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You're right, Mythbusters doesn't compare to Star Wars in a cultural way. I actually learned some things from Mythbusters. The only things I learned from Star Wars are to watch your head when entering futuristic doors and that the moon is actually a space station.
I love watching the first season. Everyone was so giddy, tired, and full of energy. You can really tell how everyone was kinda in this honeymoon phase of actually being on tv. It really had this "all or nothing" feeling to it. Had the feeling of very passionate people coming together to try and create a vision they all had. Reminds me of early indie movies made on a shoestring budget with some very close crew
Hey Adam, how many times did y'all have "You gotta be frakkin kidding me!" moments over "environmental" concerns, or insurance company denials or other production headaches?
Mythbusters is pop culture, loved to watch it every week and even the many reruns. Thank you and Jamie for making this great show that definitly influenced a lot of future sciencetists and engineers.
I had a "cannonball incident" While visiting a fort nearby to me as a kid I walked by the cannons and the cannonballs were stacked in the pyramids next to them. I wondered how heavy they were, tried to pick up the top one, realised they were welded together. But lost my footing and fell face first onto the pile. 😆
@@Druid_Plow I think I got more of a scare from the cannons being fired behind us at the live action Tecumseh! show in southern Ohio than anything I experienced in the military. Cannon fire is insane. There are no words for how loud and disruptive that sound is. A sound you can feel in your chest and fully expect you should be dead from it. Think of the sound of gunfire and multiply it by a million. All at once. It cannot be recreated on your TV or your computer because they aren't equipped to deliver that level of sound energy.
Adam just reminded me for the first time in 20 years that this show existed alongside shows like Monster Garage and American Chopper. I used to love those when I was a kid but man, those shows made you dumber and Mythbusters made you smarter haha
I always remember wishing that American Chopper would stop focusing on the drama and just teach me something about motorcycles. They had an Xbox game that was kind of fun, though.
I enjoyed monster garage and monster house since they actually did explain how some of the stuff worked. I also liked junkyard wars for the shear lunacy of it. I hated American chopper and American hotrod.
The more Adam talks about his history with Mythbusters, the more and more I am convinced Discovery was taking them for a ride. Must have been the biggest money maker they had, and with one of the lowest expenses.
i wouldnt expect the budget to be THAT small, given how many JATO rockets theyve strapped to things...but yes, the Crew also had a knack for 'maximizing' every dollar spent (like turning a pile of steel into a sword-swinging robot)
Great to hear further about the cannonball episode. I'd long thought that the ball had hit a buried large stone or other hard object that caused it to deflect. From your remark, it was just the dirt having been baked hard by the drought? Wow!
IMHO, Mythbuster is as culturally important as Star Wars. It made engineering/asking questions/testing stuff cool - like Star Wars made Sci-fi cool. Both hold a very special place in my heart, and both equally - for different reasons, sure, but don't downplay the importance of Mythbusters (and I appreciate humble you can't do much about that), it make makers realise they not only had something to offer society, but that making was cool, because, let's face it, neither Mythbusters OR Star Wars would have been up to much without makers. And that is culturally very important indeed.
I had come here to say much the same thing - while they are so different that comparison is difficult, I immediately rankled at Adam's comment that he didn't mean to be saying Mythbusters was like Star Wars "in a meaningful or cultural way".
Mythbusters was considerably more significant culturally, if not as widespread. At least it was original. I can look 20+ years prior to Star Wars and see Akira Kurosawa's "隠し砦の三悪人" (The Hidden Fortress), a vastly superior film telling the same story.
I think another aspect of the trust thing that Adam brought up was the fact that in the early episodes, when no one knew who they were, there was a lot of "We like to get hold of some JATO rockets" "-click-". Once they became more famous and as Adam said, they became more known as people who knew what they were doing, things became easier overall.
For a lot a shows something like the cannonball incident would have gotten them shut down for months. Existing permits would have pulled and no new ones issued until a full investigation and resolution was reached. Because of the existing relationship and trust the Mythbusters crew built they were given the benefit of the doubt. It was an accident caused by something unforeseen not by neglect, carelessness or deliberately breaking of the rules. It was a fluke not a pattern. That’s why you build that kind of trust. Because when something bad happens you get room to fix things.
I think the beauty of CZcams, and why it has ultimately became so successful is because most of the time the productions are that small and lean crew that you are referring to, there is just something about that just draws people in. Also, I never knew this before, but I learned in my intro to cinema class a few years back, that when Steven Spielberg was filming Jaws, the most trouble he had was with the mechanical shark that kept breaking down so he could not use it for a lot of the shots that he wanted to, and it ended up creating a more suspenseful and memorable scene because of the fear of the unknown, and I think that speaks very well into your thoughts of a cast and crew having to improvise and get creative with ideas in filming, and look at what a success it has been.
I wonder if he and Jamie look at water heaters differently than the rest of the world after seeing their destructive power. Obviously the safety mechanisms were removed to allow explosion...but being face to face with them now must be interesting
I think any engineering mind looks at things differently, but I know my scientist husband looks at things a great deal differently after taking industrial fire safety just recently. I wonder if such courses are part the Tested crew’s training.
A year or so before I saw that episode there was a house a few blocks from mine that had a water heater explosion triggered by a natural gas leak and physically rocked everyone in hearing and pressure wave distance. Miraculously no one died. I remember feeling myself pale watching the water heater episode(s) because that's when I realized how much worse that nearby incident could have been. Water heaters get a hard side-eye when I have to think about them, so I suspect the crew probably does the same.
As a friend of mine (firearms instructor) has said thousands of times... the safety is a mechanical device; mechanical devices fail; do not bet your life on the safety.
Only indirectly related, but I think a lot of people who work in technical fields know (and they definitely should) that everything that stores large quantities of energy (pressure vessels, springs, capacitors) will kill you in an instance if you don't know what you're doing when you mess with it.
@@Kenionatus yep I'm a maintenance technician and I work on vehicles are a mechanic in my scope of work and the amount of people who aren't aware how absolutely dangerous hydraulic systems on equipment can be alongside compressed springs... Both will kill you before you can react
When you make apologies for comparing to Star Wars, I love movie lines... the lines from Star Wars, of course. But Mythbusters was every bit as impactful to me. Failure is always an option, and the Force will be with you, always.
This is something I've always wondered: When someone sees "Mythbusters" on someone's resume, does it automatically get that producer a phone call from the person interested in hiring... just because they're hoping that they can learn more about how Mythbusters was made. As you suggested, Adam, I think the production of Mythbusters was legendary. I hope that everyone on that staff continues to get the credit for what they contributed in keeping that machine moving. Particularly Jamie, who must have had a hand in helping finding some of the right people.
In the mid 90s, I was part of a five person crew that produced, wrote, shot, and edited a half hour broadcast, three camera studio TV show every week. It was crazy that we were able to do it for nearly two years, FedExing the edited master BetaSP to the network on the night of the shoot so that it could air the next day.
@@RILEYLEIFSON_UTAH If only! That would have saved me several anxious, not exactly legal speed, drives to the airport for the final FedEx drop of the day. It boggles my mind that I routinely upload a few gigs of footage in less time than it takes me to get a cup of coffee.
@@fxm5715 I know right!? The things we're able to do today so easily, were entirely incomprehensible back in those days! I commented on another video about the first time I saw/used Napster as a senior in HS in '99-2000, using that same word. It was simply mindboggling that you could search for ANY song you could think of AND download it in 20 minutes!! And that was using my schools computer and blazing fast (cable or DSL I'm guessing??) internet connection!🤯 Kids today simply can't imagine how we ever did things without the aid of a supercomputer in our pocket. And yet...You still managed to get your job done and on time (albeit with < a couple minutes to spare more often than not!) without a cell phone, or Navigation telling you the fastest route and est. travel time within +/- 1 min. And we as a society got along just fine with the tools/technology we had at hand.
@@RILEYLEIFSON_UTAH I sometimes worry about my 16 year old sons generation. We had to "figure it out", now anything you want to know is in your pocket. Some of not most of those things I figured out I will never forget, now "answers" to life's questions come and go in a blink of an eye without much importance or impact. Makes me wonder if they'll remember anything. 🤔
@@jesseshort8 Oh geeze its bad when we sound like our parents, lol! But its true too. Look at what they saw be invented and then look at our generation and then look at this generation. We keep growing at the speed of light and barreling along. Some things are bound to be lost but other things will take its place. Nothing is inherently wrong with that... though I really miss the one tv family shows and movies. Entertainment used to have to satisfy a few generations at once and I think by loosing that 1 tv mentality our entertainment has suffered greatly. I hate having info stuffed in my face as if I'm an idiot but most movies give you massive exposition dumps like you can't put it together... its so frustrating! I loved Mythbusters because we got to go along for the ride and could even think on our feet with them, lol. Critical thinking in entertainment and despite its massive success... wow did that get dropped like a hot potato the minute something new and shiny came along.
Mythbusters had and still has such an impact on all sorts of life that Adam could talk about it in 20 years and he still wouldn't run out of snippets from this awesome moment in time and TV history... 😁😁😎😎👍👍
Limitations can absolutely spark creativity... I recall back in highschool, one of my friends tried to recreate an astroids game on the incredibly inefficent and slow visual basic as a final project (VB was required of us) and it ran slow. Just being able to choose an appropriate language for the project, would have had him write up the game and be done with it. Instead he came up with a few ingenious solutions to get the game to run faster, and then at full speed.
I am a project manager at a marketing agency, and I think there’s a lot that myself and my fellow PMs can learn from scrappy, tight-budget film and television producers. Because they are MASTERS of efficiency and rapid problem solving under pressure. I attended three years of film school, and then worked as a video producer for seven years. And I had the pleasure of working with many such producers. I always learned so much from them, and I am so grateful for the things they taught me.
he brings up an amazing point about networking and trust. never underestimate the power of networking and trust it opens tons of doors and makes things happen super fast. i learned this long ago from some one that was a mentor when i was starting my own company. and with the connections and trust i have built with people its super easy to get things done.
The thing I loved most about early Mythbusters was how much of the build process you showed. There was kind of a reverse bell-curve in regards to that imo. More in the beginning and end, even before M7 was terminated, than in some of the middle seasons.
Permits for guns/explosives? Huh? What are these "permit" thingy's of which you require??🤔 Me: Chuckling gleefully from UTAH. Sounds like a quick, easy, non-litigious, unbureaucratic & fun process, I'm sure! God bless America.🇺🇸🗽🦅✊🏻
Mythbusters was, and still is the only show i scheduled my life around! I learned so much, most of it practical that applied to everyday life. Thank you guys for the memories!
