Bill Nye on Facts, Falsehoods, and the Scientific Method

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Bill Nye on Facts, Falsehoods, and the Scientific Method"

Alive with Steve Burns (Lemonada Media) | February 18, 2026
Guest: Bill Nye, "The Science Guy"

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Alive with Steve Burns, Steve invites the legendary science educator Bill Nye for a candid and timely discussion about facts, misinformation, and the scientific method in today’s complicated world. The two reminisce about their days as children’s TV hosts, reflect on why critical thinking is so vital now, and explore how people can meaningfully distinguish truth from falsehoods. With humor, warmth, and intellectual rigor, they tackle the erosion of trust in science, the persistence of conspiracy theories, and—most importantly—the enduring hope that the universe is knowable.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. The Importance of Fostering Scientific Curiosity Early

• Shared TV Host Experiences
  • Both hosts started in educational children's television, influencing generations through critical thinking and wonder.
• Target Audience Insights
  • Bill Nye cites research indicating age 10 as a critical point for instilling a lifelong passion for science.

    “Ten years old is about as old as you can be to get the so-called lifelong passion for science...” —Bill Nye (04:26)

  • Steve reflects on how their shows modeled, rather than named, critical thinking:

    “No, we were just modeling it. You know, we weren’t saying it, we were just doing it.” —Steve Burns (08:43)

2. The Puzzle of Misinformation and Its Impact

• Erosion of Fact-Based Thinking

  • Despite educational efforts, both hosts observe that conspiracy theories (e.g., flat Earth beliefs) persist and even grow.
  • Bill expresses frustration and humor about confronting adults who doubt basic science:

    “Half jokingly, or maybe five-eighths jokingly, I failed. My life’s been a failure.” —Bill Nye (09:16)

  • The troubling gap between access to information and belief in conspiracy is dissected.

• Why People Gravitate to False Narratives

  • Bill suggests that people prefer simple, personally satisfying stories—“intellectual shortcuts”—over nuanced, evidence-based understanding:

    “Everybody wants to have their own cosmology... take the shortest cut.” —Bill Nye (10:42)

3. How Do We Know What’s Real? The Foundation of Epistemology

• Steve frames the big question:

  “How do we know what we know? How do we know what’s real?” —Steve Burns (12:15)

• Bill discusses the 'justified true belief' concept but pivots to everyday science:

  “There are certain things that seem to be objectively provable. The earth being round, being among those things.” —Bill Nye (13:15)

• Everything as Physics Perspective
  • Bill outlines how even thoughts and feelings can be seen as physical phenomena—a notion that surprises Steve:

    “Your chemical brain is also physics... That gets to be a lot harder question to answer.” —Bill Nye (14:51)

4. The Scientific Method: Humanity’s Superpower

• Bill’s Definition:

  “You observe something in nature and you wonder about this mythic thing, cause and effect, like, what made that happen. And so then you design a test...” —Bill Nye (19:31)

• Testing, Revision, and Willingness to Be Wrong
  • Bill and Steve discuss that the method's real power is its iterative nature and willingness to change in light of new evidence:

    “The greatest strength of the scientific process... its ability and its willingness to be wrong so that there can be appropriate change.” —Steve Burns (24:56)

• Historical Context
  • Bill credits infectious disease researchers like Pasteur for pushing the rigor of scientific testing, especially when evidence (like germs) was invisible (20:50–22:15).

5. Trust in Science and Society’s Shifting Relationship with Truth

• Erosion of Trust
  • Surveys show declining trust in science since 2020. Bill links this to political polarization, gerrymandering, and societal resistance to change (22:54–24:56).
• Change as Core to Science—and Democracy
  • Bill equates science’s embrace of change with the democratic process, where adaptability is key.

6. The Lure and Logic of Conspiracy Theories

• Shortcuts vs. Expertise
  • Bill notes that expertise takes time and deliberate effort, while the Internet offers seductive, immediate, but often misleading answers:

    “There is not an intellectual shortcut to develop an MRNA vaccine...” —Bill Nye (25:50)

  • The Internet amplifies misinformation, making it hard to distinguish expertise from speculation (28:08).
• Critical Thinking as a Habit of Mind
  • Bill stresses the value of training ourselves to evaluate evidence, not just accept ideas that 'feel' right:

    “It’s the ability or the habit of mind to evaluate evidence. When somebody tells you something, is it true or not, you stop and think...” —Bill Nye (28:28)

• What Makes a Conspiracy Theory Distinct?
  • Bill: It’s about imagining a small, secretive group controlling events—a notion both alluring and generally implausible (29:44–31:19).

