50: The Ig Nobel Prize, The 2023 Ig Nobel Winners, and the Ig Nobel Peace Prize

Episode notes

For our 2nd anniversary and our 50th episode (which it definitely is, don’t check) we cooperatively tackled a topic folks have been asking us to do for ages: The Ig Nobel Prize!

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Images and Videos we talk about:
The Levitating Frog Video
The Best of Miss Sweetie Poo
Ocean Mixing Anchovy Diagram
The Grabbing Tentacle Robot Video
Necrobotic Spider Diagram
Necrobotic Spider Video
The Juke 8
Daisuke Practicing his Speech

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:08:18) The Ig Nobel Prize
(00:45:00) The 2023 Ig Nobel Winners
(01:28:36) The Ig Nobel Peace Prize
(01:59:09) Outro

We also learn about:

Tom does an evil scientist laugh at Atto Seconds, Ella watch hours of Ig ceremonies, honoring achievements that make people laugh then think, the rotating category, six people have turned down the Nobel, comedy? with a question mark? trying to purposefully win an Ig is like recreating The Room, Limburger cheese, Andre Geim loves his Ig as much as his Nobel, “if people don’t have a very good sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists either”, Roy Glauber the keeper of the broom ALSO WON A NOBEL, “all they wanted to ask about was that damn broom”, the 24/7 Lectures, Mandelbrot goading miss sweetie poo, Ella’s Favorite Ig-ventions, partially unboiling an egg on stage, Chernobyl Bra Face Masks, that laughing and crying human emotion, cadaver nose hairs with surprisingly few nose hair variations, we all stan replication, Tom’s dad was robbed of the Ig, boring teachers, backwards speakers, maybe their neurons work backwards, the taste of rocks, the trick condition, electric taste, sexism in the stanford toilet, statistically significant anchovy boning affecting the water column, the fish kama sutra, how can i turn that dead spider into a robot? necrobotics is surprisingly easy, anti peace prizes, Pauling’s Nobel burn on Teller, Tom gets recognized, Lal Bihari’s schemes to become undead, “Lal bihari died in 1976 but he is feeling much better”, MAMAAAA OOOoooOOOH, sweet caroline, working as a waitress, karaoke means empty orchestra, Shigeichi Negishi’s first machine, Inoue’s Juke 8 origin story, Inoue is up there with Jonas Salk for not patenting Karaoke, Inoue’s Ig Nobel standing ovation, I’m not going to cry, I just started crying what the fuck, don’t tell Ella but Toms my favorite, sometimes three ding dongs can make a podcast

Sources:

About the Ig Nobels
Marc Abrahams articles
Andrew Geim
Limburger Cheese
Keeper of the Broom
Miss Sweetie Poo
Best of Miss Sweetie Poo
Wired Article: A Gala for Weird Science
Mark Hosteetler
2019 Awards – Very Fun Watch
2015 Awards – Even more Fun
24/7 Lectures
Past winners
Michigan Driving Law
The Blaster
Bra Gas Mask
—
Nose Hairs
Crowd Effects of Looking Up
Bored Students and Teachers
Ars Technica on the Igs
Brain Patterns of Speaking Backwards
Eating Fossils
Jamais Vu and Semantic Satiation
Electric Chopsticks
The Stanford Toilet
Ocean Mixing from Spawning Fish
Necrobotic Spider Grippers
—
Marc Abrahams Nobel Thoughts Interview with Linus Pauling
Stanley Cohen Nobel Thoughts Interview
NYTimes on Lal Bihari
Lal Bihari’s Ig Nobel Ceremony
Matt Alt on Shigeichi Negishi’s First Karaoke Machine for Kotaku
Daisuke Inoue’s Story told for Topic Magazine
Time Magazine on Daisuke Inoue
Daisuke Inoue’s Ig Nobel Ceremony