Interviw with Thomas Sargent

wide ranging and seems partly understandable here
via a comment by Ashwin Parameswaran in the MR post Thomas Sargent, Nobel Laureate
The same interviewer Arthur Rolnick interviews the other 2011 Nobel prize winner Christopher Sims (The interview is from 2007 and the first one from 2010)
P.S. See also Three cheers for Sargent & Sims, one and a half for the "Economics Nobel" :
"Macroeconomies all over the world are doing some really weird stuff. There are lots of ideas, but little consensus, about which theories we should be using to understand events like the financial crisis, Little Depression, and current relapse, not to mention globalization and China. In times like these, it is best to look to the data first. Pruning the idea tree is more important now than ever. If today's award to Sargent and Sims has a political message, it is that.

But in the long run, I think it would be better if the Bank of Sweden adopted more stringent criteria for the awarding of the prize, more akin to the criteria for the Nobel in Medicine. That may mean fewer winners - perhaps only one a year, or even some years of "no recipient." It will certainly tilt the award toward microeconomists. But so be it. If you're going to call it the "Prize in Economic Sciences," then my opinion is that you should back that up."
P.S. A more recent (phone) intrview