here. >> larry: how did this come about? how did you and stephen and john all get together and do this? >> well, discovery wanted to do a new and exciting show on cosmology. and so we sat around the table for a while and thought who best to do it. and there isn't a bigger name than stephen hawking. so it was a very simple, very, very short list of who we wanted to work with. and then we pitched it to him. and you may know that stephen takes quite a while to respond to questions. so we gave him our pitch, showed him the tape, and we had to wait a while. but thankfully the answer was yes, i'd love to do it. so that's how it got going. >> larry: john, are you surprised at the reaction it has gotten around the world? >> no, i'm not, because, you know, professor hawking is this distinguished academic, as we've said. but also, he wants to bring science to a new generation, to