September 3, 2026 • 33 mins
Was Stephen Hawking a genius or fraud? We take a deep dive down the Hawking black hole, looking at the theoretical physicist's life and extraordinary body of work. What we found raises an uncomfortable question: Where did Stephen Hawking end - and the Hawking machine begin?
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Red Pilled America. This Labor Day weekend, Red
Pilled America is offering 40% off an annual entry-level backstage
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(00:25):
America one story at a time. Was Stephen Hawking a
genius or a fraud? It's an uncomfortable question that few
in the civilized world dare ask. For nearly 40 years,
cultural elites branded the late British theoretical physicist as mythical,
an otherworldly figure.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Stephen Hawking was formally inducted into the Royal Academy in London.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
He has since come to be recognized as one of
the most brilliant physicists of all times.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
And some say he is as brilliant as Einstein.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But to others, Stephen Hawking was nothing more than a puppet,
used by ghostwriters as a money machine, or worse, a
political weapon.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
You describe Donald Trump as a demagogue.
Speaker 6 (01:12):
His priority will be to satisfy his electorate who are
neither liberal nor that well-informed.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
So which is it? Was Stephen Hawking an oracle or
the science hoax of the century? I'm Patrick Karelchi.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
And I'm Adriana Cortez.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
And we promise you only one thing, the truth. Welcome
to Red Pilled America. Was Stephen Hawking a genius or
a fraud? When we first saw discussions on this topic,
it seemed like conspiracy theory fodder for comedians. I mean,
(01:47):
Hawking's accomplishments are legendary. He became a fellow of the
most esteemed scientific academy in the world at just 32
years old. One of the most prestigious universities on the
globe appointed him to perhaps the most coveted professorship in
all of academia. And over the course of his 76
years of life, he received countless scientific honors and medals,
(02:08):
all with a failing body in a wheelchair. Stephen Hawking
was also a publishing powerhouse. His first popular science book
sold an extraordinary 25 million copies worldwide. He'd go on
to author, co-author, or edit over 11,000 pages of text
for books, research papers, and lectures. He's even credited with
writing scripts for TV miniseries and documentaries. With this long
(02:32):
list of accolades from varying sources, the thought of Stephen
Hawking being part of a conspiratorial con sounded absurd. But
then one man introduced a concept to test this conspiracy theory.
And the man isn't some crank. He's an MIT scientist
that was curious about whether Hawking's hype was real or
a media myth. So we did a deep dive into
(02:54):
his life, through the lens this MIT scientist provided. And
what we found was a reality far different than what
the media has portrayed. So is Stephen Hawking a genius
or a fraud? And why should we care? To find
the answers, we're going to go down the Hawking black hole.
And the best place to start is with the video
that launched the conspiracy theory around him.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It was 1984 when Professor Hawking sat down for a
rare interview.
Speaker 7 (03:22):
Stephen, when did you first realize you wanted to be
a physicist?
Speaker 8 (03:26):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
At the time, Hawking was a little-known Cambridge professor whose
language was incoherent to all but his intimate inner circle,
such as the grad student translator seated beside him.
Speaker 8 (03:41):
I think I knew from about the age of nine
or ten that I wanted to be a scientist. Most
of my activities like playing with model fireworks. or model
railways or playing complicated games was aimed in some way
(04:04):
at finding out how the world.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Worked around me. By 1984, Stephen had already been confined
to a wheelchair for over 15 years and had been
using an interpreter for roughly a decade. When the internet
got a hold of this interview years later, it's not
hard to see how some people began to believe the
interpretation was fake.
Speaker 9 (04:23):
So in a sense, you went from modeling planes to
modeling the universe.
Speaker 8 (04:28):
I was never very good with my hands, although my models.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Did not work very well.
Speaker 8 (04:36):
But I was always interested in models that I could control.
Because in a way, if you understand the universe, then
you have control of it.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
A year later, Hawking would lose his ability to speak forever.
Yet astonishingly, he would eventually become one of the most
famous scientific voices of all time, How is that possible?
Stephen Hawking was born on January 8th, 1942 in Oxford, England.
(05:09):
According to Hawking, in his early years, he was a
slow learner. He didn't learn to read until he was
eight years old and never ranked higher than about halfway
up his class. But even with these struggles, his classmates
reportedly called him Einstein. By age 17, he entered Oxford University,
(05:29):
specializing in physics, and it was there that Hawking noticed
he'd become clumsy. Sometime around his senior year, he fell
down a flight of stairs. He lost his memory for
a while, but he kept the incident from his mother.
He graduated in 1962, then ventured to the University of
Cambridge to acquire a PhD. When he arrived... Stevens sought
(05:54):
to study under the most famous astronomer of the time,
Professor Fred Hoyle. Hoyle coined the phrase the Big Bang,
a term to describe the theory about the origin of
the universe gaining traction in physics circles. He meant it
as a pejorative. Hoyle thought the theory that everything started
(06:16):
from a bang at a single point was a foolish notion,
but the name stuck. When Hawking asked Hoyle to be
his PhD supervisor, Hoyle turned him down. He was instead
assigned to a different professor who directed him towards cosmology,
or the scientific and philosophical study of the entire universe.
(06:37):
Hawking agreed. But shortly after entering Cambridge, his health took
a turn for the worse. While celebrating Christmas with his parents,
he fell down while ice skating and couldn't get up.
The building clumsiness could no longer be hidden from his mother.
They sought medical advice, and shortly after, he was diagnosed
with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The disease stops brain
(07:03):
signals from reaching muscles, causing them to weaken, twitch, and
waste away. Over time, the progression eventually affects the ability
to move, speak, eat, and even breathe. Hawking was given
roughly two years to live. He fell into a deep depression,
but was pulled out by a young lady. Her name
(07:23):
was Jane Wild. The two met at a New Year's
Eve party. Jane was still in high school but bound
for college to study languages. By 1964, they were engaged,
just as Stephen Hawking was making noise at Cambridge. In
June 1964, Professor Fred Hoyle delivered a lecture to the
prestigious Royal Society of London to argue that the universe
(07:45):
was in a steady state, meaning it had no beginning
and existed eternally. At the conclusion of Hoyle's lecture, Hawking
stood up in front of the distinguished audience and announced,
Professor Hoyle, you are wrong. At the time, Hawking was
a complete unknown, 22-year-old graduate student already leaning on a cane. Annoyed,
(08:05):
Hoyle snapped back.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
How do you know it's wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Hawking bluntly replied, Because I have calculated it. What Hoyle
didn't know was that Hawking was offered an advanced peak
at his calculations, and he found a mathematical error. The
bold move instantly earned Hawking a reputation for having a
sharp and brash intellect. But just as his profile rose,
his condition was deteriorating. To complete his PhD thesis, he
(08:32):
had to enlist help. His fiancée typed it out, and
a mathematician helped perform important calculations. Was this normal? The
Royal Society would later call these particular calculations.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Probably the most onerous in the whole body of Stephen's work.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yet Hawking's own dissertation acknowledges that the calculations were performed
with the help of mathematician Ray McLenahan.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
After receiving his Ph.D., Hawking would become the scientist most
associated with black holes, an area in space thought to
have gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
But as he explored concepts like the Big Bang and
black holes, his ALS continued to progress. By 1968, he
was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
(09:18):
But oddly, even with his body failing, his work output accelerated.
