(repeat) Stephen Hawking felt gravity\u2019s pull.\xa0His quest to understand this feeble force spanned his career, and he was the first to realize that black holes actually disappear \u2013 slowly losing the mass of everything they swallow in a dull, evaporative glow called Hawking radiation.\xa0\nBut one of gravity\u2019s deepest puzzles defied even his brilliant mind.\xa0How can we connect theories of gravity on the large scale to what happens on the very small?\xa0The Theory of Everything remains one of the great challenges to physicists.\nAlso, the latest on deciphering the weirdness of black holes and why the gravitational wave detector LIGO has added colliding neutron stars to its roster of successes.\nPlus, a fellow physicist describes Dr. Hawking\u2019s extraordinary deductive abilities and what it was like to collaborate with him.\xa0And, a surprise awaits Molly when she meets a local string theorist to discuss his search for the Theory of Everything.\nGuests:\n\n\nLeonard Mlodinow\u2013\xa0physicist and author of \u201cThe Grand Design\u201d with Stephen Hawking, and most recently, \u201cElastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change.\u201d\xa0\n\n\nJanna Levin\u2013\xa0Physicist and astronomer, Barnard College, Columbia University, and the author of, \u201cBlack Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space.\u201d\xa0\n\n\nRichard Camuccio\u2013\xa0Graduate research assistant at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy, a LIGO collaborator.\xa0\n\n\nWahltyn Rattray\xa0\u2013\xa0Grad-student, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley\xa0Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy.\n\n\n Raphael Bousso\u2013\xa0Physicist, Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California-Berkeley.\xa0\xa0\n\n\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices