"MythBusters" co-hosts on never running out of "myths to bust"
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman have been at it for a decade. The co-hosts behind Discovery Channel's "MythBusters" are celebrating the show's 10th anniversary this year.
That adds up to a lot of experiments and investigations. There was the cement truck explosion, riding a motorcycle on water and dropping a car from a helicopter. Say what? Is there anything these guys won't try? Savage and Hyneman have certainly attempted a lot of experiments over the years, and when asked if they'd ever run out of "myths to bust," Savage told CBSNews.com, "As long as people believe ridiculous things, we got a job."
Hyneman, who described the last 10 years as both "tiring" and "really awesome," added, "It's not like what we're very rigid about what defines a myth -- it's basically anything that we're curious about that we want to play with to see what happens. Running out of material for 'MythBusters' is like saying, 'We've done everything we could possibly do and we're not curious or interested in anything.' Let's hope that never happens."
It doesn't hurt that they have a fan-base bursting with ideas to share.
"We get story suggestions from fans, from Twitter, from email -- from other TV show hosts. From other TV shows, from movies, viral videos, scientific article abstracts," said Savage. "Every time we come up with something that's remotely interesting, we email it back and forth to each other and our team...Not all of them are full-blown episode ideas. But they may have a seed in them that might come up later."
One of those ideas came to fruition recently. "The last things we did was try to accelerate a ping pong ball to supersonic speed. I can't tell you how it turned out," said Hyneman. "Even though it's more or less a lab test, it's pretty exciting what results we got. It's amazing what happens - small things like that - going super super fast. They're quite dangerous to be around."
But is there a favorite episode? Both Savage and Hyneman had a difficult time picking just one.
"There's so many different things, it's hard to say, 'This is hands down the best.' But the one we like to put out there is the lead balloon," said Hyneman. "We built a balloon that was about 14 feet across out of lead foil and filled it with helium and we were able to make it fly. What we find interesting about that, for us, while it didn't involve any explosives or weapons or mayhem, it was as exciting or more so than most of the stories we've ever done because of the depth of understanding and creativity it required to actually pull that off. This is a material that is very heavy, yet very weak. It was such an exercise in internalizing what that material would do and how to handle it. We were absolutely thrilled."
Their let's-try-anything-once attitude is part of the reason why Gillette tapped the "MythBusters" co-hosts to take part in its "How Does Superman Shave?" campaign, coinciding with the release of the new blockbuster, "Man of Steel." "We get approached a lot of the time to do various things...but it's rare that someone comes to us with something as pleasurable as a simple thought experiment...For us that's part of our job -- figuring out ways in which things we have no experience with might actually work," said Savage.
So, how does Superman shave? The duo dismissed plenty of theories, including one involving kryptonite shaving cream and another where Superman's facial hair gets burned off with a laser beam pointed at a mirror.
"Then we got kind of fanciful," explained Savage about conjuring up theories for the Gillette project. "Jamie came up with the idea of Superman flying really close to the ground and grinding his face on the highway...I imagined that he was going to exploit some unknown branch of physics. Maybe he introduces a new particle that benefits mankind."
They brainstormed about the campaign while driving through Utah, wearing tuxedos, during a taping for "MythBusters."
"We did what we normally do with these kinds of things where Adam and I usually bounce things back and forth like a ping pong ball. With every hit, it kind of moves forward...In this case we picked the ones that appealed to us," said Hyneman.
It's the way these two work in their "MythBusters" lives.
"We're trying to bust or confirm myths, but for us it's more meaningful - simply the process and the experimentation," said Savage. "It is what it is. We don't try to bust anything. We try to experiment and investigate something."
For Savage and Hyneman, the past 10 years have flown by. Tired or not, they plan to keep going.
"We've made 250 hours of television in the last 10 years and it's amazing to us that it's still going strong and we're still having a great time showing up to work every day," said Hyneman. "That's such a blessing...We're still going strong. "
