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Some Interesting Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Hawking · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to you stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
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  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
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  Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and with us today
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  Speaker 1: is our friend and rotating guest producer Matt. That's right,
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  Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah. At Frederick,
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  Speaker 1: he's great, dude, and we're glad you're here. Matt. Can
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  Speaker 1: we've got some people some stuff you should know listeners
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  Speaker 1: that became scholarship sponsors, UM, starting with Chris Marino, Way
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  Speaker 1: you were gonna give me this way, Cameron. Yes, nice,
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  Speaker 1: Is that right? Viceness or that viciness? Yeah, the W
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  Speaker 1: is pronounced like a V in Germanic languages from what
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  Speaker 1: I understand. Yeah, well you know, yeah, who else, Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: I've got Raymond Breen. You skipped over justin Sechina. That's why,
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  Speaker 1: that's why c H E n A justin Sechina, and
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  Speaker 1: E d U see dot org. That's right, all right,
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  Speaker 1: so Chuck, Yes, we're talking about a guy, very special,
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  Speaker 1: guy special. His name is Stephen Hawking with a pH
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  Speaker 1: that's right, with a pH d like that. Uh, brilliant physicists,
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  Speaker 1: brilliant mind. If you haven't seen the Errol Morris documentary. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: I didn't know there was one on him. Yeah, he
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  Speaker 1: did The Brief History of Time, which is neat a
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  Speaker 1: documentary about Stephen Hawking, not really about the book. I
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  Speaker 1: think there's a movie version of the book. I think
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  Speaker 1: I have heard that too, but I haven't seen that.
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  Speaker 1: I haven't either, But that was his best seller. Um
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  Speaker 1: basically explaining making kind of doing what we do, explaining
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  Speaker 1: things in a more accessible way that are complex. But
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  Speaker 1: he doesn't way better than I. That's why he's like
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  Speaker 1: a darling of the media and of everybody, basically, because
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  Speaker 1: he's really really good typically at explaining really complex stuff
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  Speaker 1: in in a way that the average joke can kind
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  Speaker 1: of understand, which is that is, I mean, what we
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  Speaker 1: strive to do. They're making a movie about him now, actually,
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  Speaker 1: oh yeah, played by Jared Leto No good guess played
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  Speaker 1: by Eddie Redmaine. Who U. He sounds like a World
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  Speaker 1: War One ace pilot or something. It kind of looks
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  Speaker 1: like one. Yeah, have you seen the lay Miss movie? No?
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  Speaker 1: Have you seen My Week with Maryland? No? Okay, he
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  Speaker 1: was in those anything else he was another stuff, But
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  Speaker 1: those are the two most notable things. It's called The
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  Speaker 1: Theory of Everything. It's the new one, and it's really
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  Speaker 1: about the love story between he and his first wife.
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  Speaker 1: And I saw pictures of him, and he looks just
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  Speaker 1: like him. They did a really good job. Yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: think they gave him some different teeth than you know,
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  Speaker 1: put on the glasses and messed up his hair and
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  Speaker 1: but then the wheelchair and yeah, yeah you're now Stephen Hawking.
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  Speaker 1: But I think they're shooting that like literally right now.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm looking forward to that one. And he released
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  Speaker 1: stayed on that. I have no idea. Okay, it seems
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  Speaker 1: like a long time for that. Yeah, they're really putting
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  Speaker 1: their heart and soul into it, I guess. So. So
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  Speaker 1: there's plenty of stuff that, I mean, everybody's heard of
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  Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking, but there's um some pretty interesting little tidbits
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  Speaker 1: about the man, the myth, his life, um that I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know about until we read this article that I
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  Speaker 1: think is worth sharing frankly, because if we don't share it,
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  Speaker 1: what are we doing here? That's right. So one of
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  Speaker 1: the things, um, just to start off, is that he
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  Speaker 1: never won the Nobel Prize. As smart as the stude is, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: has not yet won the Nobel Prize. He's still got time.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure, I think I said has never Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I hope I did. It sounded like there was some finality.
