One of the threads from the “Bang Goes The Big Bang” and “Out of Darkness” talks, both featuring Laura Mersini-Houghton, is that whatever is wrong with big bang theories, they really seem to describe a succession of universes in time. There are no singularities in the space-time of our universe. Most of the “succession” ideas come from needing to account for boundary conditions or effects that must have pre-existed what we think of as the universe before “our” universe, whilst accounting for mass-energy anomalies in observed consequences of the (obviously flawed) big bang models.
Well, what if that continuity were even more continuous – there wasn’t really any need for big bang inflation. That’s exactly what is predicted by Rick Ryals and Cormac O’Raifeartaigh revisiting Einstein’s work. If Einstein knew what we knew now, he’d have stuck to his guns and we’d have a very different standard model of the universe.