February 3, 2022 • 50 mins
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?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Charles W. Chuck Brian 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
(00:23):
in a raw egg white. Shake us again, Add some mice.
Shake us the third time until your hand can't stand
the outside of the shaker any longer. Pour us into
a coupe or coupe, depending on where you are into
the world. Put a real deal marischino cherry not that
can you buy the grocery store in US. And a
nice little swizzle stick. You've got stuff you should know.
(00:46):
I just added a little egg white to my my
chuck B drink. What's your chuck B drink? It's my
spin on the bee's knees. It's the chuck B. It's
in b e yes, sure, neat. So there's honey in it.
Whiskey and crem to manth right. No, I do a
(01:08):
shot of gin of a blond dart. You got laon
dart at your house? No, you want to send me some? Sure,
it's uh, it's a local. Uh. It's from old fourth
word distillery. It's it's a ginger lemon liqueur. That's pretty cool. Uh.
And then I add a little pineapple gum syrup, just
a little bit, because that goes a long way, I
(01:28):
can imagine. And then what else do I add? At
ginger bitters? You gotta have a lemon juice? What about
honey honey syrup? Okay? Right? Like I make mountain honey syrup.
Not not sure because then it just sits at the
bottom like a dumb viscus thing right saying, don't look
at me. And then I chake the cred out of it.
(01:49):
I've got these beautiful vintage seventies coops. Then I add
a little lemon twist. But I've added the egg white
this last time, and it just you know, he gives
it that lovely little phone on top. It really does
you do you add the egg white first, and then
shake for a few seconds, and then add the ice. No,
I had everything together, and I just I shake till
my arms swall off and it bombs up really lovely. Gotcha,
(02:13):
You don't have to shake his heart. If you shake
for a little bit first without ice, and then add
the ice, it's Um, it's way faster and your arms
will thank you. I shake for the temperature, not so
much as for the phone, gotcha. Yeah yeah, yeah, I
like it to be And I freeze my glass like
ten 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. I
(02:35):
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 the Chuck B and
naming it too. That's a great name. Thanks. Okay. Uh,
you couldn't get a Nobel Prize and awesomeness if you
wanted to, because it doesn't exist, although something similar does.
(02:58):
It's called the Nobel Peace Prize. Really yeah uh, 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 gonna do that. This is mainly about the Peace
Prize because Pieces where It's at Ask anybody, anybody, ask Bono. Sure,
he'll say, I hate the name you two and pieces
(03:20):
where It's at. He doesn't like the name you two. Yeah,
that just came out this week. He said he's never
really liked the name. Who came up with at the edge?
I think so or 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 didn't like it. I don't know.
Come on, bonno, shut up. It's a great name. He's like,
(03:41):
I haven't been in the press for a while. What
can I Yeah, exactly, that's probably about right. I haven't
been on the cover of Catholic magazine in months. He's
probably one of Nobel Peace Prize he is not. Okay, no,
but I'm sure he's won some other humanitarian awards. But
he has too, because we'll see, like anybody, anyone can
(04:01):
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 like genuinely means it and you're
actually nominated by more than one person. But as far
as the Nobel Prize Peace Prize Committee is concerned, group
of Norwegian people who take this very seriously, Um, there's
(04:22):
no real honor in that you have to really win
the prize, or at least make it onto the actual
short shortlist to really kind of be significantly um within
the warmth glow, the warm glow of the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah,
I mean, we'll get into nominations later, but you know,
several hundred people are nominated, and people like Mussolini and
(04:44):
Stalin and Hitler have been dominated. Yeah, so not not Yeah,
And I'm gonna nominate us one day. I'm gonna become
a political science professor. I'm a nominate nominators for a
joint award. And how about this, We'll throw out a
bit of mystery here that will explain later. Maybe we'll
find out if Bonos was nominated in fifty years. So years.
That's great good foreshadowing there. So I'm pretty sure everybody
(05:09):
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
(05:30):
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 or endowed a prize um that
was dedicated to promoting peace in humanitarian issues and keeping
things nice and chill, I think is how he put
(05:52):
it in his will. Yeah, although the one New York
Times article you since said that during his lifetime, dynamite
wasn't really you for war yet mm hmm, more operation
plowshare type purposes, you know, blast digging tunnels, John Henry style. Right,
So okay, all right, but um, he was an industrialist
(06:14):
and there was at least there is at least a
story that we'll get to that suggests that he was
equated with warfare at the very least his he was
following in a family legacy of creating things that, if
if weren't directly used for warfare, certainly could be. His
father Manuel kind of kicked the whole thing off when
he moved the family to Russia and started creating um
(06:36):
weaponry for the Russians at the time, I think in
the late nineteenth century. Yeah, they were, I mean, it
was kind of he was kind of Tony Stark in
a way, and his dad was, uh, now, I can't
think of it was dad Tony Stark's dad, um Oscar
from the Odd Couple. We can picture the actor. I
(06:57):
can't think of the elder Stark anyway. Felix from the 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
(07:21):
silver Russian spoon in their mark 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, for promoting the military industrial complex,
(07:45):
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 Um, 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 in the very first one,
(08:06):
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.
(08:29):
I don't know. Interesting, but so um, so Alfred was
following his father's footsteps, right, Um. Eventually he was he
he um was a very worldly, very well educated person.
He was tutored by the best tutors that St. Petersburg,
Russia had to offer. Um. He spoke five languages. He
was very well versed in literature and chemistry. Apparently said
(08:52):
once that he could digest philosophy as well as he
could digest a mule, maybe even better. But he was
also but he didn't really fart. He did he made
the arm farting noise because that's physics, right right. Um, So, uh,
he was a he was an odd duck in a
lot of ways, and he lived too long ago to
(09:14):
pin down in today's terms, but you could call him that.
He was Uh, he kicked around in Europe. Um, he
was a very wealthy person, kicked around Europe. Um kind
of was a dilettante and stuff he was interested in.
But it was also very brilliant. But apparently described himself
as a missingthrope and a bit of a loner. I think, yeah,
I mean he never got married, never had kids. I
(09:37):
think when he described himself as having a pitiful half life,
the quote in full was pretty sad because he he
basically says, the doctor should have killed me right after
I was born. Really, it's very hard on himself. Uh,
despite being a brilliant guy. Um. He eventually started to
work in nitroglycerin along with his other emial and there
(10:01):
was a tragic accident in eighteen sixty four where a
meal and I think four other people died in an explosion.
And for a while there, in fact, you could not
uh in Sweden, you could not work with nitroglysts, and
for a while and experiment with it because of that. Yeah,
because I think his family was Swedish and background. Um,
(10:22):
so they must have moved back to Sweden at this time.
