[00:06.520 --> 00:08.520] Welcome to The Last HOPE, everyone. [00:08.780 --> 00:09.580] Good to have you here. [00:11.460 --> 00:13.360] We don't know if it's the final hope. [00:14.080 --> 00:15.600] The Last HOPE is a name. [00:16.320 --> 00:17.160] It's a label. [00:18.360 --> 00:19.460] Make of it as you will. [00:20.660 --> 00:25.020] I'd like to remind folks that you can take a piece of The Last HOPE with you. [00:25.480 --> 00:33.080] Those public terminal systems from downstairs are available and may be signed by conference staff. [00:33.080 --> 00:37.180] If you're interested, check in at the Hackerspace Village store downstairs. [00:38.620 --> 00:40.660] Up next, Adam Savage. [00:48.570 --> 00:49.810] So you've heard of him. [00:52.610 --> 00:55.290] Adam's one of the two original MythBusters. [00:55.690 --> 01:03.390] He's on Discovery Channel, has a varied and fascinating background that's in the conference program. [01:03.710 --> 01:06.270] He also teaches courses in model design. [01:06.670 --> 01:07.610] Here he is. [01:24.400 --> 01:25.720] All right, can you guys hear me? [01:26.060 --> 01:26.800] Am I being broadcast? [01:27.660 --> 01:28.020] No? [01:28.980 --> 01:29.580] How's that? [01:29.680 --> 01:29.840] No? [01:31.120 --> 01:32.560] All right, let's see if this works. [01:35.320 --> 01:36.480] Or my lavalier? [01:36.620 --> 01:37.480] My lavalier is on now? [01:38.800 --> 01:39.160] Okay. [01:40.420 --> 01:41.780] Ah, God, it's good to be here. [01:45.120 --> 01:50.060] This is the group of people that actually understand what we're talking about when we don't even know what we're talking about. [01:51.160 --> 01:52.360] Which is most of the time. [01:53.540 --> 01:55.900] I've been paying attention to this conference for a while. [01:56.060 --> 01:57.620] I'm really honored that you guys have me here. [01:58.080 --> 01:59.220] It really is my honor. [01:59.300 --> 02:01.480] I feel like I'm one of the least qualified people in this room. [02:02.020 --> 02:05.220] But being unqualified is my job, so I'm just going to run with it. [02:06.680 --> 02:13.060] What I have is about a 15 minute, maybe 10 minutes, if I could talk really fast, piece on obsession. [02:13.880 --> 02:15.320] Discussing my personal obsessions. [02:15.500 --> 02:19.500] Because I suspect that there's some minor obsessive compulsive tendencies in the audience. [02:21.480 --> 02:23.620] And then I'm going to take questions from you guys. [02:23.820 --> 02:26.520] And just have a conversation for another 40 minutes. [02:26.760 --> 02:27.360] All right, sound good? [02:30.980 --> 02:33.620] We'll see how fast I can run through this thing. [02:37.610 --> 02:43.450] About four years ago, the New Yorker did a piece on a cache of dodo skeletons found on the island of Mauritius. [02:43.550 --> 02:55.510] Now Mauritius is a small island off the west coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean where the dodo bird was found, discovered, and eventually extinguished by human inhabitation or rats or whatever your prevailing theory is. [02:56.130 --> 03:04.830] Now, this article was about how archaeologists were very excited to find this cache of skeletons because it meant that they might actually be able to assemble a full dodo skeleton for the first time. [03:04.990 --> 03:12.070] While museums all over the world have different dodo skeletons, none of them has a complete and whole skeleton from a single dodo. [03:12.210 --> 03:14.790] Because the dodo went extinct in such a recent time, 1700. [03:15.270 --> 03:19.350] Nobody was actually paying attention to extinction as the tragedy that we understand it is now. [03:19.510 --> 03:20.890] And nobody saved the bones. [03:21.270 --> 03:23.390] Nobody saved all the bones from a single dodo. [03:23.390 --> 03:26.410] Everyone's had to assemble theirs from many, many different pieces. [03:27.150 --> 03:28.670] Now this appeals to me. [03:30.150 --> 03:35.290] I have a particular obsession with things of a peculiar type of rarity. [03:35.810 --> 03:37.830] Things that there's only one of in the world. [03:37.970 --> 03:41.550] Or maybe there's no one even knows where the one in the world is. [03:41.890 --> 03:43.190] Lost manuscripts. [03:43.510 --> 03:45.410] The Necronomicon from Evil Dead. [03:46.210 --> 03:46.650] Yeah. [03:49.830 --> 03:53.030] Tibetan clay sealed tablet manuscripts found in caves. [03:54.570 --> 03:56.570] Aristotle's Commedia from The Name of the Rose. [03:57.090 --> 04:00.410] Things like this really, really get me going and make me... [04:00.410 --> 04:03.710] For some reason, it feeds right into my love of making objects. [04:04.050 --> 04:06.670] Because the objects that I make are, of course, one of a kind. [04:06.810 --> 04:08.130] Because I'm the one that made them. [04:08.570 --> 04:12.150] There's this direct parity between objects of this kind of rarity. [04:12.150 --> 04:17.250] And the thing that really got my attention, though, about this article about the dodo birds, was this photograph. [04:18.370 --> 04:21.230] I couldn't... this photograph was so compelling to me. [04:21.390 --> 04:22.570] It was so beautiful. [04:22.770 --> 04:26.150] There was so much personality in this skeleton. [04:26.310 --> 04:28.190] I could see that this isn't fossilized. [04:28.270 --> 04:29.030] It's real bone. [04:29.130 --> 04:34.670] I could see the wire that the conservator used to assemble the skull there around the beak. [04:34.890 --> 04:37.750] There was so much story in this piece. [04:38.730 --> 04:40.590] And it got to me that I wanted one. [04:43.350 --> 04:45.330] Now, I have a little more money now than I used to. [04:45.950 --> 04:47.830] And I began looking around on the web. [04:47.970 --> 04:51.930] This is actually the dodo skeleton on the island of Mauritius in their tourism museum. [04:52.050 --> 04:52.770] It's my favorite. [04:53.370 --> 04:57.670] And I began downloading pictures of dodo skeletons from all over the web. [04:57.810 --> 04:59.010] Museums all over the world. [04:59.150 --> 05:01.610] And I wanted to see if anyone sold a replica of one. [05:02.030 --> 05:03.310] I figured it was a long shot. [05:03.350 --> 05:05.590] I did find this couple that makes them four museums. [05:05.590 --> 05:08.070] They charge about $20,000 a piece. [05:08.210 --> 05:09.570] And I don't have that much money. [05:10.810 --> 05:15.690] But I did manage to gather several hundred pictures into my Creative Projects folder. [05:16.170 --> 05:18.410] I think a lot of you have folders like this. [05:18.610 --> 05:20.050] It's called Creative Projects. [05:20.110 --> 05:22.210] It really is just full-out obsession. [05:22.410 --> 05:27.110] Probably 40 gigabytes, 25,000 photos of everything I'm interested in. [05:28.050 --> 05:30.330] Rings, decoder rings right here. [05:30.430 --> 05:31.550] That's a pistol ring. [05:32.010 --> 05:33.590] You guys have probably seen this online. [05:33.750 --> 05:35.350] Just like, you know, checking the same sites. [05:35.470 --> 05:36.430] Airplane cockpits. [05:36.530 --> 05:37.490] People's workbenches. [05:37.730 --> 05:38.730] Ah, the ZF-1. [05:40.410 --> 05:41.210] Stormtrooper costumes. [05:43.210 --> 05:44.950] And I'm going to give up my geek cred. [05:45.150 --> 05:47.410] I hand drew this map of Middle-earth for myself. [05:53.690 --> 05:55.370] So one day I'm at the art store. [05:55.630 --> 06:00.050] And maybe about a month after I saw the dodo article. [06:00.250 --> 06:01.010] It might have been a year. [06:01.010 --> 06:05.110] But I'm at the art store and I'm buying some Super Sculpey and some stuff for my kids. [06:05.230 --> 06:06.590] We're going to have a craft day at home. [06:06.730 --> 06:08.210] We're going to sit around the kitchen table and build shit. [06:09.170 --> 06:15.050] And I got all these photos that for some reason are ringing through my head while I'm in the art store. [06:15.130 --> 06:20.910] And I'm thinking, you know, I've looked at the dodo skeleton enough, the dodo skull enough, that I really understand its topology, I think. [06:20.970 --> 06:22.010] I've got it in my head. [06:22.110 --> 06:25.430] And maybe I could make a dodo skull. [06:26.350 --> 06:29.010] The thing you should understand about me, though, is that I'm not a sculptor. [06:29.010 --> 06:32.430] I have never been a traditional soft sculptor. [06:32.890 --> 06:35.590] In special effects, I was what you call a hard-edged model maker. [06:35.710 --> 06:37.490] I could make towers like this all day long. [06:38.050 --> 06:39.050] Things from The Mummy. [06:40.150 --> 06:41.170] Destroyed New York from AAI. [06:41.750 --> 06:43.110] Parts from Terminator 3. [06:43.810 --> 06:44.310] Bicentennial Men. [06:44.490 --> 06:46.530] This kind of stuff, absolutely my belly weight. [06:46.610 --> 06:48.470] I love hard-edged model making. [06:48.590 --> 06:51.390] When it comes to the soft stuff, dragons, faces, I leave that to the other guys. [06:51.510 --> 06:53.790] Some of my friends are the most brilliant sculptors I've ever met. [06:53.950 --> 06:55.010] It's their task. [06:56.650 --> 07:01.150] However, I understood the topology of this thing enough where I thought I could tackle it. [07:01.310 --> 07:02.550] And I found this photo. [07:02.750 --> 07:04.590] Which is a hand with the skull. [07:04.730 --> 07:05.790] Which gives me a size reference. [07:06.490 --> 07:08.090] So I probably printed it out. [07:08.410 --> 07:12.590] And I kept on expanding the size until the hand matched my wife's hand, actually. [07:13.210 --> 07:14.570] It looks like a lady's hand. [07:14.790 --> 07:16.730] And then I had a size reference for the skull. [07:16.730 --> 07:21.790] And I began to gather all the rest of the photos I had, print them up to an accurate scale. [07:21.930 --> 07:27.170] And after about an hour or two, I had a