A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you’ll wake up? Yep, it’s the Ig Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor this year’s winners for linguistics and literature. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ig Nobel Prizes”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. And Grant, you know, they announced the Ig Nobel Prizes recently.
Did I win?
Not this year, but I think you’re a strong contender for next year.
As you know, they’re a spoof of the Nobel Prizes, and they’re given out by the editors of a science humor magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research.
And these guys honor academic and scientific research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think.
And I have a report on this year’s Ig Nobel Prize for Linguistics.
And no, you didn’t get it.
It went to researchers at Barcelona University who proved that rats cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.
What are they going to do with that?
I don’t know.
I guess somebody has to research this stuff.
And get this, the Ig Nobel Award for Literature went to one Glenda Brown.
Now, she’s a librarian and professional indexer in Australia.
And Glenda was awarded the Ig Nobel for her scholarly article on the difficulties of indexing the word the.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
In this scholarly article that she wrote, she asked the question, how should we index the who or the hague or the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe?
That’s more interesting to me than it probably ought to be.
I was afraid of that.
And you’ll be interested in this too, Grant.
Her article appeared in a publication called The Indexer.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That sounds familiar.
Yeah, so when you go looking for it, I don’t know if you should look under indexer, the, or the indexer, but I’m sure you will.
Well, later on today, we’re going to be telling you about more Ig Nobel Prizes.
And you can find a link to this year’s winners on our own website.
That’s waywordradio.org.
Well, if you have a question about little words, big words, or medium-sized words, give us a call.
The number is 1-877-929-9673.
That’s 1-877-929-WORD.
Or email us.
The address is words@waywordradio.org.
