The Pour Over Today - BONUS: TPO Explains Nobel Prizes | 10.11.25

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 20 minutes… This week, they’re explaining Nobel Prizes. Join over 1.6 million readers with our free newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ Looking to support us? You can choose to pay ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠Cru⁠ ⁠Surfshark⁠ ⁠Holy Post⁠ ⁠CCCU⁠ ⁠Upside⁠ ⁠HelloFresh⁠ ⁠Mosh⁠ ⁠LMNT⁠ ⁠Theology in the Raw⁠ ⁠Safe House Project⁠ ⁠A Place For You⁠ ⁠Practicing Life Together⁠ ⁠Not Just Sunday Podcast⁠ ⁠Quince⁠ ⁠Courage for Life Study Bible⁠ ⁠She Reads Truth

Today's episode is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Safe House Project. Did you pull a bunch of all-nighters in college? Yeah. Yeah, I have never pulled an all-nighter. Yeah. I just, my entire academic career, my strategy was going well-rested and overconfident. Yeah, it's like, if it'd be like 10.30, I'm like, well, I'm just eating into sleep time at this point. I should probably go to bed.

Do you feel like it paid off to pull those all-time? nighters. What was your GPA? I don't remember. I stopped the all-nighters after I dropped out a nursing school, so you tell me, not a nurse. Should we get started? Yeah. We are started. We are. All right, Joe. Take her away. Hello and welcome to another episode of TPO Explains. I'm Joe, podcast producer here at the pourover and I'm here with Jason our founder and editor-in-chief and Kathleen our managing editor

so here's the idea behind the show our readers share which topics they want us to explore and then we bring that to the podcast today's winner Nobel Prizes I'm excited to talk about this did you bring a Nobel Prize

no I don't have one yeah I left mine at home dang Joe what do you know What is a Nobel Prize? When you bring them Nobel Prizes, there's a whole variety of them, right? Like there's the Nobel Peace Prize is the one that comes to mind, I feel like, has the most fame and common knowledge. And then there's probably a Nobel Prize for science and other realms.

So I think it's important to state there's a many of them. in different categories. Yeah? I don't know. Do you know how many? I don't know how many. What's your guess? I would guess.

Let's go with five. Wow. Well, you and Alfred Nobel are in alignment, but there are now six. Oh, as of when? As of. 1968. Oh, so for a while. All right, yeah.

So I'll go through them real quick. There's physics, chemistry, physiology, or medicine for those of us who weren't pre-nursing. Literature, peace, and then economics was added later in 1968 by the Swedish Central Bank. Yeah. Those are the six. Those are the six. They were outlined in Alfred Nobel's will. All right.

Well, that gets into the next question, Kathleen. Why did they start? Or when? When did they start? Any idea? When was the first Nobel Prize? Warmer. 51.

Colder. 1932. Keep going. 1915. Almost there. 1905. Oh, 1901. So talk about the first one.

Okay, I really want to talk about this guy, Alfred Nobel. So the first Nobel prizes were awarded December 3rd. 10th, 1901, on the five-year anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel. So I mentioned they were kind of outlined in his will. Can we talk about the legend? Yeah, do it. So legend has, so Alfred Nobel, I'm about to blow your mind. Okay, he was a sweet, you'll see why.

He was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor. He accumulated a lot of fat stacks, as they say, throughout his life. He made a lot of money. He made a lot of money. He had like 355 inventions, mostly in like explosives and detonators. His most famous invention, any ideas? Dynamite. Dynamite.

The inventor of dynamite went on to create a peace prize. So legend has it then 1888, eight years before he actually died. He was shocked to read his own obituary in a newspaper. It was actually an obituary for his older brother, but it kind of got. at him thinking like how are people going to think about me when I've gone because the article was titled the merchant of death is dead and he was just kind of like wait a second that's not how I want to be remembered okay so question I didn't read much about this did was the obituary wrong like they had like ascribed his invention and accomplishments to his brother um they I think they

thought that he had died but it was his brother who had died got it yeah um so a year before he died for real. He made a new will with some new plans that almost no one knew about. And it was a little bit controversial because his relatives were a little bit surprised when the will didn't get all his money. The will said that 94% of his assets. So it would have been more than $232 million in today's money should be converted into a fund that would then be invested to establish five Nobel prizes. So he dies and that it takes a year for this to be legally approved because they're just like, wait, we have to create a foundation, like, who's involved? And then four years later, the foundation takes form and gets to a warden.

