. So, just forget I ever said that whole thing about brownies being cookies. Throw some meringue on a lemon bar. That's a piece of pie. Yeah, it totally is, especially if you cut it in like a little triangle wedge. That's right. Well, if you have been tossing and turning all night and have to get something off your chest to us, we want to hear it. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcast.iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject,

something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.