Adam Savage (2016)

I do believe I might have touched it once. I don't even know, the circumstance was probably that there was one errant hair in the beginning. There was this funny point a couple years into MythBusters; Jamie's wife--awesome awesome woman, life long science teacher--came by the shop and she and Jamie are very sweet, they've been married forever, and she was talking to him about stuff that they were doing. But as she was talking she affectionately smoothed out his mustache, which was so freaky for me to watch a human touching Jaime's mustache. It was like "Woah...what is she doing?!!" but you know, that's how they roll and it’s totally cool.

Jamie and I have long made it clear that we’re not friends; so we don’t actually get along on a day-to-day level. The other side of that coin is that we disagree about all the little things, but we have pretty much never disagreed about the big things. By the big things I mean directions to push the brand, ways in which to tackle and make a good show; we have a lot of small disagreements about it, but on a big scale we don’t.

The end of the show has not made us closer, I have spoken to him I think maybe once since the show ended, and we’ll see each other at various things, you know we still get hired to do stuff together. There still will be many circumstances in which we’re thrust together or forced to talk about stuff, and that’s fine.

But no, I think it’s just going to go back to the way it used to be, which is probably checking in once a year to see how things are going.

Definitely /r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/!

I try and keep it to 1 cup of coffee in the morning, or if I’m going to my local place (Ritual in the Mission) their to-go cups are kinda small, so I’ll have two of those. And that’s about it, I’ve got a cold right now, so I’m drinking a lot of tea, but after noon it’ll all be Throat Coat (which, by the way, is the greatest tea if you have a cold)

As far as my energy, my parents always encouraged me to make stuff. They both gave me an example of a life lived doing the thing you want to do. Both my dad and mom had careers they were very invested in. I was very lucky to see that. They supported me in finding my way. By that I mean they helped me pay my rent when I quit a job I didn’t like; that’s a tremendous privilege they gave to me. I am incredibly grateful for it, and that allowed me to find my place in the world, which didn’t really happen until I moved to San Francisco in the early 90s. By then I sort of found things that I was excellent at, like building and problem solving, and I was able to push those into careers. And when you push the thing you’re really good at into a career it does feel like work, because it’s really hard work to do something well, but it also doesn’t drain you at the end of the day. It’s self-generating. And now with the 13 years of MythBusters (where the best plots were where Jamie and I had the most enthusiasm, and Kari, Grant, and Tory) the best episodes were the ones that we were the most invested in. Our job was effectively to find the thing we were thrilled by and put everything we had into it.

So again, that’s energy generating. I am always looking for things that I find interesting and trying to dive into them. That’s just part of my makeup.

I don’t know if that’s exactly an answer to your question, but it’s sort of an answer to why I keep on doing six different things at once and why it seems to be working right now.

Buster was always the perfect professional. He never complained and he was never late. If he was ever unhappy with me and Jamie, he certainly never let on.

Yes! Lots more to come! One just came out today, actually, a build I did for my dogs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UmBKWQ52oQ

The squeaky ducks from the duck bomb video are still in my shop. I have not bombed anyone unwittingly. That is sort of because I don't like pranking people. I know that seems kind of weird, but my inclination is to not prank people. It's simply because it’s very hard to prank people nicely. Now a duck bomb isn't necessarily a bad prank, it's not because I think duck bombing is bad per se, it's just I don't think towards pranking in general.

But, I'm fully aware they are pelicans not ducks. That same company makes pink flamingos, they make pelicans and they make a couple others, but really the pelicans are by far the best. they have the most plaintive cry of all of those screaming, rubberized animals. And interestingly, I have not ever given one to one of my dogs. I just don't want to hear that thing in my house.

I don't have a favorite member of the former build team. All those guys are my colleagues and I'm proud to have made a show with them. And that's serious. I'm being 100% serious. They all have their wonderful strengths. They all have their unique thing that they bring to the show. I know it sounds like I'm blowing smoke up your ass, but it's just totally true. I'm honored to have worked with all of those guys on that show.

Yeah, I believe a collaboration with the Slow Mo Guys is entirely possible. I love the work that they’re doing. They have taught me a lot about high speed photography over the years.

So yes, entirely possible.