7. The Challenge of Changing Minds

• Persistence of Belief
  • Steve asks how to balance compassion for those misled (especially when motivated by personal pain) with the need to battle falsehoods.
  • Bill points out the human tendency to reject contradictory evidence, especially if tied to identity or comfort (41:27–44:00):

    “You have to be shown... the evidence over and over... It takes a long time for people who have grown up with an astrological point of view to let go.” —Bill Nye (43:28)

8. The Universe is Knowable—A Message of Hope and Wonder

• Steve’s admiration for Bill’s motto:

  “Just saying the universe is knowable fills me with instant curiosity and a sense of wonder and even joy.” —Steve Burns (44:00)

• Bill Inspires with Scientific Progress:
  • Points out how much science has discovered in just a generation, and how mysteries like dark matter may one day be explained (44:42–46:45).
• The Infinite Frontier of Knowledge
  • Bill: “Every time we think we don’t know something about the universe, we have figured it out.” (47:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Constitution and Science

  “The US Constitution... Congress is to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” —Bill Nye (39:16)
  “Science is in the Constitution.” —Bill Nye (39:18)

• On Changing Minds

  “After you show somebody evidence, they would change their mind... but it’s not human nature. It takes a couple years for people. You have to be shown... over and over.” —Bill Nye (41:27)

• On Habits of Mind

  “Logic and critical thinking, a habit of the mind. And I love that because our minds do form habits, right?” —Steve Burns (48:59)

• The Promise of Science

  “The premise of science... If you’re looking at the history of humankind and science, every time we think we don’t know something about the universe, we have figured it out.” —Bill Nye (47:52)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:26] — Bill on optimum age for instilling passion for science
• [09:16] — Bill (“I failed!”) on the persistence of anti-science views
• [14:51] — The physics of feeling and thought
• [19:31] — Bill gives his definition of the scientific method
• [22:54] — Discussing erosion of trust in science
• [25:50] — Why expertise can’t be shortcut; the temptation of the Internet
• [28:28] — Evaluating evidence vs. confirming biases
• [29:44] — Defining a conspiracy theory
• [39:16] — Science and the Constitution
• [41:27] — Belief persistence and the slow pace of changed minds
• [44:00–47:52] — Science, wonder, and the knowable universe

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Episode Takeaway

This wide-ranging and accessible conversation is a passionate defense of open inquiry, skeptical thinking, and scientific humility. While acknowledging the daunting spread of misinformation and the deeply human reluctance to change beliefs, Bill Nye and Steve Burns celebrate the joy and excitement of learning—and argue convincingly that logic, curiosity, and wonder are survival skills for the muddled present.

Final Prompt:
“What are the habits of your mind?” —Steve Burns (48:59)

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For more: Watch full video episodes at Alive with Steve Burns YouTube

Transcript

[Bill Nye]

Lemonade. The US Constitution, as I like to joke, available in paperback. And I show everybody this Congress is to promote the progress of science and useful arts.

[Steve Burns]

That's in the Constitution.

[Bill Nye]

Yes. The word science in 1787. Science is in the Constitution.

[Steve Burns]

Hey. Hi. Hello. Welcome to Alive. Made your cup of tea. There you go. So, question for you. Would you consider yourself a critical thinker? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I. I'd like to think that I am. I certainly try to be, because I just feel that it's so important, especially right now in the moment that we currently live in. It seems that the scientific method, critical thinking, testing your assumptions before asserting your beliefs, these don't feel like intellectual exercises. They feel almost like survival skills in a world this full of mis and dis. Information. Right. So I had very recently an amazing conversation with one of the true goats of critical thought, Mr. Bill Nye, the guy of science himself. And it was really fascinating because it's always an honor and a joy to talk to him, but it was really great to hear his thoughts on the topic. So check that out and I'll be here when you get back. I would love to hear what you think. Ah, okay. All right. Today we are talking to Bill Nye, the science guy. And he has spent the better part of three decades standing up for science for reason, and that elusive yet imperative human trait in crazy rare supply right now, intellectual integrity. He's battled climate denial, creationism, conspiracy culture, and the slow erosion of trust in basic fact.

[Bill Nye]

And.

[Steve Burns]

And behind the awesome bow tie, the lab coat, the hilarity, there is a serious mission to remind us that the universe is knowable and that evidence still matters. In addition to all that, Bill's lived quite a life. He's an engineer, he's a comedian, he's got like a dozen books. I think he has something like four patents, he's a chef, he does ultimate Frisbee, and he's a super fancy dancer, which is something I'm very jealous about. Oh, he's. He's here. Hey, Bill. How you doing? Steve, it is so good to see you. Legitimately. So good to see you. You know, I've told you I'm a huge fan and it is awesome that you came by today. And I mean, look at us, right? Just a couple of old kids, TV show hats. Couple of old hats, back at it again.

