Bill Nye Saves the World

Bill and his guests talk about tackling overpopulation by empowering women. Comedian Joanna Hausmann interviews couples about male contraception.

Bill explores advances in IVF that are helping couples have healthy babies. "Project Runway" star Tim Gunn hosts a special fashion show in the lab.

Chemtrails. Crop circles. Palm readers. Bill takes aim at pseudoscience and explains how confirmation bias makes us believe things that aren't true.

Confirmation bias is a sort of brain trap, which is why, in science,

Ghosts, astrology, Bigfoots.

I got this.

You get somebody to read your tarot cards.

Or crystals that will heal you.

People, we want critical thinking skills.

because we have our super skeptical science sleuth Karlie Kloss out there.

a commercial pilot with over 11,000 hours of flight experience

-What about, to control minds? -Nope. Doesn't exist.

and some stay in the sky for hours?

-at 30,000 feet-- -Yes.

Yeah, I know.

not every airplane that flies through the sky leaves a contrail.

-Can you imagine--? -At least, as we know so far.

So, I am six-foot-something and sitting in that plane, like, all curled up,

But how do we stay skeptical without being too closed-minded?

-From Brooklyn, New York. -That's right.

And one of my absolute favorite is the vagina steam,

and we have to do all these crazy things to rid our bodies of these toxins.

Does she have astrological points of view?

-You would be under the 13th sign. -Yes.

in terms of astronomical phenomena.

...with these astrological things in the background.

it's just, to me, you know-- I kind of take-- I think it's fun.

-[Bill] That's so weird. -Yeah. I know.

How does Hamlet make your life better?

Hamlet's good, but right now, I'm totally on a Hamilton kick.

Timothy, it's a little bit of a waste of time.

I'm gonna come onto your side, a little bit.

People can relate to some things that are said through astrology,

what's really happening in the cosmos,

How do you deal with people who are believers?

lack of discipline, lack of searching for true cause and effect, is inherently bad.

and that's... ridiculous.

Oh, yeah. People can hardly tell us apart.

Here's how people walk on hot coals.

Wait, wait. No, this is gonna be great. Here we are.

-Whoo! -[audience laughing]

Now hold it over the same flame and I will block it in the same fashion.

is passing right through the paper...

wood, even when it's on fire, doesn't conduct heat that well.

Now, I'm not kidding. It looks like an effect that could not possibly work.

Bill and the panel discuss private space travel. Mean astronaut Joel McHale answers questions, and lunar gravity gives a young basketballer a boost.

Sex is complex! Bill explores the ever-evolving science of sexuality with help from a panel of experts and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" star Rachel Bloom.

What's in a calorie? Bill flambés a marshmallow in the name of science, experts weigh in on fad diets, and singing kale keeps it real about nutrition.

Bill and his correspondents check out video game technology that's changing the world, including a game that helps surgeons sharpen their skills.

With help from some friends in raincoats and a room full of unemployed germs, Bill demonstrates how vaccines work and why everyone needs to get them.

[audience cheering]

But the main reason I want you to get vaccinated

I'm not kidding about this, people. It's serious.

In backyards and on the world's biggest stages.

Polio is an infectious disease that attacks nervous system.

For vaccination, we have to reach children under five,

Polio was at crisis levels in India.

But Indians must now face the legacy of the disease they have conquered.

What would you say to them?

They all had to contribute to make this work.

You got 170 million, in order of magnitude.

Well, you know, the people I spoke to,

It takes resources to eradicate a disease like this.

So, here to discuss this is our panel of experts.

Dr. Jennifer Reich. Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Denver.

And so, what I hear from parents is that

Yeah, I felt like I had the responsibility

I knew I'd heard some things about, you know, "Vaccines are dangerous.

It's many, many days of misery and unpleasantness.

The one study that purported a connection

between autism and any vaccine.

That parents are coming in and really picking and choosing

who they trust, how we're communicating science,

I already decided I probably wasn't going to vaccinate.

I kind of feel like if I had been lucky enough to find

That's such a great point. And the research shows,

So, when it comes to entrance into child care or to public school

My oldest daughter was in preschool

which was right around the same time that we all came down with rotavirus,

or child care settings,

those who can't be protected by everyone else around them

And if they-- College-educated and have a higher family income.

"We are really healthy." "We eat organic food."

-Yeah. Great. -One of your guest speakers?

They even took Poland from me.

Well, well, well, living legends here. What's up, rock stars?

-So busy. Insanely busy. -Yeah.

Ebola, I am but a cold compared to you.

Anyone interested in working with Jenny McCarthy?

Just gotta put on this unusual lab coat.

Bill introduces the theory of panspermia, NASA scientists discuss the Mars 2020 mission, and Wil Wheaton and the panel ponder life on other planets.

Bill extracts DNA from a strawberry in the lab and talks about genetically modified foods with a Monsanto executive, a professor and a farmer.

From robots that paint Rembrandts to Twitterbots gone rogue, Bill and his guests explore the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence.

something that not only uses what you've done in the past,

based on information it got from the past

But it's another thing...

Hey, hey, it's my ice cream.

Now all I gotta do is decide.

or what kind of medical treatment your kid should get?

to investigate a very different kind of artificial intelligence.

but you're asking a computer to create something original.