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  Speaker 1: It's just never gonna happen. Try all you on, but
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  Speaker 1: this pillar of the physics and mathematics community has never
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  Speaker 1: won a Nobel Prize. Yeah, it is surprising. We're gonna
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  Speaker 1: rely on punts for this one, okay. Uh. He was
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  Speaker 1: born on January eight, nine two, which was also the
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  Speaker 1: three anniversary of Galileo's death, right, which is just mere coincidence,
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  Speaker 1: but it's a nice did bit, he says, who uh
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  Speaker 1: And he is obviously was diagnosed with ALS at the
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  Speaker 1: age of twenty one, Luke Garrig's disease and given just
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  Speaker 1: a few years to live. And um, that was a
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  Speaker 1: long time ago. It was. Um. He was born in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, so he's what, um, seventy one now. Um. No,
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  Speaker 1: he'll be seventy four very soon, in about a month
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  Speaker 1: or so. Anyway, he um. When he was just before
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  Speaker 1: his twenty one birthday, he started noticing. He was in
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  Speaker 1: grad school at Oxford, and he started noticing that he
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  Speaker 1: was getting clumsier running into stuff, having like tripping that
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  Speaker 1: kind of thing, and it was apparently pronounced enough that
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  Speaker 1: his family said, you're going to the doctor while you're
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  Speaker 1: home visiting for Christmas break and so he um went
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  Speaker 1: into the hospital for a battery of tests for two weeks.
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  Speaker 1: That's an awful experience as in and of itself, I'm sure.
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  Speaker 1: But then to top it off, they said, oh, well
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  Speaker 1: we found out what's wrong with you. You have a LS,
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  Speaker 1: which stands for immo trophic lateral sclerosis YEA or Luke
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  Speaker 1: Garrig's disease, because Luke Garret most famously had it. That's right,
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  Speaker 1: And it's just a neurological condition where you're voluntary muscle
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  Speaker 1: control is lost, right, Yeah, and uh, typically you will
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  Speaker 1: die a few years after contracting it from a couple
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  Speaker 1: of things. Well, after symptoms show up, but what motor
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  Speaker 1: neurons running your breathing muscles start to fail for uh,
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  Speaker 1: deterioration of your swallowing muscles. That's a big one. So
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  Speaker 1: basically you drown like it ends up being respiratory. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: usually go, but it's there's a lot of forms of it,
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  Speaker 1: and he doesn't have either one of those conditions, so
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  Speaker 1: he's good to go. Basically and has or has been
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  Speaker 1: for a long time, especially with this talking box. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he controls that with his cheek. Now, I have no
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  Speaker 1: idea how that works though. So Um, he's got the
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  Speaker 1: A L. S. Luke Garrig's disease, that's right, Um, but
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  Speaker 1: he hasn't really let it slow him down. Prior to that,
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  Speaker 1: he wasn't exactly like a real athletic type anyway. But
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  Speaker 1: he was on the rowing team at Oxford, which was
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  Speaker 1: a huge deal. Rowing team at Oxford equals um football
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  Speaker 1: team at Georgia, sure, maybe even more. What's more than
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  Speaker 1: that football team in Ohio state? Even Oh that's more lately?
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  Speaker 1: Did you see the Vanderbilt came Yeah, I don't want
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  Speaker 1: to talk about that. I don't neither. So um, he
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  Speaker 1: was the coxswain on the rowing team. He's the guy
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  Speaker 1: who goes stroke stroke stroke, And I did know this
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  Speaker 1: until I read this article. The coxwain doesn't just set
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  Speaker 1: the rhythm for a rowing they also steer. You didn't
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  Speaker 1: know that, No, I had no idea. Yeah, I thought
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  Speaker 1: it was strictly um being basically like a human metronome,
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  Speaker 1: you know. But he, Um, this little pip squeaky guy
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  Speaker 1: was on the rowing team as the coxwain and like
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  Speaker 1: really became popular, so much so that while he was
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  Speaker 1: at Oxford, he kind of threw himself into the rowing
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  Speaker 1: team or crew as we call it in America. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: to the detriment of his studies, even for a while.
