To occasionally humans, he is better known when a human world health organization brought rock lampooner "Weird Al" Yankovic to national attention.

Hansen was natural around Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1941, the boy of an amateur pianist, and claims to own began his immense record collection whilst early when age Xii, when he encountered "that a local thrift store had thousands of old 78 RPM records for sale at 5 cents each." He attended Reed College, where he wrote the thesis in Wagnerian opera, and late a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from which he earned an expert's degree inside music.

Hansen has developed the particular interest in the roots of rock 'n' roll in R&B and country music, and has written about it in many magazine articles, liner notes to compilations and new recordings by a variety of artists, and two chapters on early R&B for The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. His shows and public appearances display an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of recorded music in general, from the earliest Edison cylinder recordings onward.

Featured musicians
Musicians that Dr. Demento regularly features include:

Kip Addotta Arrogant Worms Asylum Street Spankers P. D. Q. Bach Heywood Banks Bananas At Large Barnes & Barnes Fred Blassie The Bobs The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band George Carlin Johnny Cash Tim Cavanagh Captain Chaos Cheech & Chong Da Vinci's Notebook Da Yoopers The Dead Milkmen The Firesign Theatre Wild Man Fischer Leslie Fish John Forster The Frantics Stan Freberg Tony Goldmark The Goons Rolf Harris Benny Hill Homer & Jethro Spike Jones & His City Slickers Jungle Judy Christine Lavin Tom Lehrer The Great LukeSki Steve Martin Monty Python's Flying Circus Martin Mull Napoleon XIV Odgen Edsl Henry Phillips Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt Kickers Pinkard & Bowden Bob Rivers The Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band The Rutles Adam Sandler Art Paul Schlosser Allan Sherman Shel Silverstein Spinal Tap Tom "T-Bone" Stankus Ray Stevens Terry Teene They Might Be Giants Throwing Toasters Carla Ulbrich Loudon Wainwright III Wesley Willis Tim Wilson Whimsical Will Reverend Billy C. Wirtz Sheb Wooley Worm Quartet UFO Phil "Weird Al" Yankovic Frank Zappa Roy Zimmerman