Yes! We did a one-hour reunion show with them that airs after the finale this Saturday. It was SO fun. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/milfbusters/

Yes! There will be a viewing party with some of the cast and crew during the West Coast airing. I will be sharing as much as I can on my Twitter and Facebook, so stay tuned.

This is one of the most common questions. What myth did we want to do that the production wouldn't let us do? For the most part if we really wanted to do something, Discovery stood behind it. I might have answered this in another AMA, but I'll tell you there are three. There's one about a truck full of liquid oxygen that spills on a road bed and turns the entire road into a bomb. We played enough with liquid oxygen to respect its power and understand that it is some of the scariest stuff on earth. It can literally turn an oily rag into a bomb, and that's not exaggeration. It's terrifying. And to deal with an entire truck load on a road that might explode (or to be honest if we're gonna spend that much money, it has to explode one way or another) what we found was it was dangerous and unpredictable, and that made going full scale really really touchy, so we decided to leave that one.

Another one is upside down race car. But no one stood in our way of doing upside down race car. I should explain. Upside down race car is the myth that a formula one or indycar (two different kinds of cars, I'm totally aware of that) has so much down force because of its construction that it could drive upside down and still hug the road. We've been wanting to do this since season one. And number one, obviously we can't do it full scale with a road. We're not going to build a tunnel. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's well more than the budget for an episode of MythBusters. We could do it potentially in a wind tunnel, but we could not find either a wind tunnel that would go fast enough, or two someone that would lend us their indycar or formula one car and allow us to hang it upside down in said wind tunnel. If said wind tunnel actually existed, be assured that it would cost in excess of $10,000 an hour to operate, and that right there also pushes us way to the outside edge of the MythBusters budget.

Lastly, there is an episode that we were going to do in the last season, but we didn't have time to complete, and so I had to let it go. It's a Native American myth, supposedly, that if you wanted to go duck hunting, you would float pumpkins in a pond that the ducks frequented and get them used to pumpkins floating around them. Then when you were hungry and wanted duck for dinner, you would put a pumpkin on your head and swim over to the duck that looked, I guess the tastiest, and the duck would not notice you because you're just a floating pumpkin. And then according to a hunter friend of mine you could reach out and pull the duck right under. Now we weren't gonna pull the duck under on camera, or at all because of, you know, cruelty to animals. But I did want to find out if I could swim up to a duck dressed as a pumpkin and capture it, because that would be amazing! Unfortunately, a couple of the episodes in our last season ended up being so difficult to shoot that we put those difficulties into the narratives, and thus we ended up with narratives that were fat enough we didn't need this secondary story. Pumpkin duck hunting was always going to be about a 12-13 minute story, not a very long one. And like I said, we ended up with enough narrative that we didn't need that, so I took one for the team and chucked it. So I'll never get to know. Maybe someday I'll get to know, but not on MythBusters.

I can't single out a single thing. I will tell you that I was at TED a couple weeks ago doing a talk, I was speaker, and after my talk, one of my all time heroes came up and spoke to me. I got to talk to Harrison Ford for a few minutes. Harrison Ford is very important to the person that I have become.

We all have little phrases that run through our brains as kids and as growing adults of the way we want to be. Indiana Jones is a key filter of the kind of man I decided I wanted to be when I was a young lad. He was a lovely person to talk to. That was thrilling. The kind of access you get to other people that you admire when you're given a little bit of fame is thrilling! And then, you know, some of them can be crazy, that happens too. But more often than not, you find yourself meeting on a common plane.

Also meeting scientists and other makers of things, you know. People like Tony Fadell from Nest invented the iPod, one of my design heroes. There's countless number of people we've brought on Mythbusters. Scientists far from thumbing their nose from what we're doing found something simpatico in our approach, in the way we've found joy in the process of not knowing and discovering and getting past our bias to come to an answer that made them treat us like peers. I have to say that's really the highlight.

You don't want to know. A LOT.

Great! Thank you. Yours?

I still have my shop. M5 is Jamie's shop. As for the things built on the shows over the years that were at M5, they were given away, mostly. I have some of them, Jamie has some, the production company has some, and the crew has some.

Does creating a fireball in M5 with Jamie in 2002 while taping our demo for Discovery Channel count? https://www.facebook.com/therealadamsavage/videos/vb.1009761719037011/1160629483950233/?type=2&theater

Well, the first question I’d ask is “Is there anything true about Donald Trump?” I mean, he’s nothing BUT myth.

