

As can be seen from episodes of Bill Nye The Science Guy, Nye is a huge baseball fan. Once again, Bill Nye defies the laws of nature as he is actually quite the athlete. If movies and television have driven anything home about science geeks, it's that they are notorious for being weak and bad at sports. Nye claims that Begley became jealous of the features on his solar panels.
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The true rivalry between these green machines is believed to have ignited during the filming of an episode of Living With Ed, Begley's short-lived series about leading an environmentally conscious life. Nye didn't hesitate to amp up his game by starting a vegetable garden, ordering solar panels- and then came the rain barrels for recycled water (how he pulled off recycled water during the California drought is puzzling, but good job, Bill). The wager between the two famous environmentalist super nerds began the day after Nye moved to the neighborhood and they have been modifying their homes and lifestyles accordingly for about a decade now. This wizard of science started a friendly cold war with his carbon footprint.īill Nye has been in a longstanding competition with his Los Angeles neighbor Ed Begley, Jr. Most competitive neighbors will buy a fancy car or order the most high-tech flat screen TV, but not Bill Nye. Unfortunately, Bill Nye had a learning experience of his own as his project went unfunded, only raising $31,528 out of $100,000. Nye believes that the best way to teach blossoming minds is through experience and having the point of view of a bird may be the closest that they will ever come to experiencing the physics of flight. So, Bill Nye did what anyone with a bright idea would do: he began a Kickstarter campaign. However, it was up to The Science Guy to reel in the remainder of the funding as well as publicity. Gamedesk had already prepared a prototype of AERO 3D through their own partnership with Iridescent Learning and contributions from the National Academy of Sciences and the Office of Naval Research. This particular game was specially crafted to teach young children about aerodynamics through animated birds. so he decided to design a game for the iPad.įascinated by the concept of flight, Bill Nye partnered up with Gamedesk in 2012 to create AERO 3D. The streaming company recently revealed that it knows exactly when a viewer is going to get hooked: When an episode gets 70 percent of viewers watching through a first season’s end, Netflix knows it has you.All work and no play make Bill a dull boy.

Still, if there’s any company that understands hooking, it’s Netflix. Researchers now understand that it has to do with the flow of chemicals in the brain, and they’re discovering that genetic vulnerability also plays a part in determining who is more susceptible to developing addictions. Call it a “healthy obsession” or a “ positive addiction” - either way, it all comes back to the flow of dopamine.Īddiction research has come a long way since the 20th century, when scientists thought addictions were the result of a lack of willpower. Bill Nye Saves The World will likely affect the reward system of the brain in the same way other pleasurable things do: through long, repeated exposure, which is necessary for addiction.
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That’s because a beloved TV show isn’t quite like addictive drugs, which shortcut the brain’s reward system.

Nye’s explanation for how we get hooked on Netflix - that the brain’s neural pathways become flooded with pleasure-triggering chemicals - sounds a lot like addiction, but actually operates more like a healthy obsession. Related exposure to addictive behavior or substances causes the brain to process liking something as needing it. According to experts at Harvard Medical School, the current theory on addiction is that dopamine also interacts with the neurotransmitter glutamate, allowing it to take over the brain’s system of reward-related learning. When you receive something pleasurable - whether it’s a drug or a new Netflix show - the neurotransmitter dopamine is released, igniting the brain’s pleasure center, the nucleus accumbens. “Exactly how people become hooked is still to be studied,” he deadpans in the trailer, “but promising new research suggests that when a brain is exposed to a new show, its neural pathways open up, and after a certain number of episodes are consumed, the brain’s reward center is flooded.” Nye’s explanation of addiction, however comedic, takes its liberties with the truth.

Hook yourself, he implores, and the world shall be yours. In the new teaser trailer for Bill Nye Saves The World, the Science Guy himself (rebranded now as “Science Man”) informs us that getting hooked on Netflix, his new employer, will improve our lives.