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  Speaker 1: Um and speaking of studies, he getting an Oxford wasn't
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  Speaker 1: a foregone conclusion for this guy because he wasn't a
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  Speaker 1: great student in grade school. And um, I wasn't so
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  Speaker 1: surprised by that that he was average too poor in
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  Speaker 1: grade school, because I think a lot of these super geniuses,
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  Speaker 1: it's like it's so not even beneath them, but they're
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  Speaker 1: still beyond that. They might have a hard time and
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  Speaker 1: just in regular class room settings, you know. Oh yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so it was challenged, like you're probably not going to
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  Speaker 1: do very well in school. So those of you who
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: are board in school and don't have good grades, don't
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  Speaker 1: go up. Hope you may be a genius. Yeah, But
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  Speaker 1: even at the time, uh, there was something about him,
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  Speaker 1: like he was obviously a smart kid even though he
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  Speaker 1: wasn't getting good grades. Because his school his classmates named him,
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  Speaker 1: nicknamed him Einstein, which is about as pression as you
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  Speaker 1: can get and it wasn't because of his fluffy white
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  Speaker 1: mustache in the fourth grade. But his parents both went
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  Speaker 1: to Oxford and they wanted him to go there. And um,
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  Speaker 1: he was a great test taker and he aced his exams,
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  Speaker 1: almost got a perfect score on the physics exam unsurprisingly,
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  Speaker 1: but rather than going into physics, his father, Frank I
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  Speaker 1: believe his name is, said, no, I want you to
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  Speaker 1: be a doctor. You're going to serve the world by
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: being a doctor. And so uh, a little Stephen goes
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  Speaker 1: and tries to take some biology classes and says, this
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  Speaker 1: is sciences is imprecise, it's descriptive, it's subjective, Like I
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  Speaker 1: can't be no, I don't want to do this. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: He was not into biology. Um, and I wasn't either,
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  Speaker 1: but he was way into physics, whereas I was not.
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  Speaker 1: Um And when he went to Oxford, they were like, well,
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  Speaker 1: we got a couple of programs. We have the traditional
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  Speaker 1: particle physics where you study sub atomic particles and that's
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  Speaker 1: old school, where we have this newish kind of thing
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  Speaker 1: called cosmology, which isn't even a isn't even a real
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  Speaker 1: field yet, like we're trying it out here. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: he was like, I am all over that because I
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  Speaker 1: want to learn about bigger things, not smaller things. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: because they're basically the two different approaches to the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: Like particles studies the very small parts that make up
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  Speaker 1: the universe, and cosmology is the sum of those parts
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  Speaker 1: and how they interact. Yeah, of course he would get
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  Speaker 1: into both eventually. Yeah, well, I think you kind of
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  Speaker 1: have to have an understanding both else you're just Although
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  Speaker 1: bet if your particle physicist, you can just kind of
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  Speaker 1: be in your lab running tests and setting out data,
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  Speaker 1: and the cosmologists use that as well. Yeah, but because back,
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure it's I bet cosmology. I bet they study
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  Speaker 1: particle physics more than particle physics. People study cosmology. We'll
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  Speaker 1: prove us wrong. People prove us wrong. That was the
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  Speaker 1: nerdiest like exchange we've ever had. I think it's up
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  Speaker 1: there for sure. So out of the study of cosmology, UM,
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  Speaker 1: his probably his biggest contribution to date to science to
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  Speaker 1: cosmology popular culture would be A Brief History of Time,
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  Speaker 1: But his biggest contribution to his field is UM something
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  Speaker 1: that the author of this article calls the boundless universe theory,
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  Speaker 1: which I couldn't really find anywhere else every everywhere else
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  Speaker 1: on the internet. If the type in boundless universe theory,
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  Speaker 1: it just brings up this article and like people copying
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  Speaker 1: and pasting this article in the body. Yeah, did this
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  Speaker 1: guy invent this title? And I don't. Yeah, I guess so,
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  Speaker 1: because there is something out there that describes this, but
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  Speaker 1: nobody else calls it boundless universe theory. Really yeah, but
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  Speaker 1: this is the big contribution. And here it's about the
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  Speaker 1: time that your brain will start to melt. Uh. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: he worked with the guy named Jim Hartle and came
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  Speaker 1: up with a theory in that the universe is limitless.