All right. So, and importantly, the will outlines five Nobel prizes. Right. Physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. And those are funded through the Nobel Foundation, which is funded by his estate. Then, you know, 70-ish years later, we have in 1968, the Swedish Central Bank establishes the Nobel Prize in Economics. So the economics is administered by the Nobel Foundation. They have, like, you know, brought it into the fold, and it's the sixth one that is awarded in the same way, which we'll talk about. but it is funded by the Swedish Central Bank. And so there's some distinction there.

Alfred Nobel outlined these five things. And his will stated the prizes should be awarded to, quote, those who during the preceding year shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. And so there are these five categories and the best humans, most impactful humans get them. Yeah. The economics one, at least one of Nobel's relatives, has said, like, yeah, it's a, what do they call it, a false Nobel Prize. They said economics is pseudoscience, and this is a dishonor to Alfred Novel. Yikes. His grandkids are unhappy. Anyway, but I will say after this, the Nobel Foundation said they're not going to allow any more new prizes.

So there will not be any more than these six. There will be no seventh. Yep. All right. So, Joe, what's your path? How could Joe win a Nobel Prize? What do you think the path to that is? There has to be some nomination and probably, you know, you're some big shot in one of those six categories and there's a strong backing of people, maybe other organizations that are like, hey, this person needs to be nominated for a Nobel Prize in whatever category it is. And then is there some process of vetting and a committee that decides? Yeah, you've nailed it.

So the Nobel committees and Alfred Nobel outlined different committees or groups that choose for each of these six categories. they send out invitations to qualified nominators. So these are past Nobel laureates, professors in relevant fields and stuff. And those people propose a candidate. So there's no public nomination process. These are qualified people who are then nominating. You cannot nominate yourself. And then the committees review the nominations, create a short list, do some research

and vetting and then basically like each committee just votes and majority vote wins wins the prize and it's awarded on December 7th on on Nobel's death anniversary December 10th December 10th always the 10th what did I say not get fake dates here no not today I think he nailed that there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible so it can can be tough to know where to begin a deeper study. That's why the Courage for Life Study Bible includes a whopping 1,464 studies, one on each page of Bible text, so you can dive in anywhere. Each study highlights courage and action and walks you through a discipleship pathway designed to help you overcome obstacles and embrace a life of transformation

rooted in God's Word. And if you want to go even deeper, the free filament Bible app unlocks over 25,000 additional notes, hundreds of videos, maps, devotionals, and a full audio Bible. Grab your Courage for Life Study Bible for personal study, couples devotions, or small groups at Couragefor Life Bibles.com, or check out the link in the show notes. The four, well, five prizes that are not the Peace Prize are basically handled in Sweden, but the Peace Prize is handled in Norway. And it was just a stipulation of his will.

It was part of the will. Yeah. So, but I think you nailed it. That's basically how the winner is selected. Okay. What do you get if you win? Some hardware. There's got to be some trophy like as good as a Dundee from the office.

Yeah. It's hard to beat that. It is hard to beat that. Yeah. How dare I compare anything that could compete with greatness there? and is there maybe a monetary award? You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Alfred put, like, let's say I win. The monetary award, I have to decide, like, what cause it goes to instead of a monetary personal benefit.

But that's just me thinking. Yeah. Alfred could pull something like that off. All right, so here's each laureate, which is what winners are called, not winners. How would you call a winner of a Nobel Prize, something as mundane as a winner? Each laureate receives a green gold medal, which is like a gold medal, but it's an alley because, like, science. They get a diploma, and then they get a monetary award. This year, and for the last two years, the price is about $11 million Swedish cronor.

Which is $1.16 million. Wow. Yeah, pretty good. But that can all go to the winner. The laureate, excuse me. Yes. Thank you. The five science ones and pseudoscience, they, yes, the winner or winners, which we can get to, can keep that.

And the idea is that it would like go to continuing research. It is customary for the Peace Prize winner laureate to donate theirs. Hmm. I didn't know that. To a cause. All right. Next question. So you get this nice metal, the hardware.

who's giving you the medal? Someone from the Nobel Foundation, a family member? Way cooler. The King of Sweden, unless it's the Peace Prize, which is happening in Norway, for reasons only Alfred Nobel knows. And then that is given by like a committee, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which those committee members are appointed by Norway's parliament. But it's still in the presence of the King of Norway.

He's just watching. Oh, man. So there's a weird tradition here. And I don't know if you know the answer to this. So I get you write a will and, hey, we're setting aside this money and the interest it kicks off is going to do this in perpetuity. How presumably he said, hey, the king of Sweden is going to hand these out. I know. That's at least why it took a year because the Norwegian, I don't have the name of it somewhere, but like the basically government.

