about and you just move on and sometimes you don't so sitting there like while you are doing

your problem you also have minor crises like that going okay i need to get from here to there to answer the questions in this research and i think this is how you get it figured out. so you just keep butting your head against the wall in some promising direction and it doesn't work and then you finally get to the point sometimes you have no more ideas so you've got to a certain point in your research you know what you want to show or you have an idea where you want to go with it so it is full of frustrating and difficult times and it drove his wives crazy because when he hit that wall it was super loud and it would drown out the rest of the world for him and he would spend day after day

focused on getting past that. >> by the way the thing that it sounds like that was part of your mission for the lack of a better term to humanize or make him relatable and you absolutely nailed that. there were certainly things that no one would know having not been close to him but you made him somebody that you became your friend often with the usual frustrations that people have with other people. was there a point at which the fact that he was wheelchair-bound and not verbal that it wasn't a big deal and it was basically he's got a different shirt today that it really wasn't an issue that he got use to.

>> that is a good question and there is so much in that development of the book the answer is yes when i first got there to work with him, i felt bad for him because i could see what bad discomfort he was in. things have been like a bead of sweat going down his forehead. i remember that story. >> let me interrupt for a moment that is one of the seminal moments in the book it's one of those things we can all relate to immediately. and you just take your hand and go like this. the way that you describe your empathy and your -- like that would drive me nuts. or if my nose was itching. it doesn't matter if you are

mohammed ali, stephen hawking or a guy on the street, the things we all take for granted that all of a sudden was a central focus of this world class physicist, the way to describe that was remarkable. >> thank you. i couldn't understand how he would go through the stage without being able to do that. ...

>> and he learned not to mind that and he learned not to let them bother him. and that philosophy is that true and lasting happiness only comes from you not from what you accomplished for the material goods. all that can be taken away in this subject beyond your control and how you feel about yourself. and stephen really did that and once i realized that was going on i didn't feel sorry for him anymore he also had red hair and blue eyes and we

interacted without even thinking about it. >> as i mentioned earlier you really describe his utter humanity and you touch of something important and i have experienced in my own life with my throat cancer a few years ago with the ability to really focus on living in the moment to say this is a tenuous and a fragile line on which we walk. it doesn't have to be lou gehrig's disease but often require something to jumpstart your humanity and you think all of a sudden i know what's important and he, according to you was the embodiment of that and literally made lemonade every damn day.

it was remarkable. >> it really was. and one of the great lessons i tried to impart and i admired him very much for that. >> how do you describe his personality and general? >> because he could do that and would not be beaten down for most of us would be physical issues but he was an optimistic person with a great sense of humor and a great energy throughout his disease we went out on the town one afternoon let's go do some tourist stuff. >> describe what printing on the cam means.

>> it's for tipping over and then somebody stands in the back on the platform like in venice and then they push the pole into the bottom of the river and we went to do that. he said he wanted to join us and we said come along then the wheelchair had to go off the ramp and he had to be turned in a certain way which was difficult his wheelchair had to be able to down so that was a rough ride he would go flying at the other end had to be reversed he had to be carried down down these 20 or 30 stone steps to the boat so then he gets detached from the machine and cannot communicate from his wheelchair or his computer one takes his head and his feet and they carry

him down the stairs. >> my goodness. >> and then he could easily slip obviously he cannot swim he will drown. so i'm stepping in i almost fall off. >> this is all one oh. >> i'm thinking you must be scaring him i look down and he is laughing. >> and then they would turn his head how he looked left or right it was all those difficulties and he loved it and did things like that. he didn't like his disability stop him. >> and like everybody else they want to have strawberries and champagne so you help him

have some. >> i think i had a glass to hook up with is tablespoons. [laughter] >> i don't know how relative this theory is play feel like $100 million. >> recently i was sitting outside and i thought to myself why doesn't he bore you? >> thank you. >> about you are playing the song again. [laughter] >> it's a great big universe we are just tiny specks about the size of mickey rooney. [laughter] but you put me with a stick you will be sorry. your book obviously is full of

glorious stories with you being with stephen. are there any particular moment or two that you feel that encapsulated the whole experience of that's even possible? >> there are so many stories in different directions but i had a near-death experience i had internal bleeding in my intestines they cannot find the source. so i got over that and went back to cambridge he and i were having dinner one night and we started talking he knew that happened we were talking about it.