Where else the people in Russia had been like why
did you that was a weird low Sweden, just mind
your own business. But um, 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 has probably
probably knew all died in an explosion. That's a grizzly
(10:45):
death at the very least for the survivors who have
to clean up afterwards. Right, that's a big deal. And
he still was like, I'm going to keep pursuing nitro
glysts and studies, and and did so by moving his
lab out under a barge on the lake um somewhere
in Sweden. Yeah, it's I'm not going to pronounce that
(11:07):
lake because then I'm gonna do it wrong. My laren,
there you go, muller in, Yeah, because there's a oom out,
that's right. But he eventually uh 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
(11:28):
and all around Europe, Western Europe. And you know he
I think he ended up with more than three hundred
and fifty patents to his name, So he was he
was a consummate inventor, uh, inventing all kinds of things
and making tons and tons of money along the way.
I think in the end he died with um and
this is very important. We'll get to his will and
(11:50):
how it was used. But he died with close to
ten million bucks, which for back then was like three
hundred and change today. Yeah, like a lot of million,
three hundred million, not three backwards. It didn't deeply Yeah, um.
He subscribed to that Garfield poster from the eighties where
(12:10):
Garfields 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 to like it was a real photograph,
(12:32):
and then they just drew Garfield over it, which is
not a good combination to begin. It never looks good. So, um,
here's where we reached this point where that I referred
to earlier, where there's a kind of a lower a
legend around Alfred Dobell and why he went from inventing
stuff that make things go boom to bestowing or endowing
(12:53):
a major award, the Nobel Prizes, 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. All right,
(13:38):
I'm on the cliff. I'm hanging there like Tom Cruise,
a mission impossible. Whatever. As the story goes, some people
say it's a myth. I think it's a pretty good
story either way. Is that when Alfred's brother Ludwig died
in a French newspaper got it all wrong and thought
that Alfred had died, which is a very interesting experiment
(14:02):
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 the New York Times to
be like pooh, but at any rate, or maybe a
French newspaper would get it wrong. But they called him
(14:23):
the merchant of death, and that said he his wealth
came from the invention of new ways to mutilate and kill. Um.
The fact that they may not have used dynamite specifically
for war during his lifetime is if the New York
Times is correct, um, he still had his hand in
many kinds of munitions. So the reason that people are
(14:44):
suspect about this maybe being apocryphal is that historians have
been unable to actually locate an original copy of that article. Yeah, well,
just not to say it did not exist. But even
if it didn't, it's definitely a story worth relating because
at point Alfred Nobel definitely did go from misanthrope who
(15:04):
was a loner um 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 three fifty million dollars, saying this is what I
want you to do with my my vast wealth. I
want you to set up a prize that promotes the arts,
the sciences and peace. And here's how we're gonna do it.
(15:27):
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 of On Suttner to work
for him, as 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
(15:50):
a peace activist writing a book called Laid Down Your Arms.
And some people say that he may have been um,
not trying to curry favor, but just influenced by her. Yes, um.
And she actually won the Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen
o five in part because of her influence on the
Nobel Peace Prize even being created. So I think they
(16:13):
definitely even thought contemporaneously that she definitely had a huge
hand in his 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 have like
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 gonna stop fighting, which you know kind of works,
(16:35):
but you know that 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. You know, 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, right, and then oh, I
don't know, escalate to nuclear arms one. Um. So he
(16:56):
passed away in eight December ten, Uh, I think, so sure,
let's go with that. It's definitely December ten. Yeah. I
think it was because it took a few years uh
to get to the very first prize in nineteen o one.
Because he had lived sort of all over, like you
(17:17):
you were talking about um 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 um legal wrangling to do when he changed his
will towards 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
(17:39):
sort of tie it up legally for a few years,
which they definitely tried to. And there's another great story
to um that his executor, the executor of his estate,
was very worried that some of the French we're going
to try to put a claim on them on his fortune.
And so he actually gathered his money millions of dollars,
so this is about three fifty million hours today in cash,
(18:01):
put it on a stage coach 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 putting in
a carriage, and they would have had quite a paid
day had they realized that this guy had three fifty
(18:23):
million dollars inside. Yeah, and you know, the 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 chunk 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.
(18:43):
You go figure it out, um, And so it took
a little while to figure it out. Like he I
saw it put that he um endowed an institution that
didn't exist yet, and that he left it to his
errors to create it. And there was actually a potential
that it just wasn't going to be followed through, that
it was gonna be too into a headache, or that
his heirs really should have the money. Um. But finally
(19:05):
they got it worked out and they started um releasing
the first are giving out the first Nobel Peace Prize
in one and apparently from the outset it was 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 create
(19:28):
a large cash prize was very unique for the time. Uh, now,
to give out a big prize with an award, like
a cash award attached to it is you know, you
see that a lot these days, but back then it
was um. Just the fact that it was a cash
prize was a big deal. And a couple that with
the fact that this, along with the uh, you know,
the other Nobel prizes, this was a piece award and
(19:51):
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 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
(20:12):
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 gonna do.
I want you to invest this money. And then the
(20:34):
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. It's sort of varied
over the years depending on how his investments went. Um.
But like you said, in today's dollars, it started off
at about a million, and it's usually I think since
(20:55):
like the eighties, it's been about that every year. Yeah. Um.
And so one I think one of the original intents
possibly was that it's kind of like a genius grant
where you're, you know, you get a million dollars for
your work, and you're 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
(21:16):
part because you're doing such a good job. But um,
and I think that some people keep the money with
the other Nobel Prizes, the ones for like literature and physics. Um.
But I do know for a fact that for the
Peace Prize, it is customary and traditional, though it's not
you're not obligated to, but it's customary to donate that money. Um,
(21:38):
which is pretty cool. 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 it's gonna go a long way to paying off
that r V I crashed. Uh, they would question that.
But as one of the rules will probably pepper in
rules you in there, there are no takes these backseas. No.
(21:59):
No matter what you do, you could you could get
the Nobel Priest Peace Prize. And and some people have
gone on to do some not so peaceful things and
they're sort of admonished. But UM, no takes these back seas. No,
And there's no appealing it. Like if you knew that
you were nominated and you think this was bs Nobel
(22:20):
Committee because 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 do that.
I don't know some people out there who would do that.
I should have won forget Mawala, Yeah right, what would
you do? Right? No way? So UM. One of the
(22:42):
other things there was like a positive feedback loop that
happened to between the awards and the people that UM
received the awards over time is that the the awards
started to become associated with some like towering figures on
the international stage, um heads of state, people who um
(23:05):
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. Um. Olivia
helps us with this one, and she put it like, um,
(23:25):
it's it's the being having been awarded the Nobel Priest
Prize is usually in the first line of a famous
person's obituary who received it, right like that. They don't
save that for the middle or the end. It'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
(23:47):
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 in rightfully so, and to the Nobel Committee's
Peace Prize committees credit they've accepted this criticism and you know,
publicly wrestled with it from time to time. Um, but
(24:09):
despite like some really big stumbles, like that prize is
not diminished in stature one bit and in the general
public's eyes. No. And you know, they've even said that
they hope that it uh 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
(24:31):
keep that train rolling, you know, yes, yes, And one
of the reasons that they're doing that too, or that's
what I should say, that's one of the reasons they
have the rule that, um, it can only go to
living people, because the hope is that you can take
this prize and do even bigger stuff, which there's a
there's a critic I can't remember his name who basically said, um,
that's great and and like that's a really good thing
(24:53):
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 earlier in their career goes. Come on,
I know who that was. That was, j Alfred poppy Pants.