In 1970, with co-author and British mathematician Roger Penrose, Stephen
published a research paper that argued that it was mathematically
unavoidable that the universe had an absolute beginning, or a
Big Bang. This theory made scientists uncomfortable, because it suggested
(09:39):
a creator. But around 1972, as he was disrupting the
world of cosmology, Stephen started losing significant use of his hands.
and his voice became increasingly hard to understand. So he
enlisted his grad students to be his calculators and interpreters,
and his work output accelerated again. In 1973, he was
(09:59):
credited as a co-author of a 400 page academic book
then a year later at a cosmological conference he'd make
one of the most controversial claims of his career he
proclaimed that black holes must emit particles like a hot
body losing heat This means that black holes could, in theory,
(10:23):
eventually evaporate. His wife Jane would later explain the moment.
Speaker 10 (10:28):
He came to an end, and there was absolute silence
in the lecture hall. And I can see it now.
The chairman of the lecture jumped to his feet, and
instead of saying, oh, I must thank Professor Hawking for
his remarkable lecture, He said, this is preposterous. I've never
(10:51):
heard anything like it.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Black holes were thought to be so incredibly strong that
nothing could escape them, not even light. But now Hawking
was claiming that they could radiate particles, what came to
be known as Hawking radiation. The idea rocked the theoretical
physics world. But should it have? Welcome back to Red
Pilled America. So in 1974, Stephen Hawking made one of
(11:14):
the most controversial claims of his career. He proclaimed that
black holes could, in theory, eventually evaporate. Black holes were
thought to be so incredibly strong that nothing could escape them,
not even light. But now Hawking was claiming that they
radiated particles, what came to be known as Hawking radiation.
The idea rocked the theoretical physics world. But should it have?
(11:36):
It's important to pause here for a second and point
out something about Stephen Hawking's field of study. A theoretical
physicist like Hawking constructs mathematical models that make claims about nature. Ideally,
those models produce predictions that can be tested. Albert Einstein's
(11:56):
general relativity is a classic example. It predicted phenomena including
gravitational light deflection, gravitational time dilation, and gravitational waves. Over
the century after Einstein presented his theory, many of his
predictions were successfully observed by scientists and confirmed in nature.
That's the gold standard in science. Make a novel prediction
(12:17):
about how the world works. Others devise an experiment to
observe the prediction in nature where it can be either
confirmed or falsified. But Hawking's signature prediction presented an unusual problem.
More than 50 years after predicting it, Hawking radiation has
never been observed coming from an actual black hole. And
(12:40):
some physicists believe direct detection may remain beyond our reach.
In fact, in a 2026 paper in the Scientific Community's Bible, Nature,
an author wrote, Hawking radiation has never been observed in astronomy,
adding that chances of observing it are astronomically small. And
much of Hawking's particular work lived at this difficult frontier.
(13:02):
What happened at the beginning of the universe? Did the
universe begin with a singularity? What happens after a black
hole evaporates? These aren't questions we can simply reproduce in
a laboratory and run an experiment to check. Stephen Hawking
became one of the most famous scientists in history, even
(13:24):
though his signature prediction, more than half a century later,
has never been observed in nature, and likely never will be.
But that did not stop the accolades from coming.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
In the spring of 1974, Stephen was inducted into UK's
Royal Society. the most prestigious and oldest continuously existing scientific
academy in the world, more doors began to open. He
was invited to a visiting professorship at the California Institute
of Technology. When he arrived, they gifted him with an
(13:55):
electric wheelchair. It would eventually become part of the Hawking brand.
In the spring of 1975, Stevens submitted a paper to
a scientific journal. It was his theory on black hole evaporation.
It would become the pinnacle of his contribution to science.
But what was perhaps most surprising about the paper was
(14:18):
what it didn't contain. Unlike his PhD dissertation, which acknowledges
outside help with some of its most difficult calculations, there
is no similar acknowledgement in this pivotal work. And that's odd,
given that the year before submitting it, Hawking lost the
use of his hands to physically write out calculations, as
(14:39):
he and his former grad student assistant would later admit.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
But the excitement of a new life in California was
harshly interrupted by my motor neuron disease. The physical symptoms
took an irreversible turn for the worst.
Speaker 11 (14:55):
That was the year in which he lost the use
of his hands. When he arrived, he could still write equations,
though with some difficulty. By the end of the year,
he couldn't.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Why wasn't this acknowledged on his most famous paper? This
was a pivotal time for Hawking's health. When he arrived
in California, his physical and verbal ability had almost completely collapsed.
By the summer of 1974, Stephen had student assistants living
with him full-time, as his wife Jane would later explain.
Speaker 10 (15:23):
This wonderful idea came to me. If we were going
to go to California and the students were going to
come too, why didn't we offer them a bed in
our house in return for some help with Stephen.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
One of his former grad students would later explain the arrangement.
Speaker 12 (15:44):
I live rent-free in exchange for sort of helping Stephen
out around the home.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
You know, at bath times and helping him with meals
and things like that.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
From 1974 on, Hawking had a grad student assistant always
living with him. They not only helped with everyday tasks,
they also became his full-time interpreters, and they began to
learn something about the professor.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I did discover that despite Hawking's great brilliance, he does
read quite slowly. I mean, I could read about twice
as fast as he.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
By 1977, Hawking couldn't be understood without an interpreter.
Speaker 9 (16:25):
The Big Bang is like a black hole explosion, but
on a much larger scale.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yet that same year, Cambridge created a special professorship specifically
for Hawking. Two years later, Cambridge appointed him to the
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, the same exact professorship held by
Sir Isaac Newton 300 years earlier. Shortly after being appointed,
(16:49):
Hawking had to provide his signature in a school faculty book.