and all his near-death experiences which at least one per year. >> numerous. >> one of the problems with his disease you have trouble breathing so because of that he was subjected to lung infections think that may have exacerbated it so every year he would end up in the hospital with a lung infection and several times his family or caregivers were told he may not go through so we were commiserating a little bit and he said that's tough but then back to physics and then my son who we mentioned earlier

used as a basketball is life but then he starts typing and says love his life. and i thought that was fitting for the person who is the most famous physicist in the world that is his humanity coming out in essence he is not a physicist but a person who loves other people. >> when i was reading your book we discussed, i told you how much that really impacted me, the fact he wrote it's love, the meaning of life. it really was. it was found in many instances

like that for you stop and reread it and reread it. and in the context of who leonard is talking about, it really is impactful. in that light, with the atheist? agnostic? >> he was an atheist he did not like to talk about that. he was very sensitive and very much did not want to insult anybody or argue against god. sometimes people interpret the book as an argument against god saying that god was not necessary to create the universe one of the arguments for god is a supernatural thing that started off the universe the stevens theory shows the universe could start from nothing and that's at the essence of the book grand design we didn't say there was no god you just need to have a god and that we found evidence

i think he was very spiritual i think the book illustrates that and also he went to church. >> and she was a pretty religious woman. >> both wives were all religious women and they will go to churc church. so religion and science don't have to adapt with each other. >> you cite in the book touching on her briefly the heat that you took when the

grand design was released and you got a phone call from his secretary who said oh my god you have to help us they are freaking out. you have written a book and you disparaged god and you have to do housekeeping. >> i knew the book was coming out i was taking my daughter to school at eight in the morning and said leonard have you read the times? i said yes and waited every day she said the london times. how many people read the london times? why would you think that? >> i don't know is an emergency we cannot handle it

they are calling us we can handle the interviews. go read it. i and i'm doing 92nd interviews

so anytime since then i said that what he has to go through when you are whining about a headache where you smashed your car. on the scale between one and i

can't even move this is a number one. don't get upset is to say this is nine. now i say i can walk away from it. that's how i learned about myself i take things too seriously but also to make it not matter to but to take charge of your own thoughts not to matter to you is even more important. >> i think so also it is a marvelous book to make my living doing cartoon voices utterly relatable and readable and a total joy and there are aspects in the book we can all apply to ourselves.

you done good kid. it is one hell of a book. it's already 20 minutes before six can we do that now? >> let me go and make sure it will push the wrong button were you ever intimidated by mr. hawking? went off the bat when you got the phone call and you initially settle down and then did you think of my god? >> when i first met him, even in the early meetings then of course because he is an icon

and so brilliant and i'm not. [laughter] >> so i must be brilliant. >> real concerned that when you started to work with him that you were going to say something he would be receiving a stupid or silly? he called you but did you think jesus don't screw this u up, leonard? >> not that i have a worry before i asked something but i

was kicking myself for saying something that he might find stupid when i didn't understand what he was talking because we're looking at his current work and it was pretty complicated. i ask a question and then think i should have asked another. so we work together at the end of working together a cambridge so he would write this section or that section. so that are on the faculty i can also see him there. so writing is part one - - this passage but i'm not getting the point so i drive

up to santa barbara so they could explain to me what they were doing with this element i go back and write it up and then i go back to cambridge to see him and he is reviewing the i had written he said this is wrong. it is this way. i'm saying i sure i understood i didn't want to say so one point of looking at old notes that i had taken and they said look. these are my notes from jim. look. he successfully is to think that we changed our mind. [laughter] >> we changed your mind? nobody told me about this spirit the research he was doing was at work in progress.

