Neil Turok

speaker

2,693 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard 22 Jun

Neil Turok’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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I wish for my own career, if only when I was 20 years old, if I could give myself advice,

Back then, I would have said, work hard on the foundations.

Instead, I got my PhD place.

I listened to my advisor.

He said, here's an interesting problem, go and work on it.

It took me a year to figure out it wasn't that interesting.

And I didn't question the orthodoxy enough.

What was in fashion was grand unified theories and people worried about magnetic monopoles and cosmic strings.

There were all kinds of things people were worried about.

And I spent very little time worrying about the foundations of quantum mechanics, of gravity,

And I wish I'd spent more.

And I would advise young people now, that's the most important stuff.

If you actually want to discover something, the more time you can spend on foundations, the better.

Absolutely.

And it's not without foundation.

No, no, that's absolutely true.

I mean, when I was a postdoc, I was in Santa Barbara, and a guy came, I think it was Paul,

Um, I can't remember his name.

Um, don't want to say it wrong, but a guy came to give a lecture about the foundations of quantum mechanics and it was so woolly.

It was sort of French philosophy at its worst and, you know, rambled on and on about foundations of quantum mechanics.

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