CAN BILL NYE SAVE SCIENCE?

Nearly three decades after the final episode of his beloved TV show aired, the Science Guy hasn't lost his way. In fact, in an era when science often feels under siege, he’s doubled down on it. This time, though, it’s personal.

- RYAN D'AGOSTINO

“Hang on,” he says, searching.

The sun glints off the iPhone’s glass. Nye, who is almost 70, has just played a loose round of disc golf at the Oak Grove Disc Golf course in Pasadena, California, about a 30-minute drive from where he lives, bopping from hole to hole, shorts and a collared athletic shirt bearing the course’s logo hanging from his gangly frame. (Because you are wondering: He does not wear his signature bow tie when playing disc golf.)

He finds what he’s looking for and holds up his phone.

“This is real,” he says. It’s an old text chain, but all the texts are from the other person—miles and miles of texts, long messages with links and few interruptions, screen after screen. Nye is showing not so much the content of the texts as the volume.

“That's Bobby Kennedy Jr.”

Nye is laughing at the sheer prolificness of texting from the man who is now the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Nye had been connected to Kennedy by a mutual friend, Ed Begley Jr., the actor, who met Kennedy many years ago when Kennedy was a normal Kennedy, championing environmental causes.)

“Just no self-awareness,” he says. “And if you read these articles he sent, they’re all this speculation about autism and just cause-and-effect, and mercury in vaccines, that maybe there’s a connection. I wrote him back and said, ‘Okay, I'll read your book. I think you've confused causation with correlation. Your friend, Bill.’ And he sent this.” More miles of texts. “So I wrote, ‘Okay, no more texts.’ And he started again! So I cut him off. He does not have good judgment. He is not suited for this job.”

Nye shakes his head, fired up by the disrespect for science oozing from the RFK Jr. opus he’s holding in his hand—and then he really gets going, talking louder now: