My favorite episode is the one where they tried to turn a city bus at 50 mph to test a scene from a movie called “Speed”.
It didn’t matter how the passengers were arranged in the bus, the bus just wouldn’t turn over. In fact, the bus was more stable in a corner when ghe weight was evenly distrubuted, to the surprise of nobody with a mechanical engineering degree.
The most instructive part for me was what they did have to do to make the bus barely tip over. They had to fasten a big piece of steel plate to the roof, disable the air shocks on one side, and put all the “passengers” (barrels of water) on one side.
Thus reminding everyone that engineers know more about how to build a bus than movie writers do. Which shouldn’t be a surprise.
It’s a great show for people like you to jerk themselves off.
tf? People are allowed to like things that they like
It has nothing to do with liking things. Lol.
RIP Grant, you are missed
I don’t think you could revive Mythbusters.
I don’t think Adam and Jamie are at all interested in doing the show anymore. If it wasn’t them, you’d have to re-cast, and it would be really hard to get that kind of chemistry, while also finding people with the right technical background for the show. The Build Team members were fun, but they couldn’t do it, although they tried with projects like the White Rabbit project.
Plus, I think the world has moved on. There are plenty of YouTube channels where people build crazy things, or test myths, or whatever. But, that’s in short, 5-10 minute videos. A full hour (well, 45 minutes) of reality TV is different. Also, they tested so many myths over the years, that the only ones left are TikTok trends or gossip or whatever. Not the kinds of beliefs that go back decades.
the world has moved on
You say true, I say thankya, Gunslinger.
Love it. RIP Grant.
Removed by mod
What the hell happened to the proposed new series with an entirely different cast that they literally had a miniseries game show to find the talent for? They had the contest, found the new people and then just… Vanished.
No one watched and it didn’t have the same kind of chemistry. Mythbusters was a good TV show more than anyone thinks about. The cast made it happen. Along with the crew. Including the time of everyone else where the Internet was still relatively young in terms of proving myths wrong. Now there are many copies but none as popular. And regular TV is dead/dying. They had White Rabbit but Grant passed. Jamie has no interest in it. Kari is out doing things for scientific causes. Tori went back to movies. And Adam has a platform for cosplay on YouTube. I think the moment has passed.
Isn’t Kari shilling for oil now?
Adam’s youtube channel is a gem though. He’s legitimately an inspiration
Is she? I follow her IG and it’s always NASA or science related
I mean, I had heard she was getting paid to tweet about how great fracking was and how we don’t need to stop consuming oil but instead start geo engineering, but I don’t remember how long ago it was given the blur of time the last couple years have been and how much I’m remembering correctly
I agree with the chemistry of the cast and the synergy of the crew not ever likely to be the same, but I would still be down for the busting myths part and could forgo giving a shit about the actors lol. Half the gaming channels I watch are basically myth busters for various game franchises. They’re only missing the crucial part of “replicating the myth” when they fail to reproduce the myth as stated. Shit would be funny “we can’t reproduce this unless we use cheat programs.”
I don’t know. We are in a different space for consumption too. I hear what you are saying. I’m just not sure it would be successful. I would watch it too. It’s still one of my favorite shows.
If only we didnt need things we like to pass some bullshit benchmark of “success”. Just do it because you want to and if some people like its kinda nice.
Niche things are often how you find something amazing and often they arent what becomes well known.
Do most people know who Nirvana or Pearl Jam are? Yes. Do most people know who mother love bone is? No
But Kurt and Eddie spoke about mother love bone as a huge inspiration and gave credit for their own success
See, this is why I don’t like debunking shows in general, and I find the skeptic movement to be overrated and simply draws less criticism that it deserves.
MythBusters avoided the one mistake that all debunkers make. First off, they didn’t come off as thinking that they were smarter than anyone else, they don’t mock people for believing false information, and they never bring religion into it.
They just talked about whatever misconception, then they tested to see if it worked or not
I think Jamie comes off as if he’s smarter than everyone else and is wrong most often to boot.
Well then I guess Penn & Teller’s BS series is actually the Dark Side version of Mythbusters.
Loved both of those shows. Learned how to cheat on a polygraph from the Penn & Teller show.
Penn & Teller are hacks
Mythbusters is the reason I went into STEM. On year my parents even bought me tickets to see the tour, as a Christmas present. I also still watch Adam’s YouTube channel weekly (Tested).
Mythbusters is good just because of how down-to-Earth and raw it is.
They show the audience what they want to see. They ask the questions the audience wants asked. They give rationales that make sense, most of them.
It’s a very human show, even if it requires a lot of science and engineering to make it work.
The producers did a fine job with it. I’m glad it’s not over-edited or following a checklist of what a show needs to be in order to be successful.
Its format and presentation fit the content like a glove.
Adam Savages one day builds are relly neat videos about building props and other things and Adam is such a nice person to listen to IMO
He is now definitely. Watching the first seasons of myth busters though, you start to understand why some people were annoyed by him.
Super fun to listen to him now though.
Yea, randomly get videos from his youtube channel when I’m researching new tools or something and they’re always neat. I don’t use youtube enough to follow channels but if I his would be one of them.