But that is still just a digital item. It's zeros and ones.

but the printer is his hands. So, it uses the colors,

This is basically a person made up out of facial features glued together.

Very cool that they're able to analyze these features

if this artificial intelligence painting machine...

What if the Internet is conscious now, and we don't know?

to angry at... the Internet?

and where we are and where we're going with artificial intelligence,

law professor, Ryan Calo. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

maybe half of which have come true,

just small sections of the "intelligentsia."

Well, we've had Luddites, people who are afraid of machines,

and as you alluded to, it's kind of nudging us this way and that,

But take privacy as a good example, okay?

that are credited to, uh, webcams being taken over by malware.

It's organic. This is to say, in the case of the Internet,

as to when do they think we are going to come to a point

wouldn't necessarily have come up-- Have known in advance.

In some cases, randomly, in some cases, more directed,

And yet, we feel comfortable deploying it in our most sensitive social institutions.

based on their risk factors.

that no longer have the chance to deploy that judgment and we're losing...?

we want to separate it from the--

Let's not throw away the baby with the bathwater.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. I'm reaching, I'm reaching, I'm reaching.

You know? No, I am. It...

See, the red light, that's very troubling.

Uh, the quadricopter, not the bar.

and Margaret Mitchell from Microsoft,

I've been working on this research project

And, so, it can recognize things, this app, using the camera on the phone?

Here-- Seriously,

Bill and his panel of experts debunk bogus alternative remedies like homeopathy, the healing power of magnets ... and curing cancer by yelling at it.

I'm so glad you asked.

In the case of medicine, the researchers wanna make sure

I don't know which is the drug and which is the placebo...

and see how they feel.

So, let's see what these pills really were.

when something makes you feel better even though it's not medicine.

You could be doing yourself harm and no one would be the wiser.

It's a big deal, so you guys pay attention.

Does the treatment use dramatic stories?

Every organ and every cell has a specific vibration

-if you don't have them at peace? -You die.

[yelling]

And the sound he uses to get rid of the cancer is really intense.

It's like, imagine. "We're gonna listen to music and the disease will go away."

No. You get $2 off, I guess. They didn't round up.

that were very, very excited that we were there,

And sound therapy is a guy yelling at you.

'cause when you hear music, you think about the music, the lyrics,

But it's hard to tell if they work, or if it's just a placebo effect.

the placebo effect fascinates me.

Just the fact that we can't hear ultrasound doesn't take away from--

-[Bill] Nocebo? -A nocebo.

Is placebo any different than what we think of as alternative medicine?

is a very, very small number.

And I don't like alternative medicine,

sometimes it's a little dangerous,

-That's your business? -[Chris] That's my business.

Well, we get to the scale of sort of magnetic bracelets.

and tell them various stories

That was the trial when I had a high dose of caffeine."

I don't like using the umbrella term, because it has many effects.

We've seen-- We've seen studies where psychics and mystics

And there are people that are more perceptive than we are.

-and if you are, like, in a-- -[Bill] I've been to Sedona.

Sound therapy has nothing to do with Buddhism or Hinduism.

When they see Asians doing Reiki to cure cancer,

Asians, stop selling unregulated remedies with no scientific basis.

and became real medicine.

And then there is this alternative remedy

You're in luck, really, because...

Now, what we wanna do is put in some universal indicator--

Now, I'll put in a lot more of this stuff till we get a nice green color.

and we will use this hydrochloric acid,

Just this one little drop there.

Bill calls out climate change deniers, breaks down the science of global warming and explains how we can make the planet a cooler place to live.

are gonna have this much water on the floor all the time.

Suck, man, my chocolate.

-I know. -Thanks.

You thought I was gonna get a new TV show and not talk about climate change?

Our factories, cars, trains and planes, and electric power plants,

it warms the soil, the seas, and the plants.

my hand glows with infrared light.

The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does the same thing.

And the heat is held in the atmosphere.

And the warming ocean is expanding,

we sent Karlie Kloss to Venice, Italy,

[Karlie] For over a thousand years,

As our planet has gotten warmer, those tides have risen higher,

And that cause the tilting up till the surface

Once installed, this is full of water, and the air is entering into the red pipe--

What's that in dollars?

-It rises-- It comes in-- -Three meters is the top of the...

So, they know when the tide is gonna be high?

pieces of metal that actually slide in their door front and protect the water.

in addressing a problem like climate change.

The one thing the United States exports for better or for worse is its culture.

They did not choose to be-- "You know what I wanna do when I'm in my mid-20s?

So, please join me with my distinguished panel.

So, Dr. Jacobson, we have met.

You're saying we have the technology right now to run the whole place renewably?

And in the real world, getting to 100 percent...

-but we're closing down nuclear plants. -So, here's the problem for me,

is that it's impossible to solve the global-warming problem with nuclear,

2030? That's next week!

And the other problem--

Sun's out, I have solar panels in Studio City, California,

and the wind's not full blowing?

But also existing hydro-electric power is like a big battery,

Bill throwing out ideas.

and compared it to the demand, which also varies,

"We wanna make a change. We wanna take action."

As hard as I could, I'd listened to stories.

Exactly. We don't think on the large scale that science teaches us to.

Oui, oui.

As CO2 in the air mixes with the world's ocean,

are gonna present enormous challenges for humankind.