The History of String Theory

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I'm just not that excited about loop quantum gravity. It doesn't have the promise and the fruitfulness that string theory has. Other people will disagree or welcome to disagree. There are people out there who think it's a good idea, but might not be the right one. And another footnote there that I want to add on, which is an idea of unification, the theory of everything. That was the buzz phrase back in the 1980s.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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