[Bill Nye]

Yes.

[Steve Burns]

And it's, you know, we both. I flatter myself to say that we were sort of peers back in the day, briefly.

[Bill Nye]

Well, we were contemporaries for sure.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

And the other thing that we had in common, Steve, is we were focused on, on kids. And by that I mean people 10 years old and younger. Yeah, no, it's good to see you, but there's so many YouTube people that's good doing education on the electric Internet machines. But what set your show and my show apart, I think was focusing on very young people.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah. What was your demographic? Did you have like a specific.

[Bill Nye]

Well, our demographic is quite large, but we very compelling research that 10 years old is about as old as you can be to get the so called lifelong passion for science.

[Steve Burns]

Oh really?

[Bill Nye]

Yeah. And I think it's as old as you can be to get the lifelong passion for anything.

[Steve Burns]

Why do you think, why do you.

[Bill Nye]

Think that is the nature of our brains, I guess. But I gotta tell you, it wasn't my idea. This was research done by the National Science foundation, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. And so we embrace that and address the science guy show at people in, in fourth grade. But that turns out to be pretty good level for everybody. Fourth grade. Accessible for a lot of people.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, I didn't know that. I mean, I didn't know that there was sort of like some sweet spot chronologically for curiosity.

[Bill Nye]

Well, if it's not tent, if it's not 10, it's 12 or whatever, it's not 25.

[Steve Burns]

Do you think it's. I, I've always thought this, that, that a sense of wonder, a sense of curiosity, all of that is kind of an innate inherent super superpower that we're born with right out of necessity and we sort of learn, we sort of unlearn it as, as we get older.

[Bill Nye]

Well, everybody talks about that. Yeah, I respectfully, I've never unlearned it and all my engineering buddies never unlearn it. So I don't know. I know what you mean. People stop taking chances, stop trying to learn new things because it gets harder and harder. And a classic example is language.

[Steve Burns]

Right.

[Bill Nye]

You know, people who are four years old can speak apparently three languages is pretty straightforward for most people four years old. But by the time you're 14 or 24 years old, you're going to have an accent. Yeah, it's intuitive. I mean, just based on everybody's experience. You meet people who speak Spanish and English without accent, with an, without an accent in either language, it's because they learned it when they learned them both, when they were. Before they were five or six years old.

[Steve Burns]

Right. And there is something, there is something. There's something extra important in my view. And I think you share this view about using television educationally because of that neuroplasticity of that age group.

[Bill Nye]

Well, you guys, everybody, I am a product, and I think. Steve, you're a product. Blue's Clues is a product of the children's television act.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, that's true.

[Bill Nye]

So everybody, back in the 20th century, 1990s, people, grown ups, were concerned that children's television was becoming a sort of a, how to say, a half hour ad for toys. And I get it. Sure. If you're a kid and you're into, say, Spider man, who does whatever a spider can.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, he does.

[Bill Nye]

You want a Spider man action figure and that. It's cool. I totally get it. But there, that was perhaps missing an opportunity with kids staring at the TV to get some educational material across. And so you and I benefited from that.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we. I. Your show and my show were for decidedly different age groups. Um, but I always kind of saw our show as an on ramp to your show.

[Bill Nye]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Burns]

You know, because we kind of had a similar mission. We kind of had a similar goal. You were teaching the scientific process. We were teaching preschool deductive reasoning, critical thinking. All I did was run around the house and look for evidence. Right. That we could then think about critically before we formed a. Our opinion. Like, that's what we were doing.

[Bill Nye]

You know, I watched your show a bit. I didn't hear the word critical very much. Because you didn't need it, right?

[Steve Burns]

No, we were just modeling it. You know, we weren't saying it, we were just doing it.

[Bill Nye]

You know, I'm on board. Yes, yes, yes.

[Steve Burns]

But do. This is a question I've always wanted to ask you about. Like, so we spent all of this time and all of this energy doing this, and now those kids are adults, and it sometimes feels to me like, I don't know, a whole bunch of them believe that the Earth is flat and possibly inhabited by, you know, interdimensional reptile creatures and stuff. And do you ever take that personally?