It would be the last time he scribbled his name.
But as his body continued to decline further, Hawking's work
output didn't slow.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
In the early 1980s, he's credited as co-editor of two
separate academic books, each around 500 pages. He also co-authored
several scholarly papers. By 1984, as Stephen Hawking was being
interpreted for the CBC interview, his communication was so strained
that it sounded like complete gibberish.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Oh. I.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
You could see how someone who worked with him every
day could understand what he was saying.
Speaker 12 (17:39):
However, there might be very much smaller black holes about.
Which might have been formed by irregularities in the very
early universe.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
As 1985 approached, even his closest assistants admitted that they
had trouble interpreting his slurred speech. At the time, he
was speaking at roughly 60 words per minute. The average
Brit speaks nearly 190 words per minute, or over three
times faster than Hawking. But even at this rate, by
the summer of 1985, Hawking says he had dictated most
(18:17):
of his new popular science book to his associates. Then
tragedy struck. In August 1985, Hawking came down with pneumonia.
To keep him alive, a tracheotomy was performed. He survived,
but his God-given voice was gone forever. For the next year,
he could barely communicate. His team had to use a
(18:39):
card with letters and numbers on it. The person would
drag a pointer across the card, and when it hit
a letter Stephen wanted, he'd raise his eyebrows. The speed
was excruciatingly slow. Then a physicist from Hawking's team, called
a man who was working on a computer system for
people with ALS. The system was called Equalizer. The top
(19:00):
half of the screen had rows of letters, the bottom,
rows of very frequently used words. The user would use
a clicker in their hand to select either a word
or a letter to construct sentences. The completed sentence would
then be fed to a speech synthesizer, and out would
pop the sentence, in a robotic voice.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
If we do find a complete unified theory, it will
be a great triumph, not just for scientists, but for
ordinary people as well.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
With this equalizer system, Hawking could type out sentences at
about 15 words per minute, four times slower than before
his tracheotomy, and one twelfth the speed of his colleagues.
It was so slow that interviews didn't take place in
real time, as one reporter highlighted.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Now able to communicate again, Hawking reported, turned.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
To one of his grad students and asked him for
help finishing his first popular science book, A Brief History
of Time. Hawking reportedly wanted it to be the kind
of book you could buy at an airport terminal. No
one thought that was possible, but what most didn't realize
was that Stephen Hawking was poised to become publicity gold.
I mean, think about it. Here was a man whose specialty,
(20:15):
black holes, sounded more like science fiction than science. He'd
received countless accolades and held the most prestigious professorship in
all of academia, all from a contorted body in an
electric wheelchair. And now he had a computerized voice. His
(20:37):
digitized voice resembled that of the computer in war games,
a big screen hit at the time.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
People sometimes make.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
Mistakes.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 11 (20:49):
How can it talk?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's not a real voice.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
This box just interprets signals from the computer and turns
them into sound.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Shall we play a game?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
His contorted body in a wheelchair with a computer voice
made him look like a Greek mythological figure, the Oracle
of Cambridge, whose mind was now free to go places
where no mere mortal could venture, a narrative his team
leaned into.
Speaker 11 (21:12):
As he gradually lost the use of his hands, he
further developed his unique ways of thinking by manipulating shapes
and topologies in his head and became even more advanced
than the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
In the wake of his new equalizer communication system, Stephen
produced an astonishing level of work. Limited to just 15
words per minute, he authored and co-authored multiple research papers,
co-edited a 700-plus page academic book on gravitation, published essays,
gave lectures at prestigious institutions.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It is this Berkeley tradition of great learning and public
service that the Department of Physics has arranged for tonight's
lecture to be given by world-renowned scholar Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And with his communication speed at 1 12th of the
average Brit, Stephen even finished his popular science book, A
Brief History of Time. When it hit the bookstores in
April 1988, it became an international sensation.
Speaker 11 (22:18):
A book about scientific theory has been a top bestseller.
It's called A Brief History of Time and it was
written by a remarkable scientist named Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 9 (22:26):
Professor Hawking, in fact, has just made publishing history by
writing a book about hard theoretical science which has outsold
even Michael Jackson in the bestseller list.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
At any given time, Joan, there is one exceptional scientific
personality that seems to emerge, not just because of his intellect,
but because of some personal quality. I'll tell you, Stephen
Quality is that standout scientist of our period.
Speaker 6 (22:49):
I have lived with the possibility of an early death
for the last 25 years, but there are a lot
of things I want to do before I die.
Speaker 9 (22:58):
He has the boldness to attack problems that many other
people think don't make sense.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
In the 30 years that followed, Stephen Hawking became an
international pop culture sensation. He authored, co-authored, and edited thousands
upon thousands of pages in books and research papers, and
gave a seemingly endless number of lectures. And he also
became a near-regular on TV.
Speaker 11 (23:21):
Professor Hawking, it's an honor and a privilege to meet you, sir.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
I know.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
The volume of his work output rivaled any high-performing, able-bodied
media personality. The astonishing part is that, throughout those entire
three decades, his body continued to falter. the nerve controlling
his thumb used to control the equalizer clicker deteriorated. His
communication went from 15 words per minute in 1986 to
(23:50):
just one word per minute in 2008. One reporter at
the time said.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
It took him 20 minutes to write a salutation of
about 30 words.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
With his thumb muscle no longer reliably working, a new
system needed to be devised. His team tried a brain-switching
interface that worked for other ALS patients, but it didn't work.
One engineer noted, Somehow they couldn't get a strong enough
brain signal. Running out of ideas, they landed on an
infrared sensor that used voluntary movement in his cheek as
(24:19):
a switch to select words. By 2011, this cheek-controlled system
increased his communication from one word to roughly two words
per minute. Stephen never really improved from there. But over
the next decade, by just twitching his cheek, he was
credited as author, co-author, or editor of several thousand pages
of books and research papers. He had a lecture schedule
(24:42):
that made him look like a perpetual globetrotter, and was
even credited as writer of a TV miniseries. The theoretical
physicist was also finding time for a new activity, political activism.
He lobbied the British Prime Minister to posthumously pardon scientist
(25:04):
Alan Turing for the crime of being a homosexual. He
spoke out for causes like national health care and climate change.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
Climate change is one of the great dangers we face,
and it's one we can prevent.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And even Stephen Hawking's death didn't stop the work output.
