alan s says i just wanted to say thank you for all the content throughout these hard times
i've been struggling mentally and physically in your videos really helped alan thank you
i appreciate that uh i think we've all been struggling mentally uh
thank you that's the reason that we're doing it i mean we're keeping the lights on and we're staying
employed and that is great but frankly all of us like look at the comments and the reactions
to what we're doing and we're all really uh invigorated by the response from you guys
i watched contact last week with jody foster and william fichner and tom skerritt jake busey
it's great it's hammy it's brilliant it's beautiful it's a it's like a
you know yeah they'll there will be roberts of mecca's retrospectives and
there are some some of his films i can't watch again and many of his films i've watched many
many many many times because they're so great and contact is one i've seen a bunch
and there's this great bit and contact spoilers uh when she does meet the aliens and they've shown up
to her in the form of her dad because they've kind of read her mind and given her someone to talk to
she'd be comfortable with and she said how did i get here did you build the way that i got here and
he said no those pathways were built long before we got here and we don't know who built them
there's so much we don't know this is an intelligent alien race that has sent this
message to earth to have them build this thing and he says there's so much we don't know and
in all this time we've been looking around the only thing we have found is each other
and i i like i burst into tears watching the movie at that because that's right and you know
i i'm i'm scared about the world the list of ways in which things aren't great it's long it's a big
list it's kicking my ass we're very upset about it in my house and among my friends and my family and
my colleagues and we want to make the world a better place and it's very strange having
all of culture all of the movies and the theaters and the music and the restaurants and all of that
stuff just sort of not there i know you might live in a place in the country where
it's less locked down but for the most part a huge portion of the world is locked down
and i redown to that same thing the only thing we have is each other so alan i thank you for that
um because i get a lot out of this process too uh if i didn't have something to do every day i would
be going totally insane this shop is is my solace my secour my balm um fiona lieberman says it's fun
to see your latest tools and toys but i imagine the cave isn't actually limitless are there
decisions you've made about prioritizing your physical or cognitive space oh yeah totally
there's all sorts of tools in this place that i don't have there's all sort of to
there there are many tools that i don't have even though i would like to have access to them
but i have to be very
rigorous about what i bring in because yeah not only is this space not limitless but it's
not very large i mean a lot of people walk in and they're like this is it it's like it's what it's
maybe 16 feet this way and 30 feet this way it's not humongous um so yeah i would love every now
and then i go on craigslist and i covet surface grinders because my machining has gotten good
enough that my machining has progressed enough where i think bringing things that last surface
ground uh uh uh little sliver is is maybe a place i'll go and sometimes on craigslist you could find
a surface grinder for like a really good deal but i don't know where the hell it's gonna go in here
um the more i do carpentry the more i think uh you know a joiner might be a good tool but
i don't have room for it right now uh my dream is to have a shop big enough that i can drive
my land cruiser in and work on it indoors i will keep saying that dream until it comes through um
yeah and recently i have had in terms of
hard decisions prioritizing the work i have come to a real realization about this space that
my shop is in this building um and i've started to get rid of tons and tons and tons of crap
i have this loft upstairs which we recently shot a show and tell up so that we finally get to
see what's going on up in that the hell space but i've made a real prioritization decision
about what belongs up there and it's not stuff that i need to store it's stuff that i need to
use so the loft has become entirely material storage which is a fantastic shift for me
because it means i don't have to have all the materials down here because there's not enough
room one of the needs that came up for that is because i have now so i've done so many
fabric and leather projects i have a really great collection of leathers and fabrics
uh i mean all sorts of stuff that supports that buckles and findings and zippers and stuff and
there's just not enough room down here now i have a whole like 20 foot long wall of
shelves for all my fabric and you'll get to see it in the show-and-tell yeah there's nobody that
doesn't know there is almost nobody that doesn't have to make you know those hard decisions um
darren lewis says i know you've talked a bit about this but what constraints of the lockdown what
what constraints of the lockdown have led to interesting outcomes oh my god i mean
the most interesting early outcome for me was how beautiful
and haunting a city is when it's practically empty
or feels totally empty and like i guess three weeks into the lockdown in early april
um an italian restaurant in hayes valley that we like opened up for takeout and we went
down there and it was haze valley at eight o'clock on a friday night and there's like
you could see two other people on the whole street it was far out um there's a
great book from a few years ago called the world without us and it investigates the ways in which
nature and geological processes would change the world at once if humans disappeared and he
looks at several places the dmz or chernobyl or other places in which war has emptied out cities
to get examples of what that's like and there's always this haunting quality to be in a place
that people built and used and that they are not in and in first like two months of the
lockdown here in san francisco it was both haunting and it was also really beautiful
uh yeah um another interesting outcome um we have fallen back in love with golden gate park
one of the greatest public parks in the entire world man we go there almost daily and take maggie
um uh yeah we have a few medals and pathways we like in golden gate park um it has an endless
golden gate park is seemingly endless like it is it it's a tesseract man once you enter it you
think you can look at a map and sort of see where everything was and i've been going there for 30
years and about three weeks ago we discovered the casting pools where you can practice fly casting
i didn't know that existed there literally we walked in and we were like
who was hiding this the whole time i have since found out that they empty
out those casting pools once per year to clean them and apparently skateboarders
freaking totally dig that week because they can skate in those pools i like that
besides that professionally the lockdown has been nothing but interesting outcomes i didn't
when the lockdown first happened i thought am i going to be allowed to leave my house
to go the three blocks to the cave then of course yeah i was and then it was like
what do we do i mean the norm set up a camera in the corner with a microphone and i think i
set it up and tried to shoot something and i was like don't feel like this is no good and then i
picked up my phone and i started shooting and was like well this is much better and these guys were
like okay put here are some settings to choose so it makes our editing easier um and i didn't i mean
just again to some perspective i built this shop in 2000 late 2010 that's when i first moved in
here and i was in production on mythbusters for another five years through the end of 2015.
