hey guys Adam Savage here from tested in my cave as you can tell from my flowing
mane we are still on lockdown things like week nine or ten and I've
got a show-and-tell for you and Mythbusters show-and-tell over the
course of the 13 years that we made Mythbusters Oh fine sweetie here we go
over the course of the 13 years that we made Mythbusters I built a lot of
different things and a lot of it was mechanical engineering a lot of it was
just methodological never know and then I got to build something that was really
fun in and of itself to build and to like see the result of the built I think
one of the earliest ones for me was that sweetie it's almost her dinner time so
she's letting me know I think one of the earliest ones was the Chinese rocket
chair I got to make a pair of Chinese Thrones out of plywood and it was a
bunch of scenic techniques and stuff like that and look here's some pictures
of some of the stuff I was particularly fond of building and happy that I built
on Mythbusters here's a little compendium of some of
the things I do growing plants with microwave water yeah there are a few
however it's now been five and a half years since we wrapped Mythbusters can
you believe it five and a half years and five and a half years later I still have
a lot of those things that I built for the show they're in storage and some of
them are touring around the country and the explosive exhibition but the
distance of time gives me some perspective and the affection I feel for
some of the pieces is surprising and today's show-and-tell is actually one of
them one of my favorite episodes we ever did was airplane boarding what is the
most efficient way to board an airplane we tested it on Mythbusters we did a
huge amount of research on it and it was a really really fun episode to shoot
this was a point at which our production was getting better and better and better
at wrangling large groups of people which is non-trivial from
action simple you've got to feed them you got to give them some place to go
you got to get all the releases signed and that's Elise one of our producers
just became super excellent at managing large groups of people and we started
expanding what we thought we could test that's when we started doing the zombie
episodes and airplane boarding was one of them we had 225 volunteers for two
separate days we had a bunch of flight attendants from Southwest Airlines
helping us out as consultants and to be our official flight attendants those
ladies were so awesome I actually ran into one of them recently on a Southwest
flight recently I mean a year or two ago but I remember this episode with nothing
but fondness as you know in Mythbusters I would frequently dress up in costume
and that episode was no different in fact I wanted to dress up as a pilot and
this is when I discovered that there are some things that you might want to wear
that other people might not want you to wear what I mean is if you're dressed
convincingly as a pilot you could probably move through an airport and get
through parts of an airport easier than a civilian
there's a famous early man show episode where Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla
dress up in violence uniforms and actually get drunk at LAX priceless
comedy um suffice to say it is hard to put together an excellent pilot's
uniform and it's hard on purpose it's hard to get the right hat it's hard to
get the right epaulets it's difficult to get the right tie clip even there are
all these aspects to it that there are cheap versions and then there is the
right version and the right version is like it's not trivial but I did I put
together an excellent pilots uniform because I thought I I'm gonna be the
pilot for this episode right this is the costume I want to wear and then I
thought if we're building this whole plane where we did these steel
structures I mean there's a really elaborate construction something like 70
feet long we had full luggage racks we rented from faith aerospace I think and
chairs that we rented and we mounted them to the current I mean it was
one of the more involved episodes methodologically and I realized we
needed a cockpit so I built one and I built it in about an hour and every now
and then you jump into a speed build and this especially comes from commercial
work where you never had more than you know maybe you had a day to build a rig
for some commercial Eva and it might have even been a Super Bowl commercial
maybe get two days it's like speed speed speed I never know and then a speed
build shows up and you realize all I want to make a cockpit we gotta go into
the set okay so let me build this really quickly and all the aesthetics just like
fall into place and go reverse house of cards radius goes like this and this is
one of them this is my content from the Mythbusters airplane boarding episode I
know this is it is Lewis right this is this is literally like the cockpit that
12-year old me would have made but that's that's why I love this thing so
much is it feels like it feels like the cockpit that 12-year old me would have
made it also goes a little I could do the face culture to me but that aside I
there's something about sitting in front of this thing that this it makes me
smile it is it's totally real that feeling that a kid has when they set up
some cardboard as I did I made a spaceship in my parents guestroom closet
and Maggie it's just gonna be a couple more minutes and then I took the red
gaffer tape and made all these dial arrows and as soon and I literally used
a one brush to do all of this painting I think that these might be Sharpie marks
for some of the smaller details but this was about an hour from start to finish
it's weirdly built I cut these weird pieces out of some two by fours a genie
and some scrap fly's screwed and glued but
it's barely holding together I've had to repair it a couple times in storage and
yet I'm gonna keep this thing forever like I love it it exemplifies for me a
very specific ethos of joy in a build and a deep connection to a deep
connection to my past self right like making stuff like this that made me
smile is the whole reason I became a maker to begin with yeah so making it
again to make myself smile is is this lovely throughput it's this long right
it's a long tendril for me to pass me pass me a future me and this beautiful
conflict piece I just like I love it I have no idea how to display it that's
one of my issues it's a big footprint so it's been floating around the shop when
I decided to bring it out of storage and bring it over here and I'll have to
figure out exactly how to display it it may hang from the ceiling somewhere I'm
not sure but oh right you've been wondering the whole time what did we
conclude about airplane boarding yeah you're not gonna like the answer the
answer is the most efficient way to board an airplane
is random seed assignment everyone boards like no priority knew whoever
boards as soon as you give someone a seed assignment and you make them get on
a plane they're gonna pause to look for their seed and all hell breaks loose the
fast we boarded a plane it was like half as fast as the next I mean I can't
remember the numbers but it was so much faster
the problem with random seed assignment and random boarding is that everyone
hates it everyone feels like they're getting shafted by this deal so that's
why we have other methods because when people say I wish I knew the fastest way
to board an airplane the answer is no you don't you know but you don't want to
do that because if I gave you the choice would you like to have random seed
assignment a random boarding on every plane you'd like
oh yeah but that is the fastest way by the way the flight attendants that we
had as consultants on on our airplane boarding episode confirmed and flight
attendants do enjoy walking up the aisle farting and you can't hear it above the
noise of the airplane and they call it crop dusting thank you for joining me
for this show and tell this has been a bit busters walk down memory lane thanks
for thanks for watching stay safe stay away from each other stay indoors and
I'll see you guys next time