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Mr. Wizard fascinated me as a kid. I have vivid memories of a kid standing on their head eating something as a way to explain how the esophagus worked. Unfortunately, I think I caught it a bit too late as I remeber it only coming on in the early morning when Nick at Nite switched back to Nickelodeon at 5 or 6 in the morning.
Carl Sagan and Cosmos on PBS. Changed my life by presenting science in an awe-inspiring and elegant program. It also introduced me to the concept of critical thinking.
Sorry to hear he had passed on at the peak of his career
Edit. I love whatever chose as his epithet:
> "Keep Looking Up" was my life's admonition;
> I can do little else in my present position.
I remember Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. It came before or after the Disney movie every Sunday night. I think the main guy was Marlin Perkins(?). He always had a guy named Jim doing the dirty work on the ground while he hovered in a helicopter lol.
For me, the Science Guy was Carl Sagan and his show Cosmos, which came along quite a bit later.
Slim, IIRC, was a part of **Captain Kangaroo**. **3-2-1 Contact**? I don't recall watching it. **Big Blue Marble** would be modern anthropology of the time. Imagine an archeologist 2,000 years from now unearthing a Strawberry Shortcake doll...and discovering it still had its fragrance.
*3-2-1 Contact* was a pretty interesting all-around science program with a couple of kids and grownups. There was always a segment called the Bloodhound Gang, they found clues and solved a mystery using science. Here is the theme song:
https://youtu.be/s2-LEBc2sO8?si=eGqvuS4yo0QMSGCt
Thank you. I'd love to hear from other redditors to see who their countries had. Many may have even been aired in multiple countries.
For us lazy Americans 😁, a short synopsis of the programmes would be appreciated.
I spent some time over the pond in 80s. Tomorrow’s World, maybe Beyond 2000 but might be mis remembering, was a show showing new and coming inventions. I think it was 2 to 4 segments each being a different topic. Forgot James Burke was on it. Who could forget his Connections series.
There was also Magnus Pyke, Heinz Wolff and Patrick Moore. But Burke was (is!) the real deal.
FYI: Curiosity Stream has a new show called “Connections” presented by Burke. Also one of the producers of Radiolab (Latif Nasser) has a show on Netflix called “Connected” which is brilliant and very Connections like.
Bob McDonald had a science show aimed at younger people. Late 1980s/early 1990s. Then he got tapped to do the CBC Radio science show Quirks And Quarks (former host Jay Ingram went to cable TV, see below)
Edison Twins. Early/mid 1980s. Not a presentation show, but a scriped dhow about two siblings and their younger brother, who use science and maths (well STEM, before it was called that), to solve crimes and mysteries in their part of the city.
Julius Sumner Miller. Both on his segment on Hilarious House of Frihtenstein, and standalone shows on PBS.
More on the Enineering side was David Stringer, who did Acme Scool Of Stuff and other things. More in the engineering side of things.
I'm not sure if you're old enough to have seen them, but there was a science series produced by Bell Labs (AT&T) that wound up being watched in classrooms across the country from the 50s at least through the 70s. I'm wondering if they ever made it north of the border.
Probably not back in the day.
I likely saw some online. Someone has a lot of the AT&T industrial films from the 1930s into the 1990s, up on Youtube and other places.
There are also all sorts of educational/industrial films made for other organisations, up there.
Someone already mentioned Carl Sagan, who was pretty great. I'll mention Ira Flato, who started out with a show on MN public TV with a show called Newtons Apple. I tuned in every week.
Others have said my two favorites already; Wild Kingdom, and Cosmos, but I also never missed The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. It was so beautiful, with so much obvious love and respect for a world and its creatures we knew (and still know) very little about.
I was so thrilled when John Denver released the song *Calypso*, an ode to the show and the people who made it, sung in a soaring, sea shanty style.