>> an e-mail would have been nice to say you are explaining this but it is upside down. [laughter] >> in the book what i love about your relationship with stephen is that you are unafraid to discuss in the book your frustration was certainly the most famous physicist of my time as a layperson you talk about your frustration that if you're going to do this then let's do it, but you were writing together and he dropped the ball and you called him on it. that's pretty boldly. >> i was pretty frustrated. i will give anything away but i was pretty frustrated at that point and even the little

things there were many frustrations of people just walk into his office and then suddenly he talks and then uses that euphemism in cambridge for an hour. so at first i was naïve and said do you mind if i said that i did but stephen was fine and know how he got anything done because he was always interrupted you know he will do you want to talk he would ignore them like if we are working together didn't want to be interrupted he would say do you mind? were kind of busy but whatever they would just keep coming

and ask him the question and he would not answer it just ignore them and keep talking to me. i would say something he would answer me and then the guy would be standing there eventually he would get tired and walk away. >>. >> this is a great question did you ever collaborate on any physics problems together? to learn about certain areas of physics? >> there was one. i was interested in why we remember.

the questions of physics are reversible so if you take data on the current state and the snapshot than the laws of physics tell you how that develops to go forward or backward. and then you turn tell the difference but things like smoke dissipates and then not inherently backward in time but you will never see it concentrated to something.

so that's where it comes from where even though the laws are reversible the stage is very special. and a bunch of dominoes each standing on the table just right. and then someone moves the table they might fall. there is a million ways they could fall but only one way they can stand up just right. but they were not jump up into the initial configuration because that was special. and wondering psychologically why does that work?

and why they are reversible. but why do not remember the future? and with the smoke spreading how does that work i asked stephen about that and he said i told them i was interested in that and i wrote a paper about that in 1985. but he was confusing having said something with having proved it. [laughter] and then doesn't give any details or to show how it works.

and then i published a paper explaining that so anyway i talked to stephen about that problem. >> remember the future. it sounds like the led zeppelin album cover. here is an interesting question with so how difficult was it to take the evil being theory from scientific research to translate into something for interested nonexperts. >> first of all there is

physics that are subtle that people can read about what they have been working on at the time and i would say that most popular science books found those aspects of the theories of evolution are very well agreed upon. and that's like a different genre. and then this is much different to explain something that is already settled. and then to changing while you are writing. so when that happens then it gets and then make it clear

that how that is to settle the physics of don't think of what we do at the end of the book or how this could be confirmed or verified and what part of it is subtle theory. >> and i must say that's one of the things that was helpful as a layperson as well as being readable and human, you have a very appropriate and nicely placed footnotes to explain what you just read for someone like myself and you guys asking questions are you sure nine advance? catherine comes up with a lovely follow-up question.

just finished the book and enjoyed the physics as well as the human story. i graduated from cornell 1965 spent my working career at jpl. you indicated not everything you wrote was completely verified. hasn't been any major changes since it was published in 2010? what the grand design? >> and to find some support from that theory with those ideas is to have better technology like cosmic microwave background radiation or the afterglow of the big bang. and then to study the my night - - the minute details of that

so maybe another ten years sometimes you have to write on - - wait a long time and then talking about particles in the sixties and then there was a candidate they were studying so sometimes it takes a long time. >> if i'm not mistaken i don't know the specifics but einstein's theory of general relativity was essentially proven only a few years ago. >> but then to say we talk about the specific context but the first evidence for that is the observation that it confirmed a tradition that was different in just four years

and with a 1919 observation? and there have been others and the gps system that everybody uses it's very interesting because of general relativity. and then applies generally to the theory that we need to use up most of the old theory but and then run by a very concentrated mass and then it affects our lives because you actually need the so would be

general and very important. so that gets us all around the maps to navigate. but the fact that you get there as part of it. >> but that is what i love about what you guys and girls do in your discipline. my grandfather was a so i remember standing in this very house with first generation ipad and then the mars rover

landed because they already dropped the camera. if my genius grandfather came back and saw me standing there with a device this thick that did not heat up with no cords no to know plug and i said i watching the surface of mars, this is a really authentically learned man who would say that is witchcraft. i love to be aware of this device and then to be in mongolia. i'm glad you point that out. i know we're almost done and thank you for the opportunity. but obviously i presume it is based on other writings but it turns out isaac newton was an ass and i love that. how do we know that? >> we know a lot about newton.

about his papers and his books and even to have a reality show it there were boxes and boxes of his work and his writing. >> that is what made me laugh out loud because you wrote newton is an ass. i just love that he i think were pretty much out of time. >> i will tell you what these are the countries that have come up. here we go. ♪

♪ ♪ goodbye. >> thank you so much for joining us please be sure to cap on - - pick up a copy of the book and we will see you soon