Instant Genius - Leonard Mlodinow: How did Stephen Hawking make science accessible?

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Two years to the day the great physicist Professor Stephen Hawking was interred at Westminster Abbey, and at the time of his death, we spoke to one of the people that knew him best, Leonard Mlodinow. Leonard is an American theoretical physicist who worked with Stephen on the books The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time, and his own book chronicling their time together, Stephen Hawking: A Memoir of Friendship and Physics (£20, Allen Lane), will be released in September this year. In this republished interview he speaks with BBC Science Focus editor Daniel Bennett about writing together, his qualities, and what they did when they weren’t talking physics. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations Read more about Professor Stephen Hawking: Can you solve these deviously difficult Stephen Hawking-inspired questions? Stephen Hawking (1942-2018): the theoretical physicist's life in pictures Twitter Tributes to Professor Stephen Hawking Remembering Professor Stephen Hawking   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speed.

That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now, that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore Google Fi Wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets.

They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs. Help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now, Hank has a line out the door.

Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365Copilot.com slash work. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. Streaming has made music more accessible than ever, but true listening is about more than ease. It's about quality. British audio experts name audio,

alongside French acoustic specialist focal, combine handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials, delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. I think Stephen felt the same way. He felt that people find science beautiful,

and it was beautiful and deep and important to the human experience, but there weren't a lot of people making it accessible. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team, with the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello, I'm Alexander McNamara, online editor at ScienceFocus.com.

And some of our long-time listeners might recognise our interview this week, which we've republished from an earlier episode. The reason we're doing this is because this episode comes out two years to the day that the great physicist's professor Stephen Hawking was interred at Westminster Abbey. And at the time of his death, we spoke to one of the people that knew him best, Leonard Milodinov. Leonard is an American theoretical physicist who works with Stephen on the books The Grand Design and a Briefer History of Time and he spoke with BBC Science Focus Editor to Daniel Bennett about writing together, his qualities, and what they did when they weren't talking physics.

How did you first come to meet Stephen and work with him? I met him was at Princeton in the 70s when he gave a talk, but he could still speak and he, I'm a physicist, so I guess you know, I'm a physicist. So I was just at a regular talk that he gave, and he had a graduate student who would stand next to him in translate. Because even though he could speak, it was kind of garbled. But we got working together after he read my first book, Euclid's window, and he liked it, apparently, and was looking for someone to work with that he liked the way they wrote, and who also was a physicist. or so there's not many of them I guess but anyway he liked the book and so he he contacted me

and asked I wanted to work with him so I didn't have to think too long about that one and and so what was your work with him like how did you work together well we would do certain things apart and then we would be together for other times and sit side by side really elbow to elbow and and go over every word. So, you know, he came, I'm in, I was at the time on the faculty at Caltech, and he comes to Caltech every year, or he used to for, I mean, obviously he used to, but he used to until his last few years of his life. He came, I would say four weeks, roughly speaking, about a month, a year, every year.

So he, so he would work pretty intensely for that month. And then I would go out to Cambridge. I don't remember two or three. times a year every quarter, let's say, for roughly a week usually. And we'd do the same thing there. And we would just start in the morning and sit there until, you know, like, quit about 8 p.m. and go have dinner and together. And so when, you know, when we would, when we were apart, we would each have our assignment to write a certain section or, you know, and then when we were together, we would go over each other's stuff.

And, you know, that was kind of the process. So what was he like to write with as a writing partner? Well, I'm just a two-hour answer, but let's see. There's a lot of angles to. First of all, there's the, you know, the experience of working with him. So because of the way he communicated at the time, for most of the time, We were together. There was about six words a minute. It started out at six. It went down to like one or two. Then he changed his method of communication. Went back up to about six and gradually went down again. So I'm sure you know how he communicated. I don't have to go into that.