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  Speaker 1: Yet why is that funny? I could actually hear the
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  Speaker 1: hyphen in the Yeah. Uh, it is a contained thing
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  Speaker 1: yet it has no boundaries. Right, So, like I said,
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  Speaker 1: your mind melts. But wait, this is why Stephen Hawking
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  Speaker 1: is awesome. How can that be? Josh, Well, he says,
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  Speaker 1: visualize the Earth, the service of the Earth. It's it's contained,
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  Speaker 1: but it's also boundless. Like if you travel across the
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  Speaker 1: edge of the Earth, you never reached the edge. True,
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  Speaker 1: So he said, it's just visualize the surface of the Earth.
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  Speaker 1: But the surface of the Earth is you know, two dimensional,
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  Speaker 1: This is four dimensional. See, that's where my mind is
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  Speaker 1: already blown. Yeah. I didn't even try to follow that.
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  Speaker 1: But what what they're saying is um and the larger
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  Speaker 1: implication of this is that what Um, Hardle and Hawking
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  Speaker 1: did was they took Richard Feynman's quantum theory of the
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  Speaker 1: universe and married it to Einstein's theory of relativity to
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  Speaker 1: come up with this idea that the universe didn't emerge
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  Speaker 1: from a black hole. Um. Instead, it it came out
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  Speaker 1: of the Big Bang, and as a result, spacetime, which
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  Speaker 1: is exactly what it sounds like, travels if you're looking
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  Speaker 1: at it like a a the Earth, the Big Bank
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: takes place of the north pole. So as you're traveling
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: southward towards the equator, these lines of latitude get bigger, right,
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  Speaker 1: and Um, those represents space time. So it's kind of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: like time doesn't exist. And I don't think that's true,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: So don't email me. I'm just saying my own interpretation
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of this. At the Big Bang Big Bang happens, time
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  Speaker 1: and space start to exist. They go outward expanding, and
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  Speaker 1: then once you hit the equator, that's the apex, that's
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  Speaker 1: the peak, and then they start to come back in.
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  Speaker 1: And the the upshot of this is that eventually, by
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  Speaker 1: Hawkings reckoning, in about twenty billion years, spacetime will collapse
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  Speaker 1: in on itself again, meaning our entire universe will collapse
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  Speaker 1: upon itself. Yeah, it's finite, but it's boundless, mind blown, right,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: And like Chuck, what we just did, like isn't even
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: It's probably the most rickety terrible interpretation of the of
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that ever, but I think that that's generally the it's
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: it's an interpretation. Hey, I got one for you, okay,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: if we're listening Hawking things, And I just found this
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: out today, did you know that he had a really
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: bad situation with his second wife. No, he married his
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: first wife, Jane, and credits her with giving him reasons
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  Speaker 1: to live, like right after he was diagnosed, Like he
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: met her the week he was diagnosed, and that's what
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: they're making this love story about. And they were married
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: for quite a long time until the mid nineties and
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: they divorced and he married one of his nurses, Elaine Mason,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: and reportedly she was an awful, awful person. Reportedly reportedly
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: like basically everybody who knew her, like he was sort
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: of strange from his family for a long time because
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: of her controlling, manipulative bullying and rumors and investigations into
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the fact that she may have physically abused him. Yeah,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: his wife and nurse uh fractured his wrists by slamming
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: it onto a wheelchair. And this is all allegedly because
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: he denied it. But people close to him said he
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: would never admit that, because that would admit that he
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: really screwed up by making this decision. Ah let him
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  Speaker 1: pee himself by like not giving him his you know,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the means to do so. She uh submerged him in
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: a bathtub, like letting his tricky outomy tube fill up
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: with water. Oh my god, and left him out in
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the sun and like the hottest days of the year.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: He had heat stroke and severe sunburned. And he denied that.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: They investigated, and basically the cops wal there was nothing
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: we can do. He's saying the stuff didn't happen. Yet
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: he would show up like bruises and cuts and things
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and say, yeah, like I've ran into a door again today.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: They're like, you're in a wheelchair. You can't really do that.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I guess you can. Um And they divorced in two
