Episode Details

Professor Robert Lefkowitz is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose discovery of G protein-coupled receptors underpins more than 700 of the drugs in use today, including beta blockers, antihistamines, antidepressants and GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. At 83 years young, he still runs his lab at Duke University, exercises an hour every day, and eats entirely plant-based food after quadruple bypass surgery at 51.

In this deeply personal conversation, Professor Lefkowitz takes Méline through the science that changed modern medicine, the role of intuition in research, and the father who gave him the most important piece of advice he ever received and died three weeks later, never knowing what his son would go on to achieve.

He explains:
 ◼ How G protein-coupled receptors work and why they are the foundation of modern pharmacology
 ◼ Why a third of all FDA-approved drugs work through the same system he discovered in the 1970s
 ◼ How GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic actually work and why we are only at the beginning
 ◼ Why intuition is the only thing that keeps a scientist going when experiments fail for years
 ◼ The two things he says are all that really matter in a life: love and work
 ◼ What he hopes to see breakthroughs in before he dies: cancer and dementia
 ◼ The advice his mentor gave him that he still lives by: five year packages, never more

0:00 Intro
0:47 How Winning the Nobel Prize Changed His Name and His Life
1:50 The Discovery That Underpins 700 of Today's Most Used Drugs
4:42 How Receptors Work: The Lock and Key That Runs Your Body
8:05 Why Intuition Is the Only Thing That Keeps a Scientist Going
11:35 The Vietnam War Draft That Accidentally Made Him a Scientist
17:00 Why He Missed the Lab and What That Told Him About Himself
20:35 The Science of GLP-1: How Ozempic and the New Weight Loss Drugs Actually Work
23:15 Gene Therapy and the Future of Editing the Human Body
27:50 The Chemistry vs Medicine Nobel: The Story Behind the Tug of War
33:00 The Thanksgiving Conversation With His Father That Changed Everything
38:30 Why He Still Exercises an Hour a Day at 83 and What He Eats
42:00 His Warning About AI in Medicine and Why You Cannot Trust It Blindly
44:45 The Two Breakthroughs He Is Still Waiting For: Cancer and Dementia
47:00 Love and Work: What a Nobel Laureate Says Actually Makes a Life

 ◼ Duke University Profile:
https://www.lefkowitzlab.org/ 

 ◼ Book: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm:
 https://www.amazon.com/Funny-Thing-Happened-Way-Stockholm/dp/1324006811