After passing on March 14, 2018, three books and two
research papers were published posthumously crediting him as either author
or co-author. In his final solo authorship, a 250-plus page
book titled Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Stephen cited
the election of Donald Trump and Britain's 2016 vote to
(25:40):
lead the European Union as a warning that there was, quote,
Stephen Hawking was not just a publishing powerhouse. The media
dubbed him as one of the greatest scientific minds that
had ever lived. But was that true? This Labor Day weekend,
Red Pilled America is offering 40% off an annual entry-level
(26:02):
backstage membership where you can get ad-free access to our
entire back catalog of episodes. Go to redpilledamerica.com and click
the link on the homepage and enter the phrase Labor
Day at checkout. Join the fam bam and help us
save America one story at a time. Welcome back to
Red Pilled America. So in the wake of Stephen Hawking's death,
(26:23):
the media dubbed him as one of the greatest scientific
minds that had ever lived. But was that true?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Another theoretical physicist, Jeremy Bernstein, had long cautioned comparing Hawking
to the genius Albert Einstein. In a 1988 piece for
The New Yorker, Bernstein publicly wondered how Hawking physically performed
theoretical physics. Since Hawking could no longer perform calculations himself,
Bernstein speculated that his students and assistants wrote equations for him.
(26:53):
Over the next 30 years, Jeremy Bernstein would repeatedly return
to Hawking, increasingly questioning the enormous gap between Hawking's scientific
accomplishments and his public mythology, and Bernstein wasn't alone in
that assessment. In 1999, Physics World surveyed more than 250
prominent physicists around the globe, asking each to name the
(27:16):
five physicists who had contributed the most important contributions to
the field.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
About 130 responded.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Einstein received 119 votes. Newton got 96. Even among living physicists,
Hans Beth received three votes. Stephen Hawking received just one vote.
Out of 61 physicists who received at least one vote,
Hawking was buried among the long list of one-vote recipients.
(27:43):
It was a remarkable disconnect. By 1999, the public increasingly
saw Stephen Hawking as one of history's greatest scientific minds,
while many of his peers apparently saw him very differently.
But perhaps the most poignant critique of Stephen Hawking came
from an MIT professor. Remember at the beginning of this story,
we mentioned a man that introduced a concept that could
(28:06):
be used to test the conspiracy theories surrounding Hawking? Well,
his name is Eduardo Casal, a professor emeritus at MIT.
Casal is a civil and environmental engineer that also wrote
an article about Hawking in the wake of his death.
It's titled Stephen Hawking, the imminent physicist versus the media hype.
(28:26):
In it, he lamented about the fake news around Hawking.
To gauge the legitimacy of Hawking's work output, he introduced
the idea of a communication bandwidth.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
If you were to estimate the amount of technical information
that Hawking produced in his life, say in terms of
bits and bytes, you would find that that would amply
exceed the time and means he had available to transfer
his thoughts onto either paper or synthetic voice. This was
especially true in the last few decades of his life,
when he was confined to a chair and communicated via
(28:58):
his computer. So how did he get so much information
out of his brain?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Casal discussed the torturously slow nature of Hawking's communication system,
one that went from 15 down to just one to
two words per minute.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
This is an excruciatingly slow process, or as an information
scientist would have expressed it, Hawking had minimal bandwidth. Yet
the rate at which Hawking published papers with advanced ideas
and very complex concepts and thoughts, not to mention his books,
surely greatly exceeded that bandwidth.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Hussall argued that it was near impossible to produce the
work output attributed to Hawking given his communication limitations. He
suggested that, since at least the mid-1980s, Hawking's work consisted
of his team presenting ideas to him, Hawking would agree
with some subtle gesture, then the researcher would go off
and draft the idea.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
That assistant scientist would then have gone on to attribute
to Hawking the authorship of that thought, and perhaps even
have written that opinion on his behalf. He concluded, My
own speculation is that he had an inner circle of
scientists working with him, and that his output was the
aggregate of the work of all of them, and not
just of Hawking by himself.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Writing, editing or co-authoring thousands of pages of texts for books,
research papers, speeches and lectures is a Herculean task that
even a high-performing, able-bodied person would have trouble producing. let
alone from someone with such an incredibly low communication bandwidth.
Despite searching across the decades after his tracheotomy, we couldn't
(30:36):
find a detailed, independently documented example showing exactly how Hawking
personally generated the work attributed to his name. As the
record shows, Hawking clearly had a team around him, helping
produce his work. As early as 1965, with his PhD thesis,
he enlisted help to write and perform calculations. As his
(30:57):
condition deteriorated, this workflow not only continued, it grew. When
Hawking's voice was lost to a tracheotomy, his already slow
communication bandwidth dramatically decreased. When his thumb muscle failed, he
could only communicate through a cheek muscle at one to
two words per minute. In our humble opinion, as writers
and with a former physicist among us, Hawking's documented communication
(31:21):
bandwidth was far too low to account for the extraordinary
level and variety of work product carrying Stephen Hawking's name,
which raises the question, where did the additional bandwidth come from?
(31:42):
So is Stephen Hawking a genius or a fraud? The
young Stephen Hawking was unquestionably a formidable theoretical physicist. His
ideas changed the way physicists thought about black holes. But
as his body deteriorated, something else grew around him. A
network of students, assistants, physicists, engineers, editors, and institutions that
(32:07):
allowed Stephen Hawking to continue producing at an extraordinary rate.
Somewhere along his career, the line between Stephen Hawking the
physicist and Stephen Hawking the team became blurred. What emerged
was Stephen Hawking the Enterprise, a machine. And by then,
there were powerful financial incentives to keep Hawking the machine.
(32:28):
Hawking himself acknowledged that money was one reason he entered
the popular book business. Publishers competed for his work, broadcasters
sought his participation, and institutions benefited from their association with
perhaps the most famous scientist alive. Stephen Hawking wasn't simply
a physicist anymore. He was a global brand, and an
(32:48):
enormously valuable one. In 2007 alone, Cambridge received nearly $ 25
million for a Stephen Hawking building. And that doesn't include
the millions upon millions in donations. Publishers made a fortune
off his books. The entire entertainment industry and academic community
cashed in on his celebrity, as did Hawking. He died
(33:09):
with a net worth in the tens of millions. Stephen
Hawking was no doubt an inspirational figure, but his communication
bandwidth didn't support the level of work carrying his name.
And oddly, the mainstream media never really made that connection,
even when the information was right in their face.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
If you have to hold a normal conversation, forget it.
It takes forever.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
He's got to call up one word at a time
and even sometimes build each word up letter by letter.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
And yet he comes out with all of this. Red
Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned and
produced by Adriana Cortez and me, Patrick Karelchi, for Informed Ventures.
