Nobel Prize Conversations

Latest Episodes:

First reactions | Omar Yaghi, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 | Telephone interview Oct 08, 2025

Show notes

“I set out to build beautiful things and solve intellectual problems.” Omar Yaghi was just changing flights when he had heard the news that he had been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For this conversation with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, recorded as he was departing on the next leg of his journey, Yaghi speaks about his early life as a refugee in Jordan, the wonderful way his field has developed, and the overwhelming draw of the beauty of chemistry; “The deeper you dig, the more beautifully you find things are constructed.”

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First reactions | John Martinis, Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 | Telephone interview Oct 07, 2025

Show notes

“My wife is very kind to me, so she didn’t wake me up for a couple of hours.” John Martinis was sleeping when news of his Nobel Prize in Physics broke, but his wife Jean was up reading late into the night and received the calls, letting him sleep on. In this conversation with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, he talks about the excitement of learning how to investigate problems with his co-laureates John Clarke and Michel Devoret, four decades ago, and how that experience taught him what to aim for when building labs in academic and industry subsequently.

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First reactions | Fred Ramsdell, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine | telephone interview Oct 07, 2025

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“I was out walking the dogs and she started yelling, and I thought there was a grizzly bear nearby.” Actually, what Fred Ramsdell’s wife was telling him, while on a hiking trip together, was that he had been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In this conversation with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, recorded early the following day, Ramsdell recall how the realisation dawned on them. He goes on to speak about the benefits of working in the environment of biotech, the joy of finding talented collaborators, and the importance of celebrating the dedication of those that nurtured hundreds of generations of the all-important scurfy mouse, in which he and Mary Brunkow discovered the FOXP3 gene: “I'm really in awe of the fact that they were able to do that for so long. It's incredible.”

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First reactions | John Clarke, Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 | Telephone interview Oct 07, 2025

Show notes

“I could not imagine accepting the prize without the two of them,” says John Clarke of his fellow Nobel Prize laureates in physics, John Martinis and Michel Devoret. In this short conversation with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, recorded just after the public announcement of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics, Clarke recalls the electric atmosphere in the lab, 40 years ago, during their experiments in which they first demonstrated macroscopic quantum tunnelling. Clarke also reflects on others who inspired his thinking at the start of his career.

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First reactions | Mary Brunkow, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 | Telephone interview Oct 06, 2025

Show notes

“My phone rang, and I saw a number from Sweden and thought, well that’s just spam of some sort, so I disabled the phone and went back to sleep.” Mary Brunkow clearly wasn’t expecting the call from Stockholm. This brief conversation with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith catches the new medicine laureate at her dining table at 4:30am, an hour and a half after she had heard the news. She talks about the power of genetics to unravel biology and how she feels it was an honour to have been one of the contributors to solving the puzzle of immune tolerance: “It takes a bunch of different brains, all working on it together, for sure!”

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First reactions | Shimon Sakaguchi, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 | Telephone interview Oct 06, 2025

Show notes

"I believe this will encourage immunologists and physicians to apply the T regulatory cells to treat various immunological diseases.” Shimon Sakaguchi, 2025 Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine, has always been driven by the desire to find new ways to combat disease. In this conversation with the Nobel Prize’s Adam Smith, recorded just after the prize announcement, Sakaguchi speaks briefly about his surprise at the news and reflects on the fundamental research question that kept him dedicated to the field after many others abandoned it, a question that took over two decades to answer.

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A Time for Celebration: Adam Smith reveals what really gets our laureates celebrating Oct 01, 2025

Show notes

In this special bonus episode of Nobel Prize Conversations, we shine a light on the many ways achievements in science are celebrated — from quiet late-night breakthroughs in the lab to the glittering applause of the Nobel Prize award ceremony. Host Karin Svensson speaks with Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach, about why recognition matters, how laureates share their joy with families, colleagues, and entire communities, and how the Nobel Prize captures the world’s attention to honour the spirit of discovery.

Along the way, we hear stories of invention, laughter, music, and even unexpected traditions from Nobel Prize laureates Peter Agre, Jim Allison, Frances Arnold, John Jumper, Katalin Karikó, Benjamin List, David McMillan, John O'Keefe, Paul Romer, George Smith and Donna Strickland.

Through their lives and work, failures and successes – get to know the individuals who have been awarded the Nobel Prize on the Nobel Prize Conversations podcast. Find it on Acast, or wherever you listen to pods. https://linktr.ee/NobelPrizeConversations

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John Hopfield: Nobel Prize Conversations Jul 09, 2025

Show notes

“I’ve never been part of the gang. I was a one-man band playing little tunes.” – Meet physics laureate John Hopfield in a podcast recorded at his cottage in Selborne, England. Together with host Adam Smith, he reflects on the value of interdisciplinary work and how chemists and physicists might collaborate more closely.

They also discuss the future of AI and Hopfield’s greatest fears about it.

Read about John Hopfield and the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

See the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 and the moment they were awarded their medals.

This podcast was a production of Nobel Prize Outreach and Filt, and created in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.

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Simon Johnson: Nobel Prize Conversations Jul 02, 2025

Show notes

"With the great power to invent technology comes a great responsibility." – In this lively and energetic podcast conversation, economic sciences laureate Simon Johnson talks about how the past, future and present are interconnected, as well as how science fiction and history are intertwined. He comes to the conclusion that “science fiction is history in reverse or history is science fiction in reverse, whichever way you want to think about it.

He also tells us about his family history and how his family was part of the steel industry in Sheffield, England. The industrial revolution is discussed as well as the responsibility that comes with inventing technology.

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Gary Ruvkun: Nobel Prize Conversations Jun 25, 2025

Show notes

“When we're doing genetics, we are tapping into that mythic power of change.” — In this conversation with molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun, we discover his scientific journey and find out that the world of genetics still has many fields left to explore.

A natural storyteller, Ruvkun also shares some of his favourite tales with us – from his gap year in Latin America to how his grandparents emigrated to the United States. For Ruvkun, travelling has given him more stories than he could have ever imagined – and he tries to share them whenever he has the chance.

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