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: thousand six, when did they get married? So there's a
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  Speaker 1: Vanity Fair article about it was like really disturbing. Any
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: of that true, that's awful, let alone all of it
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  Speaker 1: combined together. Jeez. So there's that that was that was uplifting, Chuck,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I've got one for you. Um he. A couple of
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: years back, HuffPo reported that, um he was a frequent
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: visitor to a California sex club, Freedom Makers, and like
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: some somebody who went there said that like he, they'd
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: seen him there more than a handful of times. Interesting
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: like basically getting laft and it's pretty unmistakable guy. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: doubt he would confuse him. But Oxford, I believe it
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: was Oxford came out and said that is b s.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: He did go to this place once basically like as
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: a joke, as the guest of a friend or something
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: like that. But he's certainly not a member. He's certainly
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: not a frequent visitor. And like this person who's saying
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: this is a liar. Thin got dropped after that, but he,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: um he, he does have a great wit. That's another
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: thing he's known for being a charmer. Yeah, and um
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: the he was asked I think the Guardian asked him, like,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: if there's anything that he didn't understand or that baffled
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: them in the universe. And his answer was women said,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: they're a total mystery to me. So there is at
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: least one thing, but black holes not the case. Yeah,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: he lost a bet on black holes and was man
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: enough to admit it. In two thousand four. Uh, he
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: made a bet with um, a fellow scientist named John Preskill. Yeah,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and they did well. I let's talk about black holes
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: for a second here. I guess. Stars are these big,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: huge things that burned tons of energy, the sons of
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: star Son is a star. You should go back and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: revisit our Sun podcast. That's a great one. Uh. And
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: they have a ton of mass and a ton of gravity,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: which is great as long as they're burning and doing
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: fine because there are nuclear explosions pushing outward. Yeah, just
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: gravities ing it inwards. So they find this happy balance
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: massive amounts of mass and gravity. When they die, though,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: something bad happens and the gravity says, I am funny,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: something bad happened. That's hilarious. Well, if you're a star,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I guess, um, unless like that's the apex of being
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a star. Maybe, man I get to be a black
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: hole to burn out. Well, that was a spoiler. They
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: become black holes because gravity wins out and becomes stronger
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and it collapses on itself. And that that is what
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: a black hole is, right. It's just all the matter
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: in the star combined in this little dense ball that's
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: so dense and has such an amount of mass clustered
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: into one little part that it actually bends the fabric
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: of space and time. And so that's your black hole.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: It's really a black well in the fabric of space
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and time. Uh. And so that's a black hole. And supposedly, no, not,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: not even light can escape once it passes an event horizon.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And um, who did he have the bet with pres Skill?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: So press Skill and Hawking disagreed about whether or not
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: anything called information, which would be light, particles, anything, anything
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: at all escaping black holes. Hawking said no, Preskill said yes.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: And then later on Hawking figured out that Prescoe was right, um,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: that if you did go into a black hole, you
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: would get all jumbled up and distorted, but you information
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: about you, particles, whatever could escape. Um. And therefore there's
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: no such thing as a true event horizon. There's a
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: pseudo event horizon, because if you have a genuine event horizon,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: nothing could ever come back out. I wonder what the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: bet was. They don't, they don't say. I found out
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: it was a m because it was information escaping a
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: black hole. They they they bet um and an encyclopedia
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: of the winner's choice, and encyclopedia being a place from
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: which information is easily retrieved. And I think press Gil
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: wanted a baseball encyclopedia because you know, smart guys, they're
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: into sports. They're into baseball. Yeah, that's true. It's the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: thinking man's game. Um. I thought it might have been
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a trip back to the gentleman's club freedommakers. Yeah, you're
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: buying all right. Here's one that I didn't realize. Uh.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: He's written to children's books with his daughter Lucy, and
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: they have a trilogy and uh, the first one in
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: two thousand and seven was called Georgia's Secret Key to
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the Universe and it's about a little boy named George
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: who has these leadite parents that he can't stand, so
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: he kills them. He doesn't kill them, um, but technology
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to kill him. Nobody has a neighbor who he really
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: cottons too because he's a physicist and has a computer.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: It just happens to have the most powerful computer in
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the world at his house, that's right. And that computer
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: offers offers portals that they can see into outer space.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So George is super stoked about this, right, So there's
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Georgia's Secret Key of the Universe. They followed that with
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt, and then in two eleven they
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: had George in The Big Bang. Yeah, and that was
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: their children's book trilogy. And I think when they interviewed
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Lucy In and him, people are like, we shouldn't be
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: surprised because this is sort of just another extension of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: what he's trying to do his whole life, which is
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: explained things. And that's what the book does for children.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: It's it's not just a fantastical story. It kind of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: introduces them to things like physics and black holes and
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: or black wells. Right, you're gonna coin that, I think
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: if somebody else already has um. All right, well, chuck,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: before we keep going. We got some more stuff up
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: our sleep, possibly the most surprising things you can think of,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: That about Hawking coming up after this message break. All right,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: so you're about to blow my doors with some surprises. Okay,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I think you know all this. You read the same
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: article I did, being coy okay. Um Hawking has said
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: publicly that he believed in the possibility of alien life,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and not just primitive alien life, which he suggests is
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: possibly common. He's actually a proponent of panspermia, which is
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: um basically like say a meteor bringing the basics of
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: life from Mars to Earth um, but also possibly intelligent life,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: although he says it's probably few and far between. Yeah,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: but the fact that he was on record for this
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: is pretty surprising. Sure, he said it to NASA. He was.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: He came out as an alien life supporter to NASA.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: I wonder if belon though, and told his wife he
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: was like, I get this. I told NASA I thought
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: there might be intelligent line over there. Here's where my
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: mind was blown a little bit. He says, we might
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: need to be uh wary of them though, if they come,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: because they probably won't be DNA based, which you just
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: can't even wrap your head around. Well, yeah, you know, um,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I remember having my mind blown. The younger person, I
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: think it was Michael Crichton. In one of his books,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: he just was mentioning off handedly how aliens might not
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: even be like might they might be intelligent crystals or
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: something like that. They can something we just had, we
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: wouldn't recommise at all. Yeah, which is I think probably
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the likelier case. Like he's saying, d n A is
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: not essential a life. It can be a lot of
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: other things as long as you have some sort of
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: replicating basis of life. That there you go. That's sort
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: of old school like Lovecraft and all those early sci
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: fi horror writers. Remember, their common method was always to
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: be like it cannot even be described. That was always
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: their copse unnamable. Um. But the way he describes aliens
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and potentially smart aliens is sort of just like you
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: would see in the movies, like, hey, they may be
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: nomads who ran out of resources and they're coming to
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Earth for hours and then that's straight out of a
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: sci fi movie. Or are we the aliens? No, I'm
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: just saying like that's kind of what the we're at
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: the very cusp of that as well. Yeah, I remember
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: when like an elementary school, when at some point the
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: first mind blow is probably like we could be just
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: a speck on the fingernail, like some giant in some
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: other world. Wun't that neat that they ended? Um? Uh
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: the Grinch like that the movie? Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: that's how it ends. What do you mean like it?
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: He Ron Howard starts panning out out and out and
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: out from pulling out. Yeah, so pan is only going
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: in now. Panting is left and right okay, other where
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: you push interor pull out Okay, Well he's pulling out
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and out and out now. And um you finally realize
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that Whoville is part of like a Adam that makes
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: up a snowflake. Oh, I don't remember that. Yeah, that
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: was a great way to end it. Pretty brilliant. Um. Also,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking believes in time travel. He's been on the
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: record about that. Remember in our time travel episode that
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: we did at Yeah, we he like theorized this huge
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: machine that you could use to travel forward in time. Yeah,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: but not back when his Yeah? Yeah? Uh do you
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: have anything else any surprising Hawking Hawk facts? Uh? He
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: held a chair for thirty years, which is basically like
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: a position at Cambridge um the Lucazian Professor of Mathematics
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: at Cambridge in this chair of this position at this
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: university dates back to sixteen sixty three. He held it
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: for thirty years. The guy who held it the second position,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the second person to hold that was Isaac Newton. Yeah,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: that's not bad. That's pretty cool. So his nickname was Einstein.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: He had the same job literally as Isaac Newton. He's
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: doing pretty good for himself. Presidential Medal of Freedom here
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: and Commander of the British Empire, which is what non
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: brit skit I think, instead of being knighted. But still
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: James Bond is the commander. Oh yeah, but still no
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Nobel prize. No for Bond or Hawking. Yeah, well, I
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: mean breaking bad wanted on their last season. That's funny.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Didn't they win the Nobel? I don't think so. I
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: don't think they did. They wanted to me. Uh. If
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: you want to learn more about Stephen Hawking, you can
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: type that into the search bar Stephen with the pH
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: remember um at how stuff works dot com. And since
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I said search bar, friends, it is time for listener mail.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this last call for alcohol. And this
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: guy Dan describes something that we're familiar with, but we're
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: gonna read it anyway in case people don't know. Hey, guys,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and Dan and I'm a big fan of live in
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: New York City and listen to you drop knowledge on
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: my way to and from work at an East Harlem
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: beer and wine bar called a b v uh. And
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: it was here where I discovered it unique use for
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: your work. I don't know if you guys are aware,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: but bars have something called last call. That is when
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the bartender offers folks one last drink before finishing up,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: usually about fifteen minutes before standard closing time. The idea
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: is that the customer will use the remaining fifteen minutes
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: to finish up the drinks and then hit bricks. Uh.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: This system has served quite well for quite some time
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and is one of the unwritten rules of bar etiquette. But,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: as Newton's Law would suggest, sometimes that the system breaks down.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes folks just don't get the whole idea of a
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: timely closed want to linger. Here in lies one of
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the tougher spots for a bartender. How to get those
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: loiterers out without offending or upsetting anyone's delicate sensibilities. Um,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: but most bartenders really didn't give a care about that
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: at closing time. Well, the bars that I went to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: like in college, it was pretty rough. The Georgia Bar,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you know, it was profanities, consulting people will many families.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: or playing really awful music was a great mess, you know,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: which is where we come in. Um. Yeah, you can
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: stop the music, you can flash the lights, you can
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: walk over and plainly tell them uh to leave. But
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: you can try my new method, peak oil. Nothing will
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: clear room of helpless, helpless drunks, philanderers and miscreants like
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a thorough, thoughtful and well meaning discussion of the ins
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: and outs of peak oil from the middle of the
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: show and without warning our context. This tactic is subtle,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: it is funny, and it is amazingly effective. I cannot
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: begin to describe the joy I experience watching the Dilly
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Daliers suddenly gained self awareness and scurry for the exits
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: for climped but one can only hope better informed. But
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: in all seriousness, guys, you're doing the world in excellent service.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Information is rarely conveyed with such grace and wit, and
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: for that I thank you. And if you find yourselves
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: in need of a libation in New York, see seek
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: me out. Oh we will Dan Morton at A B
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: V and East Harlem. Awesome, we'll go do Peak Oil Live.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Let's all that is really cool. Yeah, what had great
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: use for that one man? Thanks a lot, Dan, thanks
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: for the invite to you and anybody hanging out in
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: New York. Go check out Dan and A B B
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and you can get a little free stuff you should
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Know action going on there at closing time, that's right. Yeah.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Uh so, if you have figured out a new use
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: for stuff you should Know, we always want to hear
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: about stuff like that. You can tweet to us at
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know So, you
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: dot com, and as always, you can join us at
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
• 31:54
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• 32:03
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