00:00I'm so honored to be here. Bill Nye has been my close friend for 43 years, and we started out trying to get into stand-up comedy, and we have very different backgrounds, so people didn't understand why we would be such friends.
00:14Bill's mom was a part of a team of women who cracked the Enigma code to end World War II. So he's got quite a legacy. My mom is Blackfoot Indian, and she taught me how to kill elk, which was very important in the Native American culture because you were judged on how good a hunter you were.
00:38A lot of people don't know this, but vegan happens to be a Blackfoot term means bad hunter. So now let me tell you that years passed. We fast-forwarded. We did become comedians.
00:51I ended up getting a television show, and Bill was a cast member on that show, very successful and well-known because of that, but he wanted to do something on his own, and so he's always kind of getting in my ear.
01:03I said, well, what can I do? What can I do that would be better for the show? And I was passing from one job on to another. I just had a moment at the car, and I said, why don't you come up with some of that science stuff that you're always talking about?
01:13And that was all I had to say. Fast-forwarded two weeks, and a guest on our show that we flew in from New York canceled 30 minutes before airtime. Now, that is not cool.
01:25And so I'm looking at the writers. What can we do? How can we salvage this? We're going to go on the air in 25 minutes.
01:31Bill raises his hand and says, hey, Ross, I could do something pretty hilarious with a tub of liquid nitrogen.
01:39Who says that to you? No one. I said, I don't even know what liquid nitrogen is.
01:44And we've got now 23 minutes. Can you get liquid nitrogen? Bill says, yeah, two people owe me a favor. I can get it.
01:51You don't want to know somebody who has a favor of liquid nitrogen. But we didn't have anything else.
01:57So now, a producer who was here, Bill Stanton, said, I'll take him away. Don't worry. We'll figure this out.
02:02And so now we're two minutes before airtime, and Stanton comes up to me and says, he's got it.
02:07He can do this, and he's got a tub, and all that. Okay, but what do I do?
02:12And he says, Bill says, just follow him. Just follow him along.
02:15Okay. So we go on the air, and so I look into Bill and said, we don't have science on the show, do we ever?
02:23And he goes, no, no. And I said, but Bill, I said, okay, we'll just go with it.
02:28And so I said, okay, here's a staff member who had something funny, wanted to show us.
02:32Just please say hello, and this is the first time I was ever spoken, Bill Nye, the science guy.
02:39So I coined the phrase, but I just threw it away. I didn't know what was going on.
02:42So next, what Bill does, and by the way, the guest that canceled, I can't tell you his name, but it rhymes with Geraldo Rivera.
02:53So now, Bill is off and running, and I say, you know Carl Sagan? And he goes, oh yeah, we're very friendly.
03:00It would be like, hey Carl, hey Bill, hey. That was his, he has very close ties.
03:06Next thing he did was that in liquid nitrogen, which is the liquid form of stuff that we try to freeze things very quickly,
03:15and he throws an onion in, takes it out, and then shatters it like glass with a knife.
03:20Then he puts marshmallows in the liquid nitrogen, puts it in his mouth, and blows smoke out of his nose.
03:24It was brilliant. He was an instant success.
03:28He was a star born running in just that moment.
03:33So, a lot of hoopla, Bill's getting photographs, and I saw autographs, and so I call him the next day,
03:39and I said, Bill, you had a big night last night.
03:41You just really kind of hit it out of the park.
03:45Are you okay? And he goes, oh yeah, but I've been busy all day.
03:48Trademarking Bill Nye, the science guy.
03:50All right, so this is where we are today.
03:57The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
04:00Now the star on Hollywood Boulevard.
04:03What you probably don't know is that Bill Nye keeps a copy of the Constitution in his pocket 24-7.
04:11That and the Table of Elements.
04:13See, he's holding it up right there.
04:15So, he's serious about what he does.
04:18He says, so Bill, if you look, Amendment 27 in there says,
04:24it is likely that you owe residuals to one comedian
04:27when you offer a multi-million dollar brand to another comedian.
04:37Or I made it up. I'm not sure.
04:39Bill really did accomplish the one thing that he told me when we were 29 years old.
04:44He said, someday, I would love to change the world.
04:48And you have, my friend, Bill Nye, the science guy.
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