Nobel Prize Conversations

How do you make a Nobel Prize laureate? In this special bonus episode of Nobel Prize Conversations, we explore the origin stories of these remarkable individuals. This bonus episode features the Nobel Prize's Adam Smith, who shares some of his insights after speaking to more than 150 laureates. He is interviewed by the producer of Nobel Prize Conversations, Karin Svensson.

Both nature and nurture play crucial parts in creating a Nobel Prize laureate. But there’s another, often-overlooked, factor that can shape their lives and careers: the element of chance. Or as Adam says, “These many, many, many pieces of luck, throughout life, come to make you what you are.”

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"We must get up, we must work like maniacs – because time is running out." Maria Ressa speaks passionately as she discusses how authoritarians exploit social media to unravel democracy, what needs to be done to fight this and when she thinks the damage might become irreversible.

2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa is one of the founders of Rappler, an independent website for investigative journalism in the Philippines that is facing a threat of shutdown by the authorities in that country. In 2016 Rappler sounded the alarm on the social media revolution – two years later Facebook admitted responsibility for letting their platform be used as a weapon in the genocide of the Rohingyas of Myanmar.

Your host is Adam Smith, chief scientific officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.

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Abdulrazak Gurnah is the author of ten novels and an emeritus professor of English and postcolonial literatures at the university of Kent. He has been hailed for his ability to convey the immigrant experience – but to him, literature is much more than just social commentry. "We also read because it gives us pleasure – sometimes completely distracts us from other things we should be doing and thinking about."

In the conversation, Abdulrazak Gurnah talks about fleeing his native Zanzibar as a teenager, and feeling unwelcome after arriving in the UK. He also offers insights into his writing: how he explores thoughtful silences and lifts the small struggles that play out in otherwise mundane lives and settings. Your host is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.

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In an increasingly chaotic world, how can you learn to concentrate deeply on a single problem?  Economic Sciences laureate Guido Imbens found his powers of concentration while getting lost in chess games as a child. ”For four or five hours you would just shut out the rest of the world, you would be focused on one task.”

Your host is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach. In this episode Guido and Adam talk about the beauty of chess, the pitfalls in talking publicly about uncertain data, and the challenge of keeping an open mind in research. But the conversation kicks off by delving into an experience they share outside of academia: parenting teenagers.

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"If somebody tells me 'this is impossible', I always think that it still might be possible – and try to find a way around." Where would the world be, without the scientists who look beyond the conventional wisdom and try to solve the unsolvable problems? Hartmut Michel speaks about his working class background, discovering his love of science – and travel – in a public library, and why he's remained true to his native Germany.

Your host is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach. 

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"I didn't really like school very much. And I was always like a little bit nervous about not doing well." David Julius, the 2021 physiology or medicine laureate, talks about his journey from anxious pupil to confident researcher, the importance of diversity in science, and how his research is connected to how different species experience the world in different ways.

Your host is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.

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"Try to follow your enthusiasm and do what you are really passionate about and what you really love to do.” As a child, Benjamin List thought chemists held the keys to the secrets of the universe. Luckily, by the time he learned this wasn't so, he was already hooked on doing chemistry experiments he found in books. Even today, he still feels passion for the field, and tries to surround himself with passionate researchers.

Benjamin List was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with David MacMillan, for his work in developing asymmetric organocatalysis, a tool for building new molecules, in cleaner and more efficient ways.Your host is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach. 

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”An amazing number of economists have extremely paternalistic ideas. They just want to tell people what to do.” Don't worry. David Card, 2021 laureate in Economic Sciences, doesn't want to boss you around. Instead, he's made a career trying to understand the economic choices people make. He shared the prize with Josuhua Angrist and Guido Imbens for their empirical contributions to labour economics.

Professor Card talks about growing up on a dairy farm, about the need for more diversity in PhD programs and his reluctance to become involved in policy-making. Your host is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.

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Some people manage to retain the relentless curiosity of a child into adulthood, keeping them on a constant quest of exploration. Meet Giorgio Parisi, who tells us about his journey of curiosity, which started by learning to read numbers at the age of 3: “I was reading the number of the bus when the bus was arriving.” At an early age, he also started to read the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, as his parents’ large library encouraged reading.

Parisi describes his life journey and how he ultimately decided to dedicate his life to physics as that topic made more sense to him than mathematics. In 2021 he was awarded the physics prize "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales." He shared the prize with Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann.

Your host is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.

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Meet economist Joshua Angrist who believes that to be a good labour economist, you should have had some real-life job experience. In conversation with our podcast host Adam Smith, Angrist tells us about his disinterest in school and how as a teenager he was more interested in earning money and maintaining his car. His later surprising and instant connection with economics led him to dedicate his life to his research: “I never stop thinking about my work.”

Angrist was awarded the 2021 prize in economic sciences and speaks about how the award has affected his life; “It was wonderful to win the Nobel Prize, but I am the same guy I was on October 10th.”

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