[Bill Nye]

Well, I say all the time, half jokingly, or maybe five, eight jokingly. I failed. My life's been a failure. Yes. So this. In the last year, I've met three different people from three different walks of life who asked me or asked my wife to ask me if I thought the earth was flat or might be flat. And you can laugh out loud at such a thing. But these are guys, they're all men raised in the United States who went to high school in the United States. And that is really troubling that we, as A society have let these people down. It's really, it's really surprising because this is a further division of our society. Those with knowledge and those without knowledge. And by knowledge I'm talking just the world is round, you guys. The moon is round, Mars is round, the Earth is round. Crying out loud.

[Steve Burns]

What do you think that is? What do you think that impulse is? Why are we seeing that? Why are we seeing people that, that have on unprecedented access to actual facts and actual legitimate information, preferring a theory like a flat Earth?

[Bill Nye]

Well, everybody wants, the way I describe this, everybody wants to have their own cosmology. By that I mean their own understanding of the universe. So you get, I believe, since you asked this question, I believe take the people, take the shortest cut. Like, well, if the Earth is flat then I can see everything and I take out a flat map and I got the whole story. I don't need to go anywhere. All I need is my phone and off I go. But whereas the fact of the round Earth is much, is much harder to understand and of course much more exciting once you embrace it. And the other thing that really is cool for me is when people do get it, when people who are from a lower income community, people who don't have the access to the educational resources that for example I had and they understand this, that the Earth goes around the sun and this is this remarkable, almost magical force of gravity. This is really exciting. Well, that's the whole thing. You know, when you're a teacher and you see the spark in the student's eyes, that's the most rewarding thing. So it works both ways. That's all I'm saying. There's the frustration of the flat Earth people and there's the excitement of the kit from underprivileged background who's going to go into aerospace. So it works both ways.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, that is exciting. Well, the thing we're kind of trying to focus on today is deceptively simple sounding but incredibly complicated question. We're getting basic with it. We're trying to ask how do we know what we know? How do we, how do we know what's real? I know, I know. This is us, Bill. After all these years, we're spitting epistemology to the kids who are now 34.

[Bill Nye]

Epistemology and their ontology or whatever. Yeah, so how do you know what you know? This is, if I understand this, you guys, I'm not a formally trained philosopher, right? If I understand this, this is the so called justified true belief, the jt, Right? So is that right?

[Steve Burns]

You? I don't know. I'm not. Neither of us are philosophers here.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

We're just asking the question that or.

[Bill Nye]

Everybody is like, whoa, so how do you know what you know? There are certain things that are. Seem to be objectively provable. The earth being round, being among those things. And then the, the saying, everything happens for a reason. And that reason is usually that reason is usually physics. We love that. If you talk to enough physicists, they will argue that chemistry is just physics at the sub, with particles running into each other and combining with each other and electromagnetic forces connecting these things. And therefore biology, which is based on chemistry, is also physics. Okay, so then does that mean that what you're thinking with your chemical brain is also physics and therefore you can predict what it will do and what you will think and you could predict what you will feel? That gets to be a lot harder question to answer. But it's important for everyone to ponder because what you feel is really important as to what you'll. How you'll behave.

[Steve Burns]

Oh, for sure.

[Bill Nye]

What choices you'll make.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

And then that affects everybody around you.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah. That is something we'll definitely get into. Man, I never thought about that, Bill. I never thought that, like our, our thoughts, our feelings, love, music, the impulse to write a poem or something might be physics.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

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[Bill Nye]

What Would you say that's a good verb? Help us decide what is real. So the scientific method for me is you. You observe something in nature and you wonder about this mythic thing, cause and effect, like, what made that happen. And so then you design a test to see if you can figure out what made that happen. Then you run the test, then you compare what happened with what you thought would happen, and then you start over. That, to me, is the scientific method, and that is. It's magical. And this seems to be what sets us apart from many, many, many other animals. You can make arguments about the acuity of crows or dolphins or what have you, but humans definitely have a lot more going on when it comes to making predictions about nature and creating tests and cause and effect. It's magical.

[Steve Burns]

So a huge part of that that I'm hearing is the testing part, Right. So there's a hypothesis, and then you test it, and you. According to the results of that test, then you sort of re. Strategize and start over.

[Bill Nye]

Right. You compare what you thought would happen with what happened. And everybody, you may have been trained in the scientific method, People watching, listening to this podcast, the scientific method, scientific method, hypothesis, maybe you'd have observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. And that rigorous formulation or expression of the scientific method for me really came from infectious disease, from Louis Pasteur and Koch and those guys trying to figure out just where does this invisible sickness come from? Where did smallpox come from? Why did raw milk make people sick? Why is it that women who are milking cows, who got cowpox didn't get smallpox? Trying to figure this out was just. Takes tremendous rigor. You got to be really careful because germs are just too small to see. And it's hard to believe, at least for me, for most of us, that this invisible thing can have such a profound effect on your health.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

And your life and death. And I think that's where. That's my belief, that that's where this rigorous, rigorous formulation of the scientific method originated.

