This is an I-Hard podcast, guaranteed human.

Physicists talk a lot about what happened in the first moments of the universe.

Non-physicists sometimes ask, why do you all care so much? Why should anyone care?

This question flabbergasts me. Of course we should care. Who wouldn't want to know? It's the

literal cosmological context of our lives. Knowing what happened in the early universe would be a huge clue in all

sorts of late night dorm room conversations about why are we here and it could inform, you know,

how we should live our lives. How is it possible, I wonder, for people to walk around not caring

about the early universe, not wanting to know about the origin

of the cosmos. If you were expecting me at this point to drop some personal growth story,

where I came to realize that not everyone cares about these things, I'm going to disappoint you.

I'm still totally flabbergasted if people aren't interested in the early universe,

because we think there are so many answers to the big questions waiting for us there.

When the universe was hot and dense, it behaved differently.

The forces were unified and things were harmonious,

described by a grand unified theory, which we hope has

mathematical beauty enough to transcend its unfortunate acronym gut. As the universe cooled,

these symmetries cracked and broke into the laws that we have today, on today's episode,

we're going to be digging into those first few moments,

explaining how forces can be unified and what it means for them to break apart. We'll take a

journey through time, space, energy, and ugly acronyms. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's

extraordinary acronymical universe.

Hello, I'm Kelly Weiner Smith. I study parasites and space, and gut is an acronym in animal behavior as well.

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