Bill Nye The Science Guy's Origin Story | StarTalk

We're featuring my interview with science communicator extraordinaire Bill Nye, and I asked how his interest in comedy and his background in engineering coalesced into the identity of the Science Guy.

Let's check it out. It's a wonderful thing to get people to laugh at your comedy jokes. So I started doing stand-up, or trying to do stand-up, well, I can stand up clubs and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I would work on a drawing board and then I would go home and take a nap and then go to comedy clubs.

So you were an engineer by day, comedian by night, sir? Yes, I wrote that. What I was trying to do, it's a problem. The thing that always trumpets? Engineering is still in your head at some...

Yeah, I miss it while you're doing that. Yeah, I...

So what's the stick? Engineering informed? Yes, that's what I say. Hilarious jokes about electrocuting yourself while trying to fix a blender. Wow, is that funny? And chewing marshmallows frozen in liquid nitrogen so that steam comes out of your nose? Hilarious! Come on, it's a payoff.

And I realized that what I wanted to do, you know, I came of age at a time for me as a mechanical engineer, is really troubling. We had the Chevy Vega and the Ford Pinto, and these were just badly designed cars. The administration decided not to embrace the metric system, something you and I haven't fully agreed on, is my belief.

There's America, yeah, yeah. The United States was falling behind industrially. Is America? So I got very concerned about the future. I'm not kidding. Very concerned.

And I realized, working at the Science Center in Seattle, that young people are the key to the future. I mean, this is obvious, but they're the key to our industrial future. They're key to our economic competitiveness. They're the future of civilization.

And so I wanted to get kids excited about science in the same way I had been excited about science by my teachers and a television guy named Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard. I remember Mr. Wizard.

So all this came together into a unique arc of life. That's my claim. That's my story. [Applause] [Music]