Immediately recognizable in his wheelchair and surrounded by an entourage of nurses, Stephen Hawking was a symbol of the power of mind over matter. The public adored him, and the media compared hirn to Newton and Einstein. Appearing at concerts, on The Simpsons, and even on the edge of space, he was widely considered the world's best physicist, and even its smartest person.Thanks to our sponsor BioOptimizes! Sleep better with www.magbreakthrough.com/impossible and use code impossible at checkout to save 10%In fact, he was neither. In HAWKING HAWKING: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity (Basic Books; April 6, 2021), science journalist and author Charles Selfe upends everything we thought we knew about Hawking, showing how his greatest genius was arguably in his talent for self-promotion. Delving deeper than previous biographies, which tend to be excessively flattering, Seife reveals Hawking as an important scientist whose importance is almost universally misunderstood; a person who suffered deeply and also caused deep suffering; a celebrity his forebears and fundamentally changed the concept of a scientific celebrity." scientist who broke the mold.To understand Hawking, Seife traces his life in reverse, starting with his elaborate funeral at Westminster Abbey, where he was interred few feet away from Newton and Darwin, through the decades when he searched in the limelight for the recognition he craved, and further back to his devastating ALS diagnosis at age 21 and the beginning of his first marriage, which would end in scandal. Hawking made important contributions early in his career, most notably in his work on black holes, but as his celebrity grew he was increasingly apt to declare victory over problems he hadn't solved, persuading audiences of his authority on topics about which he knew little and enlisting students to defend him as he failed to break any new ground in the quest for a "theory of everything."Get the book: Hawking Hawking: https://amzn.to/3u8Na5oHow Hawking struggled knowing that part of his celebrity was based on his illness.Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeatingAnd please join my mailing list to get resources and enter giveaways to win a FREE copy of my book (and more) http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php🎥 🎥 Watch my most popular videos🎥 🎥Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtASir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA🔔 Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/Artwork: Sloan SobieThanks to our sponsors!https://magbreakthrough.com/impossiblehttp://betterhelp.com/impossible Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices