Episode 9: Monday, December 26, 2005

The Paunch Stevenson Show episode 009

In this episode:

  • The Night Before Christmas Troll Read-Along Classics audio book featuring a psychotic Santa Claus,
  • Courtney Love,
  • Michael J. Fox,
  • George Takei and Christian Slater audio from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,
  • listener comments (the NYC public transit strike),
  • a get-rich-quick scheme (MTA bus drivers),
  • our movie review of Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005) starring Jack Black and Naomi Watts,
  • Ellis Island (www.ellisisland.org),
  • Creepshow (1982) starring Leslie Nielsen and Ted Danson,
  • and Kevin McCarthy.

Happy holidays!

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Professor Julius Sumner Miller

Julius Sumner Miller

We first saw Dr. Miller’s exploits during 12th grade Physics class on old PBS taped episodes of his show. He often attempted crazy experiments which went awry, leaving his studio, props, students, or Professor Miller himself busted up!

Here at the Paunch Show, we have a running skit where we re-enact his experiments on the show, resulting in his lab assistant getting injured. Visit www.abc.net.au/science/features/whyisitso/ to watch original Why Is It So? videos!

About the Professor from the Why Is It So? homepage…

Julius Sumner Miller, as he started making the Why Is It So? series for broadcast, gained much positive response from the public and much outcry from academics. The Professor was in high demand across the globe, appearing in Australia twenty-six times, and eventually had a question posted everyday in The Australian newspaper in 1966.

To finish up, who better than the man himself, who gave his bold goal in the preface to a book of Q & A’s, Millergrams which were taken from The Australian‘s questions.

“The hope I have here is simply summed up: To stir your imagination, awaken your interest, arouse your curiosity, enliven your spirit – all with the purpose of bringing you to ask, as young Maxwell put it, ‘What’s the go of it?’ – or, as Kepler had it, ‘why things are as they are and not otherwise.’ Or, more simply in my own phrase, why is it so?”