Mm hmm. What a disappointment, but out of left field
(25:16):
to everybody had such high hopes for him. So as
far as the process goes, UM, the technical definition is
that should go to the person who has done the
most or best work for a fraternity among nations, for
the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the
holding and promotion of peace Congress. And it is decided
(25:37):
upon by what's known as the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which
it's 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 there are Swedish committees. Um, they're given out in Sweden.
This is he went all Norway the Peace Award and
(26:01):
all Sweden with the others. Yeah. Um. And he never
explained why. But historians, including people on the like Permanent
Nobel Staff, Nobel Peace Prize Staff UM, have kind of
suggested that at the time there was UM, there was
a union between Sweden and Norway UM, and they were
(26:23):
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 UM 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 to UM create
public expectations for Norway to continue along that way. Maybe.
(26:46):
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 in
the committee, even though you don't have to be. No,
it's not a it's not a rule. UM. There's also
(27:08):
assistance UM, Lots and lots of research assistance. There's some
that are appointed, there's some permanent ones too, UM, 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 three hundreds something people get nominated and
(27:29):
UM as part of the process you are UM you
have to like research those people like. 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 gonna give it to him and just leave it
at that, Like there is thorough research. The recipients are
thoroughly vetted, not just to make sure that they are
(27:49):
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 the nominees who make that
short list. Yeah. I actually got my hands on Malala's
case file. Oh there are pages and pages and pages,
and at the very end it just said, also great tipper,
(28:14):
that put her over the edge. I believe it too.
I didn't get my hands on that casepole by the way,
thank you. Uh 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 like active politicians and political leaders. So you
(28:35):
can't be an active government leader at this point. Um,
So they're mainly retired politicians now right, which is a
little better. But 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
(28:55):
less like that. But uh yeah, but again this is
the 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. Uh to
(29:16):
where this initial research and they would let down to
twenty or thirty. They can also nominate their own people
if they want as a committee, and then through March
in August, the big time research happens. And this is
when they're actually deciding the winner from that whittled down
list of from three plus. Yeah, and I guess they
(29:36):
announced in October and then finally on December tenth, the
actual ceremony where the winners bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize
happens in 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
(29:56):
given year, but you can be an organization. So Doctors
Without Borders is one. The Red Cross has one three
times uh plus the very first one which went to
Henri do Not who started the Red Cross. So technically
they've gotten four awards, so you can get more than
one award, yes, um, yes. And the only other thing,
(30:21):
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,
uh to um dog Hammer's guard Hammer Scold Hammer School.
I mean, that's a tough word. Dog Hammer Scold. He
was the guy who oversaw the the the true like
(30:42):
creation in um Um Expansion and I guess the guy
who really set the tone for the Unit United Nations
as a sensibly a peace seeking body. And he played
black Metal two, which was weird. Yeah, he always were
the heavy, heavy mess Gara triangles under his eyes, this
(31:03):
cool look, but really surprising when you look at that name.
That's that's black Metal all the way Marston or Yeah,
I don't know. I'm sure we're pronouncing that wrong too.
There's a lot of I think Nail that's not a
very good hotel chicken name. It draws too much attention
(31:24):
to because they say, how do you spell that? You right? Mark?
Can you pronounce that again, No, I can't say it
anyway you want, 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. Um. We're not saying it's not an honor,
but we're saying that a lot of there's been a
(31:44):
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
fifty year rule that we alluded to earlier about finding
(32:05):
out if bono what had been elected in fifty years.
Supposedly that is under lock and key for fifty 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 uh been leaked,
(32:26):
but other people said, no, it doesn't even get leaked.
It's purely speculations. So I'm not sure how it works.
But you're not supposed to reveal it for fifty years. No,
but they're probably people who are 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
(32:49):
with whoever that they they've nominated for the Peace Prize.
You're gonna send an email saying like, hey, you know
I nominated you for a peace prize like that that
could happen. I wonder if you can get that revoked
though I don't know as a nominator, you know that
like that should be the punishment, like keep your mouth
shut or you're not getting you can't vote next year? Yeah?
What is that? Um Omerita? What's that? Isn't that the
(33:12):
mobs like vow of silence? Is it? I think it is?
I don't remember. Was that for the loud in there
somewhere your own your own life? No? No, it's a
it's a a little bit of both, Okay. Um, So
we talked about nominators, Chuck. There's a lot of people
out there who are qualified to nominate somebody for the
(33:33):
Nobel Peace Price. So again, anybody can be nominated for
the Nobel Peace Prize, but a small fraction of humanity
can actually do the nominating. Uh if you are an
elected official, uh in at the national level of any
government in the world, you can. So if you're a
congress person or president or vice president or Secretary of
the Treasury or secretary of commerce, who cares, you can
(33:58):
nominate somebody for the Nobel Peace Prize right now? Is that?
What I didn't get is is that automatic? Like if
you if you hold an office like that, it's automatic? Yes,
Well what about other ones? What about if like because
another some professors can are they invited to be a nominator? No? Um,
they they apparently for the other Nobels, the Swedish Nobels
(34:20):
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
(34:41):
the person doing the nominating is credential 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. Uh,
they should take your saber and break it over their knee,
send you out into the to the frontier to live
(35:03):
as a as a scorned cowards, revenant style. Now have
you ever seen that show Branded? Now? Oh, last I
was referring to. There's a great fifties Western, like black
and white Western TV show called Branded. I think it
was Chuck Connors who there was an attack on a
FOURT and something happened, but he was mistaken as like
(35:24):
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 um
that he used. I think he's sharpened into like a
short sabers. It was pretty pretty cool show if I
(35:45):
remember correctly. And now that I'm saying, yeah, I haven't
seen it since I was like ten, So if it's
like super racist and I'm just haven't seen in a while.
Please forgive me in advance. Yeah, it probably is. Josh
likes racist shows, right, he admitted it, young John. Uh.
The metal itself is worth talking about. Um. They were
(36:05):
until nineteen eighty made from twenty three care gold. Now
it is eighteen Carrett green gold, which is a gold
silver alloy plated with twenty four Carrott gold. Uh. This
is another way that differs from the Swedish medals, and
that this one is designed, um differently. It's designed by
a sculptor named Gustav Vigland and on the front has
(36:28):
Alfred Nobel's image, which again is different from the Swedish one.