[Steve Burns]

There's been, you know, like, I don't know, a gajillion studies about how faith in scientific institutions is eroding. Right. Especially since 2020. I believe I have stats. I don't like to do stats because I always feel like I'm going to get them wrong. But basically, I guess, broadly, people still trust scientists and scientific information, but it is eroding quickly. Right. And I think it's something like 75 of people, if you ask them, will say, yeah, science is cool. I'm into science. But that's way down in the last five years. Why do you think that is?

[Bill Nye]

Well, I have some ideas about this and keep in mind, everybody, my ideas are correct.

[Steve Burns]

Okay, I'll keep that in mind.

[Bill Nye]

That's irony, everyone. Okay, that's irony. But what's happened here in the US is over the last 50 years or so we have agreed that gerrymandering voting districts, that dividing voting districts based on how people feel or their income level or where they go to public and then private universities is a good way to organize our government with these voting districts that are a tortured shape on a map. Geographically misshapen voting districts, and this is polarize the country. Both sides gerrymander, to be sure. The way it's gone right now, it's really favored people who, who are not open to change. A key to the US government is, which is akin to the scientific method is change in science or the practice of science or the body of knowledge of science. There's change. That's the whole idea. People didn't know there was Pluto then Pluto was found and it's very shiny, it's covered with nitrogen ice. So it was presumed to be a full size planet. It turns out to be smaller than Earth's moon. So let's say it's not a full size planet anymore. Now it's a dwarf planet. And I mention that because it's changed. It's just nomenclature, but it is change and it changes the way you perceive the solar system and the cosmos and our place within it. And it's an example of how to say low stakes change.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, yeah, no, I hear what you're saying and I like relating representative democracy to the scientific process. I think that's really cool and really well said and really true. Because the greatest strength of the scientific process, as you were describing it seems to me, its ability and its willingness to be wrong. And in fact, and I think that its ability and willingness to be wrong so that there can be appropriate change. Right. And I think that is true. I think that is a great strength of both processes. Now, something you also said that was really interesting to me was this concept of intellectual shortcuts and how that's a problem. And I wonder how that relates to the rise of widespread conspiracy thought today.

[Bill Nye]

So in order to become, for example, an expert on infectious disease, you've got to spend years. And the people who are experts on immunology or the people who created these messenger RNA ribonucleic acid vaccines spent decades messing with it. Many of them went to high School where they hustled and got good grades on standardized tests, then they got into good institutions with good medical departments, then they got master's degrees, and then they got PhDs. And that takes years. And in the case of infectious disease or vaccine development, it's discipline and diligence and dinking around with petri dish after petri dish and little plastic vial and centrifuge after little plastic vial and centrifuge, protein after protein. And so there is not an intellectual shortcut to develop an MRNA vaccine. And so I won't say people are lazy, but just life being what it is, you're raising a family, you're trying to get to work, whatever is you, we all tend to look for those shortcuts. What's happened is people have embraced the shortcuts and presumed that since you can find so much information electronically so easily now, that the information you can find about something like MRNA vaccines is necessarily true. Because for what the capital of Wisconsin is easily available on the Internet, then some fact about MRNA and autism is accessible on the Internet as well. But the Internet has also given us this ability to make misinformation at an extraordinary rate, even automate the creation of misinformation. Like, wow, dude. Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

I mean, that's why I feel like this stuff is so important to talk about, honestly is I think we're about to get completely inundated and overwhelmed with a, with an intergalactic fire hose of stuff.

[Bill Nye]

If we could teach one thing, it would be this. The expression. You threw it out. The phrase earlier critical thinking.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

When I was in school that maybe that phrase wasn't popular or wasn't around. I think it was called logic or logical reasoning or something like that. But whatever. It's the ability or the habit of mind to evaluate evidence. When somebody tells you something, is it true or not, you stop and think it looks flat. But if you spend more time with it, you find out it's not flat. And it looks like certain vaccines cause autism, but after more careful studies can prove that that is absolutely not the case, that autism is not caused by vaccines. Get over it. And it's very personal. If it's your kid involved in this case, if it's your kid involved, you just, you're looking for cause and effect and you're looking for somebody to blame and.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, I mean, sure. I mean, I, I read somewhere that I think 50% of. Of people will say that they believe at least one conspiracy theory, you know, And I guess what I'm wondering is when does it become a conspiracy theory. What makes it conspiratorial in your mind?

