Jamie Hyneman, who always impresses fans with his cool demeanor, had a different perspective in testing these scary myths. “The really dangerous stuff, the thing is you’re not going to know until it’s too late that it’s really dangerous. So why worry about it?”
In testing myths, how long is the process? They can range anywhere from a couple of days to a few years. Adam revealed that it took 19 to 20 months to find someone who made lead thin enough to make a lead balloon. Kari Bryon brought up that the 747 myth was on the books since the beginning of the show but it took them a long time to find the plane. There’s even a current myth that’s been lingering for a while that they still can’t find the proper conditions to test.
“There’s a famous story about a race car, upside down race car, the Formula One racer has so much down pressure if you could race it upside down it would hug the ceiling,” said Adam. “Of course there’s no reason to do this unless we go full scale. Every time NASCAR builds a new high energy wind tunnel we’re always wondering, 'What top speed is it? Oh, not quite.' We need a wind tunnel to do it.”
What was their quickest myth to test? Adam again had the easy answer — poppyseed bagel testing. “Jamie and I ate a poppyseed pound cake and a poppyseed muffin at 9:30 in the morning and by 11:00 we tested positive for heroin. We continued to test positive for heroin all the way until the next morning.”
So what's their least favorite myth? For Grant, it was earwax candle (Adam agreed that still makes him sick). Adam thought it was a mistake to explore turbine power. For Tory Belleci, it was chili pepper remedies and Kari's was water torture. Jamie remained strangely silent on that one.
How do they decide what myths to do? “It’s a totally collaborative process. We are all part of the process,” said Adam. Grant explained that sometimes they have to fight for an idea. “Gorn cannon. We were pitching for years and finally just last year we were able to do it. We’re like 'Captain Kirk built this cannon with bamboo and homemade gun powder,' and they’re like 'No, we don’t get it.' Finally they got it and we got it made.”
Article comments
1 - lucy2
Good recap, and the duct tape stuff is funny - I bet they hear a lot of those stories now! The duct tape episodes are some of the best.
But I'm going to be a MB nerd and give you two corrections - it should be 'don't look for any MORE James Bond themed shows' because they've already done 2 James Bond specials. I think Adam is saying that they're done with it, because everything else is too out there to be worth testing.
And it's Tory with a Y, not an i.
2 - Jay Woo
I REALLY should have gone to the comic con 2010. I didn't know the mythbusters crew were going to be there!
A couple of my friends went and took a bunch of pictures though.
3 - Alice Jester
Lucy2 - You're right, more would have been a proper word on the Bond ones. I was going off quotes and missed that. As far as Tori goes, the list of proper name spellings Discovery Channel gave us was Tori. It's also spelled that way on the bags handed out to everyone at Comic Con. Weird spelling for a man I know, but that is the proper way.
4 - Alice Jester
Lucy2 - Sorry, hit return too soon on the last comment. I've actually seen it spelled both ways. I'll look into what's proper. Maybe the copy was wrong.