CARSON & CANNAN THE SCIENCE GUY

INTERVIEW Our junior science guys bonded with Bill Nye the Science Guy over space travel, Star Wars and bow ties.

Carson: When did you become the Science Guy?

Nye: It was January 1987. I was working on a comedy show in Seattle, writing jokes for a stand-up routine and working as a mechanical engineer during the day. One night, I had to fill six minutes when someone else didn’t show up. A guy—that I’m still good friends with—said, “You could be, like, Bill Nye the Science Guy or something.” I thought it was a pretty good idea. I’d freeze an onion with liquid nitrogen, then hit it with a knife, and it would sound like broken glass. Or freeze marshmallows, chew them and steam would come out my nose. It was funny, and as I walked offstage, I realized this could be huge—huge! It took another five years to get the Science Guy show.

Carson: What’s up with all the bow ties?

Nye: When I was in high school, the boys were waiters at the girls’ athletic banquet. So I said to my dad, “If we’re going to be waiters, let’s dress like waiters.” My father taught me how to tie a bow tie. I tied everyone else’s bow tie in the bathroom at school.

Then, doing stand-up comedy, I realized that a bow tie would set me apart from other people. And whether you’re a waiter or you’re working in a laboratory, when you lean over, a bow tie doesn’t fall into the flask or slip into the soup. Later in life, what you want is a woman to come up to you and straighten your bow tie. It’s the greatest. Now it’s a thing; I can’t stop it. I have about 500 bow ties.

Cannan: Star Wars or Star Trek?

Nye: For me, Star Trek is an optimistic view of the future, with science. But Star Wars is all about fathers and grandfathers and troubled sons . . . Rogue

One was like, oh, the Death Star . . . again. Come on, really? The Stormtroopers’ armor is completely ineffective; it takes me out of the story. Why do you want to destroy planets? What’s in it for you? And the Force goes faster than light? What’s up with that? The science doesn’t hold up.

Carson: When will we fly to Mars?

Nye: Not next year, which is the claim of Elon Musk and SpaceX. It’s very reasonable there will be space tourism in the next five years, for sure. Not in orbit, just up and down. Three minutes of complete weightlessness and several minutes of near weightlessness.

Nye: Do you guys want to be astronauts?

Carson: I’m more quantum [physics], so it’s not really my cup of tea.

Cannan: I do, mostly because I want to travel, I guess.

Nye: That is traveling! Go all the way around the Earth every nine minutes. That’s getting something done!