Whenever you walked into class growing up and saw one of those carts with the television set strapped to the top of it, you knew it was going to be a good day in class. Science class was no exception, but only if the video being shown was going to be from everyone’s favorite educational program in the ‘90s — Bill Nye the Science Guy. Forget those boring alternatives like Newton’s Apple, Bill Nye was the one who got you excited about science. Heck, you’d even watch the show outside of school, and that was really saying something for an educational television program!
While the somewhat frenetic format of Bill Nye the Science Guy certainly helped to make the show stand out, what truly made it work was Bill Nye himself. How did Bill Nye become the science guy? Read on to find out!
Bill Nye became our trusted scientist advisor in the ‘90s, but is he actually a scientist? Well, technically… no. He graduated from Cornell University with a BS degree in mechanical engineering and then went to work as an engineer for Boeing in Seattle, where he invented something called a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube that would be used on 747 airplanes. He ended up getting into comedy after winning a Steve Martin lookalike contest, and started doing standup while still working at Boeing, realizing that he really liked making people laugh a lot more than he enjoyed being an engineer.
In 1986, Nye decided to focus on comedy full time and began working as a writer and actor on a sketch comedy television show in Seattle called Almost Live!, and it was on this show that the Science Guy persona was born. The story goes that Nye corrected the host of Almost Live!’s pronunciation of the word gigawatt, and the host replied back with, “Who do you think you are—Bill Nye the Science Guy?” Soon enough, in 1989 he had a gig hosting an educational show called Fabulous Wetlands and he was featured on segments of the All-New Mickey Mouse Club. He also appeared as an assistant to Dr. Brown in the live-action segments of Back to the Future: The Animated Series from 1991 to 1992.
It was in 1993 that he began developing a pilot for his local PBS station in Seattle that would become Bill Nye the Science Guy. He developed the show with James McKenna, Erren Gottlieb and Elizabeth Brock, who all served as producers, and they pitched it as Mr. Wizard meets Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. They obtained funding from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy, and soon enough the show entered into a distribution deal with Disney. Though Disney was involved at this point, the show never actually aired on the Disney Channel, but instead remained mostly on public broadcasting stations.
Nye’s background in comedy is what really made the show become as popular as it was — while it was running from 1993 to 1998, it was one of the most-watched educational shows in the United States. The show not only entertained viewers, but was also recognized by the Emmy Awards, which nominated it for 23 awards over the show’s lifetime (it won nineteen of them). And while some people may give Nye flack for portraying himself as a scientist when technically he’s an engineer, there have been research studies that found that regular viewers of the show were better at explaining scientific ideas than non-viewers. I mean, didn’t it seem like sometimes he was better at teaching certain scientific concepts than your actual science teachers?
Bill Nye the Science Guy made science fun, and that was something really special for kids growing up in the ‘90s. And though we all wanted the show to go on forever, it ended after five seasons and one hundred episodes, just as planned. As of mid-2021, only the first two seasons are available to stream online, but hopefully the others will be available someday soon so we can all relive those fun science days of the past and share them with the next generation.
What are your favorite memories of watching Bill Nye the Science Guy, in science class or otherwise? Let us know in the comments!
- Some people believe that the show was canceled because of an episode that talked about evolution being real, but that’s not true — that episode aired about halfway through the show’s run.
- Most episodes of the show featured parodies of popular songs to help teach one of the scientific concepts. Some examples include “Smells Like Air Pressure,” a parody of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Let’s Talk About Stress” which is a parody of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex.”
- Bill Nye wanted to be an astronaut — he applied to NASA’s astronaut program multiple times, but was never accepted.
- Nye has appeared as his Science Guy persona throughout the years, and recently also had a new program on Netflix called Bill Nye Saves the World. It aired for three seasons and was more of a talk show format.
- Nye has also competed on a few different reality shows, including Dancing with the Stars in 2013, and on The Masked Dancer in 2020. If you want to know more about Nye, there is also a documentary about his life and science advocacy called Bill Nye: Science Guy.
- Some people believe that the show was canceled because of an episode that talked about evolution being real, but that’s not true — that episode aired about halfway through the show’s run.
- Most episodes of the show featured parodies of popular songs to help teach one of the scientific concepts. Some examples include “Smells Like Air Pressure,” a parody of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Let’s Talk About Stress” which is a parody of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex.”
- Bill Nye wanted to be an astronaut — he applied to NASA’s astronaut program multiple times, but never was accepted.
- Nye has appeared as his Science Guy persona throughout the years, and recently also had a new program on Netflix called Bill Nye Saves the World. It aired for three seasons and was more of a talk show format.
- Nye has also competed on a few different reality shows, including Dancing with the Stars in 2013, and on The Masked Dancer in 2020. If you want to know more about Nye, there is also a documentary about his life and science advocacy called Bill Nye: Science Guy.
