Cool Science

So in a couple weeks I'm going to go see Bill Nye the Science Guy talk and I have to say I'm floored. To be fair, I came in late on the Bill Nye craze and I was really in the Mr. Wizard generation and I liked his style. If you followed that link you'd see Mr. Wizard when he was a lot younger and that's pretty wild. Bill Nye's show used to be on all the time but I haven't seen it any where in ages. Maybe they squeeze it in between infomercials at 3am, because I haven't caught it on any Saturday mornings in years. Not that I look for that kind of stuff on saturday mornings...

I think Bill Nye has moved on to more advocacy and outreach and other ways to try to get his message out and I totally respect that. But there seems to be a void here - many scientists I've talked to will credit either Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye when talking about why they became scientists. So who is it now? Well Mythbusters is easily the best science on TV and their stuff is unrelenting brain-candy, but they're not really focused on the outreach and the education aspects or on the fundamental science. And they're not on saturday mornings either! Alan Alda is doing a brilliant job on Scientific American Frontiers; he really impresses the heck out of me and how naturally he interacts with the scientists on the show; and they get amazingly deep into the material, but that show is definitely for adults.

So where's the next Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye? Don't know but I hope he or she shows up soon.