To listen to our entire archive of episodes ad-free, visit
redpilledamerica.com and click Join in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
This is Red Pilled America. This Labor Day weekend, Red
Pilled America is offering 40% off an annual entry-level backstage
membership where you can get ad-free access to our entire
back catalog of episodes. Go to redpilledamerica.com and click the
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at checkout. Join the fam bam and help us save
(00:25):
America one story at a time. Was Stephen Hawking a
genius or a fraud? It's an uncomfortable question that few
in the civilized world dare ask. For nearly 40 years,
cultural elites branded the late British theoretical physicist as mythical,
an otherworldly figure.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Stephen Hawking was formally inducted into the Royal Academy in London.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
He has since come to be recognized as one of
the most brilliant physicists of all times.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
And some say he is as brilliant as Einstein.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But to others, Stephen Hawking was nothing more than a puppet,
used by ghostwriters as a money machine, or worse, a
political weapon.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
You describe Donald Trump as a demagogue.
Speaker 6 (01:12):
His priority will be to satisfy his electorate who are
neither liberal nor that well-informed.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
So which is it? Was Stephen Hawking an oracle or
the science hoax of the century? I'm Patrick Karelchi.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
And I'm Adriana Cortez.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
And we promise you only one thing, the truth. Welcome
to Red Pilled America. Was Stephen Hawking a genius or
a fraud? When we first saw discussions on this topic,
it seemed like conspiracy theory fodder for comedians. I mean,
(01:47):
Hawking's accomplishments are legendary. He became a fellow of the
most esteemed scientific academy in the world at just 32
years old. One of the most prestigious universities on the
globe appointed him to perhaps the most coveted professorship in
all of academia. And over the course of his 76
years of life, he received countless scientific honors and medals,
(02:08):
all with a failing body in a wheelchair. Stephen Hawking
was also a publishing powerhouse. His first popular science book
sold an extraordinary 25 million copies worldwide. He'd go on
to author, co-author, or edit over 11,000 pages of text
for books, research papers, and lectures. He's even credited with
writing scripts for TV miniseries and documentaries. With this long
(02:32):
list of accolades from varying sources, the thought of Stephen
Hawking being part of a conspiratorial con sounded absurd. But
then one man introduced a concept to test this conspiracy theory.
And the man isn't some crank. He's an MIT scientist
that was curious about whether Hawking's hype was real or
a media myth. So we did a deep dive into
(02:54):
his life, through the lens this MIT scientist provided. And
what we found was a reality far different than what
the media has portrayed. So is Stephen Hawking a genius
or a fraud? And why should we care? To find
the answers, we're going to go down the Hawking black hole.
And the best place to start is with the video
that launched the conspiracy theory around him.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It was 1984 when Professor Hawking sat down for a
rare interview.
Speaker 7 (03:22):
Stephen, when did you first realize you wanted to be
a physicist?
Speaker 8 (03:26):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
At the time, Hawking was a little-known Cambridge professor whose
language was incoherent to all but his intimate inner circle,
such as the grad student translator seated beside him.
Speaker 8 (03:41):
I think I knew from about the age of nine
or ten that I wanted to be a scientist. Most
of my activities like playing with model fireworks. or model
railways or playing complicated games was aimed in some way
(04:04):
at finding out how the world.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Worked around me. By 1984, Stephen had already been confined
to a wheelchair for over 15 years and had been
using an interpreter for roughly a decade. When the internet
got a hold of this interview years later, it's not
hard to see how some people began to believe the
interpretation was fake.
Speaker 9 (04:23):
So in a sense, you went from modeling planes to
modeling the universe.
Speaker 8 (04:28):
I was never very good with my hands, although my models.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Did not work very well.
Speaker 8 (04:36):
But I was always interested in models that I could control.
Because in a way, if you understand the universe, then
you have control of it.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
A year later, Hawking would lose his ability to speak forever.
Yet astonishingly, he would eventually become one of the most
famous scientific voices of all time, How is that possible?
Stephen Hawking was born on January 8th, 1942 in Oxford, England.
(05:09):
According to Hawking, in his early years, he was a
slow learner. He didn't learn to read until he was
eight years old and never ranked higher than about halfway
up his class. But even with these struggles, his classmates
reportedly called him Einstein. By age 17, he entered Oxford University,
(05:29):
specializing in physics, and it was there that Hawking noticed
he'd become clumsy. Sometime around his senior year, he fell
down a flight of stairs. He lost his memory for
a while, but he kept the incident from his mother.
He graduated in 1962, then ventured to the University of
Cambridge to acquire a PhD. When he arrived... Stevens sought
(05:54):
to study under the most famous astronomer of the time,
Professor Fred Hoyle. Hoyle coined the phrase the Big Bang,
a term to describe the theory about the origin of
the universe gaining traction in physics circles. He meant it
as a pejorative. Hoyle thought the theory that everything started
(06:16):
from a bang at a single point was a foolish notion,
but the name stuck. When Hawking asked Hoyle to be
his PhD supervisor, Hoyle turned him down. He was instead
assigned to a different professor who directed him towards cosmology,
or the scientific and philosophical study of the entire universe.
(06:37):
Hawking agreed. But shortly after entering Cambridge, his health took
a turn for the worse. While celebrating Christmas with his parents,
he fell down while ice skating and couldn't get up.
The building clumsiness could no longer be hidden from his mother.
They sought medical advice, and shortly after, he was diagnosed
with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The disease stops brain
(07:03):
signals from reaching muscles, causing them to weaken, twitch, and
waste away. Over time, the progression eventually affects the ability
to move, speak, eat, and even breathe. Hawking was given
roughly two years to live. He fell into a deep depression,
but was pulled out by a young lady. Her name
(07:23):
was Jane Wild. The two met at a New Year's
Eve party. Jane was still in high school but bound
for college to study languages. By 1964, they were engaged,
just as Stephen Hawking was making noise at Cambridge. In
June 1964, Professor Fred Hoyle delivered a lecture to the
prestigious Royal Society of London to argue that the universe
(07:45):
was in a steady state, meaning it had no beginning
and existed eternally. At the conclusion of Hoyle's lecture, Hawking
stood up in front of the distinguished audience and announced,
Professor Hoyle, you are wrong. At the time, Hawking was
a complete unknown, 22-year-old graduate student already leaning on a cane. Annoyed,
(08:05):
Hoyle snapped back.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
How do you know it's wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Hawking bluntly replied, Because I have calculated it. What Hoyle
didn't know was that Hawking was offered an advanced peak
at his calculations, and he found a mathematical error. The
bold move instantly earned Hawking a reputation for having a
sharp and brash intellect. But just as his profile rose,
his condition was deteriorating. To complete his PhD thesis, he
(08:32):
had to enlist help. His fiancée typed it out, and
a mathematician helped perform important calculations. Was this normal? The
Royal Society would later call these particular calculations.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Probably the most onerous in the whole body of Stephen's work.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yet Hawking's own dissertation acknowledges that the calculations were performed
with the help of mathematician Ray McLenahan.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
After receiving his Ph.D., Hawking would become the scientist most
associated with black holes, an area in space thought to
have gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
But as he explored concepts like the Big Bang and
black holes, his ALS continued to progress. By 1968, he
was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
(09:18):
But oddly, even with his body failing, his work output accelerated.
