oh this is a wonderful question uh testing limits with a z says hi adam i know making was sort of
on a downhill roll when mythbusters sparked a new generation to begin making and tinkering first up
that is not true i don't i don't think mythbusters can or should claim credit for that i think that
mythbusters came along at a point at which yes i think a lot of engineering colleges had gone
full simulation full digital uh and people weren't making things i think we had gotten quite distant
from shop classes so many high schools when they have when any education system has budgetary
constraints the shop classes the theater classes the band those are always the first things to go
and in the early aughts i think that there was some backlash to that and mythbusters was part of
the response alongside amazing places like make magazine and also very soon after that
3d printing became ascendant so we are not responsible for the maker movement we were
part of it and i'm very grateful that we were part of it um but testing limits wants to know
where where what do you think the next maker movement will thrive most from youtube perhaps
they ask um yeah i think you're absolutely right testing limits i think youtube is completely
a wave of new makers first of all if you have anything to repair in your house
searching the name and product number of the appliance that you're fixing will yield
umpteen youtube videos about how to repair that thing from actual service videos from the company
to people telling you what those videos don't say and helping you understand how the breakdown works
then there are countless people uh this channel is one of them bill duran beverly downin
this old tony click spring showing their work showing their successes and their failures
and really showing their failures is it's just such a key part of getting people interested in
making um but i also think that it is the shift that's also currently happening uh the economy
of scale that's happening to digital manufacturing um we used to call it rapid prototyping and now we
call it rapid manufacturing and that right there is a huge change uh i think it is incumbent on us
to help this next maker generation to educate a generation of digital of makers comfortable with
the digital frame and how the physical and digital can become can be code can be uh utilized to each
other's best affect uh so yeah i think it's twofold right now i think it's online video uh
youtube being the most uh uh uh out there front uh out there front and center example uh and i think
it's the economy of scale happening to to rapid manufacturing tools because they're just getting
better and better on a daily basis they're also getting cheaper and cheaper and i love the i've
been saying this for years but i can't wait till i can buy my new iphone case from a kid down the
street uh with his point of view as part of that construction that that thrills me uh and we're not
we're not too far from that i could probably find a kid on the mission who would be willing to make
an iphone case for me so i could probably fulfill that wish within the next couple of days um i
think that's a really important movement because um why do i think it's an important movement is
actually a really good question uh it's because a lot of jobs are just are going to disappear
factory jobs warehouse jobs bezos and other companies are are finding ways
to allow machines to do work better safer and faster than humans and that's fine that is the
you know we we progress we want to explore what's around the next corner and we're always going
to do the next thing for better or worse i and you know sometimes it's for worse but
jobs are going away in that in that manufacturing center uh and what's going to fill them well you
know healthcare service jobs are definitely way ascendant and that is a huge industry but also
bespoke construction um bespoke just as a fancy way of saying custom
but like etsy sellers right that's a whole portion of the economy that can be a real economy and uh
when i think about the history of manufacturing i like to mention that like in the year 1400
if you had a spoon it either looked like this because you carved it yourself or it was like
this really lovely spoon made by a silversmith there wasn't a lot in between so the rich people
got all their stuff custom-made and the poor people made their own stuff or got it kind of
made by someone around the corner and wasn't you know high-quality workmanship
and then uh the industrial revolution happens turns out we can stamp silverware out of flat
sheet metal and everyone's got access to great silverware uh rich people still
get to order theirs from expensive sellers sure that's fine um but we're very close to
a reality in which the economy of scale means that anybody could have access to high quality stuff
at the bulk price that's where i think digital manufacturing can really engender a massive sea
change where we are getting a lot of the objects we need from locally rather than globally um
i recognize some of this may be a total fantasy and i also recognize there's a lot of other things
to rebuild and take care of uh but that is one of the ways in which i think the next maker movement
could really do a lot of good for the world um okay let's see here uh