But so, you know, it would take minutes for each words. I mean, at first I would sit there and, you know, I'm getting used to it. I don't know what to do. I'm daydreaming. I'm, I don't know, while I'm waiting for his answer. And then I realize I'm sick. Sit right next to him. really close to him, I can actually see his screen, and he didn't seem to mind that. So then before he would finish the sentence, I could answer it if I knew what he was saying, or more importantly, I could start thinking about what he's saying before he said it. So, you know, when you and I are speaking, we speak, we are, we don't think. I mean, we, you know, we, we just give thoughts off the top of our head, more or less. There may be something beneath that in our head somewhere that it's coming from, but we answer immediately. And with him, you could get a few minutes to think, you know, as his, what he was going to say

started to take shape, you could start thinking about it. So it was a totally, you know, much deeper, more like profound discussions because you actually contemplate things. So that's, you know, I got used to that and it was, that was very different, very good. And, you know, at other times, if I, I could just sit there and also get into a very zen-like state, you know, you just got very relaxed with it. And so that was, you know, that was interesting. And he, even though everything was so difficult for him, it was striking how he, he did not let anything go. I mean, we would argue over, over individual words. And, you know, for me, the argument wasn't that hard to do because I'm speaking, but, you know, he would have to go through a lot of work to

present his side. So, but he never gave up. I mean, he was, you know, as he said, one of his best and worst qualities was stubbornness. You know, and I think he could have got through life if he wasn't stubborn. Look at all the barriers he had, physical barriers to existence, you know. And the other major quality was humor. He had an amazing sense of humor. He could still smile. He had a really big smile.

He was very expressive with his face. So you could give yes or no questions. He had expressions he gave for yes or no. I mean, he had one of them. I've quoted this in my book. I don't remember exactly what his assistant said, but, you know, it was something like that steely, steely look of disdain or something. If he really didn't like what he said.

I mean, he could, he could, he could, um, it wasn't just yes or no. He could definitely give you a super yes and a super no. Right. Supernova, yeah. Yeah, you really knew when you'd said the wrong thing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right, either or sometimes because, well, there was one face for what you said was stupid,

which I don't know if he did that on purpose, but you could tell that he was thinking that. There's another face for what you said irritated him. Something that just struck me in what you said there. Given, you know, how much, you know, so he said he was obviously a kind of stubborn, in a positive way, you know, he stuck to his guns. So he always put a lot of time and thought into what he said. Would you only talk about the work? Or what other things do you talk about?

Oh, no. No, we talked about everything, you know, from the Israel situation, American politics, British politics. You know, we went to movies together, you know, just talked about whatever. So it was like, you know, because we kind of became friends. well, we definitely became friends and something, you know, and so, yeah, you would talk about anything, and he, you know, sometimes he'd be sitting next to him and waiting for some

profound or some very heated argument and it would come out as a joke. He's waiting five minutes, you know, and it's like, oh, it's a joke. Some punchline. Yeah, and then you could play 20 questions. Oh, one thing that you're at, we have to get the now. of, you know, you could answer his questions or his comments before he finished them because he was writing them and that was a good thing. And, you know, if you were, if you were right, it was a good thing because it saved him having to finish, you know, writing it out. On the other hand,

if you were wrong, that, you know, would be annoying to him. So, you know, you see him typing and oh, you're saying da-da-da. And if he's not saying that, you know, I remember, you know, when I was first like trying that method, I would get, like, get it wrong three times in a row. He was like, roll his eyes. Like, stop up or not. Occasionally, he would hit the wrong thing and a random sentence would come out. Or sometimes the computer would just generate random, put random things together. I think it was, I don't remember anymore, but I think it was maybe the, you know, the stuff he had deleted would be all there in some cache and it would just start reading that. But you'd be talking to him and it would, you know, you'd say, so, yeah, so are we going to the curry place for dinner tonight,

or you want to eat at your house? And he'd go, and the answer would be, you know, the tree frog of the supernova exploded Aristotle. And it could be pretty hilarious sometimes, yeah. I mean, yeah, do you have, like, what are some of your, and I'm, this is a really, you know, on the spot question and I'm sure you'll go away and come up things but what are some of your you know when you think about him some of your favorite memories um one was the uh the night we finished uh grand design we had been working on it for four years and you know he showed no no sign of wanting to finish it through those four years and we kept pushing the deadline I mean I think

we originally were supposed to do it in a year and a half. And finally, the publisher just told us we're publishing it. You know, we're announcing it for next, whatever. I don't remember the way it came out. We're announcing, I think, for next September. So we expect to have, you know, it's like, it's like an ultimatum, really. But they didn't say it in a bad way. They just kind of very matter of fact.

