Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" was delivered on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium. Over 450 Carnegie Mellon students, staff members, and friends of Pausch attended the lecture, leaving only standing room as this was more than the auditorium could hold. Pausch later commented about this in an interview, saying "A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding – hopefully at the appropriate times – that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way." The first introduction of the speech as well as the series of lectures was given by Indira Nair, the Vice Provost for Education at Carnegie Mellon. Nair first explained the university's aforementioned lecture series called "Journeys", in which eight more professors from Carnegie Mellon would share their insights on their professional and personal experiences over the years.
Nice to Meet You, Walden Schmidt
With 28.74 million viewers in its original airing, the episode was the most watched in the history of the show. It scored a 10.7/25 rating/share in the 18-49 age group. At one point, the audience peaked at 31 million viewers with an 11.4/26 rating/share. Including DVR ratings, which added 4.09 million viewers, the episode was watched by a total of 32.83 million viewers with a 12.5 18-49 rating. In Canada, the show was watched by approximately 5 million viewers, with 6.7 million watching some of it. In Australia, the show was watched by an average of 2.3 million viewers in the five major capital cities, peaking at 2.6 million, which gave the show its highest ever ratings figure for an episode broadcast in Australia. It was also the most watched show on Australian television that night, beating third placed drama hit "Packed to the Rafters" by 655,000 viewers. In the United Kingdom, the episode aired on September 20 on digital channel Comedy Central and brought in a total of 803,000 viewers, the most watched programme in the channel's history.