[Bill Nye]

Well, I think for me, it's when people have the idea that it's a small group of people who keep things secret that are running, and these people are running things. And my feeling is, if only there were 60 people in the conspiracy controlling the world. And we just go meet with those 60 people and tell them to cut it out and we just move on. But it's more complicated than that. You know, I'm here on Capitol Hill in the United States today, and these people are just butt heads all day. And it's not a conspiracy so much as a constant argument.

[Steve Burns]

I always see it as like, you know, basically what you're saying. You know, you work backwards from a bias that you like, you work backwards from a story that you like. There's something that rings true to you, there's something that feels correct to you, and then you just defend that position at the expense of evidence that might challenge it. Right.

[Bill Nye]

We fight it in science all the time. Just try to overcome your bias.

[Steve Burns]

Why is that so hard? Why is it so hard to do that?

[Bill Nye]

Because you want. You want the experiment to come out the way you predicted, and then you move on. But if it doesn't, it's difficult. But of course, people talk about the aha moments and these amazing discoveries, but those are pretty far, few and far between. It's mostly just chipping away ways.

[Steve Burns]

Right. Do you think there's more conspiracy thought right now than there ever was, or do you think it's just because the Internet amplifies it and lets us see it more?

[Bill Nye]

Well, the other thing, there actually are conspiracies. I mean, people work together to kill Abraham Lincoln. They were, you know, after the assassin got away, people gave him a place to stay and fed him and stuff. There were. There was a conspiracy. There were people in on it. But there also are small organizations trying to make big changes which would. Might be conspiratorial. But I think, if I understand your question, it's. It's people looking for shortcuts, that there's some hidden group of people that is. Has outsized control over events. And it's just really frustrating. I'll just tell you guys, I'm here in Capitol Hill and this stuff with NASA, people are talking about the Space Force and the Chinese National Space Administration and so on. There's just a lot of stuff flying, a lot of satellites. The army has satellites. The Navy has satellites. The National Security Agency has satellites. They don't talk to each other very much. And so when there's something in the sky and you don't know what it is, it's almost certainly something that humans made and they just haven't told each other what it is. And this leads to conspiratorial thinking. Somebody's keeping something secret from you, so you presume they're doing it with malicious intent.

[Steve Burns]

Okay, world, I get it. Protein and fiber are very, very important. Fine. But I'm not going to restructure and rebuild my entire diet around that stuff.

[Bill Nye]

I'm.

[Steve Burns]

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[Bill Nye]

Boop.

[Steve Burns]

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[Chelsea Clinton]

Do you ever find yourself scrolling through headlines, especially health headlines, and just thinking that can't be true? Well, I certainly do. 2025 brought us some ridiculous Far fetched health claims and some especially terrifying changes in public health. What's in store for us in 2026? I'm Chelsea Clinton and we're back with season two of my podcast, that can't be true. Follow along and catch up on season one wherever you get your podcasts.

[Steve Burns]

But my question at least what I always wonder as it relates to conspiratorial thought. We'll use your satellites as an example, right? You look up in the sky and you see something blinky and it's moving in a way that you don't know. You simply don't know what that is. And instead of really doing the work to find out what that is, I can see how it's very tempting to say that is an alien aircraft. And I like that story. It's exciting to me, it's entertaining to me, and it seems to, as you say, be a shortcut to everything that feels true to me. What frustrates me, Bill, is once you arrive there at a narrative that you prefer, what frustrates me is when people then defend it and die on that hill Instead of saying, oh, this might be true, Let me use what we were discussing before the scientific process. Let me test this. Let me see if I can replicate that result. Let me see if I can. What I would say actually know if that's a thing. People just stop at the story now that they like and that has all sorts of negative consequences. And it, it does. It frustrates. It really frustrates me for sure.

[Bill Nye]

Well, you should do a podcast about it. Wait, here we are. Yeah, so you're chipping away at the problem and we just got to raise awareness and we have to writ large, I guess we have to get trust again and expertise. And that's going to take everybody. It's going to take voting. We've got to re establish trust and expertise. And the trouble is it's. It takes time to become an expert. It takes time and resources and effort.

[Steve Burns]

Well, there's. There's actually a disconnect that I. That I see sometimes where here we're.

[Bill Nye]

In U. S. Congress. That's the call for a vote.

[Steve Burns]

Is it really?

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, yeah, we're in. I'm in representative Whitesides office. He's down on the floor of the U. S. Congress voting. And his staff lent me this office. So thank you.

