Obvious Diversion

For lover’s of truth and science, it was great to see a kids show like Bill Nye the Science Guy hit the air. Well, Bill Nye is back with his new show The Eyes of Nye (unfortunately the website is Flash-based). I’ve watched two episodes and it’s a fantastic show. The show seems more information dense then his previous one and is definitely targeted at a wider audience. There’s a noticeable balance between younger and older age groups and it will certainly be enough to keep both entertained.

First Up: Astrobiology & Pseudoscience

I was very impressed by the topics this show covers. For instance, episodes 1 and 2 are about astrobiology and psuedoscience. Where else on television would I find any reasonable exploration of these topics? In the two I’ve watched, one tackled climate change and showed the correlation between CO2 in the atmosphere and the rise in global temperature as well as demonstrating how climatologists find what the climate was like, say, 14,000 years ago. The other one was about the idea of race. It explained the migration of humans from place to place, the reason behind varying skin colors and how race is really a social construct, not a genetic one. It did all these things and managed to be entertaining at the same time.

For television, these topics and the very straight-forward way in which Nye demonstrates how science finds truth seems very adventurous. I’m very interested in seeing future shows on topics including addiction, cloning, modified foods, nuclear energy and the evolution of sex. No kidding.

Great stuff. Check out The Eyes of Nye.