Oh damn, that sucks. I got to talk to him a phone call once. A friend of a friend was making a podcast and somehow got his contact info. She asked him if he'd be willing to come on the show for an interview, and he said he didn't have time, but was there anything we'd like to ask about. She spoke to him for about 5 minutes then handed the phone to me, and he and I talked for about 45 minutes. It was amazing. He just rambled on and on. He asked if I had any physics questions and I asked "if you had a giant vinyl record shaped device in space and spun the center at near light speeds, why wouldn't the outter edge move at/beyond c?"

He spent 45 minutes on the answer. I asked no other questions, but he went from saying basically "it would tear itself apart" to then talking about how light speed isn't really a constant speed, that light travels at different speeds depending on the medium, and potentially in the early universe it was faster, anything that managed to exceed light speed would be considered a tachyon, then he started talking about time travel which brought him back to early universe stuff and it was... Amazing. I was giddy for days afterwards. I had his number written down (he told me I could and said to call sometime, if he couldn't talk it'd go to voicemail) for years but lost it in a move.

Friend never did make the podcast, either. But what an experience.