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ABC News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Chit Chat: Dr Karl on the weirdest question he's ever been asked, cool shirts and his live show
Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has dedicated the majority of his life to answering our weirdest scientific questions with infectious enthusiasm and wildly accessible explanations of exceedingly complex concepts. But how much do we really know about the man himself? As part of Science Week, triple j is taking Dr Karl's Science Hour out of the studio for the first time in its 48-year run, with a live show at the Enmore Theatre in Eora/Sydney on August 11. Of course, ABC Entertainment took this opportunity to sit down with the veteran science broadcaster and ask him a bunch of personal questions. Read on to find out how Karl Kruszelnicki became Dr Karl, the strangest question he's ever been asked and what audiences should expect from Science with Dr Karl Live. But also so much more — prepare yourself. I was coming home from primary school and it was a really hot day and the bitumen was wet and sticky on the road and we'd been taught at school about how black absorbs heat and how plants do this photosynthesis and absorb sunlight. I thought, "Well, if black absorbs the Sun's energy really well, how come plants are green and not black?" That was my first science question ever. In 1981, I was very interested in NASA's Space Shuttle program. I'd been following it for many years and I knew a lot about it, so I thought, "Bugger it, I'll apply," and I wrote a letter to NASA saying, "Dear NASA, my name is Karl. I'm a fit young bloke, I can run a City to Surf, I do martial arts. I've got a degree in maths and physics, a master's in biomedical engineering, and soon I'll have a degree in medicine and a degree in surgery, can I be an astronaut? Yours truly, Karl." And they sent me a letter back saying, "No, we're full up, and anyway, we only employ Americans." I've still got that letter. But then I heard triple j was doing a show on the launch of the Space Shuttle … So I rang up and said I'd applied to be an astronaut on the Space Shuttle program and I knew a lot about it, and did they want me to come in and talk about it? And they said, "Sure, come in." I was out the back afterwards having a cup of hippie tea with [journalist and former triple j broadcaster] Tony Barrow, and he said, "Gee, I really need this tea to clean my kidneys." And I said, "Look, I'm sorry to disagree with you, but in fact it's the other way around. Your kidneys clean the tea out of your blood. "You see, your kidneys filter around 200 kilograms of blood every day, they pull out about half a kilogram of salt at vast metabolic cost, then they put all of this salt back into the blood stream, except for a tiny amount that goes in the urine, and the reason this happens is because God made a mistake and we're fish gone wrong." And he said, "We need you for a new segment. We'll call it 'Great Moments in Science'." Because they've got a sense of curiosity. People want to know why the sky is blue, or why, when you use really fine sandpaper on a hot day and you breathe out, you can see water vapour coming out of your mouth like you would on a cold day. Or — one classic one from the past which is possibly too rude to talk about — a lady rang in and said, "Hi Dr Karl, whenever I have oral sex with my husband and his penis is at the back of my throat, I go temporarily deaf, and I wondered about this, so I asked all my girlfriends to try it with their boyfriends and husbands and it happened to them too. Why?" I think so. Well, firstly, almost certainly this has not been discussed in the medical professional literature, so I had to wing it. But, luckily, I have 28 years of education including 16 years at university for free, because once upon a time the Australian government thought education was a worthwhile investment. So, I started working from first principles. When you're listening to the quietest noise you can possibly hear, your eardrum is vibrating backwards and forwards an incredibly small distance, roughly equal to the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Our eardrums respond to the merest change in pressure. Now, imagine you've got a sheet drying on the clothesline and you peg it at the top and the bottom is just floating free; the merest breath of wind will make it move. Suppose you bolt it to the ground, the wind won't make it move so far. With your eardrum, you've got a pipe leading to the outside world that sometimes you stick a cottonbud down. And then there's also another pipe on the other side of the eardrum going down the back of the throat. That's called the Eustachian canal and it's related to why, when you're flying in an airplane and you're coming down for landing and you've got a blocked ear, you have to swallow to make it go away. Getting back to the penis hitting the back of the throat, it hits the Eustachian tube, shoves some air up there and holds it there. And so you've got a preload on the eardrum, it's bulging out slightly and it's not free to flop and respond to the merest change in pressure like normal because it's being pushed by a fair bit of pressure from the inside. And that's what's happening with going momentarily deaf from oral sex. I made a very romantic marriage proposal. My wife [Mary Dobbie] was in Sydney and I rang her up saying, "Hi, honey, I'm in this cheap hotel in South East Asia about to