We said, you know, we put on the schedule for next. So if it's not there by May 15th at 8 p.m. or something. Let's go. It's, yeah, it's, I don't know what they said, but something like that, you know. So we finished at 8 p.m. on May, whenever they said exactly the minute. And I remember we had a little fight down to the minute about some little thing and we managed to, you know, and he's, yeah, I don't know. And then when it's, you know, when it fell over, he says, I'm saying, oh, my God, you know, because I was thinking, oh, many times, we were never going to finish this book. This is just going to be my lifetime project.

Of course, I was doing stuff in between, and so he was. But, you know, he had no, absolutely no, you know, he, and if ever I brought up, hey, you know, we got to finish his book sometimes, shouldn't we be like pushing on, you know, not like massaging this chapter for, you know, and I'm a major rewriter. I rewrite 47 times. But, you know, he's even worse. Well, it's also because he, you know, he's so slow at it because of his, you know, illness. So, you know, he would, his answer would always be, nope, doesn't matter when it's done as long as it's good, you know. So then after, um, after, you know, that hour took by and we literally, on that minute, which, you know, I'm sure we could have got an extra 10 minutes after four years, but on that minute, we finished. You know, he kind of like steered the ship so that on that minute we would agree on the final point. And then he says to me, I said, wow, I can't believe we ever, we made it. He said, he says, good thing we had the deadline or I would have never stopped. I'm thinking, why didn't you tell me this two years ago? I wouldn't have had to give us a deadline.

Was that because he just was enjoying it? Or because he just was like a rewriter? Well, I think he was enjoying it and he's a perfectionist. But I think both, yeah. I was enjoying it too, but I was also going nuts because, you know, had to make a living and I had other stuff to do. And, you know, going back and, you know, I just kind of, you know, it seemed like my, it just seemed like this would be a permanent position, you know, but, but at some point, I'm paid.

I mean, you get in advance, but, you know. Even done. Well, eventually, I guess they're going to ask for the money back if you don't ever turn in the book, you know. I mean, it's like, but, you know, when you're, you know, Stephen, so they, you know, I mean, that was, we spent more than double what we were supposed to spend on it. And, hey, it all turned out good. but yeah, it was, anyway, so that was one. Another good story was we went, one of his carers asked me if I wanted to go punting down to cam, which I guess I don't have to tell you what that means.

But here in the States, I always have to explain, take most of the stories explaining what that means. So we, you know, so I asked Stephen if he wanted to come thinking, you know, thinking it was a long shot because, you know, for obvious reasons. And he said, sure. So the next day, we went, we did that. And, you know, that involved parking the wheelchair up at the top of this long, I don't want to call it a staircase, a long trail of stone steps, right? Gosh, yeah. And it's not wheelchair accessible. So we have to park it up at the top, carry him down all these steps to the, you know, where the boats launch.

And I started out carrying him, because I could carry him myself. You know, I forgot what he weighed like 95 pounds or something. And so, but then they didn't like the way, you know, it's hard. I mean, I would carry him sometimes in his office, like to the couch or something. But to carry him down all that is a bit of a, you know, exercise. And, you know, you have to have his net head right. You guys can't have his head flopping around. So his car says, no, no, no, put him down.

We're going to do it. You don't know what you're doing. So they had these two kids, you know, so he's like 95 pounds. they're each like 95 pounds. Here I am like 185 pounds and I'm, you know, fairly muscular. At least I work out lift weights and stuff. And they give me their purses to hold, one of which was pink. So I have these two little women carrying this guy down this thing,

followed by a guy holding a pink purse. And, you know, we get down to the, you know, thing. And, you know, how that works. The guy, I forgot who was doing it. I don't think they supplied the purse. I think one of us, one of the group was doing the pole, whatever you call it. That's called the punting. And, you know, you could, like, I said, oh, you try.