Uncommon XKCD L. Mythbusters experiments rarely hold up to the standards of the scientific method. Controls are basically non-existent and the experiments are regularly flawed. They DO fail at basic rigor.
Zombie Feynman literally addressed that exact point!
I disagree. Zombie Feynman completely disregarded the lack of controls and the flawed nature of their “experiments”. You can’t just whip up one ballistics gel mannequin, blow it up, and come out with a definitive answer to a question raised by folklore.
By Feynman’s own standards as a Phd Theoretical Physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, would his Zombie counterpart’s claims exceed or fail to exceed his own metric?
Common dangblingus L, the xkcd comic literally explains why your take is lame and dumb.
No it doesn’t. It purports to know exactly what a PhD scientist who was critical in the invention of the atomic bomb is thinking. Feynman would not have advocated for the propagation of junk science.
Here are some direct quotes from Feynman regarding his thoughts on the value of science:
“With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may prove disappointing, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries —certainly a grand adventure!”
“It is true that few unscientific people have this particular type of religious experience. Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don’t know why. Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.”
“Hardly anyone can understand the importance of an idea, it is so remarkable. Except that, possibly, some children catch on. And when a child catches on to an idea like that, we have a scientist. It is late—although not too late—for them to get the spirit when they are in our universities, so we must attempt to explain these ideas to children.”
And the full story is too long to quote, but in one of his books Feynman recounts performing his own little Mythbusters style experiment in front of NASA to show how temperature affects O-rings when they were trying to figure out what caused the Challenger to fall apart. An experiment he performed because he was getting sick of the stacks of papers piling up as the discussion went on and all they were doing was ruminating over the minor details. In his own words:
“I say to myself, “Damn it, / can find out about that rubber without having NASA send notes back and forth: I just have to try it! All I have to do is get a sample of the rubber.” I think, “I could do this tomorrow while we’re all sittin’ around, listening to this Cook crap we heard today. We always get ice water in those meetings; that’s something I can do to save time.” Then I think, “No, that would be gauche.” But then I think of Luis Alvarez, the physicist. He’s a guy I admire for his gutsiness and sense of humor, and I think, “If Alvarez was on this commission, he would do it, and that’s good enough for me.””
A lot of his autobiographical stories are filled with examples of him doing these types of experiments, big and small, ever since he was a kid. Ones without a ton of “rigor”. The same style of experiments that Mythbusters tended to do.
So Feynman would totally agree with Xkcd here about what’s really important when it comes to science, sorry to break it to ya. He was a Mythbuster at heart.
They don’t, but they say least show a process of testing beliefs and they will rerun experiments based on feedback from the audience to see if they missed something.
And it isn’t like they are testing bleeding edge science. It is more teaching skepticism and inquiry on sayings and others information which have dubious veracity.
I think the point is’t that they are rigorous. It is that that it doesn’t matter if they fail at basic rigour because you can teach that after you inspire the interest, and that is the thing you need to do to get more scientists and engineers.
Is the issue motivation? If that’s the issue, then I would argue that Bill Nye the Science Guy is a better resource for aspiring scientists.
Bill Nye is fine if you are in a country where he was broadcast and already have a predisposition towards science. That Mythbusters came at it from a pop-culture direction, and that it wasn’t aimed at children gives it a big boost.
Instilling the “Oh, I was wrong, THAT’S SO COOL” mindset in people is one of the best things science education can do.
And it translates to all walks of life.
There’s so much misery in the world simply from people who know nothing convinced they know everything.
“It’s not “Yes! My experiment was a success!” It’s “Yes! My experiment yielded data!””
I seem to recall Adam Savage saying this at some point.
from people who know nothing convinced they know everything.
A lot of it is insecurity. If people feel inadequate, then they may go out of their way to cover-up that inadequacy.
I think part of the blame can be put on those who will admonish someone for being wrong.
The elephants and mice episode is also my favorite non-explosion myth. I can’t believe it’s actually true.
I definitely recall the myth and it being busted but I don’t remember if they explained why the elephants are afraid of mice, though. What was the explanation?
I’d like Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars or Monster Garage back. I liked the “just get it running” attitude over the muscle car and motorcycle shows.
Mythbusters really was the best TV has ever had to offer in its heyday.
I absolutely loved mythbusters, but honestly I think it ran it’s course. They were kind of running out of things to test towards the end.
Also search for Streamlined Mythbusters - they’re fan-edits that remove fluff (lots of fluff in the later seasons) and rearranges the shows so each myth is played straight through before going to the next myth in the episode; instead of showing pieces of 3 different myths at a time bouncing between them.
I’ve tried to rewatch the shows but the TV format mostly just kills it for me now. Thanks that sounds perfect for modern audiences tastes.
I feel like there were tons of movie related options had they gone back that direction. Easily a whole season’s worth of action hero stunts they could break down.
Just one episode could be on Commando. Schwarzenegger ripping the seat out of a car, or killing a guy with a thrown saw blade, or impaling another guy with a thrown pipe. Would be interesting to have seen them figure out the actual force requirements.
