Latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2 created by americas Television Company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. As far as i can tell, we probably have i know leonard has readers from all over the world, he has readers until the united states, canada, mexico, haiti, jamaica, peru, caribbean, puerto rico, venezuela, guatemala, argentina and brazil, costa rica bermuda, san juan and probably even pasadena. [laughter] thank you rob. Take you everyone for joining us for this evenings event my name is kim and im the host of tonights event. Before we begin i want to encourage you all to check out our lineup of upcoming Virtual Events by visiting the website one of our Upcoming Events is tiffany and conversation with ellie about the new book say it louder, black voters, white narrative and saving our democracy. That is next friday the 18th. As well please remember to follow us on twitter, facebook, and instagram, tonight we are honored to welcome Leonard Mlodinow and rob polson. Leonard received his phd in theoretical physics from the university of california berkeley, was in alexander fellow at the max planck institute. And was on the faculty of California Institute of technology. His previous books include the bestsellers, the green divide and a briefer history of time both with Stephen Hawking and subliminal the winner of the science award and war of the worldviews. As well as elastic, siemens rainbow and the appraising thinkers. Rob joins us as evening for conversation about his new book Stephen Hawking a member of friendship and physics, one of the most influential physics about time he touched the lives of millions. Recalling his two decades as Stephen Hawkings collaborator and friend he brings the complex man into focus in a unique and deeply personal portrayal. He puts us in the room as hawking indulges his passion for white and curry ensures his feelings on one, death and disability in the philosophy and physics. Its deeply affecting account of friendship touches teaches us not just about the nature and practice of physics but about life in the Human Capacity to overcome daunting obstacles. Leonard mlodinow is joining conversation by rob polson, he has been a voice actor for nearly three decades and is the voice of pinky from pinky and the brain, teenage mutant Ninja Turtles and jimmy neutron. He is one in me award, peabody award and three emmy awards for his voice acting. His memoir voice was released last year ironically a man who uses his voice for work found himself with throat cancer but he has thankfully recovered and is now the spokesperson for the hmc eight oral head and neck Cancer Awareness program. This evenings event will include a q a, please use the q a button at the bottom of your screen if youd like to ask a question, if someone typed a question you would like to know the answer, please upload the question by clicking the button. Most important please consider supporting Leonard Mlodinow by purchasing a copy of his new book. Ill link will be shared in a couple minutes. Leonard, rob, its a pleasure to welcome you both, thank you for joining us. A great pleasure. Thank you. Well said. As an armchair who makes his living doing essentially brought got me trouble in high school, i tell you this is a marvelous book, thank you very much leonard for lowering your standards with respect to speakers, thank you for having me on board. They keep doing this rob. My pleasure. Full disclosure, your fabulous really handsome genius child helps me with my own social Media Marketing and the apple didnt fall far from the tree, hes a delightful, smart bright young man and im very grateful to have them in my life. Thank you. Well done. Just in case there are folks who are watching who are transfixed by all of the stuffs surrounding may not be aware of Stephen Hawking as others, can you briefly explain what Stephen Hawkings places and physics in the history of physics. Stephen went to school in the 50s he went to oxford and then graduate school at cambridge and he had his undergraduate while users even as graduate school and he had a revelation after that, before that he was a goof off and due to his illness he found a purpose in life, meaning in his life and he decided he wanted dedicate the last years two fundamental questions about our existence, basically why are we here, how did we get here how did the universe get here and why is it the way it is. Those are not questions that people were asked in the 1960s and the systems, he even asked out of berkeley. The areas that he chose to study to adjust the questions, the first one is very obvious the Early Universe beginning of the universe and the other is a black hole which is much obvious but not many people were interested in those areas either back then because people thought that you cannot observe them, physics is an experiment or observational science and people thought you cannot look back to the beginning of the universe and will number from the blackhole. So why study them theoretically. Its turned out as a footnote that Technology Advances we can study and we know the famous pictures from a few years ago of the blackhole. But back then it seemed like we would never get there. There are some people working on it but the iconic fizzes, he said they were a bunch of dopes. Later in the 1970s he started to apply quantum with advances and he realized that you cant ignore quantum theory in those areas as people have been doing and he found new results. The sum total of all of this is that he took his field of cosmology in the study of Early Universe in the black hole related to that and he took it from a back log and made it one of the hottest fields in physics. His combining of the quantum theory he was a pioneer in really the probably looking forward to the holy grail of physics which is uniting the theory so by doing that he was a pioneer and make great steps in showing how we could think about that and still have not done it and he lifted the study of black holes and cosmology to not make it only respectful but popular. Sorry, that was a long answer. In fact you are right