and in that time mythbusters was a full-time job we shot 40 weeks a year
took two weeks off usually when we took those two we we shot 40 weeks a year we
shot for three month blocks and then we took two weeks off three months two weeks and for
those two weeks we usually hightailed it out of town to get some rest and relaxation and
for those five years i had this space while making mythbusters i got to spend
maybe between one and five hours a week total in this shop one hour a week in here and still we
were able to get some tested videos done first one day build was shot back around that time um
and now i'm in here 40 to 50 hours a week it feels like a like an impossible luxury to get
to spend so much time in here and sometimes i am overwhelmed by possibilities i pulled
an old costume out yesterday because i felt like working without filming something so i thought ah
let me pull out iron man mark one see if i can't make that piece that costume better
i've never worn it at a con let's see if we can uh let's see if we can adjust it
um manuel creato asks you have a story about the hat that you have on um this is one of the
i have very particular sartorial ideas about the way men should dress i know it doesn't seem like
i'm the kind of person that would have those ideas but but i do i i like dressing in a particular way
i dress in a particular way when i go out i have a uniform on a daily all right you stay right there
now i have a uniform on a daily basis which is blue jeans and sneakers or blonde stones and a
t-shirt um and in general i think that when i see a lot of men in baseball caps they look like boys
they look like young boys and i just have an inherent difficulty with that i think
of us however they want i'm not judging anybody i just don't think that works for
me and i have some other baseball caps and when i put those baseball caps i i look like a boy and
when i put this one on i feel like i don't and you may think i do that's fine i just feel like this
hat sort of fits me fits my personality and by the way i have like the most intense covered hair
um yeah look at this look at that and i ran i ran so far away
i just read yeah so i'm covering over my coveted hair oh my god i look like wave
wave i say that with love you've got the greatest cove and hair um i am getting a haircut tomorrow
it's been a long time coming man i can't stand it when it gets all puffy
here and i start looking like gary oldman's dracula without it actually being very open
hey everyone adam savage here in my cave
and we are living through a completely strange moment in time six months ago the entire world
changed everyone went into lockdown and so did tested we became a virtual workplace almost
overnight and now i see all my colleagues almost exclusively on video chat i am shooting only on
the phone i know the sound quality's gotten worse norm joey and gunther are all editing from home
and maybe the biggest change is output we have radically increased the number of videos that we
make because well that's what i'm doing all week long here is just shooting everything on my phone
and eventually the world will return to normal but one of the things we want to keep up
is the pace of videos that we've been releasing we've been ecstatic about your feedback about this
and we want to keep it going but in order to we need to ask for your direct support and so i'm
here today to announce tested channel membership if you're not interested in becoming a member
that's fine tested is not going to change for you you still get all the same great one-day builds
tool tips the podcast etc but if you are willing to join we've got some pretty cool extras and two
levels at which to join for about 99 a month we have our supporter level and for 9.99 a month
our patron level which includes all the stuff from the supporter level
and some live streams some direct access to me and the tested team
and some sneak peeks into our entire tested workflow and process we are so excited about
the new possibilities that channel membership opens up and we know that many of you have
been supporting us all along as tested premium members and to you i say thank you your support
has meant everything and you can keep it going by hitting our brand new join button somewhere on
this screen thank you guys for watching and between you and me i am most excited by the
live streams i really love doing those earlier this summer and i can't wait to pick it up again