MB had been on the air for a few years before I managed to catch a rerun of the first episode. The oddest bit about it was a couple of minutes of Jaime calling the Airforce to try to get a JATO rocket. He had to go through multiple people, and explain to each of them who he was, and what he wanted the rocket for, before getting a resounding “NO!” from them. When I finally saw it I couldn’t help thinking that if he had to do it then he’d know exactly who to talk to first, and even if it was someone he was talking to for the first time, their attitude would have been “Yes Mr Hyneman! What can we do for you Mr Hyneman!”
I bet he'd've still gotten a "no" at the end of the run, too. They just don't hand those things out to people. (maybe he could've found the contractor that made them, but it would generally be illegal to give/sell one to him.)
@@jfbeam He did tell them that he’d be be very happy to have their own technical people come along with it to handle setting it up and firing it. Later in the series they did things like get the Navy to fly a supersonic F-18 just a couple hundred feet over a trailer to see how much damage a sonic boom caused.
I loved mythbusters because it brought you into a world of science (and explosions) that was fun and intimate. You really got to feel like you knew all the hosts.
I really appreciate your point about lean production. People are realising these billion dollar series to capitalise on a title are a bit disingenuous. There can be and probably are people who have the heart to care about the story and the subject matter, but there's no love visible in the massive productions. The movies that stand out in my memory are the ones where they did really clever stuff and weren't afraid for things to look imperfect. Making those decisions for the sake of the story, not for the sake of the polish, if that makes sense. Flight of the Navigator, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Legend, Hook, so many movies in that era are so dear to me, not only because of the nostalgia, but because they weren't afraid to show some glitter. There was so much creativity on display and I love that about those films.
Thanks for talking about the importance of the crew and the value of building and maintaining trust with those you work with. Every worthwhile group effort I have been a part of has been the result of everybody who took part doing what needed to be done.
If I was the owner of the house hit by the infamous cannon ball, I would have formalized the hole by designing a permanent window at the impact point. What a conversation piece that would be!
I generally don't comment on videos, but the title got to me. I grew up around firearms and it still baffles me that anyone would consider owning a gun to be unusual. BTW I live in NJ.
The levels of safety, responsibility and trust Mythbusters displayed is something the whole world could learn from. Not just for big productions or pyrotechnics, but just day-to-day life around the house, at work, on the commute, traveling, shopping, etc. If everyone stopped to think about basic common sense and safe approaches to most situations, the world would have a lot fewer problems.
Man, really too bad San Francisco has become such a cancer. Sounds like it's always been bad there, so thanks for sharing the details, it's just a lot worse now.
Hard to believe your pilot episode was 20 years ago... Wow.... Fabulous show that even as reruns outshines the majority of current programming... A topic I would love to hear you address is shop work space lighting... This seems a constant battle....
You raised the bar for cosplay educationally in my eyes,the amount of information/secrets and short cuts you have divulged to the public is brilliance and very good of you considering a lot of top cosplayers refuse to share shop secrets but you educate and share share share ..top man 🤘I know any cosplay I'd personally think of I'd reference,learn parts of your work and videos to get me to my end goal, watching you patina on a old video increased my warhammer model output and look 🤘
Crow's Landing! LOL... I can't count the number of times I went and did touch and go landings there in my P-3 aircrew days back in the 70s. Big smile here.
I was in the rocketry club at college, starting back up after a year away for COVID, and losing all of our leadership to graduation. It took us a little less than a year to get all the approvals in order to test fire a single static rocket motor. A year for the most basic of things. And Mythbusters was able to get those types of approvals in what, a week? That shows some pretty incredible project management, as well as great relationships with the approval people.
I would argue that Mythbusters has as wide a reach as Star Wars. I think you’re going to find just as many people who know both names around the world, and probably get more favorable responses from Mythbusters, considering the polarization the second and third trilogies have.
Hey Adam, two part question: given our current political moment, do you feel Mythbuster’s importance in promoting science -based thought and solutions is more relevant now than at the time of the show’s launch, and 2. Does your motto “I reject your reality…” carry new significance in the age of conspiracy theorists dominating our discourse? Thanks from Marin!
Tangential to that, Kurt Andersen has a great book "Fantasyland" (amongst others) which touches on this topic. Specifically how conservative, particularly religious, forces essentially hijacked the ethos of exploring new avenues of thought, and rejecting the received "knowledge' of previous generations, that defined the 1960s. It created a mindset which to that point had merely been uncritical as to matters of existence, race, gender, etc... and turned into a proactively combative philosophy of rejecting any empirical basis for reality, and establishing their truth as unfalsifiable.
One of the tricks to making good TV is making seem dangerous and exciting when in reality you're perfectly safe and everything is under complete control. Mythbusters was great at it.
I watched mythbusters at every opportunity I could it is what made me love engineering and physics and what I went to school for. To make something like that work is just outstanding to put it lightly.
I'm a bit older than you, I guess. I loved physics and engineering before I found Mythbusters. ;) But it was the first time that I saw someone in public doing what I had seen folks do in private: use their knowledge of physics and engineering to do something kinda silly simply because it would be cool to have done so.