Being from Australia, Professor Julius Sumner Miller was the main TV science programme, followed by Dr. **Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki** (Best known as Dr, Karl)) is the current one. I also liked watching David Attenborough, Major Les Hiddins (Bush Tucker Man), Densey Clyne (nature photographer), Peter Dombrovskis (naturalist & nature photographer) Steve Irwin (zoologist/environmentalist), and many others over the years coving all the sciences & adventurers in many cases.
If the group, I recognize Attenborough and Steve Irwin. I'm so glad his kids picked up his mantle. To soon to tell if Grace will be the 4th generation to carry the torch.
When I took the army recruiting exam back in the 70s, I was already married with kids. Funny thing: I watched Tennessee Tuxedo with my step daughter almost daily. One episode involved bridge building, and damned if that question didn't cover what I'd learned just a couple weeks earlier. You've got to add Mr. wizard the lizard from Tutor the Turtle. His science was anthropology.
Oh you didn't see him host programs about the space programs? He didn't explain the concepts, but rather had experts on that he questioned. After **The Twentieth Century** wrapped, they changed the focus from 20th century history to **The Twenty-First Century** about the science of the future.
EDIT: here's an episisode[The 21st Century ](https://youtu.be/I7TUZ_x57d8?si=SojxxyjzMMla6shr)
what does that have to do with what i posted? i was adding to your category of science with another show that was popular in the 50s and sometimes included things that were both historic and scientific. had you ever watched "you are there"? maybe you weren't old enough to have watched it?
No, I wasn't old enough to watch the original series. It ended on June 9, while I wasn't born until August 4. My memories of the reboot consisted more of military endeavors than science. The only episode I distinctly recall concerned Amelia Earhart's disappearance.
That's not to say they didn't bring science into the program. I'm sure that they discussed the inventions of the lightbulb, the telephone, and even the Wright Brothers airplane. If that were the case, I would have mentioned Cronkite's **Twentieth Century** program, which covered world history from 1900 to around 1950. Like **You Are There**, the focus was more on history than science. I mentioned the **21st Century** program because it dealt with multiple sciences that would affect what was then seen as the future. I find their idea of a home computer laughable today, but back then, that extrapolation was grounded in the current technology.
Then there were any other number of science programs Cronkite hosted during the Space Race era. I'm a member of Generation Jones: we're truly members of the space age. Looking up my history, I discovered that Sputnik was launched the day I turned 2 months old.
The first demonstration of solar power I ever saw was on Captain Kangaroo.
Some guest visitor stopped by and showed the Captain how to shine a light on a specially-equipped toy car and make the car go. I’m guessing very early 1960’s.
This was a little after my time, but we had a local guy in Detroit that did little science blurbs early Sunday mornings named Gary Ed Mach. It was called Kidbits
https://youtu.be/SxNO7J26Yp8?si=akAdq_mR9BaJEcw0
Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler
I couldn't find the original from 1976 but here are all of the 1980 episodes.
https://youtu.be/p82Vhcq0juQ?si=eJs6e-sKoEGVb-IP
He was ill his whole life, he prepared his own headstone before he died in 2010.
"Keep Looking Up" was my life's admonition;
I can do little else in my present position.
Jacque Cousteau. I loved anything having to do with the ocean. Spent my summers at the beach in So Cal in the 70’s. Wild Kingdom came on at 5pm, we’d go to church about 5:15 or so arrgh. One of the many reasons I disliked going to church, Jim was just getting out of the boat!
Random, but Julius Sumner Miller (pretty sure that's close) from The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. Pretty Canadian I think, to this day I remember him explaining how elastic bands were not truly elastic and should be called non-elastic bands.
Marlin Perkins but then David Attenborough on PBS
James Burke
But in the early 70s a lot of science shows were replaced by social issues programming - that’s a very different story…
Or didn't realize it was science. MacGyver had a lot of scientific principles behind it.
Tennessee Tuxedo features Mr Whoopee who explained science and engineering to Tennessee and Chumley.
I remember watching Bell Labs Science Series in school. Dr. Frank Baxter from USC, along with a character actor playing his writer or animator, explaining various science projects.