we dont know that steven had a terrific movie made about him in which i think eddie redman won an oscar for that performance but my suspicion having grown up the business physicists, the physicists when i grow up was like most albert einstein. Do you have a feeling that was stephen essentially thought of as like the next rock physicist rockstar . Was he another einstein . He was not another einstein. He was and rolled his eyes and smiled when people said that because he knew and who wants to have that bar to live up to because thats a hard high bar. Most of his career was not like einstein but einstein had most of his major discoveries in the first 15 years of his career. Stephen was a leader, one of the best of his generation and i dont think we should be trying to quantify that but that is a good solid description of him and one you would agree with. Right. If im not mistaken einstein came up with his energy equals mass times the speed of light squared theory at 25 spirit yet, in 1905. You know, its interesting because people misunderstand how physics works. Dont sit there and get a brilliant idea that he is equal to mc squared until other people and they say that makes squared but he developed the theory called special relatively in one of those were based on certain principles that particular the speed of light because that was something implied by maxwells work in the 1860s and investigating that in building a theory of adjusting newtons laws would take that into account and involves the theory of special relativity in one of the consequences and things he discovered as he was writing out that there he is all my god, equals mc squared. And it became a metaphor for all the cool stuff. I still remember we are the same age and the opening of the Twilight Zone had that he equals mc squared and that became it was rough in the 1920s spirit while people dont know that but i was entertainment at the last supper. [laughter] anyway,. [inaudible conversations] you are a busboy. We have to get off the spacetime continuum in, ladies and gentlemen. I know this because i read the book but how did you first meet stephen . He read my first two books and he was, one was about curve estates and what it means and how over the centuries the ideas developed and how it was used and that was a very important topic to stephen and then he read my second book which was finding his rainbow a search for beauty in physics and in life and that was a memoir of my relationship with the great Richard Steinman while i was in my cal tech in my 20s. He was looking for someone to write with and i think he wanted a sense of humor and someone who is writing he liked and i think most of all he wanted someone who understood physics and i guess he decided i fit that so one day i got a call from my agent and said Stephen Hawkings office called and this is a bizarre question but would you like to write a book about him . Again, having read the book i can say i make my living in the funny business and you do have an excellent sense of humor, leonard. It comes across beautifully in the book, it truly does. You mentioned how the sort of dryness of physics but you found a way and clearly mr. Hawking had a wicked sense of humor too and you able to translate that for the reader. It really is, in fact, i know you began working with stephen when he was sort of in his fullblown lou gehrigs disease but what surprised you witnessing firsthand how stephen worked . Was there anything that made you go wow, this is pretty remarkable and in addition to the fact that he was doing what he was doing in his physical state. It is fascinating and again its too long to discuss this answer. Its your book, man. [laughter] physics can be looked at in two different ways and one is algebraic equations or analysis and the other is geometrically and and most people do is done using equations. Stephen obviously cant do that and cant write an he did have an amazing memory where he could do some iterations that way just like a grand master plane 20 people blindfolded but he would member each game and what to do and i was all, and all of that. [inaudible] he did have that ability but it was still difficult for him to put him at a disadvantage as opposed to other for physicist who could write and write down their equations. He did which was surprising and i did not learn for a while but he learned a new way of doing physics and he did the geometric approach rather than the equations approach in worked on his own language of geometry to treat the problems that he was treating and so he could solve problems and get ideas and analyze situations of interest to him and if this has liked beans and particle beans and black holes in all this and how they interact [inaudible] that was stephens superpower because he could, by doing that not only was he avoiding his handicap by not writing equations but he had a new angle to look at things that other physicists didnt have that allowed him to make discoveries and have insights that others didnt because they didnt have that approach so. Thats interesting because in the book you cite how we hear of people who are sightless who find a way to really enhance their sense of hearing or smell or taste or whatever and to feel ultimately or even stephen may have suggested but to feel ultimately that his debilitating illness ended up being something that helped him in his discipline . He told me it did. First, i mentioned it gave him meaning and purpose which was driving him. It was a hard subject that you had to do put in long hours all alone and it was burning, california is burning right now but as is oregon but on a normal time when its not you want to go outside and take a walk but instead you stay home and see your family or friends and i know you work 12 hours a day or months every day just to finish your work. The first thing it did was gave him that drive to answer these questions. So that was by giving them the meaning and the focus and illuminating distractions and allowing the focus to so long and so hard on problems was a big advantage to him. You been [inaudible] ive written one book and had