@@spyone4828 you might be :D I’m 29. That’s cool you liked it before Mythbusters though! That’s awesome you got to see it before all that though. It’s definitely fun and mythbusters really shown some of the more silly applications that could be applied and done. To use their knowledge of physics and engineering that way is cool I agree 🙂
There is an adage about the Magic The Gathering card came design that Mark Rosewater is fond of saying, and it has stuck with me, "Restrictions breed Creativity". When you're have limited tools and resources, it forces you to be creative in your workspace. That phrase is a guiding light to me and seems like something Adam would say :)
There is no permit in any of the major cities in the United States that will give you a permit to dump kitchen oil into a sewer system. This is why restaurants have to have grease traps attached to the buildings. In most states you also have to have a maintenance log for the grease traps and when they are emptied. One would have an easier time dumping motor oil in the street and cooking oil.
Mythbusters has where more meaning to my life than Star Wars. It was the bonding time my brother and I had with my dad on the nights we spend at his house. There are about 5 shows that I could watch over and over again and bring back the same nostalgia like the sound of my dad's giant set of keys jingling at the door when he stopped by the house.
Engendering trust is also know as living with integrity. Living with integrity automatically builds trust with the people you work with over time. It should be taught by all parents before a child even goes to school.
Finally! Someone explained it about the same as I always have; Empire Strikes Back was a "better film" than Star Wars, but Star Wars was the "Best" one. =)
Larger crews and bigger budgets are almost always detrimental. Think of the some of the greatest films made. They have been small crews and lower budgets. I would still love to see the next terminator given to a talented yet unknown filmmaker and told to do it on 10mil budget.
San Francisco is the worst city in the entire United States to me. I used to love going skateboarding and hanging out down there, and now it's just a disgusting cesspit of insane people, the stuff that goes on there is just crazy.
Interesting comment at the end. It made me think of brothers with opposite personalities who dismiss one another, but can finish each other’s sentences without thinking, and always forget how much they miss each other. But fight it.
The canon ball was clearly the failure of the bomb squad and the owner of the facility. They knew what you were doing, they should have not cleared it if they thought there was a risk. Also no facility that deals with bombs or artillery should be close to housing.
Need firearms more than ever in San Francisco. What a mess! Sad that people hold on to their “team” and don’t deviate for fear of being branded a betrayer.
For the younger and probably confused viewers: STAR WARS was the name of the first movie in the series when it came out. After Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back) came out, they went back and changed the title of STAR WARS to Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope.
Movies, TV, literally anything creative that have a person with total control always end up half assed. With tons of awesome things that never truly come to fruition.
Maybe Mythbusters can’t be compared in a cultural magnitude way, but there are going to be plenty of people out there who were much more impacted by Mythbusters than star wars. Mythbusters probably made a lot more sense engineers, technicians, types of artists than star wars did.
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You're right, Mythbusters doesn't compare to Star Wars in a cultural way. I actually learned some things from Mythbusters. The only things I learned from Star Wars are to watch your head when entering futuristic doors and that the moon is actually a space station.
lots of respect and discipline.
I love watching the first season. Everyone was so giddy, tired, and full of energy. You can really tell how everyone was kinda in this honeymoon phase of actually being on tv. It really had this "all or nothing" feeling to it. Had the feeling of very passionate people coming together to try and create a vision they all had. Reminds me of early indie movies made on a shoestring budget with some very close crew
*_You compared Mythbusters to Star Wars.....ohboy *facepalm_*_ *_
Hey Adam, how many times did y'all have "You gotta be frakkin kidding me!" moments over "environmental" concerns, or insurance company denials or other production headaches?
Mythbusters is pop culture, loved to watch it every week and even the many reruns. Thank you and Jamie for making this great show that definitly influenced a lot of future sciencetists and engineers.
I still remembered watching the first episode air. Instantly fell in love with the show.
20 years on, it's just regular culture at this point.
Pop Culture for People that have some Brain Cells 👍
Man, you know you've had a cool career when you can casually say "the cannonball incident" like that's not an insane thing to have experienced.
Yup, the other day he just dropped building an alien cat carrier. Golden.
I had a "cannonball incident"
While visiting a fort nearby to me as a kid I walked by the cannons and the cannonballs were stacked in the pyramids next to them. I wondered how heavy they were, tried to pick up the top one, realised they were welded together. But lost my footing and fell face first onto the pile. 😆
even cooler when you add : "or the ciment truck explosion" in the same breath.. loool
@@Druid_Plow I think I got more of a scare from the cannons being fired behind us at the live action Tecumseh! show in southern Ohio than anything I experienced in the military. Cannon fire is insane. There are no words for how loud and disruptive that sound is. A sound you can feel in your chest and fully expect you should be dead from it. Think of the sound of gunfire and multiply it by a million. All at once. It cannot be recreated on your TV or your computer because they aren't equipped to deliver that level of sound energy.
Or the cement truck... Water heater... Rocket car...
Adam just reminded me for the first time in 20 years that this show existed alongside shows like Monster Garage and American Chopper. I used to love those when I was a kid but man, those shows made you dumber and Mythbusters made you smarter haha
That's hilarious but you nailed it.
I always remember wishing that American Chopper would stop focusing on the drama and just teach me something about motorcycles. They had an Xbox game that was kind of fun, though.
I enjoyed monster garage and monster house since they actually did explain how some of the stuff worked. I also liked junkyard wars for the shear lunacy of it. I hated American chopper and American hotrod.
The more Adam talks about his history with Mythbusters, the more and more I am convinced Discovery was taking them for a ride. Must have been the biggest money maker they had, and with one of the lowest expenses.
i wouldnt expect the budget to be THAT small, given how many JATO rockets theyve strapped to things...but yes, the Crew also had a knack for 'maximizing' every dollar spent (like turning a pile of steel into a sword-swinging robot)
Great to hear further about the cannonball episode. I'd long thought that the ball had hit a buried large stone or other hard object that caused it to deflect. From your remark, it was just the dirt having been baked hard by the drought? Wow!
nature is a son of a baitch some times, just like newton in space...
And the fact that they tried to use a mortar as a cannon
IMHO, Mythbuster is as culturally important as Star Wars. It made engineering/asking questions/testing stuff cool - like Star Wars made Sci-fi cool. Both hold a very special place in my heart, and both equally - for different reasons, sure, but don't downplay the importance of Mythbusters (and I appreciate humble you can't do much about that), it make makers realise they not only had something to offer society, but that making was cool, because, let's face it, neither Mythbusters OR Star Wars would have been up to much without makers. And that is culturally very important indeed.
School assignment type comment
@@01subject I was last at school over 30 years ago, so, er, wrong. I am sure you had a point...
I had come here to say much the same thing - while they are so different that comparison is difficult, I immediately rankled at Adam's comment that he didn't mean to be saying Mythbusters was like Star Wars "in a meaningful or cultural way".
Mythbusters was considerably more significant culturally, if not as widespread. At least it was original. I can look 20+ years prior to Star Wars and see Akira Kurosawa's "隠し砦の三悪人" (The Hidden Fortress), a vastly superior film telling the same story.
Yup, the pilot episodes had a charm in how rough they were. It's neat to re-watch.
Back when Adam had eyebrows. I remember!
I think another aspect of the trust thing that Adam brought up was the fact that in the early episodes, when no one knew who they were, there was a lot of "We like to get hold of some JATO rockets" "-click-".
Once they became more famous and as Adam said, they became more known as people who knew what they were doing, things became easier overall.
For a lot a shows something like the cannonball incident would have gotten them shut down for months. Existing permits would have pulled and no new ones issued until a full investigation and resolution was reached. Because of the existing relationship and trust the Mythbusters crew built they were given the benefit of the doubt. It was an accident caused by something unforeseen not by neglect, carelessness or deliberately breaking of the rules.
It was a fluke not a pattern.
That’s why you build that kind of trust. Because when something bad happens you get room to fix things.
Exactly and they never had any incidents like that before or after and they owned up to it
I think the beauty of CZcams, and why it has ultimately became so successful is because most of the time the productions are that small and lean crew that you are referring to, there is just something about that just draws people in. Also, I never knew this before, but I learned in my intro to cinema class a few years back, that when Steven Spielberg was filming Jaws, the most trouble he had was with the mechanical shark that kept breaking down so he could not use it for a lot of the shots that he wanted to, and it ended up creating a more suspenseful and memorable scene because of the fear of the unknown, and I think that speaks very well into your thoughts of a cast and crew having to improvise and get creative with ideas in filming, and look at what a success it has been.
I wonder if he and Jamie look at water heaters differently than the rest of the world after seeing their destructive power. Obviously the safety mechanisms were removed to allow explosion...but being face to face with them now must be interesting
I think any engineering mind looks at things differently, but I know my scientist husband looks at things a great deal differently after taking industrial fire safety just recently. I wonder if such courses are part the Tested crew’s training.
A year or so before I saw that episode there was a house a few blocks from mine that had a water heater explosion triggered by a natural gas leak and physically rocked everyone in hearing and pressure wave distance. Miraculously no one died. I remember feeling myself pale watching the water heater episode(s) because that's when I realized how much worse that nearby incident could have been. Water heaters get a hard side-eye when I have to think about them, so I suspect the crew probably does the same.
As a friend of mine (firearms instructor) has said thousands of times... the safety is a mechanical device; mechanical devices fail; do not bet your life on the safety.
Only indirectly related, but I think a lot of people who work in technical fields know (and they definitely should) that everything that stores large quantities of energy (pressure vessels, springs, capacitors) will kill you in an instance if you don't know what you're doing when you mess with it.
@@Kenionatus yep I'm a maintenance technician and I work on vehicles are a mechanic in my scope of work and the amount of people who aren't aware how absolutely dangerous hydraulic systems on equipment can be alongside compressed springs... Both will kill you before you can react
Grew up on Mythbusters and just absolutely love hearing all these behind the scenes stories. This stuff makes me love the show even more!
When you make apologies for comparing to Star Wars, I love movie lines... the lines from Star Wars, of course. But Mythbusters was every bit as impactful to me.
Failure is always an option, and the Force will be with you, always.
This is something I've always wondered:
When someone sees "Mythbusters" on someone's resume, does it automatically get that producer a phone call from the person interested in hiring... just because they're hoping that they can learn more about how Mythbusters was made.
As you suggested, Adam, I think the production of Mythbusters was legendary.
I hope that everyone on that staff continues to get the credit for what they contributed in keeping that machine moving. Particularly Jamie, who must have had a hand in helping finding some of the right people.
Adam speaks eloquently and passionately, and holds our attention for three and a half minutes ...
Also Adam: "Um, what was the question?"
In the mid 90s, I was part of a five person crew that produced, wrote, shot, and edited a half hour broadcast, three camera studio TV show every week. It was crazy that we were able to do it for nearly two years, FedExing the edited master BetaSP to the network on the night of the shoot so that it could air the next day.
FedEx? Why didn't you just email them the file in > 5 seconds instead!?
Seems wayyy faster and efficient!😉
@@RILEYLEIFSON_UTAH If only! That would have saved me several anxious, not exactly legal speed, drives to the airport for the final FedEx drop of the day. It boggles my mind that I routinely upload a few gigs of footage in less time than it takes me to get a cup of coffee.
@@fxm5715 I know right!? The things we're able to do today so easily, were entirely incomprehensible back in those days!
I commented on another video about the first time I saw/used Napster as a senior in HS in '99-2000, using that same word.
It was simply mindboggling that you could search for ANY song you could think of AND download it in 20 minutes!! And that was using my schools computer and blazing fast (cable or DSL I'm guessing??) internet connection!🤯
Kids today simply can't imagine how we ever did things without the aid of a supercomputer in our pocket.
And yet...You still managed to get your job done and on time (albeit with < a couple minutes to spare more often than not!) without a cell phone, or Navigation telling you the fastest route and est. travel time within +/- 1 min. And we as a society got along just fine with the tools/technology we had at hand.
@@RILEYLEIFSON_UTAH I sometimes worry about my 16 year old sons generation. We had to "figure it out", now anything you want to know is in your pocket. Some of not most of those things I figured out I will never forget, now "answers" to life's questions come and go in a blink of an eye without much importance or impact. Makes me wonder if they'll remember anything. 🤔
@@jesseshort8 Oh geeze its bad when we sound like our parents, lol! But its true too. Look at what they saw be invented and then look at our generation and then look at this generation. We keep growing at the speed of light and barreling along. Some things are bound to be lost but other things will take its place. Nothing is inherently wrong with that... though I really miss the one tv family shows and movies. Entertainment used to have to satisfy a few generations at once and I think by loosing that 1 tv mentality our entertainment has suffered greatly. I hate having info stuffed in my face as if I'm an idiot but most movies give you massive exposition dumps like you can't put it together... its so frustrating! I loved Mythbusters because we got to go along for the ride and could even think on our feet with them, lol. Critical thinking in entertainment and despite its massive success... wow did that get dropped like a hot potato the minute something new and shiny came along.
“The boosters were separating” - Jamie Hynemann’s line that was the best line of the episode that the thumbnail comes from.
Mythbusters had and still has such an impact on all sorts of life that Adam could talk about it in 20 years and he still wouldn't run out of snippets from this awesome moment in time and TV history... 😁😁😎😎👍👍
"Ensmallening"
Good gosh I love you Adam.
The Simpsons used the term enbiggens. Not sure who was first.
Limitations can absolutely spark creativity... I recall back in highschool, one of my friends tried to recreate an astroids game on the incredibly inefficent and slow visual basic as a final project (VB was required of us) and it ran slow. Just being able to choose an appropriate language for the project, would have had him write up the game and be done with it. Instead he came up with a few ingenious solutions to get the game to run faster, and then at full speed.
I am a project manager at a marketing agency, and I think there’s a lot that myself and my fellow PMs can learn from scrappy, tight-budget film and television producers. Because they are MASTERS of efficiency and rapid problem solving under pressure.
I attended three years of film school, and then worked as a video producer for seven years. And I had the pleasure of working with many such producers. I always learned so much from them, and I am so grateful for the things they taught me.
he brings up an amazing point about networking and trust. never underestimate the power of networking and trust it opens tons of doors and makes things happen super fast. i learned this long ago from some one that was a mentor when i was starting my own company. and with the connections and trust i have built with people its super easy to get things done.
"ensmallening of computers"
I think I found my new favorite word to accompany "embiggen" and I don't know why it never occurred to me before now.
"The smallening of computers "
Adamspeak.
*ensmallening
Not to be confused with its antonym, embiggening. :-D
The thing I loved most about early Mythbusters was how much of the build process you showed. There was kind of a reverse bell-curve in regards to that imo. More in the beginning and end, even before M7 was terminated, than in some of the middle seasons.
Mythbusters, I truly miss the show.
An awesome mix of personalities, teaching while entertaining.
Permits for guns/explosives? Huh?
What are these "permit" thingy's of which you require??🤔
Me: Chuckling gleefully from UTAH.
Sounds like a quick, easy, non-litigious, unbureaucratic & fun process, I'm sure!
God bless America.🇺🇸🗽🦅✊🏻
Mythbusters was, and still is the only show i scheduled my life around! I learned so much, most of it practical that applied to everyday life. Thank you guys for the memories!
My science class had myth buster fridays! Lol we had to explain the science behind different episodes as a quiz! I always looked forward to it!!!
I heard "cannibal incident" and was like, "Did I miss an episode?" 😂
MB had been on the air for a few years before I managed to catch a rerun of the first episode. The oddest bit about it was a couple of minutes of Jaime calling the Airforce to try to get a JATO rocket. He had to go through multiple people, and explain to each of them who he was, and what he wanted the rocket for, before getting a resounding “NO!” from them. When I finally saw it I couldn’t help thinking that if he had to do it then he’d know exactly who to talk to first, and even if it was someone he was talking to for the first time, their attitude would have been “Yes Mr Hyneman! What can we do for you Mr Hyneman!”
I bet he'd've still gotten a "no" at the end of the run, too. They just don't hand those things out to people. (maybe he could've found the contractor that made them, but it would generally be illegal to give/sell one to him.)
@@jfbeam He did tell them that he’d be be very happy to have their own technical people come along with it to handle setting it up and firing it. Later in the series they did things like get the Navy to fly a supersonic F-18 just a couple hundred feet over a trailer to see how much damage a sonic boom caused.
@@donsample1002 Yeah, or at least they could point him towards something commercially available that was kinda analogous.
North Bergen high school's production of Alien the play is a great example of that ethos; HUGE ambition and dedication, despite almost no resources.
Adam, this episode, I cherish most. Thank you for your energy, enthusiasm, and genius... it is most inspiring!
I loved mythbusters because it brought you into a world of science (and explosions) that was fun and intimate. You really got to feel like you knew all the hosts.
I really appreciate your point about lean production. People are realising these billion dollar series to capitalise on a title are a bit disingenuous.
There can be and probably are people who have the heart to care about the story and the subject matter, but there's no love visible in the massive productions.
The movies that stand out in my memory are the ones where they did really clever stuff and weren't afraid for things to look imperfect. Making those decisions for the sake of the story, not for the sake of the polish, if that makes sense. Flight of the Navigator, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Legend, Hook, so many movies in that era are so dear to me, not only because of the nostalgia, but because they weren't afraid to show some glitter. There was so much creativity on display and I love that about those films.
Thanks for talking about the importance of the crew and the value of building and maintaining trust with those you work with. Every worthwhile group effort I have been a part of has been the result of everybody who took part doing what needed to be done.
If I was the owner of the house hit by the infamous cannon ball, I would have formalized the hole by designing a permanent window at the impact point. What a conversation piece that would be!
I generally don't comment on videos, but the title got to me. I grew up around firearms and it still baffles me that anyone would consider owning a gun to be unusual. BTW I live in NJ.
I live about 30 miles south of San Francisco, where only criminals get to use explosives and firearms
Lol
Same here, where only criminals and politicians can carry firearms.
Oh, wait...
The levels of safety, responsibility and trust Mythbusters displayed is something the whole world could learn from. Not just for big productions or pyrotechnics, but just day-to-day life around the house, at work, on the commute, traveling, shopping, etc. If everyone stopped to think about basic common sense and safe approaches to most situations, the world would have a lot fewer problems.
Man, really too bad San Francisco has become such a cancer. Sounds like it's always been bad there, so thanks for sharing the details, it's just a lot worse now.
Hard to believe your pilot episode was 20 years ago... Wow.... Fabulous show that even as reruns outshines the majority of current programming... A topic I would love to hear you address is shop work space lighting... This seems a constant battle....
Truly agree…
I was merely weeks old when they were filming. Bit of a trip to think about.
You raised the bar for cosplay educationally in my eyes,the amount of information/secrets and short cuts you have divulged to the public is brilliance and very good of you considering a lot of top cosplayers refuse to share shop secrets but you educate and share share share ..top man 🤘I know any cosplay I'd personally think of I'd reference,learn parts of your work and videos to get me to my end goal, watching you patina on a old video increased my warhammer model output and look 🤘
Its kind of funny that I think CZcams and directly releasing your content to the audience is where those lean productions have gone.
Mythbusters is my FAVORITE above all that type of show!(Pictured)All if the exploding water heaters episodes were my favorites of the mythbusters
Crow's Landing! LOL... I can't count the number of times I went and did touch and go landings there in my P-3 aircrew days back in the 70s. Big smile here.
I was in the rocketry club at college, starting back up after a year away for COVID, and losing all of our leadership to graduation. It took us a little less than a year to get all the approvals in order to test fire a single static rocket motor. A year for the most basic of things.
And Mythbusters was able to get those types of approvals in what, a week? That shows some pretty incredible project management, as well as great relationships with the approval people.
I grew up in VALLEJO
Loved seeing MARE ISLAND / ALAMEDA footage!!!
I spent 5 or 6 years living in SF. You might as well move to East Berlin. I still have friends there, I won't even go back to visit.
I would argue that Mythbusters has as wide a reach as Star Wars. I think you’re going to find just as many people who know both names around the world, and probably get more favorable responses from Mythbusters, considering the polarization the second and third trilogies have.
Discovery Plus should be sponsoring every one of your videos since you made me get a subscription just to watch Mythbusters again.
6:33 .. containment .. I just remember that one epesode with the canonball :D that was wild ...
Your view on trust is truly beautiful. Thank you.
Hey Adam, two part question: given our current political moment, do you feel Mythbuster’s importance in promoting science -based thought and solutions is more relevant now than at the time of the show’s launch, and 2. Does your motto “I reject your reality…” carry new significance in the age of conspiracy theorists dominating our discourse? Thanks from Marin!
Tangential to that, Kurt Andersen has a great book "Fantasyland" (amongst others) which touches on this topic. Specifically how conservative, particularly religious, forces essentially hijacked the ethos of exploring new avenues of thought, and rejecting the received "knowledge' of previous generations, that defined the 1960s. It created a mindset which to that point had merely been uncritical as to matters of existence, race, gender, etc... and turned into a proactively combative philosophy of rejecting any empirical basis for reality, and establishing their truth as unfalsifiable.
