voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. hello and welcome to nobel minds with me, zeinab badawi, from the royal palace in stockholm. we'll be hearing from this year's nobel laureates. in the audience, we're joined by some of their family and friends, as well as students from here in sweden.

joining us are their royal highnesses, the crown princess victoria of sweden and prince daniel. your royal highness, you want to say a few words of welcome and to tell us a little bit about where exactly we are in your palace? well, thank you. so nobel laureates, ladies and gentlemen, viewers, i'd like to wish you a warm welcome to the royal palace here in stockholm and to the bernadotte library. this library holds over 100,000 books that used to belong to the kings and queens of the house of bernadotte. this is a very special library in that sense. but we're not here to read, we're here to listen, and we're here to listen to the nobel laureates, to their knowledge and wisdom and their contributions to science and economics, so thank you all forjoining today. thank you for hosting us. thank you, your royal highness. thank you. applause welcome to nobel minds

and the first of our two programmes. laureates, this is the first time that you've been brought together in discussion on television. renewed congratulations to you all. but do you know what? just looking around the table, i'm very struck by the fact that, for once, i'm joined by three women — a very rare occurrence. and it's got me wondering, why do you think that there are so few women at the top in both the sciences and the social sciences? professor katalin kariko, you're the first hungarian woman to win a nobel prize. what do you think? well, you know, what i think is that when whenever our career is moving forward, that's the time, the child—bearing age, and many of the women decide to have family. and it is difficult for, you know, advancing their research, for example. and that might be one reason

that they give up... so, you pin it all on the fact that it's women when they have children. yes, they give up their dreams because they want to have children. but i have a daughter and anne has two sons so that, you know, we can show here that they can do both. all right. moungi bawendi, you're one of the chemist laureates. what's your take on this? well, it seems to me that when we look at the nobel laureates, for instance, it's about research that was done decades ago. and what we have here are pioneers, women that were pioneers in their field when those fields were being opened up more and more to women, where the attitudes towards having women in those fields were beginning to change. i hope we've made progress since then and i hope that having three women will no longer be seen as an anomaly but rather a straightforward, common occurrence. so do you agree, professor anne l'huillier? you are the first french woman who has

won the physics prize since marie curie 120 years ago. yes. fast—forwa rd now — do you think this is going to be getting better? yeah, i really think things are improving for women. i think, for me, the fact- that there are very few women, especially in science - and technology, is very much lack of role models. for me, marie curie has played a very important role. - so, it's fantastic to be - the woman after marie curie to get the nobel prize in physics _ professor drew weissman, you are also one of the laureates in the prize for medicine or physiology. what's your take? so, i think it's a combination. i completely agree with moungi that 20, 30 years ago, women were just breaking into the field and were just getting recognised. but if we look at our modern society, women are still

not treated equally. i'm sure claudia can tell us quite a bit about this, and i think that's a problem with society in general. and it applies to women, it applies to minorities, it applies to so many different groups. and to me, the bigger question is, how do we solve all of these problems? how do we get all people to be treated equal? professor ferenc krausz, one of the physicists here, how do you solve it? i mean, you've got to start pretty early, haven't you? well, i would agree with everything what was said and would perhaps add that there are also some stereotypes out there where — girls might have the feeling that these activities, like working in the lab, doing experiments, are mainly — mainlyjobs for actually men and not so much for women. and i think our role models here can provide the example

that this may not be true. and we can do, of course, proactively a lot to actually reach out to high school pupils and invite them to our laboratories. really? you've got to start that early? absolutely. that's where we have to do this because just a too low percentage of pupils actually choose this subject — physics, chemistry, biology. professor louis brus, you're one of the chemist laureates also. i know you've got three children, including two daughters and some grandchildren. how do you think they — how do you see it from their point of view? do you think things are going to get better in the future for women who want to go into science? yeah, definitely. there's been steady progress, you know, during my lifetime, you know, just as been said at the table here, and i think role models are critical.

you know, young students in high school looking at some scientists in the front of the room, they're thinking, "how could i possibly fill that role?" and if it'sjust white men, it's, you know, it'sjust — they're going to conclude it's not a possible career for them, no matter what we say, so role models are critical. claudia goldin, what i'm hearing around the table is that the importance of female role models to encourage females to go into science and social sciences seems to be the crux. do you agree? i don't think it's the whole thing at all. so, the first thing is, as we've heard, is that i would really like to look ahead rather than looking behind. and if we look ahead, we do see, as we've heard, a lot of change. but we also know that there are impediments and it's incumbent upon us to understand the impediments. so, first of all, if we look at the various fields, what's pretty amazing is that the field of biology

has become disproportionately female. and so, we have to ask why has that gone in one direction? physics, engineering, chemistry has moved a bit. economics is a little bit slower. why are those being held behind a bit? in addition, even those who go through don't necessarily go into academia — they go into big pharma, for example. the finalthing — i mean, we've talked about issues concerning home, family and work but we also know that the time that it takes to get a phd and then to get tenure has expanded enormously. that disproportionately impacts women versus men. so, in fact, we have added something that is more of an impediment as we've made progress. really interesting.

well, gender equality in the field of work and pay goes right to the heart of what you won your economics prize for. so, let's just take a short video and just remind ourselves of what it was awarded for. claudia goldin receives her nobel prize for uncovering key drivers of gender differences in the labour market. by charting how women's work has been historically under—reported, she's shown how human and societal development is intertwined with gender equality. for instance, the factors affecting demand for women's labour and their opportunities in the labour market. she also examined the influences that affect women's desire to get an education, as well as how parenthood has been, and continues to be, a watershed when it comes to work and pay.

so, claudia goldin, it's clear that gender pay inequality has narrowed, although it still exists, butjust give us a brief account as to why gender inequality still exists in the workplace. women do disproportionately do child care and elder care relative to men and therefore, they're going to be taking positions — it's not necessarily that they're going to stay in the home, for example — they're going to be taking positions that enable that type of flexibility and those positions often pay less. they are less demanding in terms of hours and in terms of days and, therefore, they're going to be disproportionately being paid less. what steps can be taken, then, to get greater parity in the workplace in terms of work and pay?

so, there are many fields that have figured out ways to get around it. so, it's sort of interesting that, if you think about it, all you need is one perfect substitute for yourself. so, if you are working at 11:00 and the phone rings and you have to go to the school to get your child but you have a client waiting for you, just pull in your perfect substitute. that's all you need. and so, therefore, fields in which that are built on having teams of workers — paediatricians, for example, anaesthesiologists, veterinarians, pharmacists — certain of forms of tech work have very good substitutes. so, more teamwork, right? because that's kind

of what you say — that not work as individuals in the workplace but work as a team and help each other, right? and support each other. i would like to add a little thing for a little bit what it is to work as a woman in academia. i think as a professor, you are incredibly free, and that helps as a woman with small kids. it's a flexiblejob. it's extremely flexible. you can come whenever you want, you can leave whenever you want, you run your own agenda and as a woman, i have found this incredibly helpful. and i think this, i would like to advertise to the young woman — you are incredibly free, and this is helpful when you have small children. let's look at another impact on work and pay in terms of the gender debate. what do you think might be the impact of technology and ai onjobs and how it might affect women? because you were saying,

claudia, that fewer women go into subjects like technology, computer science and so on and these are the jobs which the economies are beginning to favour, aren't they? so, could that exacerbate the problem and arrest any progress? yeah? it might help. you think it might help? because you can work from home. we realise that i technology helps. but you've got to learn it in the first place. and if there are not enough females going into computer science.... yes, but you know, - the technology helped us during the pandemic also, - that we could work from home and... that's interesting, yeah. ..and that it would also help a parent because, | let's say, you know, a scientist'sjob- is not family friendly. drew weissman, you were nodding. i mean, i think it's a bigger problem. and i don't know the source — or i don't think i know

the source — but i think in general in our society, women do not work as much as men. but the question is why? wait, wait, wait — women do not work as much as men? no, no — no, the percentage of women working outside of the house in paying jobs. 0h, isee. 0k, fine. just seeking that qualification there! my wife's going to murder me! yeah, yeah, yeah. i've saved your life just then. no, but i think getting at the source of that is really critical to understanding it and fixing it. so, we've got a question in the audience for you, claudia, about your work. let me go to clara paloma. clara, what's your question, please? yes, i would like to ask- claudia goldin, when you were carrying out your research, did it ever strike you that i you would get a nobel prize? and how was it. to get that call? well, thanks very much. i think that each of us would say, and we've said it,

no, that it never struck us that we would get a nobel prize _ that's certainly not what was driving our passion and our curiosity. that doesn't mean to say that we're not pleased to receive it. and receiving it meant a tremendous amount, because there was an outpouring to me ofjubilation and joy and appreciation and a sense on the part of a large number of people that their work was validated. and for me, this means that my award isn'tjust for me. it's been magnified many times, and for that i'm very grateful. what a lovely answer that was. thank you. good. well, i think we talked about how working from home has increased flexibility and has perhaps made it easierfor women. professor katalin kariko, you brought that up. and, indeed, that takes us

