After a review of the spectrum of superstrings on the AdS3 WZW background, I will use a conjecture positing the existence of a phase transition, when the AdS radius becomes of order of the string length, to propose a holographic dual CFT that matches exactly the entire continuous spectrum of the superstring. I will conclude with a few observations on the role of interactions amd discrete, short-string states.

This colloquium reviews old and new no go theorems that severely constrain possible interactions of massless high spin particles. Massive particles can interact with gauge fields and gravity, but often they are plagued by pathologies such as superluminal propagation in nontrivial backgrounds. The last part of the talk uses the example of open string theory to show that such pathologies can be avoided by an appropriate choice of non-minimal interactions.