A decade ago I was on the TV show, a debate on the future of God in front of a live audience.

And it was going fine until partway through they opened the mic to audience questions.

A man in a red t-shirt glasses and disheveled hair stepped up.

What's your name?

He said he was a physicist working with Stephen Hawking and he wanted to teach me what was wrong about the things I had said.

Would you like to have a short course in quantum mechanics sometimes so that we can straighten out your slightly misuse of quantum notation?

We had a back-and-pour. It got a little heated.

Well, all right, I know what all each of those words means. I still don't think I...

Do you, sir, believe in the infinite?

I'm sorry.

But that was only the beginning of our story because I decided to take him up on his offer to teach me.

I would be honored, sir, and I accept your offer with great gratitude.

And out of that a friendship grew.

I did learn a lot about my misconceptions, some of them regarding quantum physics.

In turn, he learned to meditate.

We wrote a book together from our different perspectives and we've only grown in mutual admiration.

So, it only makes sense that I would invite Leonard to join me here because he's one of the most interesting people I've ever met.

Because he wrote for Star Trek and co-authored books with Stephen Hawking because he has a big heart and a great mind.

And yes, because we still disagree on a lot of things.

I remember asking when we wrote our book together,

who were the laws of nature, and you said, we don't know.

I know are my perceptions, and I could be hallucinating in the middle of my brain and the middle of space,

...