The highs and lows of meeting Roger Penrose

On September 19th, I left for a flight to the UK because I was invited to the Institute for Arts and Ideas to host a couple of panels and interview Roger Penrose for their festival. It was a red-eye flight, and from my home town Toronto, it takes approximately 8 hours.

Once I arrived, I went to the hotel. Matt O'Dowd from PBS Spacetime was there as well, and neither of us were able to get into our rooms because we arrived “too early.” Recall it was a red-eye.

Unfortunately, in addition to not sleeping on the flight, I hadn't slept properly the previous three nights in a row. Needless to say, my cognition was at its minimum. I asked if I could pay for a room, even for a few extra hours, but they said they were booked. So, I waited around and did some laptop work as best I could.

Then the room was opened. My event was 24 hours later. I fell asleep. And I don't think I've ever slept that long in my entire life—approximately 20 hours in total.

Day One

On the first day of the festival, I was greeted in the “green room,” which was delightful. The producers took care of everything and accommodated any request. Food vouchers, print outs, a pristine washroom... (Oh, I'm a germaphobe and would never use the porta-potties at a festival. I'd rather take an Uber back to the hotel. Or hold it in! I have the world’s strongest bladder-rectum combo.)

The script for the panel had me ask questions that I felt (and the other panelists agreed) were subpar because they were either trivially correct or trivially incorrect, and there was no disagreement. Either the panelists uniformly agreed with the question or they uniformly disagreed. For instance, one of the questions was, "Is natural selection still occurring in humans?" There was no one (not even in the audience!) who disagreed that it's still occurring, essentially by definition of natural selection.

I wasn't able to alter any of the questions, so I had to ask the questions “as is; verbatim.”

It was a beautiful event. It takes place at the Kenwood House in Hampstead, which is georgic. Many people came up to me, recognizing me from the YouTube channel, took photos and (of course) told me their theories. I also recognized other people from YouTube, including Sabine Hossenfelder, Matt O'Dowd, and Rupert Sheldrake, along with several others. I had met most of them online but not in person.

That was beautiful! I'm grateful to the Institute for Arts and Ideas for setting up this entire How the Light Gets In Festival.

The cool part was that they generally only allow 20 minutes for hosts to interview interviewees, but they scheduled my Roger Penrose interview to be last. Why? So that I could go on pretty much as long as the camera operators were willing to stay extra!

Roger and I had a fantastic rapport from the get-go. I believe he looks at me avuncularly, and I look at him like a legend. All of our interactions were respectful but also warm. I hope that gets conveyed on screen both in the IAI interview (I’ll link when it’s live) and in my personal TOE interview (those are separate interviews; the TOE one is linked above). The downfall of latter comes about below...

At night, there was a beautiful four-course meal just for the speakers. I sat next to Matt O'Dowd and Roger Penrose. That was another treat.

Day Two

This is where Rupert Sheldrake and I had our panel on the “present moment.” Again, there were some questions that I disagreed with the wording of, and so I mentioned to the producers that “even if the rules are that I have to read them verbatim, I unfortunately can't do that if I'm to host an insightful or impactful dialogue. So, I'm going to word some of these questions differently. If you never ask me to come back because of this, that's cool with me.” A tad bold, I know…

The quality of me hosting conversations is important, and I wasn't terribly pleased with the wording of my last panel that I had to stick to. It's not the producer's fault at all, of course.

Anyhow, the second panel went well. Joanna Kavenna, Rupert Sheldrake, and Timothy Morton were the panelists. I was impressed with Joanna in particular and hope to speak with her on the Theories of Everything podcast. Why? She was articulate but also cognizant of the timing of a question, which isn't something that many people are aware of. Many tend to go on a monologue and need external pressure to hurry their answers up, at which point they're in the middle and now have to cut to the ending without the payoff. Joanna also seemed to understand that this audience was already aware of much of the underlying concepts already and so didn't spend time speaking at an introductory level. I appreciated that and so did the audience.

At night, the speakers and I went to a bar (or a “pub” as you’re supposed to call them, else you’re deported). At this point, I still hadn't eaten for the whole day, and it was now 9:00 PM. I asked the bar if they served food, and they didn't. That's fine, as I'm used to fasting. However, others wanted to eat as well, so when we went back to the hotel, Matt O'Dowd and I went to the only place that was open and ordered KFC.

It was quite the experience walking around London with a paper bag that says Kentucky Fried Chicken, with Matt O'Dowd talking to me about his upcoming documentary on physics, free will, and reality.