In 1970, with co-author and British mathematician Roger Penrose, Stephen
published a research paper that argued that it was mathematically
unavoidable that the universe had an absolute beginning, or a
Big Bang. This theory made scientists uncomfortable, because it suggested
(09:39):
a creator. But around 1972, as he was disrupting the
world of cosmology, Stephen started losing significant use of his hands.
and his voice became increasingly hard to understand. So he
enlisted his grad students to be his calculators and interpreters,
and his work output accelerated again. In 1973, he was
(09:59):
credited as a co-author of a 400 page academic book
then a year later at a cosmological conference he'd make
one of the most controversial claims of his career he
proclaimed that black holes must emit particles like a hot
body losing heat This means that black holes could, in theory,
(10:23):
eventually evaporate. His wife Jane would later explain the moment.
Speaker 10 (10:28):
He came to an end, and there was absolute silence
in the lecture hall. And I can see it now.
The chairman of the lecture jumped to his feet, and
instead of saying, oh, I must thank Professor Hawking for
his remarkable lecture, He said, this is preposterous. I've never
(10:51):
heard anything like it.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Black holes were thought to be so incredibly strong that
nothing could escape them, not even light. But now Hawking
was claiming that they could radiate particles, what came to
be known as Hawking radiation. The idea rocked the theoretical
physics world. But should it have? Welcome back to Red
Pilled America. So in 1974, Stephen Hawking made one of
(11:14):
the most controversial claims of his career. He proclaimed that
black holes could, in theory, eventually evaporate. Black holes were
thought to be so incredibly strong that nothing could escape them,
not even light. But now Hawking was claiming that they
radiated particles, what came to be known as Hawking radiation.
The idea rocked the theoretical physics world. But should it have?
(11:36):
It's important to pause here for a second and point
out something about Stephen Hawking's field of study. A theoretical
physicist like Hawking constructs mathematical models that make claims about nature. Ideally,
those models produce predictions that can be tested. Albert Einstein's
(11:56):
general relativity is a classic example. It predicted phenomena including
gravitational light deflection, gravitational time dilation, and gravitational waves. Over
the century after Einstein presented his theory, many of his
predictions were successfully observed by scientists and confirmed in nature.
That's the gold standard in science. Make a novel prediction
(12:17):
about how the world works. Others devise an experiment to
observe the prediction in nature where it can be either
confirmed or falsified. But Hawking's signature prediction presented an unusual problem.
More than 50 years after predicting it, Hawking radiation has
never been observed coming from an actual black hole. And
(12:40):
some physicists believe direct detection may remain beyond our reach.
In fact, in a 2026 paper in the Scientific Community's Bible, Nature,
an author wrote, Hawking radiation has never been observed in astronomy,
adding that chances of observing it are astronomically small. And
much of Hawking's particular work lived at this difficult frontier.
(13:02):
What happened at the beginning of the universe? Did the
universe begin with a singularity? What happens after a black
hole evaporates? These aren't questions we can simply reproduce in
a laboratory and run an experiment to check. Stephen Hawking
became one of the most famous scientists in history, even
(13:24):
though his signature prediction, more than half a century later,
has never been observed in nature, and likely never will be.
But that did not stop the accolades from coming.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
In the spring of 1974, Stephen was inducted into UK's
Royal Society. the most prestigious and oldest continuously existing scientific
academy in the world, more doors began to open. He
was invited to a visiting professorship at the California Institute
of Technology. When he arrived, they gifted him with an
(13:55):
electric wheelchair. It would eventually become part of the Hawking brand.
In the spring of 1975, Stevens submitted a paper to
a scientific journal. It was his theory on black hole evaporation.
It would become the pinnacle of his contribution to science.
But what was perhaps most surprising about the paper was
(14:18):
what it didn't contain. Unlike his PhD dissertation, which acknowledges
outside help with some of its most difficult calculations, there
is no similar acknowledgement in this pivotal work. And that's odd,
given that the year before submitting it, Hawking lost the
use of his hands to physically write out calculations, as
(14:39):
he and his former grad student assistant would later admit.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
But the excitement of a new life in California was
harshly interrupted by my motor neuron disease. The physical symptoms
took an irreversible turn for the worst.
Speaker 11 (14:55):
That was the year in which he lost the use
of his hands. When he arrived, he could still write equations,
though with some difficulty. By the end of the year,
he couldn't.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Why wasn't this acknowledged on his most famous paper? This
was a pivotal time for Hawking's health. When he arrived
in California, his physical and verbal ability had almost completely collapsed.
By the summer of 1974, Stephen had student assistants living
with him full-time, as his wife Jane would later explain.
Speaker 10 (15:23):
This wonderful idea came to me. If we were going
to go to California and the students were going to
come too, why didn't we offer them a bed in
our house in return for some help with Stephen.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
One of his former grad students would later explain the arrangement.
Speaker 12 (15:44):
I live rent-free in exchange for sort of helping Stephen
out around the home.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
You know, at bath times and helping him with meals
and things like that.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
From 1974 on, Hawking had a grad student assistant always
living with him. They not only helped with everyday tasks,
they also became his full-time interpreters, and they began to
learn something about the professor.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I did discover that despite Hawking's great brilliance, he does
read quite slowly. I mean, I could read about twice
as fast as he.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
By 1977, Hawking couldn't be understood without an interpreter.
Speaker 9 (16:25):
The Big Bang is like a black hole explosion, but
on a much larger scale.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yet that same year, Cambridge created a special professorship specifically
for Hawking. Two years later, Cambridge appointed him to the
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, the same exact professorship held by
Sir Isaac Newton 300 years earlier. Shortly after being appointed,
(16:49):
Hawking had to provide his signature in a school faculty book.
It would be the last time he scribbled his name.
