The Jackson County Public Library had the hottest ticket in town on Thursday night.
There were only 150 tickets available to see Bill Nye The Science Guy in Sylva. The event was free and tickets were claimed within minutes of being available earlier in the week, but library officials had to put out a message warning people not to buy tickets from some scammers who tried to sell seats.
Folks lined up at 5 a.m on Monday to reserve their seats.
Jackson County resident Sarah Ward said she got up at “early o’clock” for her ticket. Ward, 36, says she has loved Nye since her childhood.
“It’s incredible. I was thinking about that today, his legacy. Because of course, he was there for my childhood and now my children are experiencing him as well, and that’s really neat,” Ward, mom of four, said.
When Nye entered the room, the crowd went crazy, chanting, “Bill, Bill, Bill.”
Nye talked about his parents’ jobs in science, his early work as a mechanical engineer for the 747 airliner at Boeing and his early love of space. He remembers looking at the first picture taken of Earth from Space in 1968.
“I remember talking to my grandfather about it and he was surprised at the number of clouds and how much of the earth was covered with clouds because people of his age presumed it was like a classroom globe,” he said.
He remembers taking a class with astronomer and famed planetary scientist Carl Sagan in 1977 at Cornell University. Sagan was one of the founders of the Planetary Society in 1980. Sagan, along with Louis Friedman and Bruce Murray, “saw enormous public interest in space that was not reflected by government investment, as NASA's budget was cut again and again,” according to the society’s website.
Nye was a charter member of the Planetary Society and joined its board after Sagan’s death in 1996.
“We think that space exploration is cool,” Nye said. “They support us and they support our mission to know the cosmos and the place we're in.”
Nye has also been able to further his mission to share science with the world through his career on television. He said that he got started in show business after he won a Steve Martin look-alike contest in 1978.
He still remembers his first science comedy sketch in 1987 when he shared, “the household uses of liquid nitrogen.”
“When it's liquid it's freaking cold and it makes things spectacularly rip. You have the celery, that is going limp, you get it rigid. Hit the onion, it sounds like breaking glass. That's hilarious. It's well worth it,” Nye said. “Then the payoff is to eat the frozen marshmallows so that steam comes out of your nose.”
Throughout the evening, Nye advocated for increased funding for space exploration and called out potential cuts by the Trump administration.
“Space exploration, planetary exploration especially, brings out the best in us. It’s where we solve problems that have never been solved before,” Nye said during the program, where he highlighted key space advances such as the moon landing and discoveries on Mars.
He also called out attacks on DEI by the administration by highlighting the importance of women’s contributions to science. Nye said that his mother, Jacqueline Jenkins, was a lieutenant in the Navy and worked as a codebreaker during WWII.
“I would ask her, you know, what did you do during your war? And she would say, I can't talk about it. She never talked about it,” Nye said.
His father was working on Wake Island in the Pacific during WWII as an airstrip contractor. The island was bombed on December 7, 1941, and his father was a prisoner of war for four years.
Nye says that the women working as code breakers were key to ending the war during the Battle of Midway - and thereby saving his father’s life.
“The reason the US was able to do that is because of the code breaking. The code breaking was done by the 10,000 women in the Navy and Army who were working on these codes in the Pacific. So say whatever else you will, including 10,000 extra brains enabled the turning point of World War II,” Nye said.
The Navajo Code Talkers were also crucial to this effort, Nye mentioned to BPR after the event. The history of the Navajo Code Talkers was briefly removed by the Trump Administration from the Pentagon website. It was returned after a public outcry in March.
During the Q&A portion of the evening, 10-year-old Adalaide Neilsen asked Nye if he had ever wondered what is beyond our universe.
“What’s beyond the universe? Yeah, I wonder. And I don’t know, man. You are asking a fantastic question. What is beyond what we can’t see? Everyone has asked that question and nobody knows, man,” Nye said.
Nielsen came to the event with her mom, Tasha Youstin, her dad, Casey Neilsen, and her 18-month-old sister Millie.
Youstin said she has been teaching Adalaide about the scientific method at home.
“I feel like this was a really great thing for her to see. She is really into science,” Youstin said.
Nye has now been CEO of The Planetary Society for 15 years. This year, the society celebrated its 45th anniversary. Nye encourages everyone to appreciate science.
“The main thing is the process. The way that we know, what we know. It’s remarkable. It sets us apart from every other species that we have ever come across,” he said.
He told BPR after the event that NASA is important internationally and that space travel is key to solving the mysteries of life.
“[It is] very reasonable to me that in the next couple decades, we will find evidence of life,” Nye said. “Stranger still, maybe even something alive on another world and when that discovery is made, it will change all of us.”
He says that he is passionate about sharing science with the world because life is short, but also because it is in the U.S. Constitution. Article 1, Section 8 says the government has the power to promote the progress of science.
“It is patriotic to support science and that is why I am in this business to, dare I say it, change the world,” Nye said.
