Abstract: This talk will concern the Weyl functional on smooth compact 4-manifolds --- i.e. the Riemannian curvature functional which sends each metric to the L^2-norm-squared of its conformal curvature. On Kaehler metrics, the Weyl functional is expressible in terms of the L^2-norm of the scalar curvature. However, the interaction between Weyl functional and the scalar curvature is far more subtle and indirect in the general Riemannian setting. The purpose of the talk will be to describe recent results and open questions regarding this relationship.