Parliament in Norway was like, do we do we do this? Like it took him a year to approve it because the Norwegian Parliament had to basically name the Nobel Committee for the Peace Prize. And so it took a year for them to say like, I think we have to do that. Or well, fine, we'll do it. Like it took a year for them to approve it. It's a big power move by Alperin. It is. We should do an episode on will. It's like can I like will stuff to just someone famous and then like that have to do it? The executor has to figure it out? Yeah.

That's wild. So, yeah, big flex by Alfred to say, hey, the king of Sweden is going to hand out my prizes for all of eternity. Right. Well, not all of eternity. What's next? So you tell me. Joe's just along for the ride. Yeah.

Joe's just along for the ride. Okay. We haven't really talked about the rules. There are some rules that Mr. Nobel also put in his will. So I know you mentioned like the nominations. Interestingly, all nominations for a prize are sealed for 50 years from the awarding of that prize. So you cannot know any information about who nominated whom, who was nominated or why, or any information about the vetting process for 50 years.

So stuff from the 60s is just now, you're just now figuring out who was nominated like in the 60s. Like who was passed over? Right. Huh. Interesting. there's so that makes me think of another rule okay so it cannot be awarded posthumously and in 2011 they announced this uh person who won and then it was learned that he had actually died three days earlier so it created this like crisis of like so it says since 1974 if the recipient dies after

the prize has been announced they can still be awarded it um but before that if they had already been nominated. In 2011, they still gave it to that guy. Yeah, it's happened three times to where they still gave it to somebody posthumously. Got it. But then the award giving has to take place in Sweden and Norway, right? Yeah. If someone's on their deathbed. Yeah. Right. Other rules. So a maximum of three laureates and two different works can be selected per award. And so that's had a little bit of controversy. Like if you have a team of five scientists, only three of you get named. Yeah. It cannot be revoked. So if your work has been proven false or if you do something crazy, that's just life. You still get your award. I love that. The simplicity of like,

hey, we made the best decision with the info we had. And it just is we're not going back. We're not going to try to figure out how to rewrite history and it has created controversy because there have been people who yeah yeah there was like a woman who was awarded and then like years later she was involved in some politics that people it was really controversial and people were like calling for her to be stripped of it and they're like yeah we don't do that so yeah I mean there have been other controversial figures we can talk about but um the last rule is just that except for the peace prize um awards can only be given to individuals. individuals. So you can't just name like a school of medicine for their work or anything.

Right. But you can, like the Red Cross has won the Peace Prize. So you can give an organization the Peace Prize. Oh. Human trafficking isn't just an over-there problem. It's happening right here in the U.S. An estimated 300,000 people are being trafficked in America right now. And most were first sold as children. Even when they get a chance to run, Sometimes there's no safe way out, and they get pulled right back in. Safehouse Project is helping children get to safety and stay there by equipping communities to spot trafficking and funding urgent escapes. They cover what's needed in those crucial moments, a way to escape, shelter, and resources

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I cannot think of, okay, I cannot name anyone off the top of my head. The oldest person was 97. He received the prize in chemistry, and I'd love to tell you his name. Please. John B. Good enough. What? John B. last name, good enough. And you know what? He was.

At 97. Wow. He did it. So I could only name one, and it was because there was some controversy. President Obama won the Peace Prize and the controversy was that he so nominations have to be in by January 31st and he was inaugurated as president on January 20th so by the time it had been he was nominated he had at most been a relevant figure for 11 days and he even said like yeah I don't I don't totally know what I did to like deserve this you know and

has made jokes about it. So because of that, I knew him. Other, I don't know. Other controversial recipients include Henry Kissinger and Loducto, lay ducto, I think is his name, lay ducto, for Vietnam War, but it was controversial because people didn't think Kissinger actually was propagating peace. And at the time when it was announced, like the two sides were still engaging in hostilities, But you can't take it back.

You can't take it back, but two Norwegian Nobel committee members did resign because they won. And then another one is 1994. Yes, or Arafat, I know his name, and two other guys were awarded the Peace Prize for their efforts. Making peace between Israel and Palestine and immediately after that was announced, one of the five council members or committee members resigned. And so there have been some hot takes from the Nobel Committee. It's also controversial who hasn't won. When you think Peace Prize, name a couple of people who come to mind. Greta Thurnberg.

Gondi. Oh, didn't she win? I don't know. Only asked me about what I wrote down. Okay, okay. That'd be great. Gandhi has number one. He was nominated five times, but never won.

