Comment by simiones

You can listen to the podcast yourself. I explained my own understanding of his position: that String Theory, the specific mathematical structure, is categorically not a good model of the real world. He does believe that it is possible to create a different theory inspired from String Theory, "a slightly expanded version of String Theory", that could be correct. But, he also says that no version of a string theory that exists today fulfills this role.

Now, if by "string theory is dead in the water" someone means that "working on a generalization of string theory is a bad idea", then they are wrong, Leonard Susskind doesn't believe that.

But if by "string theory is dead in the water" they mean "there is no point in studying String Theory deeper, with its general mathematical properties, maybe with a slight tweaks, as it is right now it can't describe the real world", then this is quite clearly professor Susskind's position.