inject opiates into the buttocks of a young yoga teacher and I know I'm not supposed to inject into the buttocks, but I haven't had any sleep for a couple of days, so can you remind me why and where should I inject instead? And by the way, will you marry me?" And then the line went dead. Well, it was a cheap hotel room in South East Asia. But, anyway, I rang back again and she eventually said yes. Then we had a scientific wedding where we got married inside the Arctic Circle on the longest day of the year, so on that day the sun did not set, and it was a metaphor for how the love would not set on our marriage. Questions from the audience. Plus we'll have lots of people who know stuff. When I'm live on air I'll often say, "I can give you a bit of an answer but really, what we need is a canine endocrinologist." With a bit of luck, we'll have lots of those in the audience. And we'll have a few surprise little videos as well. So, it'll be a mixture of [questions] driven by the audience, plus listening to the audience give their answers, plus a few funny things I can't share because we want to keep the element of surprise. There's a few things going on here. Number one, if you look at a bunch of people going out at night for a bit of fun, in general the female humans have gone to a lot of trouble to dress up and look good and the males have gone to lesser trouble, sometimes even wearing bloody shorts and a T-shirt, God help me. Number two, in general it's kind of accepted in our society that a female person can get away with wearing [as much colour or pattern as they want]. Whereas, the males are kind of stuck with variations of white and blue and brown or black. And third, when I was a kid growing up in Wollongong, I was about 15 and it was a rainy day in winter and I was walking down Crown Street and everyone was dressed in grey and all the faces were sort of uniformly 'blah'. Suddenly, I came around a corner and there was this woman dressed in really bright colours and everyone sort of smiled a little bit when they saw her and I thought, "Wow. If you've got a choice between happy and sad, I prefer happy. And is it that easy to get happy?" And so now I follow the rainbow theory of colour dressing, where I try to wear every single colour of the rainbow at once, every day. Science with Dr Karl Live is on at Enmore Theatre in Eora/Sydney on August 11. Quotes lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
ABC News
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Wild One: Junipo - Tommy Gunn
It's a bonafide piss-up for one this week with Eora-based creative Oliver Kirby's new project Junipo and his rager of a debut music video for 'Tommy Gunn'. Co-directed by Oliver and local rage favourite Charles Buxton-Leslie, the filmmaker behind visuals from Nick Ward, G Flip, Ruel, Monnie, Ashwarya, Memphis LK, and way too many more to mention. The video for 'Tommy Gunn' has a grimy housebound party energy, looking as dishevelled as any sequence from Danny Boyle's Trainspotting (complete with toilet scene), if instead of milk-of-the-poppy Renton went for 12-year-old Scotch Whiskey and cola. 'I thought it would be fun to reverse the big party concept on itself and just have myself alone in a house, rocking out' says Oliver. 'With that in mind and after sitting on my hands for a little while, Charles kindly pushed me to go forth with the video and offered his talents and expertise.' Taking inspiration in part from the old 1980s Maxell Tape ads (you know the ones; where a super-powerful soundsystem blasts the listener back into their chair), 'Tommy Gunn' is definitely the kind of track to blow wigs back. "Working with limitations can inspire creativity in a really unique way." say Charles Buxton-Leslie. "The process of making this video reminded me of my first videos when I was a teenager with my friends after school. You have really big ideas but no money which leads to some really exciting, crazy DIY concepts and solutions. The limitations led us to think in more of a practical way. The flying scene is just a stool, fishing wire and leaf blowers… simple is sometimes the most effective!" 'Thats how I wanted people to feel when the first riff comes in', adds Oliver. 'It will knock your socks (and remaining clothing) off... The mental and abdominal strength a man needs to hold his back legs up while having a towel ripped off him in nude underwear, for that many takes, cannot be understated. Even with the assistance of a chair for stability and fish wires holding up my legs, my core and pride still hurt.' And how can we forget the epic piss shot (don't ask, just watch it and you'll see). 'The feeling of going to the bathroom can be otherworldly at a certain point of any good party, and this is how the idea of the floating toilet concept came to life' Oliver explains. 'A simple dolly rig, a second hand toilet from marketplace and the keen eye of [DOP] Jesse really brought that shot and feeling to life… To the disappointment of some, no real nudity or urine was used in the making of this video, just a phallic Ribena bottle and a lot of heart.' 'Simple camera tricks and blocking add a lot to the feeling but are not out of reach to achieve on an indie video" adds Charles. "The location in particular was… inspired. It was a condemned house that had squatters and strange souvenirs throughout. We got super lucky, we had one day to shoot the video after a last minute call and the next day the demolition crew came in and tore the place down!'
