Paul Harris Show

How and why did I create The Harris Challenge, the most popular feature in the history of my radio show? I explain in this podcast, and then you can take a shot at the topical trivia categories, including Radio You Can See, They Go Outside In The Cold On Purpose, and Names In the News.Listen and play along, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!Want more Harris Challenges? Click here.

Here are the opening remarks from my final Friday show on KTRS, in which I explain how I came to St. Louis 19 years ago this month, why I jumped over to KMOX after five years, and why I returned to KTRS a decade ago while doing freelance and syndicated shows for stations around the country.I also looked back at some of the extraordinary people from so many professions I've had the honor of interviewing in my 40 years on commercial radio. The list is too long to mention everyone, but quite often, a listener will tell me they've recently found a conversation with someone in the archives on my website, or they remember hearing it live when it happened. It makes me happy that those moments -- that have long since escaped Earth's atmosphere as broadcast signals headed off into space -- connected along the way with someone who was entertained and/or informed by them. I'm grateful to all of those guests who gave freely of their time to make my radio show better (and a few that were a pain in the ass), and especially

As the final guest on my radio show, I invited my brother Seth -- former US Deputy Secretary of Labor -- to join me to explain what it's like to run a cabinet department when the government shuts down. We also talked politics, from Trump's White House to the Democrats' chances in the 2018 and 2020 elections, and much more.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Here are the closing remarks from my final Friday show on KTRS, in which I explain why I quit college to pursue radio, why I didn't let a corporate VP keep me from succeeding in major markets, and offer thanks to the person who's been with me during the highest highs and the lowest lows of my career.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

This collection of Knuckleheads In The News® stories includes a destructive trucker, a naked airline passenger, and a stadium seat stealer. Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!Want more Knuckleheads In The News®? Click here.

Joshua Zeitz says the presidential legacy most at risk under Donald Trump isn't that of Barack Obama, but of LBJ. I asked him to explain while we discussed his book, "Building The Great Society: Lyndon Johnson's White House."We talked about Johnson's work on Medicare and Medicaid, how much the Vietnam War detracts from his legacy, how his War On Poverty worked out. I also asked how his work on desegregation and civil rights lost the south for the Democrats and how he spent the political capital he had from his first days in the Oval Office.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

This collection of Knuckleheads In The News® stories includes trouble in a box truck, a planeload of plumbers, and an Amazon delivery mistake. Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!Want more Knuckleheads In The News®? Click here.

On this edition of my Harris Challenge -- the most fun you can have with your radio on -- the categories include That's A Super Bowl, Groundhog Day, and Boston or Philadelphia? Listen and play along, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!Want more Harris Challenges? Click here.

This week on the showbiz segment of my show, guest movie critic Kevin Brackett (from ReviewSTL.com and the Reel Spoilers podcast) joined me to discuss this weekend's Comic-Con in St. Louis, the new Helen Mirren movie "Winchester," and a Netflix movie about one of the founders of National Lampoon. We also talked about the upcoming "Black Panther" film, the next "Star Wars" standalone project, and what was wrong with the Tonya Harding biopic "I, Tonya."Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Radio legend Dr. Demento -- the man who popularized such oddball songs as "Fish Heads," "Wet Dream," and "Shaving Cream" -- visited my radio show to discuss his new project, "Covered In Punk." He was accompanied by John Cafiero, who produced the project, which plays like a two-hour Dr. Demento show with punk covers of some of the songs he first gave airplay to.We talked about how Dr. Demento's career began at one local station in Los Angeles and eventually grew to a weekly national show on rock stations across the country. We also discussed how he gave Weird Al Yankovic his start, why he appeared on an episode of "The Simpsons," and the influence of Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman, and Stan Freberg on his musical taste.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes! Dr. Demento still does a weekly show, but now it streams online at his site.

Andy Dehnart, publisher of RealityBlurred.com, returned to my radio show to discuss Omarosa's return to reality television, the future of "The Amazing Race," and Ann Curry's new PBS show. We also delved into the New York Times story about a company that sells millions of fake followers on Twitter and Facebook, the reality stars who have inflated their fan numbers that way, and an analogy to radio ratings.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Last week, I raved about "Faceless," a drama that's playing at The Rep in St. Louis. I liked it so much that I invited its two leads to join me in the studio to talk about it. Susaan Jamshidi plays the prosecutor, Claire, while Lindsay Stock plays Susie, the teenager accused of trying to run off an join ISIS.We talked about what they see as their characters' motivations, what it was like to step into those roles again after having played them a year ago at the Northlight Theatre in Chicago, and what it's like to be a working actress in that city.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes! "Faceless" continues at The Rep through Sunday, February 4th. Get tickets here.

