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The days may seem long, but life itself is rather short. As Bill Nye the Science Guy explains, an average human life will span about 30,000 days. That may seem long, but consider that the typical professional football stadium holds twice as many seats. If you sat in a new seat each day of your
life, you would not visit even half of the seats in the sport stadium. In order to make the most of our lives, we would do well to meditate on our own mortality as a way to understand just how precious and limited our existence is.
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BILL NYE:
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life.
In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate.
While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.”
Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country.
Bill’s latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.” It’s about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you’ll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There’s also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It’s fun for him; he’s an engineer with an energy conservation hobby.
Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Josh: Hey Bill. Do you ever think about your mortality? Does it ever bother you to think that one day you just won’t exist? I know you’re not religious but do you think anything happens when we die or is it just over, no thoughts, nothing like that? And if given the choice to live longer in an artificial body would you take that or not? Thanks. Bye.
Bill Nye: What a question. That was Josh? Josh, fabulous question. Yes I think about mortality continually man. I won’t say constantly but everyday. So I’d like to just give you something to think about. If you lived to be 82 and seven weeks, depends on leap years as to the exact number of weeks, you get 30,000 days on earth, 30,000. When you’re in kindergarten 30,000 sounds like a lot, almost an unimaginably big number. When you are my age, I’m 61, you start to see that 30,000 really isn’t that many. And to show you it’s not that many I encourage you to imagine a National Football League stadium. They typically hold way more than 70,000 people, certainly way more than 60,000 people. So imagine sitting in a different seat every day of your life and watching your life take place down on the field, imagine this. Sit in a different seat everyday. Day-to-day it looks about the same right? But with 30,000 you don’t get halfway around, halfway around and you’re dead. It sucks man. So it’s why it’s important to do your best to live your life as best as you can every day. This doesn’t mean you become a hedonist and just have a joyride everyday, you’re working too big goals but no one appreciate that everybody is going to die. I have never met anyone who is not going to die. I’ve never met anyone who’s of a certain age who is not already dead. It sucks.
Now here’s the evidence for why I don’t believe i…
For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-mortality-and-mind-uploading