uh break build repeat wants to know with all the fans being familiar with the faces
of the mythbusters team in front of the camera who are some of the unsung heroes
behind the scenes that helped make the show what it became um so so so many um
of us six hosts and including scotty chapman who was in season two uh and then came back for the
one of the rocket cara episodes um the six of us hosts and various other folks who were on camera
were supported by so many teams of people and i am if you were on one of these teams and i
forget to say your name i i apologize because it is impossible to to to give credit to every
single human but i will give you a few highlights Alice Dallow currently now in Australia working as
a television producer uh alice dallow was uh jamie's and my main producer for about
nine solid years i believe um and alice was the one who from whom both jamie and i really learned
how to how to talk on camera not because she had a specific way to teach us how to talk on camera
she just would not let us do a piece to camera until she understood it alice was your avatar
and if alice didn't understand what we were saying she would ask us to say it again and
she would ask us to clarify and ask us to clarify just that that repetition and that practice of of
getting it right that was so important um we had a lot of our camera department uh uh Duncan Clark
Will Nail Scott Sorensen come up starting out as interns uh our production team uh eric haven
Dennis Kwan oh my gosh early ones claire mandel uh uh tree spiel uh uh uh Yvette Solis, Jax Marker
John Hunt i am i'm gonna forget some of these folks um but we literally spent years in each
other's pockets making this show mythbusters didn't have an on season in the offseason we
filmed year round for 13 straight years uh and the core production team for most of that time
was just about 20 to 25 people um lauren williams who was the producer for kerry grant and tori for
much of their time Steve-o Steve Christensen who was jamie's and my main producer for the last
few years of mythbusters last three four five years i can't remember steve is an old as an
aussie who just couldn't steve did not take any and could not abide [ __ ] i'm sorry for
cursing but this is my i'm honoring steve by by talking this way uh he is currently in tasmania
uh we we i check in with many of the mythbuster crew over the year over the years uh
on a fair not on a frequent basis but i like i like to keep tabs and see how everyone's doing
to be honest the crew working with that crew is the thing i miss most about mythbusters um
i would also be remiss if i did not um if i did not name Kristen Lomasney who started out as the
head of digital for MythBusters at Discovery a brand discovery's digital for all the years
that we were on and many other of your favorite discovery shows American Chopper etc um really
early on her along with the head of pr discovery at the time my great friend Katherine Belson.
they really those two Kristen and Katherine really understood the show and they really
understood they not they not only understood the show they loved the show and they loved
getting the public to understand what to love about the show that was really important and
part of your question included the phrasing helped make it the show into what it became well part of
that is the social outreach and Katherine Nelson was the first person to realize that we should go
to comic con and she brought us to comic-con in 2007 or 2008 and none of us knew how to
do comic-con we figured it out together i mean on camera the show was about the five of us of
the hosts figuring out stuff as we went but i'm here to tell you behind the scenes it was the
same story we were a production team of people who some of the production team were veterans but many
this was the first and only show many of us had ever worked on um dan tapster dan tapster
uh uh uh was our supervising executive producer for most of mythbusters uh for the longest of
the run i think 12 out of 13 years and um dan was absolutely critical to mythbusters success uh you
know there are many people called producers on a production um and producing is a nebulous job
but ultimately it involves producing involves helping solve problems by bringing in the right
people and also helping to solve problems by stopping those problems from getting to people
who don't need to worry about those problems and a good show runner insulates the creative department
from the network's dumb requests so that they don't have to get mad about those dumb requests
it's a lot of inside baseball but dan ran interference to allow us on mythbusters
to keep making the show that we loved and he kept on fighting television and we were like
listen this is super important and here's why it's important like we got that episode
across the line because of dan our whole you know he's the one that helped discovery see
yeah the thing i miss most about mythbusters is the crew and i still get to work with many of them
uh that Kristen Lomasney is general manager of tested.com so i'm still working with her
uh and you know my dream is always to bring in old colleagues when i can and work with them
that's my compressor it's just going to go for the next few minutes there's nothing i can do about it