Mythbusters (Part 2)

Since they didn’t blow up Neil’s office in Part 1, the MythBusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are back to finish the job. Up for discussion: busted urban legends, Archimedes, Bigfoot and more.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium right here in New York City. Today I've got co-host Chuck Nice. Hey Neil. Is Chuck Nice Nice? No. Short answer, no. Short answer, alright. But you tweet at ChuckNiceComic. That's correct. Thanks for doing this. It's always my pleasure. Love having you on. We're at part two of the StarTalk Mythbusters interview. Yeah. The Mythbusters, you gotta love you some Mythbusters. Yeah, man. What a great show. Been on Discovery Channel for 10 years and the Mythbusters are Adam Savage and Jamie Heinemann. If you don't know who was who, Jamie Heinemann, he's bald with a hat. Okay. You got that? He's the one that looks like a walrus.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did not tell him that to his parents. You're thinking of Chumley or something? Chumley, that's who we remember? Okay, I remember Chumley. Come along, Chumley. If you're 50 or older, you'll know who Chumley is. Yes. It's been one of the most popular shows on all of the Discovery Channel stable of programming. And as you may know, they use elements of the scientific method to test the validity of like myths and rumors and urban legends and stuff they show in movies and all these crazy internet YouTube videos of people doing weird stunts. Did they fake it or is it real? Super cool show. Yeah, and so they visited me in my office in New York City and I whipped out the microphone and we just chilled for an hour. Sounds good.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so one thing I couldn't help but talk about was, did Archimedes really set fire to the invading ships using mirrors? Let's find out.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Mirrors can start fires. You can focus enough of the sun's rays on a point to burn and melt all sorts of very, very high melting point things. The question is, can you use it as a military weapon against an actual boat?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, from quite a distance and using a number of different mirrors that are handheld. And the devil's in the details in this particular case because it's dramatically different to be right next to something with a perfectly focused small mirror and potentially hundreds of feet away with these things moving around. You need that pinpoint to be able to come into focus.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just light up the broadside of the ship.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  You can't light up the broadside. And we found even with as few as 10 people, getting all 10 of them to aim a mirror to 10 feet away to the same spot is actually just that is really difficult.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the farther away it is, the tiniest movement of your hand sways it.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  And what's your aiming reticule? How do you know where your mirror beam is hitting when it's off?