And I keep on to 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 pro pace at fraternitate gentium propo. Did
(36:51):
you take Latin? No? You just some know that somebody
I picked that up somewhere along the way, and for
some reason it's always stuck with me. Prop All right,
Well now I know I'll know it forever. What pautch
a or just the whole thing, just the part? Oh sure? Yeah,
And then you get your name and grave of course,
so it doesn't get mixed up with you know, and
(37:11):
customs or whatever. Right. So um, 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 gonna
take a break everybody, and then we're gonna come back
with some more great stuff. So don't go anywhere, because
you're gonna love it. Okay. So we kind of alluded
(37:49):
earlier to the idea that, um, 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 there's actually
been since there's different people who have served on the
committee over the years, the committee as a whole is
(38:09):
kind of taken different routes to deciding who should get
what award. And there's a legal scholar named Roger p
Alfred out of Notre Dame UM and he says that
you can pretty much divide the era um or the
history of the Nobel Peace Prize into different eras depending
on the committee, and that basically leading up to World
(38:31):
War Two it was mostly like pacifist committees UM or
like peace committees, peace congress is like Nobel Is specifically
called out in his will. And then after World War
Two 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
(38:55):
individuals and groups UH, people like Desmond two two and
Nelson Mandela and Malala UM. Jimmy Carter got one in
the early two thousand's for his post presidency work that
he's done. People like that, UM, I think that they
can give it to and many times have given it
(39:16):
to UH and sometimes to some controversy. People on UM
different sides of an issue. UM, like the ninety three
Nelson Mandela got it along with F. W. De Clerk.
You might remember from our apartheid episode. He was the
South African president who negotiated UM to end apartheid UM
(39:37):
with Mandela and other black leaders. So sometimes sometimes they'll
do something like that, mix it up and say, you know,
these two people broke here this even though they're on
different sides of the of the issue. Initially, yes, so
they've they've tried that. It was successful with Mandela and
the Clerk UM. At the same time they tried that.
(39:59):
They had tried it twenty years earlier for the nineteen
seventy three award. They tried to UM give it to
Henry Kissinger and Uh lay Duke To, who was North
Vietnamese UM politician and he helped broker the end of
the UM the Vietnam War between Vietnam and the United States,
although the Vietnam War continued on and lay Duke To
(40:23):
actually was the only person Uh in the history of
the Nobel Peace Prize to turn it down because he
had to share it with Kissinger. And he said that
the award put the invader and the invaded as equal,
and I mean even taking the idea that it was,
you know, a joint award between Kissinger and lay Duke too.
A lot of people have said, like, you can't give
(40:43):
a Nobel Peace Prize to Kissinger. He's a war hawk.
He was, he was a war criminal. A lot of
people think like he did some really awful stuff, carpet
bombing's civilian like just to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
UM asked elation of the war like a secret war
in Cambodia. UM, all sorts of terrible stuff. We'll have
(41:05):
to do a uh um episode on Henry Kissinger one day.
But um, that's a good example of a controversial winner
and also a split Nobel Prize winner and also somebody
turning down the Nobel. Yeah. Um. A lot of times
they will admonish people in retrospect, even though there are
no takes these back seas, like we mentioned. Uh they
will say, hey, we give you a Nobel Peace Prize
(41:26):
and then you went on to do some not so
peaceful things. Even admonished Barack Obama who won in his
first year presidency for things like drone strikes and overthrowing Kadafi. Um.
So you can get your your hands banked afterwards. Again,
they can't they can't really do anything, but they can
say you're very publicly you're not living up to this
(41:49):
prize that you earned, and that's the expectation. Yeah, I mean,
and that's a problem with with That's part of that
thing of like giving out awards to people who are
still alive and still in their careers, you know. Um.
And song Suki from me and mar was like this
huge democratic activist and I guess everybody just presumed that
she was also a peace activist too, And when she
(42:12):
finally came to power. Um, she actually oversaw a lot
of UM like basically war crimes carried out by her
troops against minorities within her country, which really surprised a
lot of people. UM. And I think it's surprised the
Nobel Committee. Um. There's an Ethiopian prime minister named Abiy Ahmed.
(42:34):
He won in two thousand nineteen because he helped finally
end the civil war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which is
a big deal. I mean that that that civil war
been going on for since the nineties, I believe. But
a short time after that, he also oversaw ethnic cleansing
in a region where minority has lived in his own
(42:55):
country as well. So, UM, it seems dicey to give
it to a head of because there's so much dirty
business involved in just being ahead of state in the
twentie and twenty one 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 that the you know, the
(43:16):
whole two thousand, two thousand eight Hope campaign, and gave
it to him within a few months of him becoming
president in two thousand nine. 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 miss step. Really. Um. So I'll bet
they don't give it to another head of state again
(43:37):
in any time you and I are still alive. MM.
I could see that for sure. I mean they you know,
they do their own thing because they can, but they
certainly don't love these controversies. Um. The fact that Gandhi
never got one is is a sort of a big
stain on the the committee. He was nominated either five
or six times over the years and never got it. Um.
(43:59):
Some people will say that, oh, Gandhi was to India
centric and he was a nationalist. Other people say that
there were violent protests that he certainly didn't um call for,
but uh, we're done because of the things he was doing. Um.
Other people say, well, that's just a symptom of this
(44:20):
eurosentrism that the Nobel Committee has, which is like, up
until nineteen sixty, 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
(44:41):
someone that's probably aligned with their interests in some way. Yeah,
because we said earlier that, um, you know, you can
some people divide the eras of the Nobel Prize up
in one of those eras as pro democracy, and the
Nobel Prize Committee has definitely like cast their lot um
among the democratic part of the world order, like they're
(45:04):
pro democracy, which doesn't account for communism and other, um,
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 sliper slope, it
(45:26):
really is. And I mean like, 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 peace work than anybody else
on the planet, don't don't overlook them, I think, is
the point. Yeah, like get put in his day, right,
(45:51):
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. Definitely? Yeah, where 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,
(46:12):
that seems obvious, but yeah that's a rule. Um yeah,
I mean imagine the Peace Prize winner who nominated himself
for 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 Um. Swedish German writer Yakob von UKs Kool created
(46:35):
this nineteen eighty 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
(47:00):
like they said that. They said, get out. 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've never heard of it, so they're not certainly
not marketed well. So apparently he funded it, and he
also offered to fund those two additional um Nobel prizes
(47:20):
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, 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,
(47:41):
then stick around for some pretty good listener mail. Because
Chuck said pretty good, I said pretty good, and I
said listener mail, which of course means it's time for
a 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.
(48:04):
Chuck wasn't on board, but Joshua 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, uh,
you can't be a batter like cake, but brownies are
definitely batter. Cookies can be made into large pan size
street brownies have to be made that way. You can't
(48:27):
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 spilling
(48:50):
or 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 in my family and I will
continue to enjoy your work. Danielle from Anaheim, California, or Man,
(49:11):
I'm sorry, this is daniel Okay. When we you said
it in the French way. Yeah, exactly. Sorry Daniel, Um, sorry, Uh.
And I think I don't know if it's gonna 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
(49:33):
undermines the idea that they're cookies. If they're made from batter,
so they can't be cookies. I I agree, And I
think the idea that lemon bar is actually more related
to pie, as Daniel put it as, pretty persuasive too.
So just forget I ever said the whole thing about
brownies being cookies. Throw some meringue on a lemon bar
that's a piece of pie. Yeah, it totally is, especially
(49:56):
if you cut it in like a little triangle wedge. Uh. 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 stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Radio Stuff you Should Know is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
(50:18):
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Charles W. Chuck Brian 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
(00:23):
in a raw egg white. Shake us again, Add some mice.
