The day Steven Hawking called John Oliver an idiot

Since I’m a firm believer in science and humor, I thought I would take a different tack to all the eulogies being made across the Internet since the passing of the great physicist last Wednesday. Instead, I offer you a wonderful interview that TV funnyman John Oliver had with Steven Hawking on Last Week Tonight in 2014. Who knows how many of the responses were actually written by Hawking himself, but he was known to spout some funny zingers from time to time and he seems to relish the entire discussion. Besides laughing at the very funny exchange, what brought me the most joy from this interview was watching the tiny smiles and even a miniscule chuckle Steven Hawking managed to eke out. Those nanoscale expressions say just as much about the man as any of his breakthrough quantum theories. The cosmos may be ultimately incomprehensible to us humans, but a sense of humor helps to get through it all.