The BBC Radio 4 organizes every year the "Reith Lectures", inviting a scientist to speak about their scientific field and research. The lectures are recorded in front of an audience, which includes leading scientists from the Royal Institution of London. Radio 4 listeners submit questions to the station about the lecture's topic, and at the end of the lecture, a selection of these questions are submitted "live" by the corresponding listeners and answered by the speaker.

In this year's (2016) Reith Lectures, the invited speaker was Stephen Hawking, a famous cosmologist and professor at the University of Cambridge. In his two fifteen-minute speeches, Professor Hawking:

- summarizes the discoveries of modern physics regarding black holes, the exotic celestial objects whose existence challenges the nature of space and time itself,

- takes a look back at his own research, a laborious and passionate work of a lifetime, and

- informs us about the most recent developments in the field, encouraging for the understanding of the laws that govern our Universe, in which he continues to actively participate.

Hawking examines the astrophysics community's speculation about black holes and the challenges arising from the idea that all matter and information is permanently destroyed inside them. He explains his hypothesis that black holes may emit a kind of radiation, known as Hawking radiation. He discusses the research on mini black holes, which could potentially be observed at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Finally, he formulates the theory that information may remain stored on the event horizon of a black hole in an encoded form.

For those who are curious but apprehensive, who are fascinated by ideas but feel fear about scientific topics, reading this book serves as a good stimulus for contemplation and information.