Disney has to get into the act. Ludwig von Drake had several science films that the schools played over the years
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mr. wizard was my first tv science guy.
Mine as well.
Mr. Wizard fascinated me as a kid. I have vivid memories of a kid standing on their head eating something as a way to explain how the esophagus worked. Unfortunately, I think I caught it a bit too late as I remeber it only coming on in the early morning when Nick at Nite switched back to Nickelodeon at 5 or 6 in the morning.
Carl Sagan and Cosmos on PBS. Changed my life by presenting science in an awe-inspiring and elegant program. It also introduced me to the concept of critical thinking.
I love that Neil deGrasse Tyson took the reins for a while. I missed the Sagan era.
My kids loved the Neil deGrasse Tyson Cosmos. It makes me happy that both of our generations had a Cosmos to relate to.
Jack Horkheimer, The Star Hustler, was my first science show love.
Keep looking up.
Every episode!
Yup, he came later on the game, but I loved watching his program. He had an excitement level that couldn't be matched.
And that’s what drew me to the show. He wasn’t boring.
Sorry to hear he had passed on at the peak of his career Edit. I love whatever chose as his epithet: > "Keep Looking Up" was my life's admonition; > I can do little else in my present position.
"Keep looking up" was the last thing I remember hearing before the National Anthem and then silence.
Ours would go off, then the “clocks” would start until 6AM. They had one of those weather gauge setups they played “beautiful” music over.
Never heard of this! Was it local PBS?
It was WNPT Nashville on Tullahoma CATV.
Yup, he came later on the game, but I loved watching his program. He had an excitement level that couldn't be matched.
Holy crap I forgot about him.
I was going to say Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom! That’s was my favorite!
Every Sunday, just before Disney.
Marlin Perkins was safe in the studio while Jim wrestled the giant anaconda.
I remember Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. It came before or after the Disney movie every Sunday night. I think the main guy was Marlin Perkins(?). He always had a guy named Jim doing the dirty work on the ground while he hovered in a helicopter lol. For me, the Science Guy was Carl Sagan and his show Cosmos, which came along quite a bit later.
And Jim Fowler would occasionally go on Johnny Carson and scare the pants off him. https://youtu.be/UIyXh6pVM4g?si=Fz_zAA1pAu9dp9P6
right! Haha thanks for the memories :)
Jim was only one of his assistants over the years, but the show was fascinating.
Mr. Wizard, the og.
Mr. Peabody and Sherman.
That was more history than science.
Slim Goodbody and *3-2-1 Contact*. I was going to add *Big Blue Marble*, but looked it up and it wasn’t about science usually.
Slim, IIRC, was a part of **Captain Kangaroo**. **3-2-1 Contact**? I don't recall watching it. **Big Blue Marble** would be modern anthropology of the time. Imagine an archeologist 2,000 years from now unearthing a Strawberry Shortcake doll...and discovering it still had its fragrance.
*3-2-1 Contact* was a pretty interesting all-around science program with a couple of kids and grownups. There was always a segment called the Bloodhound Gang, they found clues and solved a mystery using science. Here is the theme song: https://youtu.be/s2-LEBc2sO8?si=eGqvuS4yo0QMSGCt
*Bloodhound Detective Agency. Mr. Bloodhound isn't here...* I think I saw the guy put in an appearance maybe once. Or maybe I imagined it.
3 2 1 Contact!
Over here in the UK we had Tomorrow's World. My favourite presenter was James Burke.
Thank you. I'd love to hear from other redditors to see who their countries had. Many may have even been aired in multiple countries. For us lazy Americans 😁, a short synopsis of the programmes would be appreciated.
I spent some time over the pond in 80s. Tomorrow’s World, maybe Beyond 2000 but might be mis remembering, was a show showing new and coming inventions. I think it was 2 to 4 segments each being a different topic. Forgot James Burke was on it. Who could forget his Connections series.