And in 1948, the year he died and was assassinated. right? I think he was assassinated. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said no award would be given that year because there was no suitable living candidate. And they went on to say one of the committee members or the secretary of the committee went on to even say like the greatest omission in our 106 year history was leaving Gandhi out of the list of Lori. All right. I have a question for you. Okay. Is it on my papers? I don't know. I didn't read through all your notes. They were too much. Nobel said it's for things that were done in the last year. Yeah. And it feels like I hear a lot of people getting credit for breakthroughs that happened decades ago. Yeah. He did. It was supposed to be the preceding year.

And there was somebody who won and then their work was discredited. So the committee kind of said, so they ended up kind of amending the interpretation. It have kind of changed it to say. It needs to have been the year when the full impact of the discovery has become evident. So to avoid repeating the embarrassment of discredded discoveries and recognize scientific discoveries that have withstood the test of time, it is once the evidence of something being good has been a year, then they can give it to them. Sure, sure. That feels like a nice loophole, but I understand why it might exist.

Yeah. What other question? I think that was all I had. I will allow you 30 seconds to say one thing that we did not get to that you want to say. You can also pass. Oh, I would never pass. Okay, so there have been two Nobel Prize medals that were dissolved to keep them hidden from the Nazis during World War II. Two winners sent them to like a friend of theirs who was a chemist and he dissolved it basically.

the Nazis came in, couldn't find it because it was in a solution. Oh, the actual metals? The actual metals, like, were dissolved. And so two German physicists send their medals to a Danish physicist for safekeeping. Denmark is invaded. Anyway, he dissolves the metals in a mixture of acids. So it's on the shelf and a flask just dissolved. And the Nazis search his lab but can't find it because they don't realize that it's golden there.

And then after the war, they take the solution, give it back to the Nobel Foundation. and then they recast the medals for the original winners. Wow. From the solution. From the solution. That was worth. Was that worth it? That was worth it.

Okay. It doesn't mean you get another. It does. There's two more. Okay. A Russian laureate and American laureate had their medals mixed up in 1975, but it was the Cold War. And so it took them four years to actually, through diplomatic efforts,

get it back to the right people. And then in 2011, a Nobel Prize medal in Fargo, North Dakota, went through the X-ray machine in an airport. port and turned up completely black and so TSA was like what's going on and the owner was like oh I received this medal from the king of Sweden and um the people were like okay and why they give that to you and he goes because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe and that it was accelerating and they're like okay it was like this big for fuffles he just he just goes from like being in a room with people with royalty with royalty and people that understand

the gravity of his like accomplishment to the the TSA and Fargo who that sounds like the most made up tale ever like the king of Sweden. They're like, sure, the king of Sweden gave you this. Yeah, fascinating. Fascinating. Joe, any big takeaways or things that will stick out? I'm just so impressed with Alfred to think through all of these different facets of the awarding process, the committee. the rules, he just had a lot of thought through everything. And I'm just really impressed by that.

It's a very intricate process. It's like just, I don't know, it sounds like a movie where somebody has thought about this game that he wants people to play in his last will. And I don't know. And now you hear about Nobel Prizes every year and you can know that it's more intricate than you probably ever thought.

Yeah. What's our Christian perspective? I was waiting for you guys to do that? I was hoping. that you had one? The only thing I've really thought about is like, man, this is so cool. These people are given awards for like significant, the greatest benefit on mankind. And I mean, that's great.

You're talking about people who have discovered x-rays and like, we use that all the time. People who have discovered medicine and everything. And it's these are not insignificant contributions, but even they have their place. like when you consider, you know, eternity. And we're always talking about, you know, keep your eyes on eternity and keep the big things big and the small things small. And like, Nobel Prizes are big. Like, these are big. This is a big amount of money.

These are big contributions. But so is, you know, discipling to your kids. So that was my takeaway. Yeah. That's great. I think it's, it, I love the, like, thinking through the recognition of the talents and, you know, And all the, like, we have such a range of prizes here, even, like literature and chemistry and physics and peace and saying these are all recognitions of, recognition of amazing people that God created and talents that they were given. And I think it's a great thing to pay respect to people who have earned the respect and are worthy of it, while also the other, the verse that comes to mind is,

we work so hard, you know, these racers strive for this medal that's going to do nothing and there's a much bigger race and prize and goal. And so keeping that in mind as well, but also just recognizing it's so cool that God has created people who are incredible at these totally different things and are helping all of humanity in these just very unique ways. Yeah. Love it. Thank you guys on taking me on this fun adventure. Appreciate it. Thanks everyone for joining us for another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe.

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