Welcome to Theories of Everything. My name's Kurt Jymungal, and today we have a special series,

a new series called Rethinking the Foundations. This year, the Rethinking the Foundations of Physics

is centered around the question of what is unification. I'm honored that I get to bring you

an astonishing

lecture, tying together almost every unsolved problem in physics in a bow, so not only a neat

bow, but a simple one by Professor Neil Turrock. Professor Turrock is a cosmologist who holds

something called the Carlo Fadani Roger Penrose Distinguished Visiting Chair, if I'm not mistaken,

at the Perimeter Institute, and also the Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.

And to those who are unfamiliar to physics, if this was the 1800s, those chairs would be called Thrones.

So anyway, take it away, sir.

Thank you very much, Kurt.

It's a great pleasure to be with you.

And let me just start by saying how much I appreciate your podcast.

I think it's running a different way than other ones, more conversational.

And I think that's wonderful to get the more discussion we can

have the better. And so I'm looking forward to lots of interaction with the audience. The issues

at stake are very basic to our understanding of where we sit, why we're here,

how we got to be here, and so on.

And I think,

hopefully,

the ideas I'll explain are accessible enough

for everyone to engage with.

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