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Sept. 30, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
05:41
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner!
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Professor of Astrophysics at UC San Diego.
How do your colleagues view you?
Well, I think some of them view me with a little bit of bemusement because, you know, this book is really a self-help book.
It's not like my first book, Losing the Nobel Prize, which is about a scientific memoir.
Which I read, by the way, just for the record.
Yeah, you did.
You did.
And you got an A- on the final exam.
No, I didn't.
I got a C+. Okay, you're very sweet for saying that.
Go ahead.
Grade inflation is real.
But in the case of this book, which is a self-help book, think like a Nobel Prize winner, I wanted to deconstruct the soft skills that scientific folks, such as my colleagues, often overlook.
Because they might denigrate it slightly and say, oh, that's not what a real scientist should do.
As if people like Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman or others really neglected the soft skills.
You know, there's an old canard about scientists, Dennis.
How do you know a scientist is outgoing?
Go ahead.
How?
Because he looks at your shoes when he talks to you.
Oh, God.
Is that an in-joke?
Well, you know, scientists are, yeah, it is in.
It's introverted.
Scientists are not known to be the most extroverted piece of individual.
Right, I get it.
But these laureates, Dennis, when you asked me, they revealed that they spent as much time working on their soft skills, on their networking, on persuasion, even, dare I say, salesmanship, as they did on learning quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the mysteries of the cosmos.
So I think that's a lesson that I took from these individuals, that just because you've achieved greatness, it doesn't necessarily translate.
To other aspects of your life.
And I often would bring up with these laureates, you know, every four years we're told by 77 Nobel laureates which of the Democratic candidates we should vote for for president.
And the Nobel Prize carries this outsized influence on society.
And I ask them, how does that make you feel?
And how does winning the Nobel—how does it feel when you receive this 3 a.m.
phone call from the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences?
How do you react?
What do you do the next day?
Right.
So what's the answer?
What's the general answer?
So most of them, Dennis, I was shocked to learn, suffered from an affliction that I have, which is called the imposter syndrome, a feeling of severe inadequacy, of actually not being up to the task, of being, you know, kind of just randomly selected for this honor.
And I was fascinated because I said, well, you know, that must have gone away after you won the Nobel Prize.
And almost to a man, Dennis, they all said no.
Winning the Nobel Prize made their imposter syndrome worse.
And I really wanted to explore that in this book.
That is one of the resonant themes in this book.
And I think it comes from a sense of humility.
And the reason that they have it after they win the Nobel Prize, because when you win the Nobel Prize, apparently, I'll never get one.
You may get one for your work in literature, but I will never get one because of my books about it so far.
But when they win the Nobel Prize, then if you go to Sweden, you sign a logbook, and it says, so-and-so, I've received my Nobel Prize, my gold medal, my check for a million dollars.
And most of these men are incredibly curious, and so they take a peek back in the logbook.
Who signed this before me?
And they see Albert Einstein, and they see Madame Curie, and they see Richard Feynman, and they say, I am not worthy.
And in fact, that's how it started.
That's how the impetus began for this book.
Barry Barish, who co-wrote The Forward, he won the Nobel Prize in 2017. He said, I saw Einstein, and I said, I'm not worthy.
And he said, I feel the imposter syndrome even worse after winning the Nobel Prize.
And so, Dennis, I told him, guess what, Barry?
Einstein felt the imposter syndrome.
He said, he did?
I said, yeah.
He was inadequate, he felt, before Isaac Newton.
And before whom did Isaac Newton feel inadequate, Dennis?
Jesus Christ.
He said his biggest regret was Isaac Newton's biggest regret is that he died inadequate compared to Jesus Christ, except in one way, which is that he died a virgin, which he thought was the most Christ-like he could be.
So this is a common theme, Dennis, no matter what you achieve.
You can never really get into the promised land.
And I found that so resonant with me.
You know, this is truly interesting and revelatory to me.
But I have noticed in life that the best are less arrogant than the mediocre.
Yes, yes.
And in fact, Dennis, you know what's so fascinating to me?
Because there were one or two laureates who said, no, I don't have the imposter syndrome.
I expected to win.
And that's a subject for another day.
But, you know, it's hard to argue with someone who has won this, who is, you know, hailed as the next Einstein, that, you know, they should have more humility.
But, of course, you know, many of them do.
But the thing that, you know, also kind of achieved this harmony throughout the book is that when they did feel that they deserved it or something like that, it wasn't from a sense of arrogance.
Because arrogance...
No, no, exactly.
No, I understand.
They know their work.
All right, listen, we've got to do a part two in this.
Brian Keating is a special man, a special thinker.
The book, I think, having heard this, is self-recommending to all of you.
It's titled Into the Impossible, Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, and it is up at DennisPrager.com, among other places.
All right.
Good man.
I'm honored to have him in my life.
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