i don't like that shot that's a little better hey everybody adam savage here in
my cave and i am answering questions from tested patrons and this is a funny one uh
mark gabb 1975 mark a b 1975 i'm guessing that's your birth year uh wants to know hi adam what
is the single best and single worst thing about being in your position of worldwide fame thanks
okay first of all i am not in a position of worldwide fame
um i had a television show for a long time that played in over a hundred countries and
i am somewhat famous i think it's the best way to describe it but the drop-off since i haven't
been regularly on television has been precipitous and delightful uh so you asked what's the single
best and single worst thing i'm gonna start with the worst thing and i haven't experienced
there the worst thing to say about most of the deal with being famous
is that it can frequently be inconvenient but in i'm saying that like it is the smallest complaint
to be played on the smallest violin because it's just like you can't get out of the restaurant fast
because someone wants to take i mean come on you know sometimes that can feel like i really
would wish i didn't have to do this and then you remember you live this fantasy and you get
to do these amazing things so shut up and deal with it so minor inconveniences aside
i do have an experience that was genuinely awful and it was because i was famous
was i'm no longer this famous but back in the mid-aughts
mythbusters was at its absolute peak this is 2008 2007 and i'm traveling across the
country with thing one who was like nine or ten years old at the time and we are in
i think the denver airport which is a big airport
yeah i'm almost positive we're in denver airport i pretty m i remember i know a lot i'd have very
good sense of memory for america's airports so we're in denver airport and we got separated
and this is 2008 2009. again mythbusters is at its peak we're we're getting a very respectable viewer
share every week news stories come out about many of the episodes we release in a season uh
we're doing shows like david letterman and stephen colbert and jimmy kimmel frequently so i'm very
famous at that moment in time and i'm traveling so i'm wearing a baseball cap but it's not helping
and i can't find my son and the looking for him has is compounded by the fact that i'm in
a public space an airport where it felt like 70 of the people in the big room that i'm in know
who i am and are trying to make eye contact with me because they're excited they see me
they like the show they're they see if they see someone who makes a thing they like i've been
in a room i was in a restaurant with richard gere was eating a few tables over i couldn't think of
anything but richard gere richard gere richard gere i understand but when you are trying to
look for your child and everybody whose eyes you meet could take that as an opportunity
to come up and talk to you and you have to say i can't talk i can't talk i gotta find my kid
i have rarely felt so claustrophobic as i did in that moment and i don't feel claustrophobic
spatially like you could put me in a coffin put dirt on me and i'll be
fine for a couple of days like i small spaces don't squick me out but situations like that
where i can't actively look for my child because of the social dynamics of making eye contact
combined with the fact that i'm somebody that people want to talk to at that moment
that was intense and i still like that stands out as one of the peak kind of really difficult
moments where i wished i could have just become anonymous at that second that's the worst thing
the best thing it's the people it's the fact that people want to come up all the time and tell me
and all of us jamie carey tori scotty what our work meant to them what an unbelievable
grace and then you can make that person's day by signing something or taking a picture giving
them an autograph talking to them for a little while um simone yatch told me that her mom said
that her mom is slightly famous in sweden i'm not sure exactly how famous but i know slightly famous
at least and her mom said that having a notoriety is a a a delightful ticket to make somebody's day
with a very low amount of effort if you put in a little more it's even better
um i have toured around the world with several stage shows since 2012 uh i've toured multiple
countries hundreds of venues uh and every single show that i did i did meet and greets every night
uh and the meet and greets are after the show a hundred people who've paid a premium ticket
get filed through and i meet and talk to and take a picture with every single one of them
every night six nights a week and in the beginning i'll admit it was hard work it was tiring
and then i realized why it was tiring and i had a mental shift and the realization was
when i meet somebody who's who for whom my work meant something frequently well they watch the
show and they feel like they know me and they do to a large degree because the output i've made
on television and here on the web is what you see is what you get this is me this is a good
portion of me and so they feel a connection to me and they want to deepen that connection in this
conversation that we're going to have and i can feel that desire for the connection i can feel the
pull because i'm a human being and i'm an empathic and i can you know like all human beings i can
feel when another human being wants something and that pull that desire for connection it
is it is very easy to feel like you want to push back on that like you want a little bit of space
i as i'm saying this and it's occurred to me over the years i can barely imagine what it's
like to be a uh specifically an attractive woman for whom the whole world is that
that relationship i can't even imagine i feel like i have the tiniest window into that so
you feel that connection you feel initially a desire to kind of push back a little bit just
to create a little bit of space for yourself because someone's pulling you towards them
in this social construct and you want to give a little pushback but i learned something which is
don't push back please understand i don't mean this as advice for
pretty pretty women to explore because they have their totally own relationship to this
just want to be super crystal clear about that but for me in my position as a famous person
what i have learned is that in those interactions with fans instead of pushing back at all i give
in completely and the moment i started doing that the moment i gave all the way into that
conversation and looked at what they were showing me and talked to them and became involved with
them in the interaction that we were having and let it happen the way it was happening
i stopped getting tired after the meet and greets so i would do a i swear it was almost like an
overnight shift where i would do i did a meet and greet on a monday night and it like felt like it
took three hours and i was really tired at the end i got back on the bus and i was like man wow and
it didn't take three hours usually took about 30 40 50 minutes to go through uh that number
yes actually just a bit over an hour and then i had that epiphany about not holding back about
not pushing back about bringing it in and letting the interaction happen as it wanted to happen
and that next meet and greet felt like it took 10 minutes to me it passed like that and ever
since then every meet and greet i've ever done has felt like that to me two or three hours of
autograph signing at maker faire just passes in a heartbeat as far as i'm concerned and that's the
best part the best part is the people and the conversations you get to have with them yeah
thank you so much for that awesome question tested patrons your questions get better
and better keep submitting them and i will keep answering them and i will see you next
time