Editor: Hear Professor Hawking's Reith Lectures on black holes on 26 January and 2 February or listen online. You can also get downloads of this and previous Reith Lectures.
It’s always exciting to find out who’s giving the Reith Lectures for Radio 4. When we heard it was going to be Professor Stephen Hawking it was clear the world renowned scientist was going to be a hit with the Radio 4 audience. Across the country people would be leaning towards their radios desperate to finally understand the theory of black holes, Hawking Radiation and thermodynamics.
But not everyone is drawn towards listening to such a huge intellect talk about quantum physics. For some it feels way too difficult. Where do they even make a start? It’s a bit like reading War & Peace or exercising 3 times a week. We know it’d be good for us but…
So we thought we'd turn our attention to making this year’s Reith Lectures as enticing as possible by collaborating with one of the UK’s most popular providers of animation, Aardman Studios. Together we wanted to make a very short video that travels inside the Professor’s head to see what made stars and space appeal to him in the first place. It would act as an introduction to the great man himself.
We were after a multi-layered, graphic animation that stressed the child-like wonder which first drew Stephen Hawking towards his subject, hoping it would draw others in the same way, and all in three and a half minutes.
If you like the first we’ve also made a second animation with Aardrman Studios that promises to explain Black Holes in less than 2 minutes. Let us know if we managed it!
The director was Will Studd and the audio is a mix of original music by Max Halstead with words from Professor Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Andrew Strominger and Brian Cox. We should also thank The European Space Agency and NASA who helped with our search for suitable magical space images.
Rhian Roberts, Digital Editor for Radio 4 and Radio 3
- Watch the animation Inside of the mind of Stephen Hawking
- Download the Reith Lectures - inc Professor Hawking, Robert Oppenheimer, Martin Rees and Bernard Lovell
- More clips and programmes about Professor Stephen Hawking
