WEBVTT

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George and Charlotte Blonsky, who were

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a married couple living in
the Bronx in New York City,

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invented something.

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They got a patent in
1965 for what they call,

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"a device to assist women in giving birth."

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This device consists of a large, round table


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and some machinery.

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When the woman is ready to deliver her child,

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she lies on her back,

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she is strapped down to the table,

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and the table is rotated at high speed.

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The child comes flying out

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through centrifugal force.

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If you look at their patent carefully,

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especially if you have any
engineering background or talent,

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you may decide that you see

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one or two points where the design is 
not perfectly adequate. (Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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Doctor Ivan Schwab in California

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is one of the people, 
one of the main people,

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who helped answer the question,

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"Why don't woodpeckers get headaches?"

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And it turns out the answer to that

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is because their brains

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are packaged inside their skulls

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in a way different from the way

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our brains, we being human beings,

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true, have our brains packaged.

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They, the woodpeckers, typically

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will peck, they will bang their head

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on a piece of wood thousands 
of times every day. Every day!

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And as far as anyone knows,

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that doesn't bother them in the slightest.

NOTE Paragraph

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How does this happen?

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Their brain does not slosh around like ours does.

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Their brain is packed in very tightly,

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at least for blows coming 
right from the front.

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Not too many people paid attention

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to this research until
the last few years

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when, in this country especially,

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people are becoming curious about

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what happens to the brains
of football players

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who bang their heads repeatedly.

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And the woodpecker maybe relates to that.

NOTE Paragraph

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There was a paper published

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in the medical journal The Lancet

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in England a few years ago called

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" A man who pricked his finger
and smelled putrid for 5 years."

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Dr. Caroline Mills and her team

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received this patient and didn't 
really know what to do about it.

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The man had cut his finger,

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he worked processing chickens,

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and then he started to
smell really, really bad.

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So bad that when 
he got in a room

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with the doctors and the nurses,

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they couldn't stand being 
in the room with him.

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It was intolerable.

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They tried every drug,

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every other treatment
they could think of.

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After a year, he still 
smelled putrid.

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After two years, still smelled putrid.

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Three years, four years,
still smelled putrid.

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After five years, it went away on its own.

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It's a mystery.

NOTE Paragraph

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In New Zealand, Dr. Lianne Parkin

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and her team tested an old 
tradition in her city.

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They live in a city that has huge hills,

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San Francisco-grade hills.

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And in the winter there,
it gets very cold

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and very icy.

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There are lots of injuries.

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The tradition that they tested,

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they tested by asking people

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who were on their way to 
work in the morning,

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to stop and try something out.

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Try one of two conditions.

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The tradition is that in the winter,

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in that city, you wear your socks
on the outside of your boots.

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And what they discovered by experiment,

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and it was quite graphic when they saw it,

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was that it's true.

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That if you wear your socks on the 
outside rather than the inside,

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you're much more likely 
to survive and not slip and fall.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, I hope you will agree
with me that these things

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I've just described to you,

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each of them, deserves some kind of prize.
(Laughter)

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And that's what they got,

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each of them got an Ig Nobel prize.

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In 1991, I, together with bunch of other people,

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started the Ig Nobel prize ceremony.

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Every year we give out 10 prizes.

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The prizes are based on just 
one criteria. It's very simple.

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It's that you've done something that 
makes people laugh and then think.

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What you've done makes 
people laugh and then think.

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Whatever it is, there's something about it

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that when people encounter it at first,

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their only possible reaction is to laugh.

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And then a week later,

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it's still rattling around in their heads

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and all they want to do 
is tell their friends about it.

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That's the quality we look for.

NOTE Paragraph

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Every year, we get in the neighborhood

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of 9,000 new nominations 
for the Ig Nobel prize.

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Of those, consistently between 10 percent

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and 20 percent of those nominations

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are people who nominate themselves.

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Those self-nominees almost never win.

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It's very difficult, numerically, 
to win a prize if you want to.

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Even if you don't want to,

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it's very difficult numerically.

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You should know that when 
we choose somebody

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to win an Ig Nobel prize,

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We get in touch with that person, very quietly.

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We offer them the chance to decline

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this great honor if they want to.

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Happily for us, almost everyone 
who's offered a prize

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decides to accept.

NOTE Paragraph

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What do you get if you
win an Ig Nobel prize?

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Well, you get several things.

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You get an Ig Nobel prize.

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The design is different every year.

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These are always handmade
from extremely cheap materials.

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You're looking at a picture

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of the prize we gave last year, 2013.

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Most prizes in the world also give

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their winners some cash, some money.

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We don't have any money,

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so we can't give them.

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In fact, the winners have to
pay their own way

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to come to the Ig Nobel ceremony,

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which most of them do.

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Last year, though, we did manage
to scrape up some money.

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Last year, each of the 10
Ig Nobel prize winners

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received from us 10 trillion dollars.

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A $10 trillion bill from Zimbabwe. (Laughter)

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You may remember that 
Zimbabwe had a little adventure

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for a few years there of inflation.

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They ended up printing bills

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that were in denominations as
large as 100 trillion dollars.

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The man responsible, who runs
the national bank there, by the way,

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won an Ig Nobel prize in mathematics.

NOTE Paragraph

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The other thing you win is an invitation

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to come to the ceremony,

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which happens at Harvard University.

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And when you get there,

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you come to Harvard's biggest 
meeting place and classroom.

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It fits 1,100 people,

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it's jammed to the gills,

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and up on the stage,

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waiting to shake your hand,

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waiting to hand you your Ig Nobel prize,

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are a bunch of Nobel prize winners.

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That's the heart of the ceremony.

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The winners are kept secret until that moment,

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even the Nobel laureates 
who will shake their hand

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don't know who they are
until they're announced.

NOTE Paragraph

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I am going to tell you 
about just a very few

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of the other medical-related prizes we've given.

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Keep in mind, we've given 230 prizes. 


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There are lots of these people
who walk among you.

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Maybe you have one.

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A paper was published about 30 years ago

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called "Injuries due to Falling Coconuts."

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It was written by Dr. Peter Barss,

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who is Canadian.

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Dr. Barss came to the ceremony

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and explained that as a young doctor,

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he wanted to see the world.

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So he went to Papua New Guinea.

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When he got there, he went to work
in a hospital, and he was curious

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what kinds of things happen to people
that bring them to the hospital.

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He looked through the 
records, and he discovered

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that a surprisingly large number of people

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in that hospital were there

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because of injuries due to falling coconuts.

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One typical thing that happens is

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people will come from the highlands,
where there are not many coconut trees,

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down to visit their relatives on the coast,

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where there are lots.

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And they'll think that a coconut tree

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is a fine place to stand and maybe lie down.

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A coconut tree that is 90 feet tall,

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and has coconuts that weigh two pounds

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that can drop off at any time.

NOTE Paragraph

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A team of doctors in Europe

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published a series of papers
about colonoscopies.

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You're all familiar with colonoscopies,

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one way or another.

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Or in some cases,

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one way and another.

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They, in these papers,

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explained to their fellow doctors
who perform colonoscopies,

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how to minimize the chance

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that when you perform a colonoscopy,

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your patient will explode. (Laughter)

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Dr. Emmanuel Ben-Soussan

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one of the authors,

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flew in from Paris to the ceremony,

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where he explained the history of this,

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that in the 1950s,

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when colonoscopies were becoming
a common technique for the first time,

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people were figuring out how to do it well.

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And there were some difficulties at first.

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The basic problem, I'm sure you're familiar with,

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that you're looking inside a 
long, narrow, dark place.

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And so, you want to have a larger space.

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You add some gas to inflate it

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so you have room to look around.

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Now, that's added to the 
gas, the methane gas,

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that's already inside.

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The gas that they used at first,
in many cases, was oxygen.

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So they added oxygen to methane gas.

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And then they wanted to be able to see,

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they needed light,

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so they'd put in a light source,

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which in the 1950s was very hot.

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So you had methane gas, which is flammable,

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oxygen and heat.

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They stopped using oxygen pretty quickly.
(Laughter)

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Now it's rare that patients will explode,

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but it does still happen.

NOTE Paragraph

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The final thing that I want 
to tell you about is a prize

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we gave to Dr. Elena Bodnar.

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Dr. Elena Bodnar invented a brassiere

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that in an emergency

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can be quickly separated 


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into a pair of protective face masks.

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One to save your life,

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one to save the life of some 
lucky bystander. (Laughter)

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Why would someone do this, you might wonder.

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Dr. Bodnar came to the ceremony

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and she explained that 
she grew up in Ukraine.

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She was one of the doctors who treated victims

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of the Chernobyl power plant meltdown.

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And they later discovered that

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a lot of the worst medical problems

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came from the particles people breathed in.

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So she was always thinking after that

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about could there be some simple mask


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that was available everywhere
when the unexpected happens.

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Years later, she moved to America.

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She had a baby,

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One day she looked, and on the floor,

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her infant son had picked up her bra,

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and had her bra on his face.

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And that's where the idea came from.

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She came to the Ig Nobel ceremony

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with the first prototype of the bra

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and she demonstrated:

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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["Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate 
(2008) in economics"]

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["Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel 
laureate (2001) in physics"]

NOTE Paragraph

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I myself own an emergency bra. (Laughter)

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It's my favorite bra,

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but I would be happy to 
share it with any of you,

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should the need arise.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)