reasonable facsimile of a dodo skull. [07:27.370 --> 07:28.750] I wish I could show it to you. [07:28.930 --> 07:37.010] The problem is, is even though it occurred to me at the moment to take pictures of the process of my first, quote, sculpture, for some reason I was lazy and I did not take pictures. [07:37.990 --> 07:41.070] However, after about an hour, I had this dodo skull. [07:41.370 --> 07:48.090] And the armature wire I had going around to the back of it to hold the skull up actually turned out to be perfectly placed for a vertebrae. [07:48.130 --> 07:51.210] Because skeletons is another thing that I've been obsessed with over the years. [07:51.410 --> 07:53.310] I have several dozen in my collection. [07:53.310 --> 07:56.950] And I've, you know, if I'm in the woods and I find some vertebrae, I'm taking them home. [07:58.390 --> 08:03.390] I understood vertebrae enough to actually understand, to know their mechanical, how they work mechanically. [08:03.390 --> 08:08.350] The different parts ride upon each other and I began to fake myself a dodo spine. [08:08.570 --> 08:10.770] I wasn't thinking about making a full dodo at this point. [08:10.910 --> 08:19.950] It was kind of like, the only way you can clean a really messy room, I don't know if you guys have ever seen one, is to just pick up one thing at a time. [08:20.070 --> 08:23.970] You don't have to think about the whole thing, just one thing at a time, one thing at a time, and eventually the room is clean. [08:24.130 --> 08:35.430] I was just going vertebrae by vertebrae by vertebrae, just thinking about the next one and keeping on going, adding some more wire, et cetera, et cetera, until by the end of that day, Today I had a dodo skull and a spine and the better part of a pelvis. [08:36.190 --> 08:37.230] So I kept going. [08:37.490 --> 08:42.650] I downloaded more pictures of dodo skeletons, more pictures of dodo pieces, parts. [08:43.110 --> 08:44.210] Check this guy out. [08:44.370 --> 08:49.490] I found a guy, drawings, original drawings from naturalists who visited Mauritius when the dodos were alive. [08:49.650 --> 08:51.590] A whole dodo foot skeleton. [08:51.870 --> 08:54.470] This guy even put it on a scanner with a ruler on it. [08:54.770 --> 08:55.910] Thank God for him. [08:56.130 --> 08:56.910] This guy too. [08:57.650 --> 09:02.710] And so finally, after about six weeks, I made myself a dodoskeleton. [09:08.490 --> 09:16.350] You'll notice, I even went so far as to actually make a museum label and I had tap plastics make me a museum vitrine for it. [09:16.410 --> 09:18.930] I don't have the room in my house for it, yet there it is. [09:20.830 --> 09:23.010] And it was deeply satisfying. [09:23.930 --> 09:39.470] And it also represented kind of a sea change for me because, you know, now that I had my dodo, all of a sudden, in my obsessions folder, in my creative projects folder, there might be something else I could make for myself that I'd never considered to make for myself because at that point, [09:39.610 --> 09:42.410] when I was first obsessed with it, I wasn't a sculptor. [09:42.890 --> 09:45.090] And so I went back into the creative projects folder. [09:45.190 --> 09:46.010] What else could I make? [09:46.530 --> 09:50.150] And I settled upon the Maltese Falcon. [09:51.690 --> 09:53.850] And if you've never read the Maltese Falcon, you have to read it. [09:53.930 --> 09:56.790] And if you've never seen the movie of the Maltese Falcon, you have to see it. [09:57.350 --> 10:03.910] I know there's Elvis people and Beatles people, and there are definitely Hammett people and Chandler people, and I am a Raymond Chandler person through and through. [10:03.990 --> 10:08.250] But I've got to give it up for the Maltese Falcon because it's a fantastic book and an amazing movie. [10:08.250 --> 10:17.950] And it is specifically about the obsession with an object, the object of desire, the Maltese Falcon that Bogart comes across in the film, that Gutmann is looking for. [10:18.190 --> 10:29.330] Now, it's supposedly a 14th century gift from the Knights of Malta to the Habsburg kings whose thanks for giving them the island of Malta during the fight with the Islamic empire. [10:29.610 --> 10:35.570] In fact, it's actually based on quite a similar thing, this hideous thing from the 16th century, which is called the Niphauser Falcon. [10:35.570 --> 10:40.490] And it's actually a ceremonial pouring vessel made kind of as an offering, but not by the Knights of Malta. [10:41.430 --> 10:45.070] Although, Hammett built a lot of real history into his history of the Maltese Falcon. [10:46.590 --> 10:50.670] I even went so far a few years ago to buy this replica off of eBay. [10:50.790 --> 10:53.850] And I know it's kind of dark, but all you need to know is that it's a piece of crap. [10:55.230 --> 10:59.930] And that as soon as I received it in the mail, they had taken photos of it that made it look like it might be kind of accurate. [11:00.070 --> 11:04.370] And when I got it, it just, I mean, it looks like, to me it looks like Peter Falk in a Falcon suit. [11:06.830 --> 11:08.530] I don't know where that analogy came from. [11:10.210 --> 11:16.910] And the problem is, I saw it, I knew that it was a piece of crap, it sat on my shelf, I thought, you know, I wanted the real thing. [11:17.130 --> 11:19.730] And at that point, I didn't consider making myself one. [11:19.810 --> 11:23.030] I thought maybe I could ask a friend to sculpt it for me, and something like that. [11:23.230 --> 11:29.910] I mean, there's certainly plenty of hideous replicas on the web that people have made, but I wanted the real, real thing. [11:30.690 --> 11:31.830] I wanted this. [11:32.670 --> 11:36.350] And this is a picture that I came across in a very small thumbnail. [11:36.910 --> 11:42.750] It turns out that the original Maltese Falcon, which was made in lead, was given as a... [11:42.750 --> 11:43.510] Where do I begin? [11:43.710 --> 11:46.830] You'll remember William Conrad from the Canon series in the 70s. [11:46.910 --> 11:49.470] William Conrad actually has a much longer history with Hollywood. [11:49.470 --> 11:53.990] He was kind of a fixer, kind of a cleaner, a director, a writer, an actor. [11:54.450 --> 11:57.710] He did a lot of work helping the studios finish projects that were unruly. [11:57.790 --> 12:02.310] And as a thank you to all his service, Jack Warner gave him the Maltese Falcon. [12:02.490 --> 12:08.390] And it sat on his office shelf for about 30 years until he died, and then his wife sold it at Christie's. [12:08.510 --> 12:19.450] I managed to track down an antiquarian bookseller who was able to find me the original Christie's auction catalog and get me this picture, which gives a tremendous amount of beautiful detail of the Falcon. [12:19.590 --> 12:20.370] And this texture. [12:20.550 --> 12:23.570] I mean, I'm still mystified by this texture. [12:23.670 --> 12:30.990] This bird is cast in lead, then it was painted with black enamel for the movie, and after 40 years of people handling it, for some reason, it's gold. [12:31.350 --> 12:33.270] I don't get it, but I love it. [12:33.310 --> 12:47.670] And the patina, the other thing, one of the other areas that I'm really fascinated by within the subset of objects is the patina that tells the story of the narrative of the object. [12:47.890 --> 12:56.270] In fact, every model maker will tell you when you're working on a spaceship on Star Wars, and you're gluing two things, and then you're taking a space, and you're gluing another one. [12:56.350 --> 12:58.530] Because in Star Wars, it's actually two things, space, one thing. [12:58.630 --> 13:00.290] In Star Trek, it's three things in a row. [13:01.370 --> 13:07.690] And you're gluing these details on piece by piece, and you always have in your head the narrative of what these things are. [13:07.690 --> 13:12.510] I understand what, this is a cooling vent, this is an offshoot thing, this is something else, a thermostat. [13:12.870 --> 13:15.370] And that narrative informs the piece. [13:15.490 --> 13:17.470] It tells me that the piece is looking right. [13:17.570 --> 13:20.150] It doesn't quite look because it doesn't look like, you know, this works here. [13:20.350 --> 13:24.990] And the patina of the falcon here is completely self-similar to me to that. [13:25.710 --> 13:27.330] It is a narrative of function. [13:27.510 --> 13:29.070] It tells the story of the object. [13:32.420 --> 13:36.140] Other birds I found online that were in my obsession folder. [13:36.140 --> 13:44.520] This one is actually a resident Maltese falcon, apparently built when Humphrey Bogart got pissed off because the lead one was so friggin' heavy that he dropped it. [13:44.860 --> 13:52.640] This is a resident one found in a New Jersey flea market back about 10 or 11 years ago by a Los Angeles filmmaker who recognized it for what it was. [13:52.760 --> 14:00.100] It took him five years to authenticate it, which I thought was kind of funny because looking at it I understood it was authentic the second I saw it because of a bunch of details. [14:00.680 --> 14:03.880] And this actually sold at Profiles in History in around 1999. [14:03.880 --> 14:06.900] Profiles in History is another movie memorabilia auction site. [14:07.720 --> 14:16.500] And the best thing that Profiles in History did, if you see there, is that they not only took a photo from the front, but there were photos of both sides and the back. [14:16.640 --> 14:24.620] And so now I had all the topological details I needed to really put the whole entirety of the Maltese falcon in my head and start to make it. [14:24.720 --> 14:27.120] So I probably printed all of these photos up. [14:27.200 --> 14:29.140] I know these are lower res, but they gave me what I needed. [14:29.140 --> 14:36.680] I printed them up full size because luckily the Christie's auction catalog happened to print the exact size and dimensions of the falcon. [14:36.900 --> 14:42.680] And I began to use these with calipers and sculpting with Super Sculpey my Maltese falcon. [14:42.780 --> 14:50.100] Now, I only have one picture that I took to show to a friend of mine that I took with my eyesight camera on my laptop here. [14:50.100 --> 14:51.020] This is me. [14:51.120 --> 14:52.120] My wife's watching television. [14:53.380 --> 14:55.620] And I'm working on the falcon slowly but surely. [14:55.760 --> 15:00.380] Now, the other thing is, because this is only my second sculpture, I don't know how to make it shiny. [15:00.440 --> 15:01.840] I don't really know how to make it smooth. [15:02.000 --> 15:07.660] I definitely... it turns out that I'm pretty good at replicating a topology, but I don't know how to get all these correct textures. [15:08.400 --> 15:10.700] But I do know how to cheat the correct textures. [15:11.300 --> 15:17.340] So I threw it into a vat of rubber, let the rubber harden, pulled out the casting, made a resin casting of that. [15:17.340 --> 15:22.460] And now, when you want to smooth down a resin casting, you can use Bondo, you can use autofillers, you can use putties and everything. [15:22.560 --> 15:27.920] My preferred thing is actually about 70 coats of this, auto-primer. [15:28.980 --> 15:30.260] You just keep on spraying it. [15:30.400 --> 15:32.860] It drips like hell, but there's nothing that's easier to sand. [15:33.020 --> 15:38.640] And when you're done, you hit it with a bunch of quadruple zero steel wool, and you polish it, and I would say, oh... [15:38.640 --> 15:43.380] Yeah, so as I'm polishing this casting, you know, I'm trying to work on the light kicks. [15:43.500 --> 15:48.980] And luckily, in the movie, there's a scene when they reveal the falcon, they actually spin it on camera really close. [15:49.120 --> 15:57.120] So I did screenshots of every frame that the falcon is visible to really replicate... I'm really replicating the light kicks. [15:57.240 --> 16:06.180] I'm replicating the lighting in the room and taking a look at my piece as I'm sanding it, as I'm, you know, getting the different planes down, until I had this. [16:06.180 --> 16:09.080] And there's my Maltese falcon. [16:16.470 --> 16:18.490] Oh, we're not done by a long shot. [16:19.830 --> 16:21.050] I'm obsessive, remember? [16:21.750 --> 16:33.870] So here I have this thing, which I now realize, from the extensive amount of research that I've done, my Google foo and my arrogance tells me, this is the most accurate replica of the Maltese falcon that anybody has ever made up until now. [16:33.870 --> 16:36.270] And I'm pretty satisfied with it. [16:36.390 --> 16:37.150] It's got the shine. [16:37.310 --> 16:38.310] It's got all the light kicks. [16:39.550 --> 16:45.770] It has a lot of moxie, but it's not quite there because it's too light. [16:46.450 --> 16:48.830] The real Maltese falcon weighs 41 pounds. [16:49.310 --> 16:50.050] It's lead. [16:50.370 --> 16:52.070] I wanted one made out of lead. [16:52.350 --> 16:55.410] So I figured, let's start with bronze. [16:56.070 --> 16:57.850] I know I want it to be lead. [16:57.970 --> 16:59.170] It will eventually be lead. [16:59.250 --> 17:01.950] The whole story will end with me having a lead falcon with that patina. [17:02.090 --> 17:04.750] But in the meantime, I wanted to work with something that wasn't poisonous. [17:06.550 --> 17:08.930] So I had a wax master cast. [17:09.070 --> 17:10.530] We had gates put on it. [17:10.950 --> 17:12.130] It turned out... [17:12.130 --> 17:14.730] Anybody here familiar with the Replica Props Forum? [17:16.130 --> 17:16.970] Oh, come on. [17:17.250 --> 17:26.470] The Replica Props Forum is a group of really good geeks, of people like me collecting, trading information on and making their own props from movies that they want. [17:26.570 --> 17:28.890] Maps from Middle Earth, Stormtrooper costumes, everything. [17:29.370 --> 17:30.550] It's a level of... [17:30.550 --> 17:35.050] You wouldn't believe how much detail these guys can go into on Luke's lightsaber from Star Wars. [17:35.610 --> 17:37.090] And one of my friends... [17:37.090 --> 17:39.370] I have a bunch of friends on the RPF that I've met over the years. [17:39.530 --> 17:42.090] Actually, many that I haven't met, but only via online. [17:42.090 --> 17:43.450] We've traded stuff back and forth. [17:43.530 --> 17:46.170] And one of them managed a foundry in Northern California. [17:46.370 --> 17:55.070] And he did all this work for me, taking my wax master, actually spraying it with the plaster and prepping it, setting it up in his forge and actually pouring it in bronze. [17:55.230 --> 17:57.970] Here's the bronze master just coming out of the mold. [17:57.970 --> 18:03.550] Here it is sitting on a scale, you can see it weighs 27 and a half pounds, which is close enough. [18:03.690 --> 18:06.650] It's actually unbelievably heavy when you go to pick it up. [18:07.830 --> 18:08.970] This is it after being sandblasted. [18:09.710 --> 18:22.170] And then I took it, I polished it down, I hit it with steel wool, hit it with a bunch of polishing wheels, threw it in a bath of acid overnight to really darken down the patina, which I know isn't quite the patina, not quite the texture of the real Maltese Falcon. [18:22.170 --> 18:26.370] But again, during this interim period, I'm still wanting objects that thrill me. [18:26.470 --> 18:33.070] And so I'm still working with materials and processes that I feel are authentic to the material of the Falcon that I've got in front of me. [18:33.250 --> 18:36.390] And I don't know why these slides are in there. [18:37.250 --> 18:38.630] Oh, I see, it's doubled up. [18:38.790 --> 18:39.450] Sorry about that. [18:40.010 --> 18:41.310] And so there it is. [18:41.410 --> 18:43.590] There's my bronze Maltese Falcon. [18:44.890 --> 18:46.150] And this thing, yeah. [18:46.390 --> 18:48.530] Now, this one I'm really psyched about. [18:50.430 --> 18:54.030] It is, it is, it's hilarious when you go to pick it up. [18:54.230 --> 18:57.030] The range of people's expressions when they go to pick it up. [18:57.110 --> 18:59.370] They grab it, it's really cold and they can tell that it's heavy. [18:59.510 --> 19:02.070] And then they start to move it and they get this expression like, wow, that's heavy. [19:02.210 --> 19:03.790] And then they try to tip it to lift it. [19:03.870 --> 19:06.930] And that's when they realize that it's actually much heavier than they were prepared for. [19:08.130 --> 19:11.750] And that a good 20% of people who go near it can't even pick it up. [19:11.830 --> 19:15.310] It's like, it's just, it's heavier than anything they handle in the normal course of their daily lives. [19:16.510 --> 19:19.390] But, again, with this one, there... [19:19.390 --> 19:20.350] Oh, and here's the progression. [19:20.530 --> 19:23.490] Here's the, on the left is the piece of crap I bought on eBay. [19:23.650 --> 19:25.470] There's my Super Sculpey Falcon. [19:25.510 --> 19:26.830] There's my first interim casting. [19:27.110 --> 19:28.310] There's my polished one. [19:28.430 --> 19:29.350] And there's my bronze one. [19:29.410 --> 19:43.710] I don't know if you can see what the problem there is, but there is a big problem, which is, if you've ever casted and molded anything, especially big volumetric objects like a falcon like this, you lose a certain amount of size, between one and five percent, [19:44.010 --> 19:46.070] in each generation of casting. [19:46.290 --> 19:53.430] And so, when I held up my resin bird, my original Super Sculpey bird against the bronze bird, the bronze bird was three quarters of an inch too short at the beak. [19:53.690 --> 19:55.730] Which, of course, means I hate it. [19:59.340 --> 20:02.760] It's nothing but, it's nothing but an interim artist proof at this point. [20:03.620 --> 20:06.000] So, I figure now I have two options. [20:06.580 --> 20:16.580] I can either take the original casting of my polished black bird, have it laser scanned, have it a rapid prototype, and some sort of deposition or 3D lithography process, and then recast in bronze. [20:16.700 --> 20:24.480] Oh, by the way, I'd have it cast up ten percent too large, so that at each casting procedure, progressing from there, I'd end up with a bronze one of the correct size. [20:25.120 --> 20:27.000] And then I'd cast it finally in lead. [20:27.360 --> 20:35.260] Or, I'd contact either Dr. Gary Mulan, the dentist who bought one of the two lead falcons, or Ron Winston, the man who bought William Conrad's falcon. [20:35.320 --> 20:37.900] Ron Winston is actually the son of Harry Winston, the famous jeweler. [20:38.340 --> 20:41.280] And Ron bought William Conrad's falcon at Christie's. [20:41.600 --> 20:43.140] And I met Ron last year. [20:43.640 --> 20:48.020] I spoke at the EG conference in Los Angeles, and Ron said, you know, next time you're in New York, give me a call. [20:48.120 --> 20:48.900] I'm here in New York. [20:49.000 --> 20:50.820] Ron didn't return my call this trip. [20:51.520 --> 20:59.080] But what I'm hoping that I can convince him, or Gary Mulan to do, is let me visit the bird. [20:59.560 --> 21:02.280] I'll sign a piece of paper saying, I'm only ever going to make one. [21:02.480 --> 21:05.180] But I have a portable handheld laser scanner. [21:05.320 --> 21:06.180] It fits in a suitcase. [21:09.790 --> 21:11.770] I think you guys see where I'm going with this. [21:12.530 --> 21:13.710] Have it wrapped in prototype. [21:14.070 --> 21:15.110] Have it cast in bronze. [21:15.210 --> 21:18.910] Make it slightly too large, so that each successive process, I end up with the right hand, with the right one. [21:18.910 --> 21:21.410] And then I end up, I'm happy to give them one too. [21:22.070 --> 21:25.650] I end up with my Maltese Falcon decked out in lead. [21:25.810 --> 21:29.550] And then I can figure out exactly how to do that gold process, that patina. [21:29.770 --> 21:30.990] That'll take me another six months. [21:31.090 --> 21:32.710] Check back with me in a year, and I'll tell you how I'm doing. [21:43.910 --> 21:46.250] But you guys don't understand obsession like that, do you? [21:47.390 --> 21:47.970] All right. [21:48.290 --> 21:52.490] I am happy to take questions from the audience for the remainder of my time up here. [21:52.690 --> 21:53.410] I assume... [21:53.410 --> 21:54.670] How many people here have ever... [21:54.670 --> 21:56.230] Can we get the lights up on the crowd? [21:56.430 --> 21:59.590] How many people here have ever yelled at me at the television? [22:00.810 --> 22:01.970] Watching mid-classes. [22:02.190 --> 22:02.350] Yeah. [22:03.390 --> 22:05.590] That's the largest percentage I've ever seen. [22:07.310 --> 22:09.730] Even at engineering schools, it's not that large. [22:11.950 --> 22:13.350] Can we get the lights up on the audience? [22:13.450 --> 22:14.110] I'd love to see everybody. [22:16.770 --> 22:17.410] Yeah. [22:19.470 --> 22:20.190] What's that? [22:20.290 --> 22:21.290] They're gonna have a microphone. [22:21.430 --> 22:21.650] Okay. [22:22.410 --> 22:24.250] So apparently there's a microphone. [22:24.650 --> 22:26.330] There we go. [22:26.590 --> 22:27.210] There it is. [22:27.290 --> 22:27.470] Hey! [22:31.180 --> 22:31.820] Hi. [22:32.760 --> 22:33.400] Hello. [22:35.400 --> 22:36.040] Oh! [22:42.780 --> 22:43.420] Oh, [22:46.700 --> 22:47.560] I love technology. [22:50.460 --> 22:50.980] Okay. [22:51.280 --> 22:54.340] No one here is gonna shoot you for talking about this. [22:54.340 --> 22:54.360] Hold on. [22:54.560 --> 22:54.900] I missed it. [22:55.020 --> 22:55.300] Start again. [22:56.200 --> 22:59.160] No one here is gonna shoot you for talking about this. [22:59.320 --> 23:13.480] So, I've been curious since around 9-11, 2001, why you haven't built a scale model of the World Trade Center with all the I-beams and everything, and let's see what actually would happen. [23:13.480 --> 23:13.980] Yeah. [23:13.980 --> 23:14.280] Oh-ho! [23:14.520 --> 23:14.720] Yeah. [23:15.420 --> 23:15.540] No. [23:17.640 --> 23:18.120] It's... [23:18.120 --> 23:25.900] Uh, haven't you been curious to know if you just hit it with a plane and there was a fire all the way near the top? [23:26.300 --> 23:26.400] Yeah. [23:26.640 --> 23:28.500] If the whole thing would fall down? [23:31.040 --> 23:34.800] It's on our list, it's been on our list for a long time. [23:36.760 --> 23:43.880] And one of the problems is figuring out a scale and a budget to do it in that is possible within the confines of our show. [23:43.960 --> 23:46.400] We have to turn around a myth in seven days. [23:46.600 --> 23:53.560] And that's seven days to build a 60 foot suspension bridge, seven days to train a goldfish. [23:53.680 --> 23:55.300] One's easy, one becomes really hard. [23:55.640 --> 24:03.940] And especially when you're scaling the engineering problems, like the 60 foot suspension bridge, probably I consider one of our worst moments on the show. [24:05.640 --> 24:11.200] Engineering gets really difficult to scale materials, especially to a degree that's actually satisfying to people. [24:11.400 --> 24:21.220] And I wouldn't go near that one unless I was convinced we could do it in a way that was actually convincing to... I don't want to practice to the people that are... I don't want to preach to the choir. [24:22.120 --> 24:24.720] I'd want to do it in a reasonable scale and a reasonable size. [24:24.880 --> 24:25.620] It is on our list. [24:25.720 --> 24:27.080] It is something that we've been thinking about. [24:27.460 --> 24:29.440] It's right up there with the Dick Cheney shooting. [24:37.360 --> 24:41.620] So that actually sort of was stealing my question, but not really. [24:41.880 --> 24:51.320] Can you give an example of something that you guys get in and you say, wow, that's really cool, but it is so not for Discovery Channel. [24:53.420 --> 24:55.180] Yeah, it's funny. [24:55.360 --> 24:56.620] It's a common question. [24:56.720 --> 24:58.740] What is Discovery Channel turned down? [25:00.000 --> 25:01.380] We're often surprised. [25:01.720 --> 25:09.440] They let us do most of the racy things we wanted to do, like the Civil War soldier getting shot in the testicle and impregnating a lady. [25:10.920 --> 25:14.960] It took a couple of years for us to convince them that we could do that tastefully, but we did. [25:16.580 --> 25:20.920] Right now we're doing an idiom special and I was able to convince... [25:20.920 --> 25:24.360] In the model making industry, you're often working for art directors who are idiots. [25:26.040 --> 25:28.000] And I know it's a shocking concept. [25:28.800 --> 25:36.480] And when you're working on a model for an art director who's an idiot and the design is terrible, but you've still got to make it look good for the film, we call it turd polishing. [25:38.220 --> 25:40.100] And I thought, that's great. [25:40.460 --> 25:41.840] Let's do polishing a turd. [25:41.900 --> 25:42.500] Is that possible? [25:42.500 --> 25:47.020] So we were actually... we got all the poo in from the San Francisco Zoo just on Friday. [25:48.040 --> 25:51.080] The only restriction is that we can't say turd. [25:51.700 --> 25:56.080] For some reason, Discovery Standards and Practices requires that we say doo-doo or poo-poo. [25:57.240 --> 25:58.120] Which is fine. [25:58.280 --> 25:59.120] It's funnier. [26:00.780 --> 26:08.860] The ones that Discovery ends up turning down, that turn out not to be Discovery, are the ones which they have a hard time seeing how we could do in an interesting way. [26:10.380 --> 26:16.040] I've been wanting to do Monster Cable versus Coat Hanger for years. [26:16.840 --> 26:18.400] And they think that's really boring. [26:19.120 --> 26:20.500] Green around the CDs. [26:20.880 --> 26:25.540] The entropy reducing boxes that you plug in that make your stereo sound better. [26:25.680 --> 26:26.420] All of that crap. [26:26.520 --> 26:30.640] I have a whole high fidelity hour that I've written that Discovery keeps on saying this. [26:30.820 --> 26:31.620] Nah, it's not visual. [26:31.740 --> 26:32.540] It's too boring. [26:33.680 --> 26:36.420] We have a whole episode called The Surreal Gourmet. [26:36.860 --> 26:39.200] Which actually Discovery stole the finale from. [26:40.200 --> 26:41.320] For our own show. [26:41.840 --> 26:45.960] But The Surreal Gourmet was all the different ways to cook food in non-standard ways. [26:46.140 --> 26:47.500] Poaching fish in your dishwasher. [26:47.680 --> 26:49.080] Cooking eggs on your catalytic converter. [26:50.320 --> 26:53.260] Various ways to safely cook and eat roadkill. [26:53.740 --> 26:56.000] Finishing off with tenderizing meat with dynamite. [26:56.100 --> 26:59.720] And when Discovery saw that, we actually tenderized meat with dynamite late last year. [26:59.720 --> 27:02.000] That will air this fall if it hasn't already. [27:02.680 --> 27:04.020] Has tenderizing meat with dynamite aired yet? [27:04.320 --> 27:04.700] No. [27:04.980 --> 27:05.260] Okay, no. [27:05.880 --> 27:06.200] Let's see. [27:06.580 --> 27:06.840] Oops. [27:07.820 --> 27:11.140] They've been saving a ton of our episodes to air starting next week. [27:11.240 --> 27:12.900] The Shark Week airs next week. [27:13.340 --> 27:17.200] And then it's like three and a half months of brand new MythBusters episodes all in a row. [27:18.860 --> 27:19.340] Yeah. [27:19.840 --> 27:21.440] Starting out with busting the... [27:22.420 --> 27:25.320] Taking on the myth that the NASA moon landing was a hoax. [27:27.740 --> 27:33.800] Besides the Dick Cheney shooting, which was the only time I was told no and please don't make that suggestion again. [27:36.260 --> 27:38.440] Discovery has stayed away from things to do. [27:38.580 --> 27:40.340] We did jumping on a grenade. [27:41.020 --> 27:43.740] Which, if you saw it, is a terrible, terrible episode. [27:44.000 --> 27:48.300] Because they turned it into a Hollywood movie myth that people jump on grenades. [27:48.980 --> 27:52.960] And the progression was is that we did a myth about jumping on grenades. [27:53.160 --> 27:54.760] We did it beautifully, succinctly. [27:54.840 --> 27:56.080] We put bodies on them. [27:56.140 --> 27:56.900] We put helmets on them. [27:56.960 --> 27:57.420] We put armor. [27:57.540 --> 27:58.680] We put them in refrigerators. [27:58.780 --> 28:02.880] And we had all these cutouts and plywood at various distances from the kill zone. [28:03.000 --> 28:05.960] We proved exactly the kill zone of a grenade is exactly what we thought it was. [28:06.820 --> 28:11.400] Except our cutouts were all World War I soldiers with that World War I helmet. [28:11.400 --> 28:17.700] And it was going to air the day after the 2004 election. [28:18.400 --> 28:27.380] And Discovery felt that because of the Iraq War that it would put them in way too politicized a position for us to be talking about soldiers dying. [28:27.740 --> 28:32.960] And they said it would be disrespectful to the soldiers, which I thought was the most asinine thing I've ever heard in my life. [28:33.220 --> 28:35.640] And we fought, and we fought, and we fought bitterly with them. [28:35.720 --> 28:38.220] There was actually a lot of really angry emails going back and forth. [28:38.220 --> 28:40.620] But Jamie's the one that sends the really angry emails to Discovery. [28:41.980 --> 28:43.280] We take the... [28:43.280 --> 28:48.640] I don't know if anyone read Steve Martin's biography, but John Belushi had this great thing that he told Steve Martin when he first showed up at Saturday Night Live. [28:48.700 --> 28:50.940] He said, I only yell at the executives, never the staff. [28:51.420 --> 28:52.340] And Jamie and I do the same thing. [28:52.400 --> 28:53.720] We do a lot of yelling at the executives. [28:54.820 --> 28:58.480] And in the end, they recut it as a Hollywood myth. [28:58.640 --> 28:59.440] And what did we get? [28:59.520 --> 29:04.060] We got tons of excoriating emails from soldiers saying we disrespected them. [29:05.480 --> 29:09.520] And I mean, we forwarded those right off to Discovery and said, you know... [29:12.520 --> 29:13.640] Thank you very much. [29:14.760 --> 29:20.640] Since I'm standing here, I have to say, as a microbiologist, please revisit food on the floor for five seconds. [29:20.980 --> 29:21.360] Really? [29:21.700 --> 29:26.060] Yeah, too numerous to count is like measuring 480 with 120 volt meter. [29:27.160 --> 29:27.280] Okay. [29:28.040 --> 29:30.360] But I don't think we'd come up with any different results. [29:31.020 --> 29:32.740] I don't think... [29:33.260 --> 29:34.280] Here's the thing. [29:34.400 --> 29:37.300] I don't think you would either, but I have a way to test it. [29:37.420 --> 29:37.640] Okay. [29:37.880 --> 29:42.700] The thing is that we will absolutely revisit when we think we screwed up the results. [29:43.400 --> 29:44.040] It's funny. [29:44.140 --> 29:45.280] We'll revisit when we screwed up... [29:45.280 --> 29:47.040] We won't stand by our results. [29:49.440 --> 29:50.080] We don't. [29:50.160 --> 29:53.300] I mean, you can't with a data set of one and two and five. [29:53.500 --> 29:55.300] But we do stand by our methodologies. [29:55.420 --> 29:57.920] And I agree, some of the methodologies get problematic. [29:57.920 --> 30:00.640] But if we're going to come to the same conclusion, there's not... [30:00.640 --> 30:02.640] There's just not enough meat to do a revisit for it. [30:03.280 --> 30:04.320] Even though I love... [30:04.320 --> 30:05.780] Five second rules are my all-time favorites. [30:06.180 --> 30:09.700] My kids now, they drop candy on the floor and I look at them and they're like, okay. [30:13.930 --> 30:14.650] Next question. [30:15.370 --> 30:18.850] Gotta say first, thank you for making your small models in movies. [30:19.210 --> 30:25.210] I have to say, I have always enjoyed watching small models in movies for miniatures because it just looks a lot more realistic to me. [30:25.750 --> 30:32.250] CGI, no matter how good it gets, just does not get that realistic grit you get from actual photons hitting an actual object. [30:38.090 --> 30:43.790] And second for the Maltese Falcon, as a comic book reference, maybe you want to put a stamp saying, made in the savage land. [30:45.530 --> 30:46.250] On the bottom. [30:50.470 --> 30:55.870] And last, I was wondering, do you guys plan on ever doing any episodes about debunking crackpots ideas? [30:56.070 --> 30:59.590] Maybe like the grizzly suit or heating yourself with microwaves? [30:59.750 --> 31:02.690] Like, not to say Tesla was a crackpot, but he was a little bit... [31:02.690 --> 31:03.210] Yeah. [31:05.050 --> 31:10.450] I was at the EG conference and somebody came up to me and said, are you familiar with the... [31:10.450 --> 31:12.310] Actually, he didn't sound crazy when he walked up. [31:13.530 --> 31:17.550] He said, are you familiar with the work of Nikolai Tesla? [31:17.550 --> 31:26.250] And this phrase flashed through my brain and I almost said, do you mean Nikolai Tesla, the genius that invented AC power or Nikolai Tesla, the total nut job? [31:27.790 --> 31:33.730] Because there are two, and there's two kinds of people who love Tesla that are going to come up and talk to you and the total nut jobs. [31:33.950 --> 31:34.030] Yeah. [31:34.450 --> 31:38.830] The problem with the crackpot ideas is often it's so difficult. [31:39.030 --> 31:41.770] It's very close to Bigfoot in crop circles. [31:42.390 --> 31:47.650] It's very close to, you're going to end up trying to prove a negative, which is just bad territory to be in scientifically. [31:49.090 --> 31:51.470] And we learned this when we started doing free energy. [31:51.850 --> 32:02.710] We put our researchers on over unity and came up with a research file that was like two feet thick inside of about three weeks. [32:02.950 --> 32:05.170] And we had no idea where to even begin. [32:05.310 --> 32:08.570] And then our producer came up with the great idea of, look, what we can do is... [32:09.060 --> 32:12.190] All we can do is start with what people claim is going to work. [32:12.330 --> 32:13.370] And we bought kits. [32:13.370 --> 32:15.250] We bought kits that people said were going to work. [32:15.410 --> 32:16.390] And then we built those. [32:16.610 --> 32:26.650] And while I'm not extremely satisfied with what we did on free energy, that's about as close as you can get to that kind of stuff to try and show somebody's guaranteeing you a positive. [32:26.870 --> 32:30.630] You can show that it doesn't work because you've done the best faith effort to make it work. [32:31.270 --> 32:33.910] With the crackpot stuff, it gets a lot more difficult. [32:34.170 --> 32:34.350] Okay. [32:34.510 --> 32:35.090] Thank you very much. [32:35.170 --> 32:35.290] Sure. [32:38.050 --> 32:49.430] And by the way, with the CG versus models, while I totally agree, do remember that there's a whole bunch of people out there who spent, you know, 25 years building models and you're seeing the results of all their work. [32:49.530 --> 32:53.430] Whereas the whole CG industry isn't 25 years old yet. [32:53.650 --> 33:07.310] And I really do see, because I have a lot of friends at Industrial Light & Magic that moved from models into building virtual models, that the quality of model making that's coming out in the virtual world is increasing rapidly as people get past the learning curve. [33:07.490 --> 33:19.770] And, I mean, of course, we all know that the rubber, where the rubber is going to meet the road in the next 10 years, both in CG and in rapid prototyping, is in the interface, is in people's ability to really feel like they're interfacing with the virtual object. [33:19.950 --> 33:22.350] And when that gets solved, I think it's actually going to get a lot better. [33:22.630 --> 33:22.910] Thank you. [33:24.110 --> 33:24.470] Hi. [33:24.470 --> 33:26.870] Uh, first about, uh, your bronze falcon. [33:27.030 --> 33:30.910] I know it's pretty horrible, but I'd be willing to take it away from you so you don't have to look at it. [33:31.130 --> 33:38.890] Uh, and then also, I'm an industrial design student, do a lot of model making, uh, everything by hand essentially. [33:39.050 --> 33:46.990] But I have a lot of friends who are interested in making that transition from industrial design into special effects, and wondering how you suggest getting started in that. [33:47.510 --> 33:57.450] Um, yeah, I, uh, I got into special effects in, uh, uh, Jamie Hyneman actually on MythBusters hired me in 2004 to work in commercials. [33:57.790 --> 34:01.010] And I worked for him and for a couple toy companies for about five years. [34:01.270 --> 34:04.690] And I got into industrial light and magic just at the tail end of episode one. [34:04.890 --> 34:09.770] And I have to say, at this point, it's an era whose time has almost passed. [34:10.610 --> 34:11.950] It's a real sad thing. [34:12.130 --> 34:16.190] But model making, uh, a lot of my friends at, uh, you know that, uh, you might not know. [34:16.310 --> 34:18.530] Industrial Light Magic shut down their model shop last year. [34:19.150 --> 34:24.550] Um, they sold it to one of the old, uh, one of the old ILM employees who used to run the model shop, Mark Anderson. [34:24.730 --> 34:25.990] And now it's called Kerner Optical. [34:26.090 --> 34:27.150] It's a whole bunch of my friends. [34:27.530 --> 34:29.910] They are, uh, they have a sweetheart deal with ILM. [34:30.030 --> 34:31.210] They've got some great office space. [34:31.310 --> 34:32.170] They bought all the tools. [34:32.350 --> 34:33.910] They bought the laser cutters and all of that. [34:33.910 --> 34:38.790] Um, but it's, it's much more catch-as-catch can work. [34:39.010 --> 34:45.150] And, uh, you know that original place, ILM, which, you know, they would give us so much money to build the models and so much time. [34:45.610 --> 34:48.470] Uh, I had friends that went from ILM down to L.A. [34:48.750 --> 34:51.630] And they'd say, in L.A., they'd say, you got three weeks to build this model. [34:51.750 --> 34:52.750] And they'd work for it. [34:52.830 --> 34:54.610] And after two weeks, the guys would go, oh, that's good enough. [34:54.670 --> 34:55.090] We'll shoot that. [34:55.970 --> 34:57.490] And they wouldn't get a chance to finish it. [34:57.970 --> 35:00.270] Because the quality, they didn't want that amount of quality. [35:00.270 --> 35:06.090] And so, that, that whole era, uh, it's a, it's a wedding workshop. [35:06.330 --> 35:08.170] That's the last place I think it is right now. [35:08.370 --> 35:09.250] It's down in New Zealand. [35:09.690 --> 35:09.870] Okay. [35:10.030 --> 35:10.370] Thank you. [35:12.670 --> 35:15.070] Uh, sorry, let me do one more finish to that question. [35:15.230 --> 35:24.470] I will say that all the special effects artisans that I worked with, either whether they were in pyro or CG or actual practical model making, were real polymaths. [35:24.730 --> 35:27.630] And this is absolutely a word that applies to a crowd like this. [35:27.630 --> 35:31.650] Because there's the aesthetic that once you learn about one thing, you want to learn about more things. [35:31.770 --> 35:40.530] And I know you guys, more than almost any other crowd I've probably ever spoken to, is a group of people who wants to learn a little bit about absolutely f*cking everything you can. [35:41.330 --> 35:41.690] Yeah. [35:46.420 --> 35:50.960] And, as a collector of skills and a master of not a single one of them. [35:51.800 --> 35:55.520] Um, there, you know, there, no one knows the full phrase. [35:55.640 --> 35:57.400] Jack of all trades, master of none. [35:57.660 --> 36:01.220] The finish of that phrase is, though often better than a master of one. [36:04.300 --> 36:10.260] And so, the best special effects technicians that I've ever worked with, they are always the ones who understand the big picture. [36:10.380 --> 36:12.480] Where their model fits in, how it all goes together. [36:12.680 --> 36:15.000] And, uh, that will make you... [36:15.000 --> 36:21.040] The moment I see someone around me who understands the big picture, even if they don't know how to build stuff, I know that I can teach them anything. [36:22.400 --> 36:22.460] Yeah. [36:23.160 --> 36:25.960] Uh, two quick things, because I don't want to waste people's time. [36:25.960 --> 36:26.900] Oh, come on closer to the mic. [36:27.020 --> 36:27.640] I'm hard of hearing. [36:27.760 --> 36:33.240] Uh, first of all, I just want to say that, once again, it's a very, very great honor for you to be here at HOPE. [36:33.640 --> 36:41.720] Uh, because you're going out there and being so passionate about something, even though you don't know how to do it, that you're willing to learn skills that you don't even know that you had before. [36:41.800 --> 36:45.120] And not only getting the final result, but that final result ends up being your own. [36:45.120 --> 36:47.540] I think that is the true essence of the hacker spirit. [36:47.760 --> 36:49.800] So, in my turn, you are the hacker spirit. [36:49.960 --> 36:51.340] It's a great honor for you to be here. [36:51.560 --> 36:52.460] So, thank you. [36:57.400 --> 37:02.020] And, my second quick thing is that there was originally supposed to be two people in this, uh, line. [37:02.240 --> 37:05.400] My best friend Alex, who's probably one of the biggest fans of your show. [37:05.780 --> 37:09.140] Uh, he couldn't afford to make it, and he's also paralyzed from the waist down. [37:09.340 --> 37:10.740] So, it would be really hard to wheel him here. [37:10.740 --> 37:14.760] And he was really upset that he couldn't come and see this talk, but I'm buying for him later. [37:14.760 --> 37:22.320] And I just want to say that if you just say on, on this talk that his name is Alex Robey, that Alex Robey, you rock. [37:22.540 --> 37:23.980] You would die happy. [37:24.240 --> 37:25.560] Wait, say his name again slowly. [37:25.760 --> 37:26.760] Alex Robey. [37:27.000 --> 37:27.700] Alex Rogan? [37:27.860 --> 37:28.040] Yep. [37:28.460 --> 37:29.600] Alex Rogan, you rock. [37:29.620 --> 37:30.160] No, Rogan. [37:30.300 --> 37:30.460] Wait. [37:30.780 --> 37:31.660] Alex Robey. [37:32.080 --> 37:32.520] Robey. [37:32.900 --> 37:33.340] Robey. [37:34.220 --> 37:34.340] Yeah. [37:34.660 --> 37:34.880] Okay. [37:35.200 --> 37:35.440] Sorry. [37:35.640 --> 37:37.100] Alex Robey, you rock. [37:37.400 --> 37:38.080] Thank you, sir. [37:39.300 --> 37:40.200] That was easy. [37:47.990 --> 37:58.170] Hey, from the, from the first day your show aired, I was struck by the fact that you guys have succeeded in making science exciting, not just for adults. [37:58.430 --> 38:03.310] You know, when we were in school, some of us, it wasn't cool to love science. [38:03.790 --> 38:05.110] Uh, you made it really cool. [38:06.410 --> 38:15.670] And, one of the things that you do at the beginning and in the middle of your shows is you warn the viewers, you know, please don't try this at home. [38:15.850 --> 38:16.370] Give us a break. [38:17.610 --> 38:28.870] And, I'd like to suggest that you consider as, you know, a little piece in every show where you give young people, uh, something that they can do that's safe. [38:28.870 --> 38:37.270] Uh, because they really shouldn't be doing stuff that, you know, in the rest of the show, but maybe a little something that they can do to test. [38:37.830 --> 38:47.030] Um, the second thing I'd like to, to do is to say, if you're ever in Washington, D.C., uh, say, visiting the headquarters for Discovery in Silver Spring. [38:47.550 --> 38:47.950] Um... [38:47.950 --> 38:49.210] The mothership, as we call it. [38:49.370 --> 38:49.610] Yes. [38:50.770 --> 38:52.610] We'd love you to come down to Hack D.C. [38:52.630 --> 38:54.030] and let us help you blow stuff up. [38:54.270 --> 38:54.670] Okay. [39:01.480 --> 39:04.780] I'll say this about coming up with things that kids can try at home. [39:05.040 --> 39:07.920] Um, it's, it's... [39:08.520 --> 39:14.460] If we had started out wanting to do a show that inspired kids, we would have never succeeded. [39:15.440 --> 39:27.040] Uh, the fact is, I think that one of the things that gets people involved is that a lot of what we're doing is dangerous and shouldn't be tried unless there's EMTs standing by and the FBI bomb squad. [39:28.560 --> 39:29.000] Um... [39:29.000 --> 39:30.840] But there is something that we are... [39:30.840 --> 39:31.340] that we're... [39:32.360 --> 39:36.020] I mean, it almost sounds like a trope to trot out, but it really is true. [39:36.080 --> 39:40.460] When I say we stand by our methodology, I really mean that Jamie and I are... [39:41.200 --> 39:45.140] act along with Dan Tapstar, executive producer in Australia, and our director, Alice Dallow. [39:45.240 --> 39:51.900] The four of us, um, as a quartet, really shape the stories from the beginning and all the way through to the end. [39:51.980 --> 39:54.400] We really shape the stories about how the narrative gets told. [39:54.400 --> 39:59.160] And that methodology of critical thinking is the thing that we're hoping to imbue. [39:59.280 --> 40:05.840] And every step we take, we make sure it fits into the previous step as best we can that tells a story of discovery. [40:06.000 --> 40:16.460] Even if we think we understand what's going to happen, we start with the simplest possible explanation and work up to the complex explanation because that story is something we want to imbue the viewers with. [40:16.620 --> 40:18.560] We're tricking people into watching... [40:18.560 --> 40:21.620] We're tricking people into thinking scientifically by blowing shit up. [40:22.740 --> 40:24.160] I mean, and that is... [40:24.160 --> 40:28.520] Nobody's ever... nobody's emailed us to thank us for our groundbreaking work in urban legend research. [40:28.660 --> 40:29.720] Nobody cares about that. [40:30.260 --> 40:30.700] Really. [40:30.800 --> 40:31.520] Everyone understands. [40:31.520 --> 40:36.560] It's a tacit understanding, if you really think about it, that this is just a scarecrow on which to hang... [40:37.120 --> 40:39.740] hang a show about science and about actually exploring. [40:40.340 --> 40:41.660] And that's... that's... [40:41.660 --> 40:43.860] that's something we take really seriously every time. [40:43.860 --> 40:46.200] And when we try and think about... [40:46.200 --> 40:49.120] We get asked a lot about experiments you could do that kids could do. [40:49.320 --> 40:51.460] And unfortunately, so many of them are so... [40:51.860 --> 40:53.980] Often get really boring like Mentos and soda. [40:54.920 --> 40:56.660] I'm really bored of Mentos and soda. [40:58.000 --> 40:59.000] And others are... [40:59.440 --> 41:01.360] Nobody will allow you to do in schools anymore. [41:01.540 --> 41:05.660] I mean, Mr. Wizard was able to like take hydrogen and Pringles and blow shit up in the classroom. [41:06.100 --> 41:07.420] Nobody's allowed to do that anymore. [41:07.800 --> 41:09.920] So that's actually really... it's a tall order to fill. [41:09.920 --> 41:12.140] And I don't think we'll be trying to fill it anytime soon. [41:12.360 --> 41:13.740] Because it's... [41:14.200 --> 41:15.920] Again, we're not trying to appeal to kids. [41:16.060 --> 41:18.540] That's just a wonderful, wonderful side benefit. [41:18.700 --> 41:21.640] That we figure as long as we go along the way we are, that'll keep on happening. [41:23.940 --> 41:28.060] Well, on that note, when I was in high school, I did get to light the chalkboard on fire. [41:28.100 --> 41:29.140] And that was a lot of fun. [41:30.740 --> 41:39.220] What I wanted to say was, ever since I saw the first episode of your show, I've been telling people that my dream job would be to work for MythBusters. [41:39.220 --> 41:41.760] What could I possibly do to make that happen? [41:42.580 --> 41:43.660] Oh, yeah. [41:45.260 --> 41:46.980] We've never gotten that request before. [41:50.260 --> 41:51.840] At this point, we are... [41:51.840 --> 41:54.760] The turnover on the crew is extremely small. [41:55.660 --> 41:56.700] As you can expect. [41:57.180 --> 42:00.680] And if opportunities do come up, they'll usually make a big deal of them. [42:00.760 --> 42:04.240] And they'll show up on the Discovery message boards or on the MythBusters fan club boards. [42:04.700 --> 42:06.880] And we'll do some kind of show about that. [42:07.160 --> 42:08.920] Besides that, there's nothing I can tell you. [42:08.920 --> 42:08.940] Yeah. [42:09.360 --> 42:09.800] Thanks. [42:13.610 --> 42:14.370] Hey, Adam. [42:15.170 --> 42:16.530] I'm kind of starstruck here. [42:16.570 --> 42:16.870] I'm sorry. [42:16.870 --> 42:18.030] I enjoy your show. [42:18.250 --> 42:18.750] I love it. [42:18.830 --> 42:19.690] Closer to the microphone, please. [42:19.730 --> 42:20.050] I'm sorry. [42:20.130 --> 42:21.250] I'm kind of starstruck here. [42:21.410 --> 42:22.630] I love your show. [42:22.630 --> 42:24.570] And I love your motto. [42:24.770 --> 42:28.630] And I often use it at the school I work at. [42:29.230 --> 42:29.630] So... [42:32.250 --> 42:35.830] Have you ever thought of doing some of these video game... [42:35.830 --> 42:36.310] I don't... [42:36.310 --> 42:37.750] They're not really missed, but... [42:37.750 --> 42:38.210] Oh, yeah. [42:38.410 --> 42:44.610] The stuff they do in the video games, like Team Fortress 2, one of the guys can do a rocket jump. [42:45.070 --> 42:48.230] Pointing the rocket at the floor and, you know, jump up. [42:48.350 --> 42:50.790] You know, poor Buster's been through so much, but... [42:50.790 --> 42:51.270] That's... [42:51.270 --> 42:52.430] Actually, that hadn't occurred to us. [42:52.470 --> 42:53.030] That's a good one. [42:54.610 --> 42:55.210] Um... [42:55.210 --> 42:58.090] We have one on our list for a long time that's... [42:58.090 --> 43:00.930] That's just location-dependent called Nintendo vs. Pro. [43:01.750 --> 43:04.490] In which we take, um... [43:04.490 --> 43:10.150] A teenager who's just gotten his driver's license, but is really good at a specific driving game. [43:12.710 --> 43:18.410] And putting him on the Sears Point Raceway track in the car he's good at driving on the... [43:18.910 --> 43:19.650] In the game. [43:19.850 --> 43:22.950] Because I know that the physics simulators on them are fantastic now. [43:23.510 --> 43:23.910] Um... [43:23.910 --> 43:28.390] And seeing how well he does against another teenager of a similar skill level who's also just gotten his. [43:28.570 --> 43:32.210] And see if the video game actually teaches you better driving. [43:32.370 --> 43:34.010] And race him off against a real race driver. [43:34.130 --> 43:34.770] Race car driver. [43:35.210 --> 43:35.610] That's... [43:35.610 --> 43:35.990] That's... [43:35.990 --> 43:36.550] That's... [43:36.550 --> 43:37.510] We haven't done that yet. [43:37.690 --> 43:38.050] It's just... [43:38.050 --> 43:38.970] It's been on the list forever. [43:39.110 --> 43:40.790] We know it's a nice, quick three-day story. [43:40.910 --> 43:43.450] The problem is it takes renting the track, which is just... [43:43.450 --> 43:45.270] It's expensive, and it just hasn't happened yet. [43:45.350 --> 43:45.670] But it will. [43:46.290 --> 43:48.430] I'd also like to thank you for coming. [43:48.590 --> 43:50.890] It's gonna make me even cooler at my school next year. [43:50.890 --> 43:51.670] I missed that. [43:51.670 --> 43:54.210] I said I'd also like to thank you for coming. [43:54.390 --> 43:55.150] It's just... [43:55.150 --> 43:55.990] I'm one of the... [43:55.990 --> 43:57.930] The kids call me one of the kids. [43:58.070 --> 43:59.230] They don't consider me a teacher. [43:59.370 --> 44:00.730] And now you're just gonna make me even cooler. [44:04.790 --> 44:05.390] Thank you. [44:07.630 --> 44:08.410] Hey, Adam. [44:09.470 --> 44:10.270] First quick question. [44:10.450 --> 44:13.110] What is your weekly budget for fire extinguishers on the show? [44:15.910 --> 44:17.030] Well, it's... [44:17.030 --> 44:22.610] You know, the fire extinguisher problem is an ongoing one, because it's so much fun to fire those CO2 fire extinguishers. [44:24.130 --> 44:27.130] And Jamie's always getting really pissed off about it. [44:27.930 --> 44:28.630] Where... [44:28.630 --> 44:29.370] Where's the... [44:29.370 --> 44:30.010] Where's the... [44:30.010 --> 44:32.030] Where's the goddamn fire extinguisher that was here? [44:32.690 --> 44:33.170] This... [44:33.170 --> 44:33.970] Can somebody... [44:33.970 --> 44:35.570] Can somebody please get the... [44:35.570 --> 44:36.530] God damn it... [44:36.530 --> 44:37.130] It was... [44:37.890 --> 44:38.570] Constant. [44:38.750 --> 44:39.130] Ongoing. [44:39.330 --> 44:39.490] Okay. [44:40.090 --> 44:41.350] A few questions back. [44:43.520 --> 44:44.080] Awww. [44:51.700 --> 44:57.900] Earlier you were talking about, you know, nobody's mentioning your ground-breaking work in urban legends and that. [44:58.100 --> 45:08.180] And I think there is a certain level of consumer, you know, consumer advocacy and, you know, testing things for yourself, not assuming that the manufacturer is correct. [45:08.860 --> 45:11.860] The one I wish you would revisit more is RFID. [45:12.300 --> 45:15.380] Now, I know that... Does Kerry still have the RFID tag in her arm? [45:15.780 --> 45:17.260] Dude, the RFID thing. [45:17.680 --> 45:19.060] Why did you not... [45:19.820 --> 45:20.540] I'm sorry. [45:20.740 --> 45:23.180] I'm not... It's just not going to happen. [45:24.920 --> 45:27.520] I discovered... Here's what happened. [45:27.800 --> 45:30.820] I'm not sure how much of the story I'm allowed to tell, but I'll tell you what I know. [45:36.420 --> 45:46.140] We were going to do RFID, and on several levels, you know, how hackable, how reliable, how trackable, et cetera, et cetera. [45:46.880 --> 45:47.680] And we... [45:47.680 --> 46:02.540] One of our researchers called up Texas Instruments, and they arranged a conference call between, I think, Tory and the head producer over there for the other team, Linda Wolkovich, and one of the technicians at Texas Instruments. [46:02.680 --> 46:05.400] This was... They were supposed to have a conference call to talk about the technology. [46:05.620 --> 46:06.960] I'm like, Tuesday at 10 a.m. [46:07.380 --> 46:11.360] And Tuesday at 10 a.m., Linda and Tory get on the phone, and they... [46:12.060 --> 46:22.800] Texas Instruments comes on, along with Chief Legal Counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else. [46:23.000 --> 46:23.800] I mean... [46:23.800 --> 46:26.700] And I got chills just as I described it. [46:26.760 --> 46:29.280] They were way, way outgunned. [46:29.460 --> 46:38.520] And they absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was. [46:38.680 --> 46:43.920] And Discovery backed way down, being a large corporation who depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. [46:44.820 --> 46:46.960] And now, it's on Discovery's radar. [46:47.100 --> 46:48.100] They won't let us go near it. [46:48.140 --> 46:49.160] So, I'm sorry. [46:49.460 --> 46:49.600] No. [46:50.000 --> 46:50.580] We are... [46:50.580 --> 46:52.100] It's just one of those things. [46:52.280 --> 46:53.680] But, man, that was a really... [46:53.680 --> 46:56.880] Tory still gets a little white when he describes that phone conversation. [46:58.080 --> 47:04.280] Well, you do have about 3,000 people in the room who aren't under such legal arrangements with producers, so... [47:04.280 --> 47:05.480] So nice! [47:11.100 --> 47:12.060] Okay, well... [47:12.060 --> 47:12.180] Hi. [47:12.210 --> 47:13.880] It's great to have you here. [47:14.250 --> 47:14.480] Thank you. [47:14.750 --> 47:18.420] And I've been a fan since the first episode, so it's wonderful. [47:20.000 --> 47:20.440] I... [47:20.440 --> 47:29.420] Since you mentioned earlier about all the food tests that you were interested in doing and that Discovery wasn't interested, how do you feel about the fact that on the... [47:29.420 --> 47:31.860] I'm also a foodie besides MythBusters. [47:31.860 --> 47:39.900] On the Food Network, they're actually starting something similar to a MythBusters show starring Ted Allen. [47:40.160 --> 47:40.480] Yeah. [47:40.620 --> 47:41.770] And how do you feel about that? [47:41.900 --> 47:42.380] I love it. [47:42.620 --> 47:43.020] Really? [47:43.250 --> 47:43.660] Absolutely. [47:43.660 --> 47:44.330] I love it. [47:44.480 --> 47:44.920] I mean... [47:46.210 --> 47:56.000] Of course, it's incumbent upon the other networks, Food Network and TruTV, to try and replicate the success of MythBusters. [47:56.560 --> 48:01.200] It's still one of the top-rating shows on cable television right now when it airs new episodes. [48:02.400 --> 48:04.580] You've got Smash Labs on Discovery Channel. [48:04.790 --> 48:05.250] You've got... [48:05.860 --> 48:06.730] Yeah, I know. [48:06.900 --> 48:07.100] I know. [48:07.200 --> 48:07.480] Yeah. [48:07.900 --> 48:08.730] You've got... [48:09.820 --> 48:13.140] You've got Sports Science on ESPN, which is actually pretty good. [48:13.520 --> 48:14.540] You've got... [48:14.540 --> 48:17.810] There's a time-lapse show on Discovery. [48:18.060 --> 48:19.270] It's all time-lapse photography. [48:19.420 --> 48:21.140] That's all absolutely off of what we've done. [48:21.640 --> 48:32.160] We actually were prohibited from doing a finale of an episode recently because Discovery has a whole show based on this, which I can't tell you the idea because they're still in development. [48:32.400 --> 48:39.860] But tons of things that we're doing are being pulled out and put together as shows about figuring out the science behind something and taking a close look at it. [48:40.000 --> 48:54.700] And as much as I love being at the top of the heap and MythBusters still riding on the crest of this wave, if there are more shows out there that lend people to do critical thinking and break something down and think about it like that, that's fantastic. [48:55.160 --> 48:59.210] I'd be happy to watch us lose to another show that did it better. [48:59.940 --> 49:03.680] I know that we don't do it as well as we could every single time, although we try. [49:04.290 --> 49:07.540] And I know that a lot of the attempts out there are crappy as hell. [49:08.290 --> 49:13.900] But the fact that other people are trying to replicate our success by making science shows is absolutely not a bad thing. [49:21.020 --> 49:35.860] And as a quick follow-up from a New York point of view as a possible science suggestion, I happen to be at home right now cutting up unglazed ceramic tile to put in my oven to make a better pizza. [49:37.380 --> 49:41.360] And there's always, obviously, commercial pizza stone. [49:41.540 --> 50:02.180] And I was wondering if you ever thought about testing commercial stones versus, you know, this kind of, you know, unglazed, which is better, how to make a better oven, better, you know, better pizza, in particular, a Neapolitan pizza from a New York kind of pizza and getting a better crust. [50:02.180 --> 50:04.240] And this is a New York issue. [50:05.300 --> 50:08.960] You know, because we're all into having this good thin crust pizza. [50:09.020 --> 50:11.700] Because if you nailed it, then you could put original rays right on the oven. [50:11.820 --> 50:12.120] Yeah. [50:12.740 --> 50:14.300] Yeah, this is a New York thing. [50:14.460 --> 50:19.220] And, of course, you always have the chance of getting the oven hot enough, you get to blow up or melt down your oven. [50:20.940 --> 50:22.520] You know, there's a show on the Food Network. [50:24.220 --> 50:25.860] Yeah, but they won't go that far. [50:27.040 --> 50:31.180] The product testing stuff is, it's territory which we've drifted into before. [50:31.180 --> 50:36.860] We did, we have had one episode completely quashed by advertising concerns. [50:37.020 --> 50:39.560] And that was, we did a whole episode on teeth whiteners. [50:41.320 --> 50:43.280] And we proved that they didn't do squat. [50:43.640 --> 50:45.980] The commercial ones, not the... [50:45.980 --> 50:49.180] We compared them to the process that your dentist does, which actually does do something. [50:49.680 --> 50:52.860] And we showed that none of them matched up to the claims they made on the boxes. [50:52.860 --> 50:56.480] And it spent six months with the Discovery lawyers. [50:56.720 --> 51:08.580] And they had way too many Colgate and all those guys say, even though we didn't name any of the products, they wouldn't, the Discovery, put that episode on the vault and they won't let us show it. [51:08.780 --> 51:12.000] So that kind of stuff, the comparing the commercial product to something we could do. [51:12.480 --> 51:17.360] We have to do that in a very circumspect and kind of roundabout fashion when we do do it, to make sure the episode's there. [51:18.700 --> 51:18.820] Okay. [51:19.140 --> 51:19.480] Thank you. [51:19.600 --> 51:19.720] Sure. [51:22.440 --> 51:23.540] Quick and lowbrow. [51:23.760 --> 51:24.660] Favorite explosion. [51:25.160 --> 51:26.220] My favorite explosion? [51:26.460 --> 51:26.700] Yeah. [51:27.220 --> 51:27.620] No question. [51:27.760 --> 51:28.300] Hot water heater. [51:32.080 --> 51:32.720] Here, wait. [51:34.220 --> 51:35.940] Oh, no, I don't think... I don't have... wait. [51:37.260 --> 51:38.840] I have something for you here. [51:39.160 --> 51:39.680] Wait a second. [51:40.180 --> 51:41.620] You guys want to see... [51:42.240 --> 51:43.100] I know you do. [51:44.420 --> 51:45.160] Here's a... [51:45.160 --> 51:45.500] Okay. [51:45.700 --> 51:47.540] I'll give you a... [51:51.400 --> 51:51.800] Okay. [51:53.620 --> 51:56.180] Yeah, so you can see what some of my... [51:57.520 --> 51:58.320] We just... [51:58.320 --> 52:00.660] Yeah, well, so I, you know, I haven't seen it yet. [52:02.540 --> 52:03.300] There we go. [52:06.800 --> 52:07.200] Yes. [52:11.100 --> 52:13.320] This is... I feel so exposed. [52:13.320 --> 52:15.120] Is it going to take off my pants? [52:16.520 --> 52:17.040] Um... [52:17.040 --> 52:17.800] We recently did... [52:17.800 --> 52:19.420] We recently did sobering up techniques. [52:19.600 --> 52:22.000] And although I shouldn't do this, I'm going to show you. [52:22.420 --> 52:25.140] We did sobering up techniques and we finished off with... [52:25.140 --> 52:27.380] Will smacking you in the face sober you up. [52:28.720 --> 52:30.120] You gotta see this. [52:31.680 --> 52:32.720] This is... [52:32.720 --> 52:33.540] Unbelievable. [52:53.680 --> 52:54.560] And then... [52:55.180 --> 52:57.020] We also did vigorous exercise. [52:58.560 --> 52:59.000] Um... [52:59.000 --> 52:59.640] And so... [52:59.640 --> 53:02.120] Here's Jamie timing me running on a treadmill. [53:03.460 --> 53:03.780] Our... [53:03.780 --> 53:08.340] Our second cameraman, Scott Sorensen, is a friggin' genius with a high-speed camera. [53:08.640 --> 53:10.000] He sets up these gorgeous shots. [53:10.140 --> 53:11.960] That's Peter Heap, my cameraman on the left side. [53:12.100 --> 53:15.420] Jamie on the right, looking like the man with no eyes from Cool Hand Luke. [53:15.420 --> 53:19.460] And here's me on five Scotches in 45 minutes running on a treadmill. [53:21.080 --> 53:23.580] Now, here's where I'm starting to have a little trouble. [53:24.380 --> 53:27.380] And there, I've actually stepped on the treadmill and the track. [53:27.380 --> 53:29.400] So, I'm starting to lose my balance. [53:31.720 --> 53:33.220] But I'm still going. [53:34.200 --> 53:36.520] Then I realized I could step on the ground. [53:36.520 --> 53:38.160] So, now I'm okay. [53:38.160 --> 53:41.600] Except that, for some reason, I decide to jump right back on. [53:42.980 --> 53:44.900] Before I've regained my balance. [53:46.860 --> 53:48.680] And this is when I hit the ground. [53:48.680 --> 53:48.980] And now I... [54:10.650 --> 54:11.630] There you go. [54:13.170 --> 54:14.510] Okay, next question. [54:17.790 --> 54:24.350] You said before in your speech that you do actually like to do redactions and all that, retest things and all that. [54:25.130 --> 54:29.050] I'm one person that tries to watch as much as it can, but sometimes I can't. [54:30.270 --> 54:38.030] The one test that I've seen that always was stuck out of my head was the American Graffiti blowing the rear axle out. [54:39.310 --> 54:41.870] Has there been a redo of that? [54:42.590 --> 54:43.970] Are you planning on it? [54:43.970 --> 54:44.750] I know we did. [54:45.070 --> 54:46.410] We didn't use the correct car. [54:46.510 --> 54:49.810] The correct car, at that point, that was the very first season. [54:50.570 --> 54:52.210] So our budgets were really low. [54:52.850 --> 54:58.290] That cop car cost us, I think, 3,000 bucks and that was a freaking deal. [55:00.090 --> 55:08.630] And the actual, the classic car that was that police car, I can't remember what it was exactly now, but I know that we didn't have the right one in the rear axle. [55:08.690 --> 55:12.650] We tried to get one that was close, but we, at that point, we were on such a shoestring. [55:12.730 --> 55:13.830] We only had two researchers. [55:14.450 --> 55:15.710] We totally messed it up. [55:16.470 --> 55:18.590] Yeah, we might end up doing it again someday. [55:19.090 --> 55:22.290] It hasn't been on the list, but now it is. [55:23.730 --> 55:24.330] Thank you. [55:29.110 --> 55:42.550] Yes, I know you get a lot of emails complaining about the way you do things, but do you ever get emails from scientists or engineers saying, I saw your show, I've been working on this, let's get together for a patent, you know, journal entry, something like that? [55:42.950 --> 55:44.090] Anything gone on further? [55:44.450 --> 55:48.430] Yeah, actually, that's the vast majority of the feedback that we get. [55:48.690 --> 55:55.130] And even if you, I don't read the discovery boards, because I just don't want to put myself up for that kind of abuse. [55:55.930 --> 55:58.030] Same reason I don't read the Slashdot comments. [56:01.030 --> 56:08.970] But whenever somebody excoriates us for screwing something up and not knowing what we're doing, the people that rally to our defense are the working scientists. [56:09.210 --> 56:21.450] And at this point, Jamie and I have been consulted and congratulated by everybody, Sandia Labs, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, NASA. [56:21.450 --> 56:29.190] I mean, from every FBI, everywhere you can imagine, scientists have come out of the woodwork and not only asked us how we did certain things. [56:29.310 --> 56:33.370] I mean, one of the very first, my favorite, my first favorite explosion was explosive decompression. [56:33.570 --> 56:37.470] We fired the bullet through the fuselage of an airplane and blew it up. [56:38.010 --> 56:42.970] No, we didn't blow it up, but then later on we blew it up to show that firing bullets through the fuselage won't do squat. [56:43.510 --> 56:51.690] And we immediately, after that episode aired, we got a call from one of the head scientists at the Oak Ridge Ballistic Labs, the U.S. [56:52.810 --> 57:08.310] government's ballistic testing facility, and he said, not only have we been trying to do that experiment for 10 years, we've been trying to raise the money to perform that experiment because nobody knew, nobody knew how that was going to turn out, but you guys did exactly what we had outlined. [57:08.930 --> 57:14.270] You got exactly the results we were imagining that we would get, and can we borrow your footage to use? [57:19.140 --> 57:23.140] And those are some of my favorite episodes, the ones where we got the science exactly right. [57:23.380 --> 57:28.320] Have there been any products or practices out there that you're aware of that came as a result of your show then? [57:29.360 --> 57:34.280] Are there any products or scientific practices that came around as a result of one of your shows? [57:34.300 --> 57:35.440] I have no idea. [57:35.760 --> 57:41.940] I know that every time I'm in the airport, air marshals seek me out to tell me that their wives now feel safer to fly. [57:43.160 --> 57:47.880] Knowing their husbands are traveling with a pistol on their belt, they feel safe because they know the pistol won't do anything. [57:48.060 --> 57:48.980] But I don't know. [57:49.100 --> 57:49.980] That's a good question. [57:50.360 --> 57:52.060] I think that about wraps it up for me. [57:52.160 --> 57:54.080] I'm sorry, you four guys who've been waiting. [57:54.740 --> 57:55.860] Thank you so much. [57:56.000 --> 57:57.760] It's been my honor to speak to you guys. [57:58.340 --> 57:58.900] Thank you. [58:03.560 --> 58:04.880] Well, I'll take care of your computer. [58:05.000 --> 58:05.220] Okay. [58:06.340 --> 58:06.940] Follow me. [58:12.090 --> 58:12.490] Obviously. [58:13.650 --> 58:15.990] It's not that I'm that hard to see. [58:15.990 --> 58:16.210] It's not that I'm that hard to see.