to our next category, because, of course, covid—19 was when working from home really took off. and that was central to the nobel prize in medicine or physiology. let's just look at this video telling us what the award was made for. something that we had worked on for 25 years was now being stuck in our arms. for decades, there have been attempts to speed up the time—consuming process of developing vaccines by using viruses, genetic information, messenger rna, or mrna. discoveries by katalin kariko and drew weissman fundamentally changed our understanding of how mrna interacts with our immune system and allowed vaccines to be developed, produced and updated quickly as well as on a large scale. that work received a lot of attention and funding when the covid pandemic hit

the world, and it has the potential to treat many other diseases in the future. so, drew weissman, just remind us of what your words were when you were told that you had won the nobel prize for medicine or physiology. so i talked to kati, i think around 4am eastern time, and kati sent me a note. "did you hear from thomas?" and i said, "thomas who?" so we started talking, and she said, well, somebody called her and said they were from the nobel assembly and that we had won but, "they didn't have your phone number." kati gave them my phone number, which we'll talk about later. but we then talked and we said we didn't believe it. we thought somebody was pulling our leg and playing a joke on us and we really hadn't won it. and then, at six in

the morning, we saw the video, and we were both incredibly ecstatic and surprised. now, you've had such a close working relationship, and both of you said that you sometimes have trouble sleeping, so talking to each other in the early hours of the morning is not unusual, right? no, we do that all the time when we're working together. it was usually by emails. we were not sure that the other person... we didn't want to wake up the spouses or the kids. yeah. so, i mean, you know, you came up with mrna, which uses a completely different approach from traditional vaccine technology. and of course, it paved the way for covid—19. and we salute you because, of course, that saved countless lives. i think we ought to give them a round of applause. yes, absolutely. yes _ you know, but the really sad thing is actually you both were working on what was seen as a scientific backwater

and you really had to battle to get to where you are. i mean, one of you pick that up. yeah, i mean, i started to work on it ten years...on messenger rna before drew, and then i couldn't get funding. zero. and you were also thrown out of a laboratory? yeah. — laid off, rather. ten years ago. ten years ago, because they thought what you were doing wasjust... because i couldn't get the funding, and that was enough. but you went back to your native hungary, didn't you? and you had this heroine�*s welcome. yeah. how did you feel when all those young people, multitudes turned up to see you? i mean, that was one, two months ago, you know, in october, when i went back. and i wasjust unbelievable that people gathered. and they were so happy. they were like celebrating a rock star or somebody,

and it was just unbelievable! but i know we were talking about female role models and how important that is. and all your stories are so inspiring, but yours, kati, really is, because you came from a very economically deprived background, and, you know, yourfather was a butcher and you lived in very modest accommodation. and really, you know, your brilliance now has brought you to the top table. yeah, i hope that the girls will think that their parents not necessarily has to be professors. they can be coming any kind of background, and then they can study, believing something, working hard, and then their dream comes true. ok, so we got the covid—19 vaccine. but even though, obviously, as i said, it saved a lot of lives, we have had this phenomenon of both vaccine scepticism and also vaccine hesitancy, two

slightly different things. but why do you think there was this scepticism? and do you think scientists were also to blame? so, hindsight is always a great thing. looking back, scientists should have done much more to promote vaccines, to promote their safety, their efficacy. but i think we were against an enormous headwind of social media. and the problem with social media is it gives any person with unusual thoughts the ability to forecast those to the entire world. in the old days, crazy people would sit on the corner with a megaphone and yell. now you've got hundreds of thousands or millions of people who are reading their posts, and a large number of people who are looking for conspiracy theories wherever they can find them. and i think this was just a great conspiracy theory. they could blame everything

in the world that was bad on rna vaccines and use that as a tool to attack the ruling parties, to attack politicians, to attack scientists. so the politicisation of the vaccine is a huge factor, you think, how it was used by politicians as a football? i mean, in the us that was an enormous problem, but it happened across the world. but does it also boil down to a lack of scientific literacy, perhaps, that, you know, a lot of people in the big wide public out there don't really understand science too well? professor louis brus, your thoughts on that? yeah, i think that's our number one problem in the us, - the fact that the science is black magic to much. of the population. it's a shame. you know, climate researchl in the us is highly politicised as well as the vaccines. and all of this comesl from politics in taking

advantage of situations, basicallx _ you want to name names? laughter no. j 0k. but, i mean, science literacy is certainly a problem. but i think we scientists and the scientific community has a great deal of responsibility to actually deal with it, because i think it's our task and even duty, i would say, to reach out and try to explain in simple terms what we are doing, what it is good for, and in particular in the case of these new vaccines. and science should actually provide clear answers. "what is my risk if i'm doing it? "what is my risk if i'm not doing it?" and i think we didn't do a good job on that. i think this is an issue also| about the scientific process that louis was talking about, the scientific literacy. - there's uncertainty in science, and we're all comfortable - with the uncertainty.

