Almost three months into the Trump presidency, this government's pathological resistance to facts, science, and the notion of trusted sources is so relentless that it's beginning to feel normal. The rising tide of anti-science sentiment is not okay with Bill Nye, whose return to television could not possibly be better timed—or more accurately titled. Premiering next Friday on Netflix, Bill Nye Saves the World is a whole different beast from his beloved 1990s program, Bill Nye the Science Guy.
"It's quite different," Nye told Esquire.com. "This is a talk show, it's not a science primer, so much as a show about topics that have pros and cons from a scientific perspectives. We want you, the viewer, to draw your own conclusions after we present the evidence."
Hosted by Nye alongside a slew of celebrity correspondents and guest—including Karlie Kloss, Zach Braff, and Tim Gunn—the show will employ a mix of monologues, demonstrations and talk-show style debate segments to refute myths and pseudoscience. Here, Nye tells us what to expect and why he thinks his new series is important for viewers of all ages.
Billed as an "anti-anti-science show," each episode of Bill Nye Saves the World will focus on a different anti-scientific claim.
The idea is that these claims are all susceptible to analysis. We have a show on alternative medicine, which is quite literally treatments that aren't medicine; homeopathy being kind of the worst. We found a stomach antacid that has vinegar in it, so it doesn't settle your stomach, it just makes you feel worse, but it's sold in a hippie store and it's full of hippie sounding words, so it looks like it'll work. And then climate change, which is where everybody's in denial in the most inappropriate way.