So, when you’re talking about busting myths, you’re talking about reaching an objective truth, which is a very difficult thing to do. Obviously, even within scientific confines, it’s really difficult to do, which is why we repeat experiments and why conclusions are so difficult to come to. And why facts are so rare.

But when you’re talking about an object truth, you’re in the opposite universe than politics exists in, because politics are all about relative truth. “I’m speaking this truth to this group, I’m speaking that truth to that group” … “I want everyone to vote for me, so I’m going to lie to everybody.”

sigh

Which is why I love Bernie so much, because I feel like he gives really consistent answers to everybody, it just sounds simple when he talks. I don’t see him doing all these mental calisthenics when he’s answering questions. There are certain things that we disagree on, but for the most part I feel like he’s just giving the genuine, straight dope as it’s coming from his head. It might not be the truth, but it’s the truth as he’s thinking about it. And he even seems to me like someone who’d change his mind if you brought him evidence to the contrary of something he firmly believes.

So, I know you didn’t ask me who I liked, but I don’t think you have to look very deeply into my history to figure out that Bernie would be my guy.

I love this question because my first answer is… don’t ask a white dude. Don’t ask me! Ask them!

Girls are the most natural, critical thinking scientists there are. The trick is to normalize for everybody that they can manipulate their world. That they can actually have an effect upon it.

It was natural for me to want to take things apart when I was a kid. My parents kind of encouraged that; they gave me old stuff to take apart. When you take apart enough things, how they go back together becomes kind of clear to you. Every kid is different, I have two boys and my thing is: they don’t necessarily have to be makers, but I’d like them to know how manipulatable the world. Part of that is when they’re enthusiastic about something, I put it in front of them. That’s really important because that’s what my parents did for me and that’s exactly the kind of way I want to privilege my kids’ enthusiasm.

If they’re interested in making anything, go ahead and take them to a class to do that. My mom took me to tons of summer classes in pottery and woodworking - stuff like that. There was a community center near my house in Westchester, New York, that had summer classes and I went and took them all the time. There was a woman who gave art classes in my neighborhood and my parents sent me to that art class. So, it’s like it might not even be that they end up becoming makers, but send them to classes in which they make things with their hands. If there’s any proclivity at all, that’s where they’ll find it.

I love rapid prototyping and 3D printing, laser cutting, 3D Routers, all the techniques; it’s very exciting what’s happening. But CAD/CAM (the drawing of something in 3D and then the translation of that into some machine language that outputs out of your 3D printer, laser cutter, whatever) still sucks. Everyone knows that it sucks. Translating something from your head out onto a screen in 2D so it can become 3D is still really, really difficult. There are a lot of people doing amazing work on it. I love what AutoDesk is doing in that they’re trying to make it more intuitive. And when that worm turns, when CAD/CAM becomes genuinely, naturally intuitive, that’s when I think things are going to get genuinely exciting.

Right now the 3D output tends to be rough for consumer level machines (it’s getting finer and finer; we’re covering a lot of that on Tested.com) but these two paths of both the output being refined more and using recycled materials is really exciting, alongside the translation from people’s brains into their computer out to the machine; that’s really thrilling.

I think that when kids can see something that they want to make, and they invest themselves in wanting to make it extant (my whole life has been spent doing this: thinking something in my brain and putting it in my hands) when a kid can see that that can happen, it wakes up this whole other portion of possibility for them.

That’s a world that should be open to every kid.

I feared for my life all the time on MythBusters. You know, you work through a stunt to try and do it so that you know you'll be safe, but when you're sitting at the top of a water slide in a greased latex wet suit, you can't help but wondering what you haven't thought of. I'll leave it at that.

Of course! I grew up with Bill Nye. I grew up with Mr. Wizard. Bill’s amazing.

We do different things; Bill is a master science communicator and explainer. He understands the science that he’s talking about on a level that’s even deeper than he’s revealing. I mean, he’s a really, really great intellect. And also, brilliantly funny. I’m jealous of him for both of those qualities. I wish I was funnier and I wish I was smarter.

And yet, we have different shows. Bill’s show is a science demonstration show. He explained a concept, and then he would demonstration how that concept works. We were a genuine experimentation show. We would investigate a concept and figure it out on the fly, but much of the time we really had no idea what the results of one of our tests was going to be. That’s an inherently different narrative structure.