Shake us the third time until your hand can't stand
the outside of the shaker any longer. Pour us into
a coupe or coupe, depending on where you are into
the world. Put a real deal marischino cherry not that
can you buy the grocery store in US. And a
nice little swizzle stick. You've got stuff you should know.
(00:46):
I just added a little egg white to my my
chuck B drink. What's your chuck B drink? It's my
spin on the bee's knees. It's the chuck B. It's
in b e yes, sure, neat. So there's honey in it.
Whiskey and crem to manth right. No, I do a
(01:08):
shot of gin of a blond dart. You got laon
dart at your house? No, you want to send me some? Sure,
it's uh, it's a local. Uh. It's from old fourth
word distillery. It's it's a ginger lemon liqueur. That's pretty cool. Uh.
And then I add a little pineapple gum syrup, just
a little bit, because that goes a long way, I
(01:28):
can imagine. And then what else do I add? At
ginger bitters? You gotta have a lemon juice? What about
honey honey syrup? Okay? Right? Like I make mountain honey syrup.
Not not sure because then it just sits at the
bottom like a dumb viscus thing right saying, don't look
at me. And then I chake the cred out of it.
(01:49):
I've got these beautiful vintage seventies coops. Then I add
a little lemon twist. But I've added the egg white
this last time, and it just you know, he gives
it that lovely little phone on top. It really does
you do you add the egg white first, and then
shake for a few seconds, and then add the ice. No,
I had everything together, and I just I shake till
my arms swall off and it bombs up really lovely. Gotcha,
(02:13):
You don't have to shake his heart. If you shake
for a little bit first without ice, and then add
the ice, it's Um, it's way faster and your arms
will thank you. I shake for the temperature, not so
much as for the phone, gotcha. Yeah yeah, yeah, I
like it to be And I freeze my glass like
ten 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. I
(02:35):
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 the Chuck B and
naming it too. That's a great name. Thanks. Okay. Uh,
you couldn't get a Nobel Prize and awesomeness if you
wanted to, because it doesn't exist, although something similar does.
(02:58):
It's called the Nobel Peace Prize. Really yeah uh, 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 gonna do that. This is mainly about the Peace
Prize because Pieces where It's at Ask anybody, anybody, ask Bono. Sure,
he'll say, I hate the name you two and pieces
(03:20):
where It's at. He doesn't like the name you two. Yeah,
that just came out this week. He said he's never
really liked the name. Who came up with at the edge?
I think so or 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 didn't like it. I don't know.
Come on, bonno, shut up. It's a great name. He's like,
(03:41):
I haven't been in the press for a while. What
can I Yeah, exactly, that's probably about right. I haven't
been on the cover of Catholic magazine in months. He's
probably one of Nobel Peace Prize he is not. Okay, no,
but I'm sure he's won some other humanitarian awards. But
he has too, because we'll see, like anybody, anyone can
(04:01):
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 like genuinely means it and you're
actually nominated by more than one person. But as far
as the Nobel Prize Peace Prize Committee is concerned, group
of Norwegian people who take this very seriously, Um, there's
(04:22):
no real honor in that you have to really win
the prize, or at least make it onto the actual
short shortlist to really kind of be significantly um within
the warmth glow, the warm glow of the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah,
I mean, we'll get into nominations later, but you know,
several hundred people are nominated, and people like Mussolini and
(04:44):
Stalin and Hitler have been dominated. Yeah, so not not Yeah,
And I'm gonna nominate us one day. I'm gonna become
a political science professor. I'm a nominate nominators for a
joint award. And how about this, We'll throw out a
bit of mystery here that will explain later. Maybe we'll
find out if Bonos was nominated in fifty years. So years.
That's great good foreshadowing there. So I'm pretty sure everybody
(05:09):
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
(05:30):
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 or endowed a prize um that
was dedicated to promoting peace in humanitarian issues and keeping
things nice and chill, I think is how he put
(05:52):
it in his will. Yeah, although the one New York
Times article you since said that during his lifetime, dynamite
wasn't really you for war yet mm hmm, more operation
plowshare type purposes, you know, blast digging tunnels, John Henry style. Right,
So okay, all right, but um, he was an industrialist
(06:14):
and there was at least there is at least a
story that we'll get to that suggests that he was
equated with warfare at the very least his he was
following in a family legacy of creating things that, if
if weren't directly used for warfare, certainly could be. His
father Manuel kind of kicked the whole thing off when
he moved the family to Russia and started creating um
(06:36):
weaponry for the Russians at the time, I think in
the late nineteenth century. Yeah, they were, I mean, it
was kind of he was kind of Tony Stark in
a way, and his dad was, uh, now, I can't
think of it was dad Tony Stark's dad, um Oscar
from the Odd Couple. We can picture the actor. I
(06:57):
can't think of the elder Stark anyway. Felix from the 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
(07:21):
silver Russian spoon in their mark 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, for promoting the military industrial complex,
(07:45):
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 Um, 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 in the very first one,
(08:06):
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.
(08:29):
I don't know. Interesting, but so um, so Alfred was
following his father's footsteps, right, Um. Eventually he was he
he um was a very worldly, very well educated person.
He was tutored by the best tutors that St. Petersburg,
Russia had to offer. Um. He spoke five languages. He
was very well versed in literature and chemistry. Apparently said
(08:52):
once that he could digest philosophy as well as he
could digest a mule, maybe even better. But he was
also but he didn't really fart. He did he made
the arm farting noise because that's physics, right right. Um, So, uh,
he was a he was an odd duck in a
lot of ways, and he lived too long ago to
(09:14):
pin down in today's terms, but you could call him that.
He was Uh, he kicked around in Europe. Um, he
was a very wealthy person, kicked around Europe. Um kind
of was a dilettante and stuff he was interested in.
But it was also very brilliant. But apparently described himself
as a missingthrope and a bit of a loner. I think, yeah,
I mean he never got married, never had kids. I
(09:37):
think when he described himself as having a pitiful half life,
the quote in full was pretty sad because he he
basically says, the doctor should have killed me right after
I was born. Really, it's very hard on himself. Uh,
despite being a brilliant guy. Um. He eventually started to
work in nitroglycerin along with his other emial and there
(10:01):
was a tragic accident in eighteen sixty four where a
meal and I think four other people died in an explosion.
And for a while there, in fact, you could not
uh in Sweden, you could not work with nitroglysts, and
for a while and experiment with it because of that. Yeah,
because I think his family was Swedish and background. Um,
(10:22):
so they must have moved back to Sweden at this time.