As I wrote Friday, I was outraged at Stephen Colbert -- for whom I'd had a lot of respect for both his comedic and critical thinking skills (Catholicism aside) -- for playing nice with Gwyneth Paltrow on his Thursday night "Late Show."Over the last few years, he's made fun of Paltrow and her nonsense-promoting business, Goop, and he's been pretty direct about it. But this time, he allowed Paltrow a network television platform to promote her Goop pseudoscience (e.g. vagina steaming, magnetic acupuncture, binaural meditation), even going as far as to say, "I love Goop!" Instead he should have said, "I'm consciously uncoupling from even booking her in the first place!"I don't have anything against Paltrow as an actress. I've liked her ever since I saw her in 1996 in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Hard Eight" (with the great Phillip Baker Hall), as well as "Seven," "Shakespeare In Love," "Proof," "Contagion," and even her multiple appearances with Robert Downey Jr. in the "Iron Man" movies.On the big screen, she's likab

Over the last few weeks, several actors and actresses who have appeared in Woody Allen movies (e.g. Joaquin Phoenix, Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Rebecca Hall, Greta Gerwig, Rachel Brosnahan, Ellen Page, and Mira Sorvino) have made public proclamations of regret in an attempt to distance themselves from the filmmaker.The reason? The continuing claims by Dylan Farrow that Allen sexually assaulted her in 1992, when she was 7 years old. Allen has always denied the assertions, claiming that his ex, Mia Farrow, had coached Dylan into making the allegations because the adults were going through a messy separation.To discuss this matter, I invited David Evanier, author of "Woody: The Biography," to return to my radio show to explain why he thinks those celebrities are acting out of ignorance, why he doesn't believe Dylan, and why he thinks Mia was the abuser in the household.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes! Previously on Harris Online...My original conversation with David Evanie

This week on the showbiz segment of my show, Max and I review the new Christian Bale movie "Hostiles." Then we get into who was left out of the Oscar nominations, why we love the movie theater company that's coming to St. Louis, and the upcoming remake of "West Side Story." On the TV side, we discussed the return of "Murphy Brown" and "The Greatest American Hero," plus Jimmy Kimmel's perfect guest for the night of Trump's State Of The Union speech.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

On this edition of my Harris Challenge -- the most fun you can have with your radio on -- the categories include Never Won A Grammy, Names In The News, and Where In The World? Listen and play along, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!Want more Harris Challenges? Click here.

This collection of Knuckleheads In The News® stories includes a beauty pageant for camels, a catnip cocktail, and a real-life man-bites-dog headline. Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!Want more Knuckleheads In The News®? Click here.

Do you know there's wood pulp in your parmesan cheese? Do you know there's probably no lobster in the lobster bisque you ordered? Do you know what makes olive oil "extra virgin"? Do you know that the Kobe beef on a restaurant menu is very unlikely to be real Kobe beef?These are just a few of the questions answered by my guest Larry Olmsted, author of "Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It." Larry writes the Great American Bites column for USA Today and is the travel and food columnist for Forbes.We also discussed why the FDA does such a poor job of regulating the food we buy, why you shouldn't buy apples in June, and what the real definitions are of "free-range," "natural," and "organic."Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

In the years since the Darren Wilson/Michael Brown story in Ferguson, there’s been a lot of talk about police department reform, both here in St. Louis and across the country. Documentarian Peter Nicks spent two years embedded with the Oakland, California, police department, as it tried to reform itself after years of high crime rates and scandals.The finished product is called “The Force,” which aired last night on PBS as part of the Independent Lens series and is now streaming online. Here's my conversation with Nicks about it.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Here's my conversation with Aaron Carotta, who took a solo trip in a canoe the entire length of the Missouri River, then down the Mississippi River, and across the Gulf of Mexico -- that's 5,000 miles from Montana to Florida. Considering he had zero experience in a canoe (he didn't even own one) when he started, it's an amazing story, part of which is captured in the documentary "Finding The Current," which will premiere at the Tivoli in St. Louis on February 8th.Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!