I’m really grateful for Bill for inspiring me at a young age of the idea that science could be fun. And so, absolutely - he’s been hugely inspiring.

Yes, the day I burned my eyebrow I did have a date.

The date went great, thanks for asking.

All the time.

I play Millipede! I have one in my shop. It's a great stress reliever. I actually did a video on Tested about it once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kZBrZ3jsmU

Do I have a favorite gas station snack? It's funny because I know my wife's right off the top of my head. She likes the Lays Barbecue potato chips. That is absolutely what I better walk out of the gas station with because it's just road trip food.

For me, it's got to be sour patch kids, and really specifically the sour patch watermelons. I don't know why, but those don't carve up my mouth as much, and I don't know anyone else's experiences, but I find a wide variance in sour patch kids quality. And by quality, I mean chewiness. Specifically, my perfect sour patch kid is not super chewy, but it starts to dissolve the moment I'm chewing on it. And you can artificially induce this by putting a pack of sour patch kids in your pocket for an hour and when they're warm they are easier to eat.

I am a deep expert in sour patch kid consumption. But right out of the bag they can be everything from super chewy to super dissolving, which I find sort of annoying. And so the sour patch watermelons tend to be more consistent. I'm amazed at the specificity I was able to bring to the sour patch kids.

I can’t say there’s one tool I couldn’t do without. A good knife is maybe the most important thing to have nearby.

If you’re a woodworker and you don’t know about forstner bits, get some forstner bits. They’re this tool I was late in learning about (I probably had been working with wood for like five years before someone showed me a set of forstner bits)

They’re basically big, fat drill bits, but they carve in a way that allows you to almost machine wood, even if you don’t have a milling machine. They’re amazing. A full set of good forstner bits can start around $35-$40 on Grizzly.com.

A good table saw and some sleds to use that table saw are amazing. Lately I’m obsessed with the YouTube channel of Matthias Wandel (https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel); he’s this guy who builds pretty much everything with a table saw, a drill press, and a band saw. One of his latest builds is a full, working, wood turning lathe, using only wood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCt3LooUVsQ) He’s got a wonderful amount of ingenuity. So, in terms of using a small amount of tools to get a lot of effect, go check out his channel.

Reddit actually asked me that once and they did a really cool graphic for it! https://upvoted.com/2015/10/22/perfect-sandwich-adam-savage/

Not only do I want to talk about Rampart, but I’d like to talk ONLY about Rampart, and not about previous drug use of Woody Harrelson, or even sexual congress that he might have had or might not of had with someone in his deep past.

Yes. Who doesn't?

When the cameras aren’t on, I’m cursing all the time. I have a very dirty mouth. It’s just how I communicate with the world. It’s interesting raising children too, because at a certain point you realize “I can’t not curse around these beings” It’s just not in my nature. And then they start to curse, and when children curse it’s just…it’s just gross.

And yet there’s an age when it becomes ok.

Sure enough, when my boys were like, 15 or almost 16, it was just time to stop asking them not to curse. They curse just as much as I do now. I can’t say that I’m proud of that. Look, I feel like words shouldn’t have as much weight as they often have. So, I feel like cursing is a way of taking their power away.

Okay kidlets. I've been at this for awhile now and I think it's time to pack it in.
Thanks for all the awesome questions and comments and I'm glad and grateful and humbled to the comments about what Mythbusters has meant to you. I'm fundamentally changed by making that show and I'm glad it's had some positive effect. My best to everyone and I'll see you lurking around here somewhere...

xo!

Tamiya! They make great kits.

Both of those things happened a lot. I would tell you the rocket special in this last season (it aired a couple weeks ago) was a real ass-kicker of an episode to get right. We ran into difficulties we did not expect. They ended up taking us far longer to solve the problems than we expected. It was a real grind, especially because working in the Mojave desert in 105 degrees; just not easy to work under those conditions.

Stories that seemed like they were going to be tough but turned out to be really fun? Nah, you know - we started every episode with “I can’t wait to get our hands on this”. I loved where the vacuum cleaner car lift ended up, that was awesome that it didn’t work the first time. We were a little bit like “ahhh…”, but once we started on the second attempt we felt pretty confident we had something and that ended up being great.

Don't worry. I'll be popping in and out of this AMA all day, between meetings.

