The Essence of Nobelity
By Elizabeth Marglin
Turk Pipkin, the director of Nobelity, doesn’t digress—he gets right to the heart of why the world is so screwed up. Ever wondered what the world’s top ten problems are? Well, now you can have those issues laid out for you in a handy list. Here are some of the highlights: Energy, water, poverty, disease, and education. Pipkin dives into many of the top ten in depth, but he doesn’t stop at enumeration. More than mere talking points, he wants solutions. Nothing short of that can stave off the helplessness he feels about the legacy our generation is leaving for the next one. With the future made more urgent as seen from the lens of his two young daughters, Pipkin makes his way across the world as an everyman in search of the essential.
I love this film, earnestness and all. The nine Nobel Laureates he worked with include Desmond Tutu, Wangari Maathai, Ahmed Zewail, Harold Varmus, Steve Weinberg, Amartya Sen, Jody Williams, Sir Joseph Rotblat and Richard Smalley. The work with Rotblat and Smalley, it turns out, were the final major interviews of their lives.
