Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 2

Smelly Shoes, Rock-licking, and Homosexual Necrophiliac Ducks at the Royal Institution on Halloween Night

In his first public appearance as an Ig Nobel Prize winner, Vikash Kumar will be at the Royal Institution in London on Halloween night, Friday, October 31, 2025. In an event called Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, Kumar and other Ig Nobel Prize winners will ask each other questions about their work. Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements […]

Fly-Swatters and Flies

“Fly-Swatters and Flies” is a special review article in the special MOTION issue (volume. 31, no. 5) of the magazine, Annals of Improbable Research. Download the article, free, you like. And if you really like, then subscribe to the magazine!

World Standards Day, and World Standards Day

The world, with the exception of the USA, will celebrate World Standards Day on Tuesday, October 14, 2025. As usual, the event is organized by the world’s leading developers of international standards: the IEC [the International Electrotechnical Commission], ISO [the International Organization for Standardization] and the ITU [the International Telecommunication Union]. The USA will celebrate […]

The Adventures of Tom Lum at the Igs

Tom Lum visited the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on behalf of Scientific American magazine. He met some unexpected people there (Julie Mannella and the other Ig Nobel winners, opera singers, Bill Kaelin, Mariette DiChristina,…) , then crafted this video report about the experience.   Meanwhile, taking a more traditional approach, Chris Simms […]

The combined happy allure of smartphones and hemorrhoids

Dr. Trisha Pashricha gave a 24/7 lecture at this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. She subsequently posted a video clip of it on Instagram, saying: Watch me explain to a room full of actual Nobel laureates how we discovered that taking your smartphone to the bathroom was linked to an increased risk of hemorrhoids. The […]

Impending Move to a New Magazine Subscription Processor

This is what has been driving us nuts recently — and we fear has also been driving some of you nuts: If you are a subscriber to the magazine, (not just to mini-AIR, the free little monthly email newsletter), you may have noticed and suffered from the deepening technical woes of the company we have […]

How to Become Famous Physicists: Pasta

One way to make it big in physics is to make pasta. Physics Magazine interviewed the Italian physicists who did exactly that — and consequently won the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize for physics. Here is the beginning of that interview (read the whole interview at the Physics Magazine web site): Pasta Physics Scoops Up an Ig Nobel […]

Predicting the End of the World

Joshua Mhlakela [pictured here, in a screen capture from his webcast] was 14 years too late to become a co-winner of an Ig Nobel Mathematics Prize — too late in making his prediction that the world will end at a particular, specific time. The particular time is this week. The International Business Times reports (on […]

Ig Nobel Face-to-Face TODAY at the MIT Museum

Ig Nobel Face-to-Face TODAY, Saturday, Sept 20, 2025, at the MIT Museum, 2:30-4:00 pm. Ig Nobel Prize winners will ask each other questions about their work.

The Added Difficulty of Producing the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony in 2025

This year, this 2025, brought new difficulties in organizing the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — difficulties for us, the ceremony organizers, and difficulties for the winners who contemplated traveling to the USA to take part in the ceremony. Hannah Richter reports about it in a September 19 article in Science magazine: The Ig Nobels are […]