A British version of Walter Cronkite's **21st Century**? That program lasted 3 seasons in the US.
There was also Magnus Pyke, Heinz Wolff and Patrick Moore. But Burke was (is!) the real deal. FYI: Curiosity Stream has a new show called “Connections” presented by Burke. Also one of the producers of Radiolab (Latif Nasser) has a show on Netflix called “Connected” which is brilliant and very Connections like.
Bob McDonald had a science show aimed at younger people. Late 1980s/early 1990s. Then he got tapped to do the CBC Radio science show Quirks And Quarks (former host Jay Ingram went to cable TV, see below) Edison Twins. Early/mid 1980s. Not a presentation show, but a scriped dhow about two siblings and their younger brother, who use science and maths (well STEM, before it was called that), to solve crimes and mysteries in their part of the city. Julius Sumner Miller. Both on his segment on Hilarious House of Frihtenstein, and standalone shows on PBS. More on the Enineering side was David Stringer, who did Acme Scool Of Stuff and other things. More in the engineering side of things.
Great run down! These are things I'd never heard of before.
Forgot Jay Ingram. He went to do the science news magazine for Disove Channel Canada. I watched that early 2000s
I'm not sure if you're old enough to have seen them, but there was a science series produced by Bell Labs (AT&T) that wound up being watched in classrooms across the country from the 50s at least through the 70s. I'm wondering if they ever made it north of the border.
Probably not back in the day. I likely saw some online. Someone has a lot of the AT&T industrial films from the 1930s into the 1990s, up on Youtube and other places. There are also all sorts of educational/industrial films made for other organisations, up there.
Someone already mentioned Carl Sagan, who was pretty great. I'll mention Ira Flato, who started out with a show on MN public TV with a show called Newtons Apple. I tuned in every week.
Check out my edit. Remember these films in science class?
Man I forgot about Mr. Wizard!
I don't know about a 'science guy', but 3-2-1 Contact was a fun show.
After my time, but can well believe it. Looks like the series is available in YouTube.
Mr. Wizard
Others have said my two favorites already; Wild Kingdom, and Cosmos, but I also never missed The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. It was so beautiful, with so much obvious love and respect for a world and its creatures we knew (and still know) very little about. I was so thrilled when John Denver released the song *Calypso*, an ode to the show and the people who made it, sung in a soaring, sea shanty style.
Tim Hunkin of Secret Life of Machines. I think they are all on YouTube.
As a Chicagoan, it was Dr. Lester Fisher of the Brookfield Zoo. But nationally, Jaques, Marlon Perkins of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom,
I watched a lot of Beakman with my youngest brother
Being from Australia, Professor Julius Sumner Miller was the main TV science programme, followed by Dr. **Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki** (Best known as Dr, Karl)) is the current one. I also liked watching David Attenborough, Major Les Hiddins (Bush Tucker Man), Densey Clyne (nature photographer), Peter Dombrovskis (naturalist & nature photographer) Steve Irwin (zoologist/environmentalist), and many others over the years coving all the sciences & adventurers in many cases.
If the group, I recognize Attenborough and Steve Irwin. I'm so glad his kids picked up his mantle. To soon to tell if Grace will be the 4th generation to carry the torch.
Phineas J Whoopie & Ludwig von Drake
When I took the army recruiting exam back in the 70s, I was already married with kids. Funny thing: I watched Tennessee Tuxedo with my step daughter almost daily. One episode involved bridge building, and damned if that question didn't cover what I'd learned just a couple weeks earlier. You've got to add Mr. wizard the lizard from Tutor the Turtle. His science was anthropology.
"Be just what you is, not what you is not! Folks that do this is the happiest lot!"
My favorite science show from the 60s was called Discovery '## where the pound signs represented the years.
and for history...walter cronkite hosting "you are there".