I stood up there. And, oh, my God, I got to fall off. And they said, yeah, and the boats can tip over, too. And it's a flat boat. And he, you know, if it's tipped, oh, I kept thinking, my God, if we tip this over, he's dead. I mean, there's nothing you can do. I mean, like, even if a normal person's hard to save a person who has come and totally left. How are you going to do that?

So, you know, and, you know, he's fine. He has his head on one of their laps. and they're turning, you know, he can't, when he look at, when his eyes go to the right, they turn his head to follow his eyes. His eyes go to the left, he turned his head, and I don't know, there were strawberries and champagne. It was a very nice time, but I mean, I'm thinking that, of course, you know, he wanted to go up into space and he went on the vomit comet, and he was very intrepid. So it was very interesting, because to me, that was a very vulnerable situation. You could have dropped them, he could have fallen off the boat or the boat tipped over or I don't know. One of the things that it's quite interesting is, so with all the, you know, he did, he had his science and that was a, he's had his science, a bit of a simple way to put it, but, you know, he had his work, which is kind of quite good.

What do you think it was about, and maybe, you know, what is it for you, uh, that makes you want to write about science and share it with people? Well, when I was writing about physics, it's because I just thought it was so beautiful and fast. interesting, that everybody would love it, that they just could understand what we're talking about. And so I just felt like the drive to, always felt the drive to tell people about this beautiful stuff. And, you know, so they, you know, yeah. And I wanted them, on some more intellectual level, I wanted them to understand what is science about, how do we know these things? Not only what, what do we know, but how do we know what's our, you know, why do we think we believe this? you know, why is it good to follow these things and why should you believe it today, of course,

in our American, you know, ridiculous, you know, culture here right now, you know, you're defending science, you're going, no, you can't just say, oh, it's no, there's no global warming or, you know, to understand what, you know, or the anti-evolution people who, you know, send up these people with ridiculous arguments that, you know, and people buy it. You know, you need to understand What is the, you know, what is the difference between pseudoscience and science? So that's just another, another, you know, like something that I think Stephen and I both felt strongly about that, that we wanted people to, you know, to know the difference between pseudoscience and science so they don't get misled. And so people don't make the wrong decisions.

And, yeah, so I think, and I think, you know, I think Stephen felt the same way. He felt that people would find science beautiful, and it was beautiful and deep and important to the human experience. But there wasn't a lot of, there weren't a lot of people making it accessible. And especially when he started, I mean, he was not, you know, he's not just a pioneer in Black Hole. He was a pioneer in explaining science to the public. Because in 1980s, when he wrote that book, there were not, there were very few. popular science books. So people writing broadly about science is really, really the key. And that's what Stephen did. I mean, he wrote about his own work or his own field, I should say. See,

he wrote about his own field, not just not about his own work. So that's the difference. So a lot of people will write about their own little corner of what they did and try to make it sound earth shattering. But Stephen wrote about the whole field, right? So like a brief history of time, it wasn't a brief history of my work. It included his work. It included his work. but it was about, you know, it was some beautiful big topic. And, you know, and so anyway, that was all those tangents. So that's probably that really relevant. But I'm just saying there are many books.

I mean, that's about 50% of what we're talking about how his book, his passion for sharing what he loved. Well, he was, so he was one of the people, you know, him and Stephen Weinberg and Carol Sagan, you know, they were the ones. And back then, who were the pioneers who started this huge, like, in, you know, deluge of popular science books that we have today. And they all came from those guys, you know, doing it back then. And that showed, you know, that people saw and Feynman eventually a little bit later, I think, you know,

but not that long later with his anecdote books. So they all showed people, oh, people, you know, show the publishers, I guess, and the other potential authors that people would be interested in this stuff. And, you know, I don't think they have high hopes for it. I know I heard stories about the brief history of time that they didn't have, you know, huge hopes for it. I mean, they didn't think it was a, they didn't, you know, totally dismiss it because I think he got a decent advance for it, but they didn't have huge hopes for it either. They just thought, you know, this is something to try and it would be interesting, but they didn't expect it to be nearly what it turned out to be. Oh, who could expect that.