a gentleman help me and do physicists go through a lay person would call Writers Block that is to say when you are working on a theory or working on something and youre postulating and have your own promise that you are working on to find you can go through Writers Block to and as you mentioned you are alone in other points at which you say im stuck and i just that is why i wrote the book really, not just for physics or for stephens personal life but the idea of him as a person in both the books that exposed how we do physics but also how we do life every day and yes, physicist like in the movies you mentioned looking for a fireplace and the answer comes but [inaudible] we would all be physicists but its very difficult and yes, richard had very long times of non productivity where he had no ideas and when he would get depressed and he thought teaching satan because in those times he still taught courses and could accomplish things in teaching and that would fulfill him and take up his time because he was waiting for some idea to come. It happens both while youre doing it so between problems youre sitting there going okay, i just wrote on paper were ten papers and ive had a lot of ideas but have run out of ideas and ive done all the papers on that topic so what should i work on now . Sometimes you have something in the back of your head and if you move on and then sometimes you dont. For physicist sitting there like a writer doesnt know what book to write and while youre doing your problem you also have minor crises like that to because you are going okay, i need to get from here to there to answer the questions im trying to answer in this research and you go this is how you figure it out but no annuities keep putting your head against the walls for a day or a month and promising direction and then sometimes you get to the point where you get ideas and you get up to a certain point and you know what you want to show or have an idea of where you can go with it but if that is not working out yeah, its full of very frustrating and difficult times even drove his wives crazy because when he hit that flaw he would turn wagoner up and he liked it loud so it would annoy everyone in the house but it would drown out the rest of the world and he would spend day after day after day just focused on getting past that so. Good gracious. By the way the thing it sounds like that was part of your mission was to for lack of a better term humanize and make an relatable and absolutely nailed that and there were certainly things no one would know having not been close to him but you utterly d hollywood and made him somebody that you became your friend often with the usual frustrations that people have with other people. Was there a point in which your work with steven and the fact that he was the fact that he was wheelchairbound and nonverbal and was not a big deal and basically stephens had a different turn on today and it really was not and you got used to it. Good question in there so much in that developing of a book and the answer is yes when i first got there to work with him at the cambridge to his office i was i felt bad for him because you could see the discomfort he was in, not necessarily in the discomfort but that he should have been but things happen to him like a bead of sweat going down his forehead that he had to wipe away. By the way, let me interrupt, i do and that is one of the seminal moments of the book because it is the sort of thing that we can all relate to immediately and you just take your hand like this and the way in which you describe your empathy and your like oh my god, that would drive me nuts or if my nose was itching it would be doesnt matter if you are mohammed ali, Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow or rob paulson or the guy on the street but the things we all take for granted that all of a sudden was a central focus of this worldclass physicist and the way you described that was really remarkable and very on impactful. Thank you. I could not understand how he could go through his day without being able to do that and maybe his caretakers were noticed or maybe not but at first i felt sorry for him a lot but then as i got to know him later i thought no, dont feel sorry for him. It was quite inspiring to me by the way he handled those things and he change the way he thought so that its not that he sees or has sweat dripping down or the itch or bedtime or he sleeping and wants to turn but he cant wait to turn and he has to wait for them to turn him and all those other obstacles and tortures the rest of us would experience and he learned not to remedy that but not to mind that. He took his mind and his feelings and he learned not to let them bother him. Thats amazing. The greek philosophy called stoic philosophy which is that happiness, true happiness and lasting happiness comes only from within you, not from the things you accomplish in our material goods or any other person. All that can be taken away and subject to many things beyond your control. Selfsatisfaction and how you feel about yourself and what your own mind and stephen did that and once i realized that that was what was going on i did not feel sorry for him anymore. He was of person with a handicap but also a person with reddish hair, blue eyes and it was just another trait of his. We interacted and i interacted with him about without thinking of his handicap. You describe his utter humanity and you touch on something quite important with respect to stephen and ive experienced this in my own life which my cancer a few years and that is the ability to focus on the moment into really understand that while, this is a pretty tenuous little fragile line at which we walk. It doesnt have to be lou gehrigs disease but often it requires something that jump starts your humanity and you think while, of a sudden i know whats important and he according to you and the description was the embodiment of that and that he literally made lemonade every damn day. It was remarkable. It really was. That was one of the great lessons i tried to impart and i admired him very much for that. I