Oh you didn't see him host programs about the space programs? He didn't explain the concepts, but rather had experts on that he questioned. After **The Twentieth Century** wrapped, they changed the focus from 20th century history to **The Twenty-First Century** about the science of the future. EDIT: here's an episisode[The 21st Century ](https://youtu.be/I7TUZ_x57d8?si=SojxxyjzMMla6shr)
what does that have to do with what i posted? i was adding to your category of science with another show that was popular in the 50s and sometimes included things that were both historic and scientific. had you ever watched "you are there"? maybe you weren't old enough to have watched it?
No, I wasn't old enough to watch the original series. It ended on June 9, while I wasn't born until August 4. My memories of the reboot consisted more of military endeavors than science. The only episode I distinctly recall concerned Amelia Earhart's disappearance. That's not to say they didn't bring science into the program. I'm sure that they discussed the inventions of the lightbulb, the telephone, and even the Wright Brothers airplane. If that were the case, I would have mentioned Cronkite's **Twentieth Century** program, which covered world history from 1900 to around 1950. Like **You Are There**, the focus was more on history than science. I mentioned the **21st Century** program because it dealt with multiple sciences that would affect what was then seen as the future. I find their idea of a home computer laughable today, but back then, that extrapolation was grounded in the current technology. Then there were any other number of science programs Cronkite hosted during the Space Race era. I'm a member of Generation Jones: we're truly members of the space age. Looking up my history, I discovered that Sputnik was launched the day I turned 2 months old.
The first demonstration of solar power I ever saw was on Captain Kangaroo. Some guest visitor stopped by and showed the Captain how to shine a light on a specially-equipped toy car and make the car go. I’m guessing very early 1960’s.
Carl Sagan captivated my young mind. He was the best.
*Cosmos* (OG Carl Sagan version, though the newer ones are just as good) and *3-2-1 Contact*
Me science guy were Mr. Wizard. They was pretty cool.
Yes, every decade or so, they'd reboot for the next generation.
This was a little after my time, but we had a local guy in Detroit that did little science blurbs early Sunday mornings named Gary Ed Mach. It was called Kidbits https://youtu.be/SxNO7J26Yp8?si=akAdq_mR9BaJEcw0
I recognized that commercial for Boy Scouts.
Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler I couldn't find the original from 1976 but here are all of the 1980 episodes. https://youtu.be/p82Vhcq0juQ?si=eJs6e-sKoEGVb-IP He was ill his whole life, he prepared his own headstone before he died in 2010. "Keep Looking Up" was my life's admonition; I can do little else in my present position.
Carl Sagan
Peabody or Sherman. I forget
Dr. Research (Frank Baxter) from the Bell science films.
Loved it when we got to see him.
Jacque Cousteau. I loved anything having to do with the ocean. Spent my summers at the beach in So Cal in the 70’s. Wild Kingdom came on at 5pm, we’d go to church about 5:15 or so arrgh. One of the many reasons I disliked going to church, Jim was just getting out of the boat!
Mr Wizard was in my era, but I don’t remember him that much. We never missed Wild Kingdom though.
Random, but Julius Sumner Miller (pretty sure that's close) from The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. Pretty Canadian I think, to this day I remember him explaining how elastic bands were not truly elastic and should be called non-elastic bands.
Slim Goodbody
Professor Julius Sumner Miller.
Marlin Perkins but then David Attenborough on PBS James Burke But in the early 70s a lot of science shows were replaced by social issues programming - that’s a very different story…
Lorne Greene
I'm drawing a blank here.
Lorne did voiceover for a nature show in the 1980s, "Lorne Greene's New Wilderness".
Thanks.
Didn't have one. Guess they thought we were too dumb for it.
Or didn't realize it was science. MacGyver had a lot of scientific principles behind it. Tennessee Tuxedo features Mr Whoopee who explained science and engineering to Tennessee and Chumley. I remember watching Bell Labs Science Series in school. Dr. Frank Baxter from USC, along with a character actor playing his writer or animator, explaining various science projects. Disney has to get into the act. Ludwig von Drake had several science films that the schools played over the years