hello everybody adam savage in my cave and i am answering questions about mythbusters here
uh these questions have been submitted by tested patrons if you would like to further
support tested you can become a patron yourself information is in the comments below um today's
question comes from cole johnson wants to know what myth did you enjoy the most that didn't get
as much love as other myths my favorite is the bank heist and climbing in the air duct
i have to say the myth that i loved the most that didn't get the love i thought it deserved
was the archimedean death ray we did with president obama i i will tell you
we never got so much attention for filming a story like it was just in the national news in
every publication there was a story about the fact that we were filming an episode with the
president we went to the white first of all obama administration reached out to us and
asked us if there was a myth that the president could participate in and we were like are you
freaking kidding me yes we can come up with one we pitched a few they chose archimedes death ray
we went to the white house we filmed with the president in the white house library
there was all this press back then about like how how obama is wasting his time
making these television shows we showed up to the white house library in the morning
on the day of the shoot we shot all of our establishing shots all of jamie's and my
lines even to the president to make sure we had them in the can so that when the president showed
up we'd run through the lines like twice and be done and we didn't even run through them twice
we ran through all the lines once we got all the reverses in the main shots that we needed with the
president he took picture with all of us and was out in something like 17 minutes i can't remember
the exact number but it was less than 20 minutes he showed up with all the lines fully memorized
with the impossible amount of charisma that that man actually has he was gracious and sweet to
all of us the secret service was amazing yeah so that was that was the front and a weird amazing
part to film and then we went to ensenal high school over in the east bay where jamie's wife
uh was a science teacher for 20 years and we filmed with 500 of the students from ansenal um if
you are one of those students thank you thank you it was one of my favorite days of filming ever um
we filmed along the water in alameda um and it was a hell of a day it was a like i mean
a big beautiful story we had 500 people with reflective shields aiming them we had a way for
them to aim it was just it like the execution of this test the methodology is one of my favorites
plus i was wearing some uh incredible polyurea armor roman segmented armor that i had bought
from the film centurion i turned my segway into a chariot but most of all there just never been in
mythbusters tenure a a story that had gotten this much press attention wait right there
well i couldn't find it um here's how much national press this single episode got before it
aired discovery's pr department was so ecstatic about it they digested every print or an online
article about the archimedean death ray episode with obama and put it in a binder
and they sent a binder to jamie and i i think i gave my binder to my mom uh like you do
and then the episode did not rate very well like
what can you do what can you do you get national press coverage
for like two full weeks before the airing of the episode and when it airs it's like
yeah and the ratings weren't terrible but they were they nowhere near reflected the amount of
advanced press on that episode i was totally sure we were going to like knock this one out of the
park but you never know you neg that's like that was the that was the story that was the episode
that taught me that you can't count on anything that's just like you never know how sometimes a
story will not seem to have legs and people go bananas when it airs you never know um
i'm just making sure i've gotten to all the parts of your question um i so you love the bank heist
and climbing in the air duct i loved the bank heist and climbing in the air duct the question
is which bank heist because there's the one from the score in which we did the hydraulic explosion
that was pretty stunning um and then there's the one which is jamie's giant shoe magnets
against the sides of an air duct that was absolutely
delightful um i would also think that if you were to ask mr heinemann if you could find him uh that
this would also be one of his favorite episodes um it was crimes and myth demeanors that's what
we called those episodes and we had several and they were really good i really dug those
yeah but archimedes death right i really wish that the ratings for that one had been way more
off the charts or made way more reflective of the amount of press that we got because it was
super exciting to film to film with the president of the united states of america how how amazing
how amazing was that answer it was totally amazing yeah thank you guys so much thank
you specifically cole johnson for that awesome question and tested patrons keep submitting your
questions and i will continue to answer them thank you guys so much i think i said thank you so much
i'm going to say it again thank you thank you thank you stay safe and i'll see you next time