Where else the people in Russia had been like why
did you that was a weird low Sweden, just mind
your own business. But um, 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 has probably
probably knew all died in an explosion. That's a grizzly
(10:45):
death at the very least for the survivors who have
to clean up afterwards. Right, that's a big deal. And
he still was like, I'm going to keep pursuing nitro
glysts and studies, and and did so by moving his
lab out under a barge on the lake um somewhere
in Sweden. Yeah, it's I'm not going to pronounce that
(11:07):
lake because then I'm gonna do it wrong. My laren,
there you go, muller in, Yeah, because there's a oom out,
that's right. But he eventually uh 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
(11:28):
and all around Europe, Western Europe. And you know he
I think he ended up with more than three hundred
and fifty patents to his name, So he was he
was a consummate inventor, uh, inventing all kinds of things
and making tons and tons of money along the way.
I think in the end he died with um and
this is very important. We'll get to his will and
(11:50):
how it was used. But he died with close to
ten million bucks, which for back then was like three
hundred and change today. Yeah, like a lot of million,
three hundred million, not three backwards. It didn't deeply Yeah, um.
He subscribed to that Garfield poster from the eighties where
(12:10):
Garfields 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 to like it was a real photograph,
(12:32):
and then they just drew Garfield over it, which is
not a good combination to begin. It never looks good. So, um,
here's where we reached this point where that I referred
to earlier, where there's a kind of a lower a
legend around Alfred Dobell and why he went from inventing
stuff that make things go boom to bestowing or endowing
(12:53):
a major award, the Nobel Prizes, 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. All right,
(13:38):
I'm on the cliff. I'm hanging there like Tom Cruise,
a mission impossible. Whatever. As the story goes, some people
say it's a myth. I think it's a pretty good
story either way. Is that when Alfred's brother Ludwig died
in a French newspaper got it all wrong and thought
that Alfred had died, which is a very interesting experiment
(14:02):
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 the New York Times to
be like pooh, but at any rate, or maybe a
French newspaper would get it wrong. But they called him
(14:23):
the merchant of death, and that said he his wealth
came from the invention of new ways to mutilate and kill. Um.
The fact that they may not have used dynamite specifically
for war during his lifetime is if the New York
Times is correct, um, he still had his hand in
many kinds of munitions. So the reason that people are
(14:44):
suspect about this maybe being apocryphal is that historians have
been unable to actually locate an original copy of that article. Yeah, well,
just not to say it did not exist. But even
if it didn't, it's definitely a story worth relating because
at point Alfred Nobel definitely did go from misanthrope who
(15:04):
was a loner um 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 three fifty million dollars, saying this is what I
want you to do with my my vast wealth. I
want you to set up a prize that promotes the arts,
the sciences and peace. And here's how we're gonna do it.
(15:27):
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 of On Suttner to work
for him, as 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
(15:50):
a peace activist writing a book called Laid Down Your Arms.
And some people say that he may have been um,
not trying to curry favor, but just influenced by her. Yes, um.
And she actually won the Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen
o five in part because of her influence on the
Nobel Peace Prize even being created. So I think they
(16:13):
definitely even thought contemporaneously that she definitely had a huge
hand in his 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 have like
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 gonna stop fighting, which you know kind of works,
(16:35):
but you know that 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. You know, 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, right, and then oh, I
don't know, escalate to nuclear arms one. Um. So he
(16:56):
passed away in eight December ten, Uh, I think, so sure,
let's go with that. It's definitely December ten. Yeah. I
think it was because it took a few years uh
to get to the very first prize in nineteen o one.
Because he had lived sort of all over, like you
(17:17):
you were talking about um 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 um legal wrangling to do when he changed his
will towards 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
(17:39):
sort of tie it up legally for a few years,
which they definitely tried to. And there's another great story
to um that his executor, the executor of his estate,
was very worried that some of the French we're going
to try to put a claim on them on his fortune.
And so he actually gathered his money millions of dollars,
so this is about three fifty million hours today in cash,
(18:01):
put it on a stage coach 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 putting in
a carriage, and they would have had quite a paid
day had they realized that this guy had three fifty
(18:23):
million dollars inside. Yeah, and you know, the 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 chunk 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.
(18:43):
You go figure it out, um, And so it took
a little while to figure it out. Like he I
saw it put that he um endowed an institution that
didn't exist yet, and that he left it to his
errors to create it. And there was actually a potential
that it just wasn't going to be followed through, that
it was gonna be too into a headache, or that
his heirs really should have the money. Um. But finally
(19:05):
they got it worked out and they started um releasing
the first are giving out the first Nobel Peace Prize
in one and apparently from the outset it was 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 create
(19:28):
a large cash prize was very unique for the time. Uh, now,
to give out a big prize with an award, like
a cash award attached to it is you know, you
see that a lot these days, but back then it
was um. Just the fact that it was a cash
prize was a big deal. And a couple that with
the fact that this, along with the uh, you know,
the other Nobel prizes, this was a piece award and
(19:51):
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 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
(20:12):
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 gonna do.
I want you to invest this money. And then the
(20:34):
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. It's sort of varied
over the years depending on how his investments went. Um.
But like you said, in today's dollars, it started off
at about a million, and it's usually I think since
(20:55):
like the eighties, it's been about that every year. Yeah. Um.
And so one I think one of the original intents
possibly was that it's kind of like a genius grant
where you're, you know, you get a million dollars for
your work, and you're 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
(21:16):
part because you're doing such a good job. But um,
and I think that some people keep the money with
the other Nobel Prizes, the ones for like literature and physics. Um.
But I do know for a fact that for the
Peace Prize, it is customary and traditional, though it's not
you're not obligated to, but it's customary to donate that money. Um,
(21:38):
which is pretty cool. 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 it's gonna go a long way to paying off
that r V I crashed. Uh, they would question that.
But as one of the rules will probably pepper in
rules you in there, there are no takes these backseas. No.
(21:59):
No matter what you do, you could you could get
the Nobel Priest Peace Prize. And and some people have
gone on to do some not so peaceful things and
they're sort of admonished. But UM, no takes these back seas. No,
And there's no appealing it. Like if you knew that
you were nominated and you think this was bs Nobel
(22:20):
Committee because 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 do that.
I don't know some people out there who would do that.
I should have won forget Mawala, Yeah right, what would
you do? Right? No way? So UM. One of the
(22:42):
other things there was like a positive feedback loop that
happened to between the awards and the people that UM
received the awards over time is that the the awards
started to become associated with some like towering figures on
the international stage, um heads of state, people who um
(23:05):
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. Um. Olivia
helps us with this one, and she put it like, um,
(23:25):
it's it's the being having been awarded the Nobel Priest
Prize is usually in the first line of a famous
person's obituary who received it, right like that. They don't
save that for the middle or the end. It'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
(23:47):
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 in rightfully so, and to the Nobel Committee's
Peace Prize committees credit they've accepted this criticism and you know,
publicly wrestled with it from time to time. Um, but
(24:09):
despite like some really big stumbles, like that prize is
not diminished in stature one bit and in the general
public's eyes. No. And you know, they've even said that
they hope that it uh 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
(24:31):
keep that train rolling, you know, yes, yes, And one
of the reasons that they're doing that too, or that's
what I should say, that's one of the reasons they
have the rule that, um, it can only go to
living people, because the hope is that you can take
this prize and do even bigger stuff, which there's a
there's a critic I can't remember his name who basically said, um,
that's great and and like that's a really good thing
(24:53):
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 earlier in their career goes. Come on,
I know who that was. That was, j Alfred poppy Pants.
