Russell M. Nelson: podcast appearances and interviews

Russell Marion Nelson Sr. (September 9, 1924 – September 27, 2025) was an American religious leader and surgeon who served as the seventeenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2018 until his death in 2025. Prior to his presidency, he was a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for nearly thirty-four years, and served as the quorum president from 2015 to 2018. As church president, he was recognized by the church as the prophet, seer, and revelator. Nelson was born in Salt Lake City and completed his undergraduate and medical education at the University of Utah. He earned a PhD at the University of Minnesota and was part of the research team that pioneered the first human open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass in 1951. After serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, he returned to Salt Lake City to accept a professorship at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He dedicated twenty-nine years to cardiothoracic surgery, becoming a noted heart surgeon and serving as president of the Society for Vascular Surgery and the Utah Medical Association. Throughout his medical career, Nelson also served in various lay leadership positions within the LDS Church, including as the church's Sunday School general president from 1971 to 1979. In 1984, he and Dallin H. Oaks were called to the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Nelson lived to the age of 101, making him the oldest person to serve as church president.