This is an expository article to accompany my two lectures at the CDM conference. I have used this an excuse to make public two sets of notes I had lying around, and also to put together a short reader's guide to some recent joint work with T.Tao. Contents: 1. An exposition, without much detail, of the work of Goldston, Pintz and Yildirim on gaps between primes; 2. A detailed discussion of the work of Mauduit and Rivat establishing that 50 percent of the primes have odd digit sum when written in base 2; 3. A reader's guide to recent work of T.Tao and the author on linear equations in primes. The sections can be read independently.

40 pages, notes to accompany my lectures at the Current Developments in Mathematics Conference, Harvard, 16th-17th November 2007