Cheese is serious stuff. The physics behind cacio e pepe.
Watch the 2025 Ig Nobel Ceremony here: https://youtu.be/z1cP4xKd_L4
In this episode, we sit down with Daniel Busiello and Ivan Di Terlizzi, physicists whose playful kitchen experiments on the classic Roman pasta dish cacio e pepe just earned them the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize. What started as a Friday-night cooking ritual turned into a full-blown study of the “mozzarella phase” of pecorino cheese — revealing how heat, proteins, and stabilizers drive sauce breakdown and mimic the phase transitions seen in labs and nature.
We explore how their simple setup — a sous-vide bath, a pan, and a smartphone — let them quantify clump sizes, why starch or trisodium citrate can stabilize emulsions, and what this says about statistical mechanics, protein aggregation, and gene-expression dynamics. Busiello and Di Terlizzi. also share their paths from reading about relativity in high school to running research groups, and what it’s like to go viral with a “night-science” project.
Whether you’re curious about pasta, phase diagrams, quirky science experiments or the hidden laws of nature, this conversation offers a rare insider’s look at how everyday cooking can illuminate physics.
Follow us for more technical interviews with the world’s greatest scientists:
Twitter: https://x.com/632nmPodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/632nmpodcast?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/632nm/about/
Substack: https://632nmpodcast.substack.com/
Follow our hosts!
Michael Dubrovsky: https://x.com/MikeDubrovsky
Misha Shalaginov: https://x.com/MYShalaginov
Xinghui Yin: https://x.com/XinghuiYin
Subscribe:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/632nm/id1751170269
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4aVH9vT5qp5UUUvQ6Uf6OR
Website: https://www.632nm.com
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:12 - From Hobbyist to Ig Nobel Laureate
06:33 - Methodology of the Experiment
13:31 - How to Avoid the Mozzarella Phase
19:10 - Career Trajectories
24:44 - Who is the Greatest Italian Scientist?
25:40 - Lesser Known Works
28:05 - Measuring Heat Flow in Red Blood Cells
#ignobel2025 #cacioepepe #pastasauce #thermodynamics #phasetransitions #dairy #pecorino