ABC News
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Wild One: Bonniesongs - Strangest Feeling
Love and whimsy collide in interstellar greenscreen fashion for this week's Wild One, 'Strangest Feeling', from Irish-born, Eora-based songwriter Bonniesongs. In a music video for what Bonniesongs (a.k.a. Bonnie Stewart to her friends and fam!) has described as perhaps her 'only classic love song', dreams of flying through space (literally, the fabric of the cosmos) have been fully realised with the help of a tiny skeleton crew. Co-directed by Bonnie herself along with filmmaker Nick McKinlay (plus a special shoutout to cameraman Mike Ridley!), the filming process consisted of various green-screen shenanigans and a whole lot of fun. 'I always wanna have a little bit of silly and fun in my music videos' says Bonnie. 'We wanted to make a love story between me and my friend's beloved Frankenstein-esque doll. The doll was handcrafted by an artist called Hj Huwman. He has become a bit of an easter egg, visiting a couple of my videos over the years.' DIY attitudes and teamwork have undoubtedly brought this project together, but that's not to say there weren't a few hiccups along the way! 'Mike followed me around with the green screen, he couldn't see where he was going at all and was trying to anticipate my movements, which led to a few crashes' says Bonnie. 'Other funny moments included running down the hill screaming wrapped in green screen and scaring all the dogs in the park; Mike's feet popping out from behind the green curtain walking down the street; Nick filming from the boot of a moving car with me scooting behind; Mike lifting me up into the tree to get the feet hovering shot!'Nick adds 'it's obvious I'm not very good at green screen but hopefully the intent and Bonnie's glee when throwing around this doll transcends the technical shortcomings! My fave bit is when Bonnie is flying around space. I want to release that raw footage because it's basically her just writhing on the ground with a fan in her face."
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Rubens Celebrate 10 Years Of ‘Hoops' With Three Huge Shows In Sydney
Time flies when you're cranking out indie-rock anthems — The Rubens are officially celebrating a decade since their breakout album Hoops with a trio of intimate hometown shows this August. The Menangle five-piece will take over Oxford Art Factory's Main Room on Friday 22nd, Saturday, 23rd and Sunday, 24th August for three special nights honouring their ARIA Gold-certified 2015 record, which shot them from rising stars to bonafide Aussie indie-rock heavyweights. Hoops was the moment that changed it all for The Rubens. It gave us hits like title track 'Hoops' (aka the song that nabbed the #1 spot in triple j's Hottest 100), packed out festival sets, and a launchpad for the band's now five-album-strong career. These shows will see the group revisit that era with a selection of Hoops fan-faves, woven into a full career-spanning setlist that tracks their evolution from pub gigs to arena-fillers. The mini-residency is also part of Oxford Art Factory's 18th birthday series — a fitting venue for a full circle moment with one of Australia's most loved live acts. Joining them on support is rising artist MISSO, with more special guests to be announced soon. You can suss all the deets down below. Supported by MISSO + more TBA Friday, 22nd August – Oxford Art Factory – Eora / Sydney Saturday, 23rd August – Oxford Art Factory – Eora / Sydney Sunday, 24th August – Oxford Art Factory – Eora / Sydney Tickets on sale now here triple j's Like A Version in 2016 triple j's Like A Version in 2013 Music Feeds' Top Ten Australian Albums Of 2021 The post The Rubens Celebrate 10 Years Of 'Hoops' With Three Huge Shows In Sydney appeared first on Music Feeds.
ABC News
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Tasman Keith covers Outkast 'B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)' for Like A Version
What's cooler than being cool? Tasman Keith running it up on a stone-cold Outkast classic in the Like A Version studio. From Atlanta to the streets of Eora, the Gumbaynggirr man brought his own powerful spin on the alternative hip-hop duo's iconic 2000 hit, 'B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)'. "I grew up loving this song and it was always in the list for when I would do Like A Version," he said. "For me, just with a lot going on right now here and everywhere, it just felt like what I needed and what I wanted to say in the moment. And also to be able to pen a verse after an Andre 3000 verse is a challenge, and I wanted to take that on." After starting with Andre's flow, Tasman took it in his own direction where he spat venom on things that were more intimate and personal to him. "Speak on, you know, freedom of my people, freedom of all people," he said. "Really putting us at the forefront. The favourite line of the band was the 'Weetbix and powdered milk' bar, when I brought that to rehearsal it was like 'yeah, that's the one'." Run it back and check out more from Tasman Keith's debut in the Like A Version stuido below. Behind Tasman Keith's cover of Outkast 'B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)' for Like A Version Tasman Keith - '70 Somethin'' (live for Like A Version) Posted 39m ago 39 minutes ago Thu 26 Jun 2025 at 10:30pm
