On Big Brains, we get to speak to a lot of groundbreaking scholars and experts, but some conversations we walk away knowing we’ve just heard from someone who is really changing the world. We certainly felt that way years ago after talking to University of Chicago scholar James Robinson, and it turns out…the Nobel Prize committee agreed in 2024 when it awarded him a share of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Robinson was honored for the exact work that we talked to him about nearly five years ago. The author of numerous best-selling books, including Why Nations Fail (2012) and The Narrow Corridor (2019), he won the Nobel this year because his work researching what makes nations succeed and…what makes them fail. There’s no better time to refamiliarize ourselves with his important research and celebrate his Nobel win.

The Problem of Self-Diagnosis