Mm hmm. What a disappointment, but out of left field
(25:16):
to everybody had such high hopes for him. So as
far as the process goes, UM, the technical definition is
that should go to the person who has done the
most or best work for a fraternity among nations, for
the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the
holding and promotion of peace Congress. And it is decided
(25:37):
upon by what's known as the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which
it's 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 there are Swedish committees. Um, they're given out in Sweden.
This is he went all Norway the Peace Award and
(26:01):
all Sweden with the others. Yeah. Um. And he never
explained why. But historians, including people on the like Permanent
Nobel Staff, Nobel Peace Prize Staff UM, have kind of
suggested that at the time there was UM, there was
a union between Sweden and Norway UM, and they were
(26:23):
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 UM 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 to UM create
public expectations for Norway to continue along that way. Maybe.
(26:46):
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 in
the committee, even though you don't have to be. No,
it's not a it's not a rule. UM. There's also
(27:08):
assistance UM, Lots and lots of research assistance. There's some
that are appointed, there's some permanent ones too, UM, 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 three hundreds something people get nominated and
(27:29):
UM as part of the process you are UM you
have to like research those people like. 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 gonna give it to him and just leave it
at that, Like there is thorough research. The recipients are
thoroughly vetted, not just to make sure that they are
(27:49):
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 the nominees who make that
short list. Yeah. I actually got my hands on Malala's
case file. Oh there are pages and pages and pages,
and at the very end it just said, also great tipper,
(28:14):
that put her over the edge. I believe it too.
I didn't get my hands on that casepole by the way,
thank you. Uh 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 like active politicians and political leaders. So you
(28:35):
can't be an active government leader at this point. Um,
So they're mainly retired politicians now right, which is a
little better. But 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
(28:55):
less like that. But uh yeah, but again this is
the 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. Uh to
(29:16):
where this initial research and they would let down to
twenty or thirty. They can also nominate their own people
if they want as a committee, and then through March
in August, the big time research happens. And this is
when they're actually deciding the winner from that whittled down
list of from three plus. Yeah, and I guess they
(29:36):
announced in October and then finally on December tenth, the
actual ceremony where the winners bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize
happens in 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
(29:56):
given year, but you can be an organization. So Doctors
Without Borders is one. The Red Cross has one three
times uh plus the very first one which went to
Henri do Not who started the Red Cross. So technically
they've gotten four awards, so you can get more than
one award, yes, um, yes. And the only other thing,
(30:21):
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,
uh to um dog Hammer's guard Hammer Scold Hammer School.
I mean, that's a tough word. Dog Hammer Scold. He
was the guy who oversaw the the the true like
(30:42):
creation in um Um Expansion and I guess the guy
who really set the tone for the Unit United Nations
as a sensibly a peace seeking body. And he played
black Metal two, which was weird. Yeah, he always were
the heavy, heavy mess Gara triangles under his eyes, this
(31:03):
cool look, but really surprising when you look at that name.
That's that's black Metal all the way Marston or Yeah,
I don't know. I'm sure we're pronouncing that wrong too.
There's a lot of I think Nail that's not a
very good hotel chicken name. It draws too much attention
(31:24):
to because they say, how do you spell that? You right? Mark?
Can you pronounce that again, No, I can't say it
anyway you want, 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. Um. We're not saying it's not an honor,
but we're saying that a lot of there's been a
(31:44):
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
fifty year rule that we alluded to earlier about finding
(32:05):
out if bono what had been elected in fifty years.
Supposedly that is under lock and key for fifty 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 uh been leaked,
(32:26):
but other people said, no, it doesn't even get leaked.
It's purely speculations. So I'm not sure how it works.
But you're not supposed to reveal it for fifty years. No,
but they're probably people who are 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
(32:49):
with whoever that they they've nominated for the Peace Prize.
You're gonna send an email saying like, hey, you know
I nominated you for a peace prize like that that
could happen. I wonder if you can get that revoked
though I don't know as a nominator, you know that
like that should be the punishment, like keep your mouth
shut or you're not getting you can't vote next year? Yeah?
What is that? Um Omerita? What's that? Isn't that the
(33:12):
mobs like vow of silence? Is it? I think it is?
I don't remember. Was that for the loud in there
somewhere your own your own life? No? No, it's a
it's a a little bit of both, Okay. Um, So
we talked about nominators, Chuck. There's a lot of people
out there who are qualified to nominate somebody for the
(33:33):
Nobel Peace Price. So again, anybody can be nominated for
the Nobel Peace Prize, but a small fraction of humanity
can actually do the nominating. Uh if you are an
elected official, uh in at the national level of any
government in the world, you can. So if you're a
congress person or president or vice president or Secretary of
the Treasury or secretary of commerce, who cares, you can
(33:58):
nominate somebody for the Nobel Peace Prize right now? Is that?
What I didn't get is is that automatic? Like if
you if you hold an office like that, it's automatic? Yes,
Well what about other ones? What about if like because
another some professors can are they invited to be a nominator? No? Um,
they they apparently for the other Nobels, the Swedish Nobels
(34:20):
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
(34:41):
the person doing the nominating is credential 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. Uh,
they should take your saber and break it over their knee,
send you out into the to the frontier to live
(35:03):
as a as a scorned cowards, revenant style. Now have
you ever seen that show Branded? Now? Oh, last I
was referring to. There's a great fifties Western, like black
and white Western TV show called Branded. I think it
was Chuck Connors who there was an attack on a
FOURT and something happened, but he was mistaken as like
(35:24):
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 um
that he used. I think he's sharpened into like a
short sabers. It was pretty pretty cool show if I
(35:45):
remember correctly. And now that I'm saying, yeah, I haven't
seen it since I was like ten, So if it's
like super racist and I'm just haven't seen in a while.
Please forgive me in advance. Yeah, it probably is. Josh
likes racist shows, right, he admitted it, young John. Uh.
The metal itself is worth talking about. Um. They were
(36:05):
until nineteen eighty made from twenty three care gold. Now
it is eighteen Carrett green gold, which is a gold
silver alloy plated with twenty four Carrott gold. Uh. This
is another way that differs from the Swedish medals, and
that this one is designed, um differently. It's designed by
a sculptor named Gustav Vigland and on the front has
(36:28):
Alfred Nobel's image, which again is different from the Swedish one.
