Bill Nye says inspiring the next generation of scientists is “amazing,” but admits the scale of his impact is hard to grasp
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Bill Nye the Science Guy, which aired from 1993 to 1998, aimed to “change the world” and remains beloved by Millennials and Gen Z
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Nye highlights the importance of critical thinking and says today's scientists have unprecedented access to information to drive change
Bill Nye, the "Science Guy," knows he is the reason many '90s and 2000s kids got interested in science, but admits it's still “hard to grasp.”
“We made theScience Guyshow in a warehouse in Seattle, a couple dozen of us and put my heart and soul into it to be sure,” Nye, 70, shares with PEOPLE at the Museum of Science in Boston for the official launch ofThe Air We Shareinitiative.
The scientist and TV personality says that, at the time, he wrote down the show's objective on a piece of paper and gave it to everyone who worked on it.
“I gave everybody this document, and it says, ‘Objective: change the world.' As aspirational as that might have been, to actually have people out there trying to change the world is pretty cool,” Nye shares.
Bill Nye the Science Guypremiered in 1993 and ran until 1998 on PBS. However, its reach didn't end there. Nearly all Gen Z and Millennial science students across the United States can recall a day when his show was aired in class, becoming a staple educational tool.
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While he admits there isn't one singular episode that people approach him about most, he says, “generally people just like the show.” The theme song, he admits, is “pretty good, I gotta say.”
“I didn't write it. It's pretty good," he tells PEOPLE.
While Nye doesn't have a “favorite episode," as there was "something in every episode that [he] loved," he admits that making the segment around flight still stands out.
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"Getting a ride in that airplane and making these tiny changes and the plane would go, that was cool,” Nye says.
One of the most exciting things about the next generation of scientists, he says, is that people “want to change the world” and “they have access now to information that nobody had before.”
“You can look up the atomic weight of chlorinated fluorocarbons in a beat. It used to be this huge hassle. It used to be big, thick books where you had to really know what you were looking for," he explains. "With these electronic information systems, you can get a lot of wrong things, but that's the most important skill for anyone, the so-called critical thinking, sorting out or having the habit of mind to sort out what is reasonable from what is probably not reasonable. That's our goal."
"We have people excited about science who are entering the workforce, who are gonna vote and make changes and change the world. It's exciting,” Nye adds.
Knowing that he inspired the next generation of scientists, he says, “is amazing.”
“I try to get the significance of it, but the scale of it's still hard to grasp,” Nye says.
The scientist recently teamed up with prodigy Sean Atitsogbe, known as Sean the Science Kid, for a new national initiative from Sanofi and the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC), designed to help families better understand how air quality impacts respiratory health through trusted, science-based community education.
At just 11 years old, Sean is already widely known for his science content and as a STEM educator, following in Nye's footsteps.
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