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your aiming reticule. Oh my goodness.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Not to mention the movement of the boat, which it would be moving.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The rocking of the boat and water sloshing of it. You've got to evaporate the water before you evaporate.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Well, this was about a boat that was in process of attacking the shore. And so it's going to be underway. So you've got to be able to track it. And the sun's moving as well. There's just no practical, reasonable way that you'd be able to get a pinpoint thing by.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I remember the guys at MIT, they like painted the side of the boat matte black or something.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  They did, and they used mirrors on stationary stands. This is Dr. David Wallace at MIT, and he was a big fan of Mythbusters. He used it as.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until then.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  No, no, no. So we had done it once and busted it. And then he brought his students out at our invitation and we set up 500 mirrors, just like his experiment. But this time we were aiming it at a boat and we couldn't get it to go. And the only thing we hadn't done in that story was get 500 actual soldiers, quote unquote, on the shore with mirrors trying to actively point. And that's when the Obama administration called and asked if we could somehow work with them on a myth that would help promote the STEM initiative. And we suggested this one as a perfect one because our soldiers could be high school students. And Jamie's wife is a science teacher.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so you now have legions of high school students trying to ignite things with reflected mirrors?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Large ones that we supply.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Large focusing mirrors.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And their interest level was high. It was excellent. They were a terrific army.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this all started because there was a legend that Archimedes, we know, love me some Archimedes. Right. Give me some more Archimedes, right? That he destroyed enemy ships with fire caused by these reflective mirrors. And they were called burning glasses. Burning glasses. Burning glasses. Second century, AD second century author Lucian wrote that during the seas of Syracuse, 214 to 212 B.C., Archimedes destroyed the enemy ships this way. Okay. And the cool thing about it is, if you're at war, it's good to have smart people on your side. That's so true. You know, he knew you could focus light, the light would make something hotter. Right.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so this has been sort of a legend and people never really knew if they could pull this off. Okay. And the Mythbusters, you know, went ahead and tried it. It turns out you can do it if the side of the ship is painted matte black. Matte black. Matte black. And it's parked there, all right? Okay. And everybody's there aiming. And at the exact same spot. Exact spot. But if you're at a ship that's swaying in the ocean and it's wet. Wet, number one. You can't ignite something that's wet. Right. That's why, did you know, that's why you can boil water in a paper cup? If the paper cup is, is wet. Yes, it's wet because it has water in it.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how that works. See how I got, see I got right in on that one? The cup cannot get hotter than 212 degrees. Right. And it has to be hotter than 212 degrees to burn. So, so this kept going. We also wondered, can you prove a negative? Mm-hmm. Right? Like, how about, you know, Loch Ness? Well, that's a loch, but Nessie. Nessie. Is it there? Can you show that it's not? Let's find out. Most urban legends are about the existence of something or a claim of something that is true. How about claims of something that are not true? Oh, like, yeah. Then you have to prove a negative. Chupacabra, Loch Ness monster. Exactly. Yeah. The jackalope. The jackalope, yes. I saw a cartoon with a jackalope in it, so I'm pretty sure it's real. A moderate politician.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how do you deal with having to prove negatives? Other than the logical impossibility, I mean, there's a practical element that one should ought to be able to demonstrate the unlikelihood of something.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Well, if you're doing something like looking for a ghost or whatever, where you can't use a control to compare against, all you're going to be able to do is prove that you weren't able to find that.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As evidenced by all the ghost hunting shows that never find a ghost and all the Bigfoot shows that never find Bigfoot.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not proof that they don't exist, it's just proof that you couldn't find it. And that's one of the things where, you know, science in its methodology has a way of dealing with actually being able to test things, and that's providing controls and things that you can compare against. And so we just stay away from those things. We can't physically test it and come up with any kind of conclusion, other than...

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't happen on your watch.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  It didn't happen on our watch, which is not proper science.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a famous philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and he hypothesized the teapot experiment. You say there's a teapot orbiting the sun. Okay. I know there is. How? Well, so now, so now you have to prove that there isn't. Now you gotta prove that there's not a teapot. Right, and then I just go back to the Bahamas while you're up there trying to prove, right? So he's trying to distinguish people making claims that the burden of proof should not be on the person who doubts you. It should be on the person who's making the claim. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. And so it'd be really cool if astronauts went up and actually found a teapot. Nothing would make me happier. Well, when we come back, more of StarTalk's interview with the Mythbusters.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, Tyson here, Chuck Nice there.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was very Starship Captain. It was, it was. That was. Warp factor five, we're ready. We've got the Mythbusters, they came to visit me in New York, and they didn't come to visit me, they were in New York, and I snared their schedule. Nice. Them come by my office. You know, there's some myths that Discovery Channel will not let them test. Really? Yeah. Danger? Let's find out. Okay.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Well, the one that I've been wanting to do, it actually involves canceling velocities. And it was based on a video where some baseball pitcher hangs his arm out the window with a baseball and he throws it backwards in the opposite direction that the train is traveling at exactly the same speed. And so to somebody on the side, the ball just drops out of midair and stops. We did that, Cary Grant, Tori did that on the show, and I was a little ticked off because I wanted to do that, but I wanted to take it a step further where I would get to be the baseball. And you would get thrown off the train. Well, cancelled velocity. So presumably he'd just be standing there. Yeah. No, you'd have to be thrown off the moving train backwards at the speed of the train. Right. Yeah, I would rig a backwards facing slingshot. What could possibly go wrong?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Well, it actually, it goes on from there where if you rigged something like this on a bus, you know, the bus wouldn't even have to stop at the bus stop. You'd just get into this little pod and then bang, you're right on the. And you're standing. You're standing stock still. The buses would never have to stop. Yeah. Trains would not have to stop. Planes would never, you just have continuously running. People into it. Well, there's going to be a limit, you know, you're not going to get up to speed in an airplane that's traveling 500 miles. Because you have to get on the airplane in the first place. But ignoring that complication, this is a brilliant idea. Well, yeah, I mean, the G loads, if you accelerate from zero to 500 miles an hour in what, 50 feet. Okay, you're a pile of goo, fine, but it's otherwise a brilliant idea.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Well, and so they had issues with safety and I went immediately to one of the tricks that we often do when we're testing things is to get into it incrementally. Obviously, they wouldn't have any safety issues if I did it at five miles an hour. And I could do that running off of a low trailer that's being towed. Up to your own body speed, yeah. You could do that at five, 10 miles an hour for sure. Because you're easing them into this idea that you have a high speed. You know, presumably at some point, it might be 50 miles an hour, who knows? The G loads that you would have to subject yourself to over, say, a 50 foot long bus or trailer would be excessive and. You have to accelerate from zero to that speed very quickly. Yeah, but there would be a safe way, if you do it incrementally, to increase the speed and find out what you could do.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  A theoretically safe way.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, this speaks towards a lot of what we do on the show where some of these things are silly. We've polished turds and we've made balloons out of lead, you know, inherently ridiculous. They're of no major importance. Yeah. They're curiosities. Did you say polished turd?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we actually got a reflectometer to make