[Steve Burns]

No way. So that's how they vote. They, they send like someone puts a foghorn on Capitol Hill and everyone says, I must vote now, and they come running.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah. And there's all These crazy clocks with the symbol of dots that tells you when to vote. Can you. There's the, there's the clock. Let's see if I can do it. There's the clock with the lights. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Burns]

Look at the civics lessons that we weren't expecting to get today. Bill, you always deliver.

[Bill Nye]

Another thing that would be really good is the civics lessons. I show this to members of Congress all the time and their staffs and they're unfamiliar with this. So everybody. The U.S. constitution, as I like to joke, available in paperback. And I show everybody this. So Article 1 is the role of the legislative branch, the Congress, not the president or the courts, but the legislative branch. So it goes on. Article one's about. Article four is about voting. This section eight, clause eight. Congress is to promote the progress of science and useful arts.

[Steve Burns]

That's in the Constitution.

[Bill Nye]

Yes. The word science in 1787. These guys say whatever else. I know there are some problems with the founders. I understand there are some issues, but this is an amazing idea. They put the word science, not, not natural philosopher. Science is in the Constitution. And I was in the office this morning. I didn't know it was there. I know you're a freaking congressman and you're the staff and you haven't read this thing. It's, you know, you can get it at the bookstore and they usually have stacks of them at the front desk here in US Congress. And useful arts to me is an 18th century expression that meant engineering using science. Make stuff.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

Let's build a bridge, let's make a plow, let's temper steel so that the knife stays sharp, whatever it is. Useful arts.

[Steve Burns]

I was unaware that science in scientific processes is baked into the DNA of our actual Constitution. That's really cool.

[Bill Nye]

They realize the value of science to our health, well being. And especially everybody today on Capitol Hill talking about the NASA budget, our international competitiveness.

[Steve Burns]

So I hear your frustration, you know, and I share a lot of it. Right. I want to go back to an example you used of, say, a mother, Right. With a sick child who is looking for answers because it's difficult to conceive of anything more painful than what she's going through. Right. I have enormous empathy for, for that and I can. It's easy to empathize with that situation. How do we balance. How do I say this? How do we balance compassion for why someone might believe something demonstrably false? Right. With the, with, with the same need to challenge misinformation.

[Bill Nye]

So here's, here's a problem. People on our side or my side have. You might expect that after you have somebody who says, who asks you, do you think the earth could be flat? You might expect that after you show them a classroom globe, or you take them to an airport and have them look at the list of destinations that includes London, Sydney, Australia, Lagos, Nigeria. And how would you get to these places if the world were not round and so on. And what about, how could it be a different time in Tokyo than it is in Mexico City or what have you? And so you, you might expect that after you show somebody evidence, they would change their mind. Everything's fine. Oh, good. Thank you. He showed me the world is round. I've changed my worldview, I'm moving on. But it's not human nature, Right. It takes a couple years for people. You have to be shown, in my opinion, have to be shown the evidence over and over.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

And the example that for me is just classic is people who embrace astrology. So this is the 2000 year old presumption that the motion of planets affects people's personalities. And there's only 12 personality types, or there are specifically 12 personality types.

[Steve Burns]

Right.

[Bill Nye]

And depending on the time of year you're born, you're going to be like this. Even after the Earth wobbles, as it does 24,700 years or whatever, and all the constellations have shifted one to the west, they still embrace the 2000 year old personality descriptions. It takes a long time for people who have grown up with an astrological point of view to let go of.

[Steve Burns]

That, to let go of the story that they like. Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Nye]

And so if somebody believes in ghosts, it takes a long time to get them to let go of ghosts. Somebody believes their ancestor is watching over them or has a plan for their life and takes a long time to get people to let go of that. So for people on my side, you got to go into it with expectations that this is a big problem that's not solved with that wave of a hand.

[Steve Burns]

I believe firmly that we need to be asking these questions and stuff. And I know you got to go here in a minute. So the last thing I really want to get to is something that I've heard you say that I adore. Right. And that's that the universe is knowable. And that that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I don't know why, but just saying the universe is knowable fills me with instant curiosity and a sense of wonder and even joy. I love that idea. But there are people for whom that is a threatening idea. The Concept that. That. That a knowable universe sort of erodes their sense of mystery. I think they're kind of the same thing.