What a life. What a wonderful, marvelous life.

Day Three

And here's where that marvelous life takes a turn!

Today, I had Penrose scheduled in Oxford at 10:00 AM. Keep in mind that I'm in Central London. I checked how long the Uber would take, as well as the cost and so on. It was approximately the same as taking a train, if not slightly faster and certainly more convenient. So, I ordered my Uber at 8:00 AM. The app said it would take 90 minutes to get there. I'm elated because I wanted to be there early in order to set up and not keep this Nobel laureate waiting!

However, when I ordered the Uber, it said the driver was 8 minutes away. I'm sweating. Why? Because in Toronto, Ubers are generally 3 minutes away whenever you call them, day or night. That was worrisome, but already, I'll only be 20 minutes early. I still have enough time to set up mics and cameras…

Then this guy canceled. Oh… no…

So, I called another one, and this guy said he was 10 minutes away. My fingers are crossed, hoping he doesn't cancel.

And of course, he then canceled. So, I wasted another few minutes. Now I'm sweating profusely.

Another guy picks up and says he's 20 minutes away. I'm now looking for any cab, forgetting about Uber, just looking for cabs on my own in London to wave down. I don't see any. I still have this guy on my Uber saying 20 minutes away. And then a few minutes later, he cancels.

Oh, did I mention that from Oxford, I have to leave at 1:00 PM because my flight to Toronto is back in London in the late afternoon? No? Well, now I'm mentioning it.

Then someone else picks up the Uber, and I message him manually, saying, “Please, don't cancel.” He messaged me back, “Don't worry, bro.” Thankfully, the Uber arrives. He was one of the best Uber drivers, if not the best, Uber driver that I've ever had. He greeted me with a smile, took my bag, and said, "You must be worried! I could tell from your message, buddy."

He explained that what's going on is that Ubers in London have electric cars and didn't have enough charge to take you all the way to Oxford. But fortunately, he had just started his shift on a full charge and so could make it there and back.

Thank God!

Then we're driving there, and I'm 10 minutes late for this Nobel laureate. It turns out he knows who Roger Penrose is and so was thinking that I was a celebrity by proxy (which was hilarious).

As we get just 9 miles from Oxford, there's traffic on the road, which he says is ordinary. But then the traffic stops, which he said was decidedly not ordinary…

We're at an actual standstill.

Worse, we're at a place where there's no data, so I can't even contact Roger to tell him that I'm going to be even further late, nor can they contact me, nor can my Uber driver get data on his phone.

So, we sit in traffic for 10 minutes, and then another 20 minutes goes by, and then another 30 minutes goes by, and I am furious, agitated, and also somewhat hysterical, maniacally laughing at the luck that I have here. Then another 60 minutes goes by, then a total of 3 hours in traffic. I kid you not.

Three full hours.

That’s right…

180 minutes, sitting in traffic because there was a freak accident above in a zone where there's no data. While I was just a 9 miles away from Oxford. There were so many times I considered just getting out and leaving, but not only was it drizzling and I had all of my luggage, but it wasn't a straightforward walk since it was a highway.

Apparently, Roger’s people even called my wife in Toronto because it's so atypical of me not to respond like this and to keep someone waiting this long without any prior notification. They thought I got in a car crash. They were close to being correct; just the wrong vehicle.

Anyhow, I get there at 1:00 PM, which was actually the time I'm supposed to leave for the airport! And the Roger interview was supposed to wrap then as well.

I was so disappointed because it was going to be the longest interview Roger Penrose has ever had (2.5 hours+). I was sooo appreciative that Roger said we can “just record it now anyway” (even though I was itching the entire time not only from the anxiety of earlier but that I was going to miss my flight!).

If you watch the interview, you'd notice there were times where I interrupted him, which is uncharacteristic of my interviews since I'm known for letting people speak at length (almost too much). Why was this time different?

The issue was that Roger was forgetting his place in the conversation often, and there were long stretches of pauses of perhaps 20 seconds or so. So, I had to speed it along and also remind him where he was in the conversation. We edited those stretches of pauses out, but in the editing process, it looks like I'm interrupting him. What people don't see is that behind-the-scenes, fueled only by last night’s extra crispy chicken.

Again though, thank the Lord because that rapport between me and Roger from the previous days was still there, and we hit it off.

I was so thrilled and grateful for everything Roger said and the time he spent with me over the past couple of days. I’m also thankful to the Institute for Arts and Ideas.

It's a time I won't ever forget.