Nobel Prize Conversations

Nudges, sludges, and the connection between stubbornness and success. Join us for this encore presentation of our first episode of Nobel Prize Conversations, as host Adam Smith picks the brain of Richard Thaler, the 2017 laureate in Economic Sciences. Thaler's work has helped us to understand how people make choices in the real world and has also given us tools to nudge people towards better decis...

Meet astrophysicist Andrea Ghez, recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy." In this energy-packed conversation with Adam Smith, you can hear about prima donna galaxies, Ghez’s personal pet star, and how she overcame one of her biggest childhood fears. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What costs a billion dollars and takes 50 years to build and perfect? LIGO: A machine to detect gravitational waves. In this encore presentation of a conversation from Season 2, Kip Thorne confides, ”In the 70’s I thought we would have this done within one decade ... two decades at the most.” Predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravitational waves were first measured by the...

“What we’re talking about here is credit.” — In this conversation, recorded the day after the announcement from Stockholm, Ben Bernanke stresses the importance of the financial system as a critical part of the broader economy, not just a ‘side show’. “That’s the real insight,” he says, “that credit can help provide growth, but if the credit mechanism is badly disrupted it can also be a very advers...

“When I woke up I had what seemed like thousands of messages” — Philip Dybvig’s phone was on silent, so he missed the call from Stockholm. When, half asleep, he did confirm the news, he recalls that his initial response was one of stress: “What’s this going to do to my life?” In this call recorded a few hours later he talks briefly to Adam Smith about the theoretical model that he and Douglas Diam...

“There are very few people in the world I’d rather be sitting next to when discussing these issues” — In this interview recorded just after the public announcement, Douglas Diamond, the first of the three laureates to hear the news, speaks about his happiness at receiving the economic sciences prize together with Philip Dybvig and Ben Bernanke. He tells Adam Smith how he and Dybvig laid the ground...

“Common people have a much greater impact than they can even imagine” — When asked what brings her hope, Oleksandra Matviychuk replies, “Ordinary people.” Although the challenges faced might seem insurmountable, she sees first hand how people have the power to change the status quo: “Mobilisation of common people can change world history quicker than UN intervention.” In this conversation with Ada...

"It is incredible" — Before the public announcement of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Olav Njølstad, Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, called Oleksandra Romantsova, Executive Director of Center for Civil Liberties to inform her that her organisation was one of the three Nobel Peace Prize laureates for 2022. Today the Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize f...

“You should be drawn to uncertainty” — Barry Sharpless quotes Einstein when asked about his daring approach to choosing problems: “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there’s no hope for it”. Ever inventive, he starts this conversation with Adam Smith not by talking about the work that led to his first Nobel Prize, or even to his second, but his very latest research findings from the lab. Rec...

“When the world is in trouble, chemistry comes to the rescue” - As just illustrated by the Covid pandemic, says Carolyn Bertozzi, “Chemistry is such an exciting area of science for people who want to have an impact.” This call with Adam Smith, recorded immediately after the public announcement of her Nobel Prize, caught her just before the world started descending on her home in California. As the...

“Reality is much more complex than we, as chemists, are able to imagine” — In the call recorded just after he had heard that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, Morten Meldal describes how he views chemistry as a way of describing reality. It’s a field that should appeal to the young, he says, since “Understanding how everything works is a very challenging but also a very rewarding experience.” A...

“What a waste of time, now start doing some real physics!” – As a young man, John Clauser set out to topple quantum mechanics, but all his faculty thought he was crazy. “I thought it was important at the time, even though I was going to ruin my career by doing it, and in some sense I did: I’ve never been a professor!” But, as he tells Adam Smith in this joyous call recorded in the middle of the ni...

“It’s probably one of the most beautiful theories ever invented.” – Anton Zeilinger conveys his love for the elegant simplicity of quantum mechanics in this call recorded shortly after the public announcement of his Nobel Prize. “With very few symbols”, he explains, “you can explain a whole lot of things from the smallest quantum particles up to the origin of the universe.” Zeilinger emphasises th...

“The conclusion is, yes, quantum mechanics resists all possible attacks!” — Alain Aspect was trying to find the limit of quantum mechanics, but, as he says in this call with Adam Smith, “I didn’t find it!”. Recorded just after he had received news of his Nobel Prize, this conversation captures his thoughts about the place of his work in the long history of quantum mechanics, the need for constant...

“There were almost always other types of humans around.” In this telephone conversation recorded just after he had heard news of the award of his Nobel Prize, Svante Pääbo reflects on our relationship to extinct species of early hominins and how his exploration of their genetics might influence our view of ourselves and our place in nature. He also discusses what gave him the confidence to underta...

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...

"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...

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 think...

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 Out...

"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 remain...

"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...

"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 wit...

”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...

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...

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 l...