I would compare Mythbusters and Star Wars. Both huge parts of my childhood
One of the tricks to making good TV is making seem dangerous and exciting when in reality you're perfectly safe and everything is under complete control. Mythbusters was great at it.
Thanks for doing these videos!
takes about 4 minutes to realize there was even a question, never change
I totally forgot how i found mythbusters because i was watching Monster Garage which aired after it. Talk about nostalgia.
I'm always learning new things here, thanks Adam Savage, love your videos and love Myth Busters alot!!!
Myth busters definitely pushed me to the career I have now. And I can’t thank you enough
I watched mythbusters at every opportunity I could it is what made me love engineering and physics and what I went to school for. To make something like that work is just outstanding to put it lightly.
I'm a bit older than you, I guess. I loved physics and engineering before I found Mythbusters. ;) But it was the first time that I saw someone in public doing what I had seen folks do in private: use their knowledge of physics and engineering to do something kinda silly simply because it would be cool to have done so.
@@spyone4828 you might be :D I’m 29. That’s cool you liked it before Mythbusters though! That’s awesome you got to see it before all that though. It’s definitely fun and mythbusters really shown some of the more silly applications that could be applied and done. To use their knowledge of physics and engineering that way is cool I agree 🙂
There is an adage about the Magic The Gathering card came design that Mark Rosewater is fond of saying, and it has stuck with me, "Restrictions breed Creativity". When you're have limited tools and resources, it forces you to be creative in your workspace. That phrase is a guiding light to me and seems like something Adam would say :)
There is no permit in any of the major cities in the United States that will give you a permit to dump kitchen oil into a sewer system. This is why restaurants have to have grease traps attached to the buildings. In most states you also have to have a maintenance log for the grease traps and when they are emptied. One would have an easier time dumping motor oil in the street and cooking oil.
Mythbusters has where more meaning to my life than Star Wars. It was the bonding time my brother and I had with my dad on the nights we spend at his house. There are about 5 shows that I could watch over and over again and bring back the same nostalgia like the sound of my dad's giant set of keys jingling at the door when he stopped by the house.
Never heard the antonym of embiggen
"ensmallening of computers". Brilliant
I loved mythbusters so much I've been buying and watching through all the seasons on Apple TV
I used to live in patterson and then in Newman they are on either side of the tiny, tiny town of crows landing LOL funny to hear that town name here.
Engendering trust is also know as living with integrity. Living with integrity automatically builds trust with the people you work with over time. It should be taught by all parents before a child even goes to school.
I love that Adam called Star Wars the correct name instead of the retronym
Finally! Someone explained it about the same as I always have; Empire Strikes Back was a "better film" than Star Wars, but Star Wars was the "Best" one. =)
"we made sure everything was contained"
*except that one time
I have the Same thoughts about a Bands first 3 Albums. They are hungry to produce.
Mythbusters was compulsive watching , you hated to miss an episode…
I'm infinitely grateful that MythBusters existed and was able to do the things they did
Dangerous Toys? Just had to look that up as I never knew about it! Anyone know if was ever shown in the UK?
I miss the series. I loved your show. I hate it ended.
Agreed about Star Wars. That's exactly correct.
Larger crews and bigger budgets are almost always detrimental. Think of the some of the greatest films made. They have been small crews and lower budgets. I would still love to see the next terminator given to a talented yet unknown filmmaker and told to do it on 10mil budget.
San Francisco is the worst city in the entire United States to me. I used to love going skateboarding and hanging out down there, and now it's just a disgusting cesspit of insane people, the stuff that goes on there is just crazy.
Interesting comment at the end. It made me think of brothers with opposite personalities who dismiss one another, but can finish each other’s sentences without thinking, and always forget how much they miss each other. But fight it.
Awesome and well said!
Love the Star wars comparison because I still love Mythbusters after all these years and not star wars xD
Monster Garage, American Chopper, and Mythbusters were the golden age of Discovery.
It's dogshit, now.
The canon ball was clearly the failure of the bomb squad and the owner of the facility. They knew what you were doing, they should have not cleared it if they thought there was a risk. Also no facility that deals with bombs or artillery should be close to housing.
"Ensmallening"? I think "shrinking" is better.
Need firearms more than ever in San Francisco. What a mess! Sad that people hold on to their “team” and don’t deviate for fear of being branded a betrayer.
2:00 But it does though.
I worked on a forensic explosives committee with the expert who you hired to blow up the dump truck.
I'm a fan but never heard of Dangerous Toys.
I got a kick out of this backdrop. Gonna regard paying attention worthwhile - grin.
For the younger and probably confused viewers: STAR WARS was the name of the first movie in the series when it came out. After Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back) came out, they went back and changed the title of STAR WARS to Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope.
time stamp for the title question?
Movies, TV, literally anything creative that have a person with total control always end up half assed. With tons of awesome things that never truly come to fruition.
Alan, who helped with the firearms episodes, is a friend of mine.
Maybe Mythbusters can’t be compared in a cultural magnitude way, but there are going to be plenty of people out there who were much more impacted by Mythbusters than star wars. Mythbusters probably made a lot more sense engineers, technicians, types of artists than star wars did.
Just learned that “strove” is a word! 😅
I love listening to smart people
lmao at Adam being proud of the 'environmental activism' of a city that pushes corporate green initiatives instead of going nuclear