[Bill Nye]

People are very troubled by the idea that humankind doesn't know it all and doesn't have all the answers. And so I'll just give you an example, just because we're here talking about NASA and so on. When all four of my grandparents were born in the 19th century. All four of my grandparents were born in THE 1800s. Dude, that's so low. I know. It's a long time ago. They didn't know there was relativity, let alone the consequences of it that we now have in your mobile phone. This is to say, all the timing that modern computers, including this phone call or video call, rely on, all that depends on both special relativity, the speed of time caused by Earth or affected by Earth's gravity, and special relativity, the speed of time is affected by the spacecraft's speed above the Earth's surface. Okay? Everybody's running around talking about dark matter. Nobody knows what it is. And then they'll say, well, it's dark energy. I would not be surprised if in 30 years somebody does know what it is and it does have practical consequences for your phone or your cookbook or whatever the heck it is, your water purification system. It wouldn't surprise me at all. And so it's an example for me. It's an example of something we do not know. We have seen evidence of it, but we do not know what causes it. And some people immediately jump to, well, that means that there's. I met some people. That means that there's telepathy, that we have mental abilities to communicate in a way that's completely not known to science.

[Steve Burns]

I don't get that. I don't know how that works.

[Bill Nye]

Well, but in other words, since you don't know this one thing, then therefore it's explained by this other unknown thing.

[Steve Burns]

But that's broken logic. You know what I mean? So that.

[Bill Nye]

That just.

[Steve Burns]

That seems insufficient to me to form a belief. That's to me. That's to. That's to me. Right? And I think we do ourselves a disservice if we simply jump to an answer that we prefer and defend it and just decide that we're unpersuadable because we like it, not because of facts, not because of evidence.

[Bill Nye]

Well, so there you go. But the example where you really do have to push back against this if you're a parent, why are we doing that? Because I said so, okay? That's why we're going. That's why we're going to your grandmother's house. And we are going to enjoy it. And just.

[Steve Burns]

Well, listen, Bill, you know, half everybody, if. If we. If the universe is knowable and we live.

[Bill Nye]

That's the premise of science. I know. It's just not knowable. That is a. Will be a new thing. Every time we find something we don't know we do. Event humankind does eventually figure it out. So the. If you're looking at the history of humankind and science, every time we think we don't know something about the universe, we have figured it out.

[Steve Burns]

How exciting is that? Right? If. If the universe is knowable and also infinite, there are infinite things to know. What could be more exciting than that? And. And. Hey, man, I know you gotta go. I love talking to you. I would do this a million more times. I have so many more questions for you. A million. A gazillion.

[Bill Nye]

Let's do it again soon.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, we will, man. And thank you for. Thank you for defending NASA. I think that's great. And. Go get them, Bill.

[Bill Nye]

Thanks, you guys. Let's change the world. Carry on.

[Steve Burns]

Bye.

[Bill Nye]

Thanks, Steve. All right, man.

[Steve Burns]

Wow. Bill's great, right? I always love talking to him. Always. And there's one thing he said that really stuck with me. He called logic and critical thinking, thinking a habit of the mind. And I love that because our minds do form habits, right? We know that they do. The mind can be trained. We can train our minds to look for evidence or to simply look for things that agree with what we already assume we know. We can train our minds to ask difficult questions or settle for easy answers. So I guess the question I have for you is what are the habits of your mind? Fascinating.

[Bill Nye]

Fascinating.

[Steve Burns]

Thanks for stopping by. This means a lot to me. It truly does. I'll see you next time. And you look great. Alive with Steve Burns is a Lemonada Media original. If you haven't subscribed to Lemon on a Premium yet, now's the perfect time. You can listen to the show completely ad free, plus you'll unlock exclusive bonus content from me as I reflect on this episode. Just press subscribe on Apple podcasts. Head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app or listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. That's lemonadapremium.com Alive is hosted by me, Steve Burns, and produced by Jeremy Slutskin. Our editor is Christopher Champion Morgan. Our associate producer is Akshaz Tharabailu. Audio engineering by James Sparber. Lemonada's SVP of weekly programming is Steve Nelson. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Whittles, Wax, and me. We'll see you next week. And you look great, by the way.

[Chelsea Clinton]

Want to listen to your favorite Lemonada shows without the ads? Subscribe to Lemonada Premium On Apple Podcasts, you'll get ad free episodes and exclusive bonus content from shows like Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus, Fail Better with David Duchovny, the Sarah Silverman Podcast, and so many more. It's a great way to support the work we do and treat yourself to a smoother, uninterrupted listening experience. Just head to any Lemonada show, feed on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe Make Life Suck Less with Fewer Ads With Lemonada Premium, are you looking for ways to make your everyday life happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one bestselling author of the Happiness Project, bringing you fresh insights and practical solutions in the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. My co host and happiness guinea pig is my sister, Elizabeth Craft. That's me, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore ideas and hacks about cultivating happiness and good habits. Check out Happier with Gretchen Rubin from Lemonada Media.