um okay let's see here uh jordan freeman asks in the early days of mythbusters you
were seen smoking on camera have you gone cold turkey or do you still smoke i do not smoke
cigarettes anymore no i quit about 15 years ago uh i i smoked from the age of 17 until about 15
years ago on and off like two years on two years off two years on two years off um i would quit
i quit many times as lots of people have said quitting's easy i've done it hundreds of times um
i quit for good uh 15 years ago on a trip to hawaii my wife and i were newlyweds this
wasn't our honeymoon but it was an early trip and i had never been to hawaii and so we went
and we stayed in a beautiful rental in kailua on oahu famous for its powdered sugar sand beaches
and we got to hawaii and promptly came down with viral bronchitis that sent us both to
the hospital and we spent 10 of our 12 days in hawaii in a bed watching law and order marathons
and i have never smoked again i tell a lie i smoked two cigarettes
since i quit smoking one with marsha brady sorry one with maureen mccormick at a
disney party where i was super super super drunk and the second one was backstage at the punch line
uh with dave chappelle i went to see chappelle play his long like 16 night 17 night run at the
punch line shortly after he had disappeared from the world uh and he did this long run at
the punch line i got tickets my wife and i went and we met him afterwards and he was super super
gracious and he offered me a cigarette and i was like damn damn chappelle offers me a cigarette
i'm gonna smoke that cigarette it was terrible it was a terrible thing i don't i don't crave smoking
anymore um the smell is perfectly fine to me if i smell it on the street it doesn't bother me
it neither induces in me a feeling of craving or repulsion i'm somewhat neutral to it now um
what i did leading up to quitting smoking was a a very careful practice of not wishing i could quit
smoking but if really like just thinking about every cigarette that i was smoking
and how it really felt and when i did that what i had to confront was the fact that the best
cigarettes i had had in my life were the first cigarette of the day when i was in my late teens
and like at that age man your body is just this magical wonderland of possibility right it's just
it wakes up every day even if you have a hangover it only lasts for 10 minutes just some greasy eggs
and you're done and everything feels great about the world and that first cigarette of the day was
a real like it was literally intoxicating um and it never feels that good after that and
when i quit 14 years ago or whatever 15 years ago uh i had to confront that every
cigarette did not taste good at all it didn't feel good it didn't taste good i
just was looking for that rush i love the ritual i love all the rituals around it
that was one of the things i was definitely addicted to but um yeah another phrase that
i heard that helped me was the trick is not to quit smoking it's to become a non-smoker
and that's a kind of a mental framing that helped me put my brain in the right mindset
so the goal is that that's a that's a clever way of saying don't try and not do something
try and do something right i'm not trying to achieve the negative ie not smoking
i'm trying a positive to become a non-smoker a new thing that doesn't include smoking
i can't believe there's footage of you smoking on camera that's terrible
uh let's see here um sean vidal says you talk a lot about your impatience uh do
you think adhd is an issue or a positive asset in the maker world i don't think
i don't i don't think of adhd as being a positive or a negative asset it is a thing
let us consider ourselves as human beings the way we consider our characters when playing
dungeons and dragons our character in dungeons and dragons has all of these
facets and features to their character that will come into play as they interact with
the world the dungeon master has set for them um when you're playing a character you are not
necessarily you are just playing those things as they're dealt you're playing those cards
as they were dealt with you life is the same so i'm pretty sure that if adhd was a regular
uh thing when i was a kid that i would have been diagnosed with adhd i absolutely fit the profile
um you know there's plenty of studies to show that dyslexia can be a huge
uh asset in certain fields of study because of the level of focus it lends to the people
that uh i don't want to say suffer from it or afflicted by it some of the people that have
to deal with it or some of the people that deal with that right all of this language you choose
really matters it's really important not to define these things as afflictions and culturally it's
still really hard right you still have to think through it but when you define them as afflictions
or things that people suffer from you're putting it in a whole category and then that's this whole
other thing that the person who has this issue has to deal with and again we all have our crap
if it's not adhd it's something else right i mean over the last year i've gotten to know depression
a fair bit and i'm not someone who has been depressive in my life and i have lots of friends
who suffer from depression i've dealt with it and i've gotten a lot of incredible uh uh uh love
and support and information from them as as you know the covet year has has brought this out um
so sean i guess the thing that i want to point out is
thinking of adhd as a positive or negative asset i think is still viewing the idea of adhd and other
things that fall into similar categories like uh autism spectrum disorder or uh dyslexia or other
things that is still the language of is it good or is it bad it just is it just is it's the water the
water each of us swims in is the water of all of the aspects of our personality there's a great um
god what was it there was a a
tv show many years ago with andre brauer uh about cops in baltimore what was that show called anyway
in it at one point a cop is talking to a friend and his friend is lying to him and the cop says
am i a fish all day long i swim in lies and it's a great phrase and what the cop is saying to his
friend is i know you're lying to me because everyone lies to me all day long and it's
all that i see i can tell that you are lying to me i'm not sure cops have the perfect in fact
studies have shown that they don't have perfect lie detectors in their in their eyes and brains
however for the purposes of this little vignette i love that idea all day long i swim in lies we all
swim in the water of the full confluence of our personalities and some of those things serve us
some of them don't many of them serve us in certain situations and hinder us in others
everything that's a boon could also everything that is an asset could also be a detriment
there is no essentially good personality traits and essentially bad personality traits is that
really true i haven't thought through that one so i'm not sure i'm going to state that absolutely
but let's just say i don't like the idea of thinking of certain aspects of
each person's intersection of the world as essentially good or essentially bad they just
are and it's really good for us to understand them and to talk about them so that we can
deal with them honestly i knew about autism spectrum disorder and and all the
what do you call it uh uh uh all the satellite things around that but it
wasn't until mythbusters where uh people on the spectrum really glommed on to the show and came
to our appearances and came to our shows to such a degree that actually when i tour whenever i tour
my production team meets with the house and every theater i go to to talk about the fact
that a significant portion of the audience that's coming is going to be on the spectrum
and they inform the house what that means some of these folks are going to seem aggressive
and they're not being aggressive you have to understand that their intersection of
the world is a little different and here's how it's different and here's how you can respond
um that has been an incredible education to me in the full sweeping scope of
all of the different conditions we all have in our upbringing that brings us to the point that we are
um yeah i don't think i have much more to add to that um
okay let's see here i'm gonna go back to some of the earlier questions uh
have you brought furniture for your have you bought furniture for your home and then
decided to improve it if so how annoyed has your significant other become over this habit
um you're you're building a wrong narrative about how things go um with stuff for my house i'm very
very circumspect and highly collaborative with my partner because we live in the same place
um i don't unilaterally take things out of rotation and modify them without discussing
with her why would i do that that would be that would be crazy that being said i have certainly
taken pieces of furniture after we've discussed them and refinished them or repaired them or
modified them in specific ways i recently did a build which we're going to put up
in a couple of weeks uh about something i built at the end of the year for the house
and in fact i'm already planning on building another model of it because
we both see improvements that could be made after living with this furniture for a while
so yeah uh my partner not at all uh that just doesn't happen right