But as his body continued to decline further, Hawking's work
output didn't slow.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
In the early 1980s, he's credited as co-editor of two
separate academic books, each around 500 pages. He also co-authored
several scholarly papers. By 1984, as Stephen Hawking was being
interpreted for the CBC interview, his communication was so strained
that it sounded like complete gibberish.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Oh. I.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
You could see how someone who worked with him every
day could understand what he was saying.
Speaker 12 (17:39):
However, there might be very much smaller black holes about.
Which might have been formed by irregularities in the very
early universe.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
As 1985 approached, even his closest assistants admitted that they
had trouble interpreting his slurred speech. At the time, he
was speaking at roughly 60 words per minute. The average
Brit speaks nearly 190 words per minute, or over three
times faster than Hawking. But even at this rate, by
the summer of 1985, Hawking says he had dictated most
(18:17):
of his new popular science book to his associates. Then
tragedy struck. In August 1985, Hawking came down with pneumonia.
To keep him alive, a tracheotomy was performed. He survived,
but his God-given voice was gone forever. For the next year,
he could barely communicate. His team had to use a
(18:39):
card with letters and numbers on it. The person would
drag a pointer across the card, and when it hit
a letter Stephen wanted, he'd raise his eyebrows. The speed
was excruciatingly slow. Then a physicist from Hawking's team, called
a man who was working on a computer system for
people with ALS. The system was called Equalizer. The top
(19:00):
half of the screen had rows of letters, the bottom,
rows of very frequently used words. The user would use
a clicker in their hand to select either a word
or a letter to construct sentences. The completed sentence would
then be fed to a speech synthesizer, and out would
pop the sentence, in a robotic voice.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
If we do find a complete unified theory, it will
be a great triumph, not just for scientists, but for
ordinary people as well.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
With this equalizer system, Hawking could type out sentences at
about 15 words per minute, four times slower than before
his tracheotomy, and one twelfth the speed of his colleagues.
It was so slow that interviews didn't take place in
real time, as one reporter highlighted.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Now able to communicate again, Hawking reported, turned.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
To one of his grad students and asked him for
help finishing his first popular science book, A Brief History
of Time. Hawking reportedly wanted it to be the kind
of book you could buy at an airport terminal. No
one thought that was possible, but what most didn't realize
was that Stephen Hawking was poised to become publicity gold.
I mean, think about it. Here was a man whose specialty,
(20:15):
black holes, sounded more like science fiction than science. He'd
received countless accolades and held the most prestigious professorship in
all of academia, all from a contorted body in an
electric wheelchair. And now he had a computerized voice. His
(20:37):
digitized voice resembled that of the computer in war games,
a big screen hit at the time.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
People sometimes make.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
Mistakes.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 11 (20:49):
How can it talk?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's not a real voice.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
This box just interprets signals from the computer and turns
them into sound.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Shall we play a game?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
His contorted body in a wheelchair with a computer voice
made him look like a Greek mythological figure, the Oracle
of Cambridge, whose mind was now free to go places
where no mere mortal could venture, a narrative his team
leaned into.
Speaker 11 (21:12):
As he gradually lost the use of his hands, he
further developed his unique ways of thinking by manipulating shapes
and topologies in his head and became even more advanced
than the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
In the wake of his new equalizer communication system, Stephen
produced an astonishing level of work. Limited to just 15
words per minute, he authored and co-authored multiple research papers,
co-edited a 700-plus page academic book on gravitation, published essays,
gave lectures at prestigious institutions.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It is this Berkeley tradition of great learning and public
service that the Department of Physics has arranged for tonight's
lecture to be given by world-renowned scholar Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And with his communication speed at 1 12th of the
average Brit, Stephen even finished his popular science book, A
Brief History of Time. When it hit the bookstores in
April 1988, it became an international sensation.
Speaker 11 (22:18):
A book about scientific theory has been a top bestseller.
It's called A Brief History of Time and it was
written by a remarkable scientist named Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 9 (22:26):
Professor Hawking, in fact, has just made publishing history by
writing a book about hard theoretical science which has outsold
even Michael Jackson in the bestseller list.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
At any given time, Joan, there is one exceptional scientific
personality that seems to emerge, not just because of his intellect,
but because of some personal quality. I'll tell you, Stephen
Quality is that standout scientist of our period.
Speaker 6 (22:49):
I have lived with the possibility of an early death
for the last 25 years, but there are a lot
of things I want to do before I die.
Speaker 9 (22:58):
He has the boldness to attack problems that many other
people think don't make sense.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
In the 30 years that followed, Stephen Hawking became an
international pop culture sensation. He authored, co-authored, and edited thousands
upon thousands of pages in books and research papers, and
gave a seemingly endless number of lectures. And he also
became a near-regular on TV.
Speaker 11 (23:21):
Professor Hawking, it's an honor and a privilege to meet you, sir.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
I know.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
The volume of his work output rivaled any high-performing, able-bodied
media personality. The astonishing part is that, throughout those entire
three decades, his body continued to falter. the nerve controlling
his thumb used to control the equalizer clicker deteriorated. His
communication went from 15 words per minute in 1986 to
(23:50):
just one word per minute in 2008. One reporter at
the time said.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
It took him 20 minutes to write a salutation of
about 30 words.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
With his thumb muscle no longer reliably working, a new
system needed to be devised. His team tried a brain-switching
interface that worked for other ALS patients, but it didn't work.
One engineer noted, Somehow they couldn't get a strong enough
brain signal. Running out of ideas, they landed on an
infrared sensor that used voluntary movement in his cheek as
(24:19):
a switch to select words. By 2011, this cheek-controlled system
increased his communication from one word to roughly two words
per minute. Stephen never really improved from there. But over
the next decade, by just twitching his cheek, he was
credited as author, co-author, or editor of several thousand pages
of books and research papers. He had a lecture schedule
(24:42):
that made him look like a perpetual globetrotter, and was
even credited as writer of a TV miniseries. The theoretical
physicist was also finding time for a new activity, political activism.
He lobbied the British Prime Minister to posthumously pardon scientist
(25:04):
Alan Turing for the crime of being a homosexual. He
spoke out for causes like national health care and climate change.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
Climate change is one of the great dangers we face,
and it's one we can prevent.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And even Stephen Hawking's death didn't stop the work output.