but the politicians, you know, they really don't like that, - so they want to be able to say something is yes or it's no, i you know, not, "well, i i'm going to hedge here, "i'm going to hedge there." and, you know, if somebody. is not trained in understanding the scientific process, they are completely . confused with that. drew weissman, i know that you and your family have done a lot to try to persuade people to take the covid—19 vaccine. your wife, a psychologist, mary ellen weissman, and your daughter allison actually offered to be guinea pigs for the vaccine. actually, just before you answer that, can we just see if they're in the audience? i think they are in the audience. and maybe you'd like to stand and we can say hello to you. good. did they become guinea pigs for the covid—19 vaccine? they were early entrants into the covid—19 phase—three vaccine trials. one of the tools my wife

would use is she would go with friends to church services, to community meetings, and they would say to her, "well, we heard "the vaccine gives you cancer or it makes you sterile" or does a variety of things. and she would look at them and just bluntly say, "do you think my husband would have his daughters "and his wife take a vaccine that's going to make them "sterile?" and that was a very strong message to people, to encourage them to join the trials. i think we should give them an applause. don't you? i think we all salute you. that's a good point to end this first programme of nobel minds, with the winners of this year's nobel prizes. join us for the second programme, when we'll be looking at the awards made in the field of physics and also in chemistry.

for now, from me, zeinab badawi, and the rest of the team, from the royal palace in stockholm, goodbye. hello there. part two of the weekend looks pretty similar to saturdays with a lot of cloud around for many, glimmers of brightness here, and there and it remaining pretty mild for mid—december. there will be some very wet weather, though, continuing across the north and west of scotland, thanks to almost stationary weather front here. but you can see on the air mass charts, the mild air moving up on a brisk south—westerly wind. however, this weather front will continue to bring some problems across northwest scotland, some heavy rainfall. it does start to weaken a little bit

as it sinks southwards into more central parts of the country for sunday evening. but we're concerned about the northwest highlands. by the end of sunday, we could be looking at up to 200 millimetres of rain falling in places. that's likely to lead some localised flooding and even some landslips in some sensitive areas. so the amber warning the met office have enforced throughout sunday continues for the north and west highlands. the rain beginning to edge a bit further southwards into argyll, towards the end of the day pushes into dumfries and galloway, northern ireland, into the evening, probably across cumbria and northwest wales. elsewhere it's rather cloudy, glimmers of brightness, southeast england, east of the pennines, east wales, and that'lljust make it feel even more mild, with temperatures at the low to mid—teens for many. that weather front begins to weaken as it moves southwards during sunday night. but it starts to reinvigorate across wales, south west england by the end of the night, and it turns a bit colder for the very far north of scotland. otherwise, it's a largely mild night to come for most 8—11 degrees. for monday, we have a couple of weather fronts across the country.

these will reinvigorate as they move their way eastward. so it starts off again, rather cloudy for many, limited brightness. the rain peps up across northern ireland, central southern scotland, northern england, the midlands, wales for a time and then pushes out into the north sea, leaves the legacy of cloud, further spots of rain and drizzle. and once again, for the time of year it'll be fairly mild, temperatures low to mid—teens. as we move out to monday to tuesday, this more active weather front will bring some wet weather for england and wales throughout the day on tuesday. turns briefly colder across the far north of the country, you can see there. but generally we're in the influence of low pressure. so next week will remain fairly unsettled. rain at times, generally mild for most of us, but it will start to see a little bit colder, particularly towards the end of the week across northern areas. and you can see that evidence here for the end of the week. but generally speaking, generally mild for mid to late december with outbreaks of rain, a little bit of brightness here and there.

live from washington, this is bbc news. families of those taken by hamas protest in tel aviv after israeli soldiers mistakenly kill three hostages and demand the government immediately return to negotiations. the world health organization says it has delivered essential medical supplies to gaza's al—shifa hospital and calls its emergency ward "a bloodbath". there's been a non—stop stream of injured people coming in on trolleys, on donkey carts, on stretchers being pushed down the road. and two more shipping companies divert their ships away from the red sea amid attacks by suspected houthi fighters in yemen. i'm helena humphrey. good to have you with us. relatives of those held hostage

by hamas have rallied in tel aviv, demanding that israel's government restart