Welcome, CR3ZZ! What I'm doing today: I'm got some meetings today after this AMA. I'll probably pop back into this AMA later today and answer more questions, too. And I still have a cold, so I'll probably go to bed early again if I can.

That's interesting. My first thought is like a Criterion Collection DVD set of one of my favorite films. That's about what they cost, and I love the Criterion Collection because they are for film geeks like me. That's not necessarily an object, that's media I'm consuming, so I recognize I might have stepped outside the citadel of what your question is hoping to encompass.

I love me a good sketchbook. These days I'm keeping my notes in a series of sketchbooks, and I have multiples. Each one is a different project that I'm working on, or a different mindset that I'm thinking about, and I'm able when I have an idea to pick it up and put it in the notebook it belongs in. I used to buy these think notebooks, you know, like 3/4 of an inch thick, like the moleskins and stuff. My problem with those is I would fill the first 50 pages and then stuff would be so jumbled I'd never be going back to it because it would be like, one page is a build I want to do, and another page is a movie idea i've got, or some sort of narrative, it's all over the place. This allows me a nice granular attack on each project so that when I open it up, there's all my thoughts within this one thing. But the perfect notebook, I have not yet found it. My guess is though, when I do, it will be under $30. Look, maybe I'll have to make it. That's also possible.

No, I don’t mind telling you that I love you last time I was here.

You know, I met this great pair of kids in LA a few years back. They’re like the niece and nephew of this good friend of mine. They were awesome when I met them; they were dressed like little Gatsby characters. The boy was wearing a Seersucker suit, if I remember correctly. These kids were like 7 and 9.

They were so fun to talk to that when we parted I said “When you tell people about meeting me, you’re allowed to say that I’m a good and close friend of yours.” and I hear a couple of years later that they are absolutely still doing that, and I think that’s great.

Dogs! I have two rescues: Huxley and Maggie. They're the best. https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/690216936773300225

Rarely. I certainly get to stopping points where I don't know what the next step is going to be, but at that point what I will do is I will box it up with all of its notes and all of my research on it and put it up in my loft until such time as I've thought about it and know how to attack it again. I certainly regularly come to points in a build where I don't know how to proceed, and in that case I'll put it aside for a while. I think at any given time I've got 15 or 20 of those sitting around.

It's hard to know. I don't know how much research you've done, haha. I like to cook, and my main food I'm really good at cooking is eggs. I make a mean soft scrambled eggs, and also a pretty darn good omelet. I juggle. I can play one song on the piano. I ride a unicycle.

Oh! Here's something you didn't know about me: In 1919 my grandfather, who was a pilot in world war one was on a bender with his best friend in New York City, and at 5am they were in Washington Square Park drunk as skunks, fat with cash from having left the war, and apparently according to my dad, my grandfather's best friend Pare Lorentz, Pare and my grandfather bribed 2 milk truck drivers--and at this point milk was still delivered in a horse drawn carriage--bribed 2 milk truck drivers 5 bucks each, which in 1918/1919 was a lot of money--and they had a chariot race up 5th avenue in a pair of milk trucks while drunk. How about that?

I mentioned the full name of my grandfather's best friend because Pare Lorentz was actually a really important new deal filmmaker and did a lot of films for Franklin Delano Roosevelt about the depression and about the dust bowl in particular, and along with his composer, Virgil Thompson, was a really important early american documentarian filmmaker.

My favorite Murakami novel is still 1Q84.

I’ve read about half of his books twice, and I also still have a super special place in my heart for A Wild Sheep Chase. It’s definitely because it’s so inspired by Raymond Chandler, who’s my all-time favorite novelist. But 1Q84 is staggering good; it’s an amazing, amazing book.

If you haven’t read it, you’re welcome.

Yeah. The thing is when I first thought I wanted to work in special effects, I did not have any usable skills at that point. So I was like 23, and I thought “oh, I want to work in special effects!” – I didn't know my ass from my elbow. I didn't know that I didn't know!

But cutting my teeth on 200 television commercials in Jamie's shop for 4 years...that gave me the skill set and the mindset of working quickly, working elegantly, working efficiently...that was a great skill set to show up at ILM with. And when I showed up I was darn fast and it was a lovely niche to fill. It afforded me a bunch of projects that I wouldn't have normally gotten.

Bernie.