After passing on March 14, 2018, three books and two
research papers were published posthumously crediting him as either author
or co-author. In his final solo authorship, a 250-plus page
book titled Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Stephen cited
the election of Donald Trump and Britain's 2016 vote to
(25:40):
lead the European Union as a warning that there was, quote,
Stephen Hawking was not just a publishing powerhouse. The media
dubbed him as one of the greatest scientific minds that
had ever lived. But was that true? This Labor Day weekend,
Red Pilled America is offering 40% off an annual entry-level
(26:02):
backstage membership where you can get ad-free access to our
entire back catalog of episodes. Go to redpilledamerica.com and click
the link on the homepage and enter the phrase Labor
Day at checkout. Join the fam bam and help us
save America one story at a time. Welcome back to
Red Pilled America. So in the wake of Stephen Hawking's death,
(26:23):
the media dubbed him as one of the greatest scientific
minds that had ever lived. But was that true?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Another theoretical physicist, Jeremy Bernstein, had long cautioned comparing Hawking
to the genius Albert Einstein. In a 1988 piece for
The New Yorker, Bernstein publicly wondered how Hawking physically performed
theoretical physics. Since Hawking could no longer perform calculations himself,
Bernstein speculated that his students and assistants wrote equations for him.
(26:53):
Over the next 30 years, Jeremy Bernstein would repeatedly return
to Hawking, increasingly questioning the enormous gap between Hawking's scientific
accomplishments and his public mythology, and Bernstein wasn't alone in
that assessment. In 1999, Physics World surveyed more than 250
prominent physicists around the globe, asking each to name the
(27:16):
five physicists who had contributed the most important contributions to
the field.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
About 130 responded.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Einstein received 119 votes. Newton got 96. Even among living physicists,
Hans Beth received three votes. Stephen Hawking received just one vote.
Out of 61 physicists who received at least one vote,
Hawking was buried among the long list of one-vote recipients.
(27:43):
It was a remarkable disconnect. By 1999, the public increasingly
saw Stephen Hawking as one of history's greatest scientific minds,
while many of his peers apparently saw him very differently.
But perhaps the most poignant critique of Stephen Hawking came
from an MIT professor. Remember at the beginning of this story,
we mentioned a man that introduced a concept that could
(28:06):
be used to test the conspiracy theories surrounding Hawking? Well,
his name is Eduardo Casal, a professor emeritus at MIT.
Casal is a civil and environmental engineer that also wrote
an article about Hawking in the wake of his death.
It's titled Stephen Hawking, the imminent physicist versus the media hype.
(28:26):
In it, he lamented about the fake news around Hawking.
To gauge the legitimacy of Hawking's work output, he introduced
the idea of a communication bandwidth.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
If you were to estimate the amount of technical information
that Hawking produced in his life, say in terms of
bits and bytes, you would find that that would amply
exceed the time and means he had available to transfer
his thoughts onto either paper or synthetic voice. This was
especially true in the last few decades of his life,
when he was confined to a chair and communicated via
(28:58):
his computer. So how did he get so much information
out of his brain?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Casal discussed the torturously slow nature of Hawking's communication system,
one that went from 15 down to just one to
two words per minute.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
This is an excruciatingly slow process, or as an information
scientist would have expressed it, Hawking had minimal bandwidth. Yet
the rate at which Hawking published papers with advanced ideas
and very complex concepts and thoughts, not to mention his books,
surely greatly exceeded that bandwidth.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Hussall argued that it was near impossible to produce the
work output attributed to Hawking given his communication limitations. He
suggested that, since at least the mid-1980s, Hawking's work consisted
of his team presenting ideas to him, Hawking would agree
with some subtle gesture, then the researcher would go off
and draft the idea.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
That assistant scientist would then have gone on to attribute
to Hawking the authorship of that thought, and perhaps even
have written that opinion on his behalf. He concluded, My
own speculation is that he had an inner circle of
scientists working with him, and that his output was the
aggregate of the work of all of them, and not
just of Hawking by himself.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Writing, editing or co-authoring thousands of pages of texts for books,
research papers, speeches and lectures is a Herculean task that
even a high-performing, able-bodied person would have trouble producing. let
alone from someone with such an incredibly low communication bandwidth.
Despite searching across the decades after his tracheotomy, we couldn't
(30:36):
find a detailed, independently documented example showing exactly how Hawking
personally generated the work attributed to his name. As the
record shows, Hawking clearly had a team around him, helping
produce his work. As early as 1965, with his PhD thesis,
he enlisted help to write and perform calculations. As his
(30:57):
condition deteriorated, this workflow not only continued, it grew. When
Hawking's voice was lost to a tracheotomy, his already slow
communication bandwidth dramatically decreased. When his thumb muscle failed, he
could only communicate through a cheek muscle at one to
two words per minute. In our humble opinion, as writers
and with a former physicist among us, Hawking's documented communication
(31:21):
bandwidth was far too low to account for the extraordinary
level and variety of work product carrying Stephen Hawking's name,
which raises the question, where did the additional bandwidth come from?
(31:42):
So is Stephen Hawking a genius or a fraud? The
young Stephen Hawking was unquestionably a formidable theoretical physicist. His
ideas changed the way physicists thought about black holes. But
as his body deteriorated, something else grew around him. A
network of students, assistants, physicists, engineers, editors, and institutions that
(32:07):
allowed Stephen Hawking to continue producing at an extraordinary rate.
Somewhere along his career, the line between Stephen Hawking the
physicist and Stephen Hawking the team became blurred. What emerged
was Stephen Hawking the Enterprise, a machine. And by then,
there were powerful financial incentives to keep Hawking the machine.
(32:28):
Hawking himself acknowledged that money was one reason he entered
the popular book business. Publishers competed for his work, broadcasters
sought his participation, and institutions benefited from their association with
perhaps the most famous scientist alive. Stephen Hawking wasn't simply
a physicist anymore. He was a global brand, and an
(32:48):
enormously valuable one. In 2007 alone, Cambridge received nearly $ 25
million for a Stephen Hawking building. And that doesn't include
the millions upon millions in donations. Publishers made a fortune
off his books. The entire entertainment industry and academic community
cashed in on his celebrity, as did Hawking. He died
(33:09):
with a net worth in the tens of millions. Stephen
Hawking was no doubt an inspirational figure, but his communication
bandwidth didn't support the level of work carrying his name.
And oddly, the mainstream media never really made that connection,
even when the information was right in their face.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
If you have to hold a normal conversation, forget it.
It takes forever.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
He's got to call up one word at a time
and even sometimes build each word up letter by letter.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
And yet he comes out with all of this. Red
Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned and
produced by Adriana Cortez and me, Patrick Karelchi, for Informed Ventures.
To listen to our entire archive of episodes ad-free, visit
redpilledamerica.com and click Join in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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