But so, you know, so I think that he helped really to pave the way, um, um, you know, to, you know, for, for the, you know, what we have today. And just to touch on something you said earlier that you've reminded us. So someone else we talked to said, the part of the strength of that book was its clarity. It was just so clear. A brief history of time? Yeah.

Yeah, so it's like. Well, Stephen did not feel that way. Let me just say that. Really? you know, really, yeah. In fact, that's why we wrote a briefer history of time. Right. He said, yeah, he said that, yeah, and it's, you know,

the beginning of a brief history of time was pretty clear, and it got hard to understand after that, which is why Stephen kind of himself said, you know, that it's like the, I think he said, I forgot how he put it, but the, you know, book that sold the most and was read the least, The average person found it tough going about after I forgot, you know, the first hundred pages or so, it started to get hard for people. Yeah, I'm one of those people.

That's specifically why he asked me to write a briefer history with him. That's kind of funny. And that's why it's called a briefer. It's not really briefer. You know, we had debated calling it a clearer history of time. So it's about the same length. But it's, we worked on making it, you know, more understandable. And then that experience was so such a good experience.

Then I proposed to him that we write the second book, the grand design, because that book was based on his ideas that he had, his new, new ideas. In the time, I think we started running around 2006. It was work he had done just over the last, oh, five or six years. And his work was developing as we were writing in the book, which made it hard too. Because at one point, we had written, you know, like a whole passage of like five or six pages and then I'm going to see him and we're supposed to moving on and he wants to make these changes. And I say to him, but Stephen, we went over this last time. This is how it works.

He says, he says, like, I've discovered it doesn't work that way. Oh, gosh. I suppose that's a nice problem to have. At least, you know, you've got it right. No, no, no, it wasn't a nice problem to have. A nice problem. No, it's not a nice, no, no, no, no, no. Nice would have been, oh, we finished that, let's move on. And was that, so was that always, was that what was driving him, really, you know, when he's taking this time? I like the idea of him as someone, like you said yourself, as a person who rewrites and rewrites and rewrites, you know. I think sometimes there's an image of a writer that just they sit down at the keyboard and just, you know, it comes out first time. I think my friend Michael Shermer called that the Amadeus myth for Mozart, you know, because they say that about Mozart too.

And when you look, and I did some research on Mozart, actually for Elastic. And the truth is he wrote and rewrote and rewrote constantly and he constantly looking for places. The pianos to play this stuff on, you know, and he had to, I forget all the details, but he had to find another for a, for a wow, he didn't have a piano, he couldn't write, he had to go find, you know, borrow some. I mean, he was, you know, I forgot the story about how the myths happened, and it's not really relevant for this, I guess, but, but, oh, actually, I do remember now, it was some later writer made it up. Right.

And, you know, and, but they've done great detailed studies of his letters and, you know, they found, no, it wasn't like that. And, you know, I'm not saying that there is nobody in existence who's like that, but that's image people have, just like the stupid movies, like this movie about Stephen, which I was very, I was invited to the premiere in Hollywood. And, you know, even though the movie was like, as Stephen said, broadly accurate, I think was his comment. You know, and people thought that that was a, you know, that he was endorsing the movie, which I guess he was. But I also know Stephen, and I know when he says broadly accurate, he also means not necessarily accurate in the

details. That was a good, I was a perfect Stephenism, you know. That was Leonard Mladenov on working with Professor Stephen Hawking. If you want to hear more, just look for the episode Remembering Stephen Hawking from March 2018. And let us know what you think with a rating or a review. Otherwise, there are plenty more science and text stories to be found in the latest issue of BBC Science Focus magazine, where we look at the bacteria that can eat plastic, chew through carbon, and create food from thin air. Visit sciencefocus.com forward slash subscribe for the latest subscription offers.

Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's bestselling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital social. sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended.

Discover more at name audio.com. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for citizens back. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items, then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes,

so you can feel confident it's what you ordered. Fresh groceries, your way, with Ralph's delivery and pickup. And right now, you can save $20,000. on your first delivery or pickup order. Ralph's, fresh for everyone.