And I keep on to 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 pro pace at fraternitate gentium propo. Did
(36:51):
you take Latin? No? You just some know that somebody
I picked that up somewhere along the way, and for
some reason it's always stuck with me. Prop All right,
Well now I know I'll know it forever. What pautch
a or just the whole thing, just the part? Oh sure? Yeah,
And then you get your name and grave of course,
so it doesn't get mixed up with you know, and
(37:11):
customs or whatever. Right. So um, 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 gonna
take a break everybody, and then we're gonna come back
with some more great stuff. So don't go anywhere, because
you're gonna love it. Okay. So we kind of alluded
(37:49):
earlier to the idea that, um, 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 there's actually
been since there's different people who have served on the
committee over the years, the committee as a whole is
(38:09):
kind of taken different routes to deciding who should get
what award. And there's a legal scholar named Roger p
Alfred out of Notre Dame UM and he says that
you can pretty much divide the era um or the
history of the Nobel Peace Prize into different eras depending
on the committee, and that basically leading up to World
(38:31):
War Two it was mostly like pacifist committees UM or
like peace committees, peace congress is like Nobel Is specifically
called out in his will. And then after World War
Two 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
(38:55):
individuals and groups UH, people like Desmond two two and
Nelson Mandela and Malala UM. Jimmy Carter got one in
the early two thousand's for his post presidency work that
he's done. People like that, UM, I think that they
can give it to and many times have given it
(39:16):
to UH and sometimes to some controversy. People on UM
different sides of an issue. UM, like the ninety three
Nelson Mandela got it along with F. W. De Clerk.
You might remember from our apartheid episode. He was the
South African president who negotiated UM to end apartheid UM
(39:37):
with Mandela and other black leaders. So sometimes sometimes they'll
do something like that, mix it up and say, you know,
these two people broke here this even though they're on
different sides of the of the issue. Initially, yes, so
they've they've tried that. It was successful with Mandela and
the Clerk UM. At the same time they tried that.
(39:59):
They had tried it twenty years earlier for the nineteen
seventy three award. They tried to UM give it to
Henry Kissinger and Uh lay Duke To, who was North
Vietnamese UM politician and he helped broker the end of
the UM the Vietnam War between Vietnam and the United States,
although the Vietnam War continued on and lay Duke To
(40:23):
actually was the only person Uh in the history of
the Nobel Peace Prize to turn it down because he
had to share it with Kissinger. And he said that
the award put the invader and the invaded as equal,
and I mean even taking the idea that it was,
you know, a joint award between Kissinger and lay Duke too.
A lot of people have said, like, you can't give
(40:43):
a Nobel Peace Prize to Kissinger. He's a war hawk.
He was, he was a war criminal. A lot of
people think like he did some really awful stuff, carpet
bombing's civilian like just to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
UM asked elation of the war like a secret war
in Cambodia. UM, all sorts of terrible stuff. We'll have
(41:05):
to do a uh um episode on Henry Kissinger one day.
But um, that's a good example of a controversial winner
and also a split Nobel Prize winner and also somebody
turning down the Nobel. Yeah. Um. A lot of times
they will admonish people in retrospect, even though there are
no takes these back seas, like we mentioned. Uh they
will say, hey, we give you a Nobel Peace Prize
(41:26):
and then you went on to do some not so
peaceful things. Even admonished Barack Obama who won in his
first year presidency for things like drone strikes and overthrowing Kadafi. Um.
So you can get your your hands banked afterwards. Again,
they can't they can't really do anything, but they can
say you're very publicly you're not living up to this
(41:49):
prize that you earned, and that's the expectation. Yeah, I mean,
and that's a problem with with That's part of that
thing of like giving out awards to people who are
still alive and still in their careers, you know. Um.
And song Suki from me and mar was like this
huge democratic activist and I guess everybody just presumed that
she was also a peace activist too, And when she
(42:12):
finally came to power. Um, she actually oversaw a lot
of UM like basically war crimes carried out by her
troops against minorities within her country, which really surprised a
lot of people. UM. And I think it's surprised the
Nobel Committee. Um. There's an Ethiopian prime minister named Abiy Ahmed.
(42:34):
He won in two thousand nineteen because he helped finally
end the civil war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which is
a big deal. I mean that that that civil war
been going on for since the nineties, I believe. But
a short time after that, he also oversaw ethnic cleansing
in a region where minority has lived in his own
(42:55):
country as well. So, UM, it seems dicey to give
it to a head of because there's so much dirty
business involved in just being ahead of state in the
twentie and twenty one 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 that the you know, the
(43:16):
whole two thousand, two thousand eight Hope campaign, and gave
it to him within a few months of him becoming
president in two thousand nine. 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 miss step. Really. Um. So I'll bet
they don't give it to another head of state again
(43:37):
in any time you and I are still alive. MM.
I could see that for sure. I mean they you know,
they do their own thing because they can, but they
certainly don't love these controversies. Um. The fact that Gandhi
never got one is is a sort of a big
stain on the the committee. He was nominated either five
or six times over the years and never got it. Um.
(43:59):
Some people will say that, oh, Gandhi was to India
centric and he was a nationalist. Other people say that
there were violent protests that he certainly didn't um call for,
but uh, we're done because of the things he was doing. Um.
Other people say, well, that's just a symptom of this
(44:20):
eurosentrism that the Nobel Committee has, which is like, up
until nineteen sixty, 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
(44:41):
someone that's probably aligned with their interests in some way. Yeah,
because we said earlier that, um, you know, you can
some people divide the eras of the Nobel Prize up
in one of those eras as pro democracy, and the
Nobel Prize Committee has definitely like cast their lot um
among the democratic part of the world order, like they're
(45:04):
pro democracy, which doesn't account for communism and other, um,
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 sliper slope, it
(45:26):
really is. And I mean like, 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 peace work than anybody else
on the planet, don't don't overlook them, I think, is
the point. Yeah, like get put in his day, right,
(45:51):
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. Definitely? Yeah, where 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,
(46:12):
that seems obvious, but yeah that's a rule. Um yeah,
I mean imagine the Peace Prize winner who nominated himself
for 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 Um. Swedish German writer Yakob von UKs Kool created
(46:35):
this nineteen eighty 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
(47:00):
like they said that. They said, get out. 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've never heard of it, so they're not certainly
not marketed well. So apparently he funded it, and he
also offered to fund those two additional um Nobel prizes
(47:20):
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, 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,
(47:41):
then stick around for some pretty good listener mail. Because
Chuck said pretty good, I said pretty good, and I
said listener mail, which of course means it's time for
a 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.
(48:04):
Chuck wasn't on board, but Joshua 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, uh,
you can't be a batter like cake, but brownies are
definitely batter. Cookies can be made into large pan size
street brownies have to be made that way. You can't
(48:27):
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 spilling
(48:50):
or 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 in my family and I will
continue to enjoy your work. Danielle from Anaheim, California, or Man,
(49:11):
I'm sorry, this is daniel Okay. When we you said
it in the French way. Yeah, exactly. Sorry Daniel, Um, sorry, Uh.
And I think I don't know if it's gonna 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
(49:33):
undermines the idea that they're cookies. If they're made from batter,
so they can't be cookies. I I agree, And I
think the idea that lemon bar is actually more related
to pie, as Daniel put it as, pretty persuasive too.
So just forget I ever said the whole thing about
brownies being cookies. Throw some meringue on a lemon bar
that's a piece of pie. Yeah, it totally is, especially
(49:56):
if you cut it in like a little triangle wedge. Uh. 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 stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Radio Stuff you Should Know is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
(50:18):
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H.
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