• 11:14Speaker 02

  To see how shiny your turd is.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Genuinely making it shiny and Jamie did lion poo, I did ostrich poo.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got mine within a couple of percent similar to, uh, ball bearings shininess. It was pretty impressive. This is hardened poo, obviously.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Well, do you know the process of dorodongo, the Japanese process of making shiny mud balls?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  It's actually really cool. You can make a nearly perfect shiny sphere out of mud using this process and just using mud and your hands.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  So you just put the poo in for the mud and you

• 11:41Speaker 01

  And we, yeah, so we went to the zoo and we actually collected about a dozen different kinds of poo.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  And the zookeeper let you take the poo?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Well, they collected it for us.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  We have shots of Jamie ferreting through a warthog enclosure.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. But I digress. Sorry. I was distracted by shiny poo, but go on. So these things are not in and of themselves that useful to know, but the process of getting there is interesting. And in the case of this canceling velocities thing, I started to think carefully since I was especially meeting so much resistance from the insurance company that, you know, I might be maimed or killed in the process of testing this. That I started to parse out what exactly it was that would be of concern. And it wasn't that the drop to the ground, because this affair could be arranged to be fairly low on a low trailer, you know? So maybe you drop a foot or, or something like that. No big deal.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  The problem therefore is if you would happen to mismatch those velocities, you make a mistake and it doesn't work exactly as planned. And what happens there? Well, you interact with the ground at something other than Other than zero. Other than zero velocity. And what's the problem with that? Well, it's friction. And so if you have friction, if the velocity is significant enough, then you're going to start to interact with that ground and tumble. And tumbling means broken bones and things like that, and that's where you run into problems. So your euphemism for breaking your neck is interacting with the ground? Yes.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Under parameters that are unacceptable.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and my solution to that would be to remove the friction, which couldn't be either lubrication, which would be funny and make for good television, I think. You're on the bus and you step into this little slingshot affair and it sprays you with some kind of

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Animal birthing lubricant.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then, uh,

• 13:26Speaker 03

  So you're on time even if you're a little greasy.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Animal birthing lubricant.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Actually, by ours in a powder form.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, in large quantities.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Just add water.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  And that's interesting, and it actually feeds right back to conventional things that we all know about, like what do motorcycle racers wear? They wear leather. It's not an exoskeleton, it's an exoskin. Yeah, it allows them to slide. It removes the friction.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Maybe they'd be better if they were coated in lubricant.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  It's possible, as long as there aren't any obstacles on the course. And in our testing, we can make sure, you know, we go out on a runway, so there's nothing that we would hit. But the process of getting there where I come up with this premise, what if we did this, what would happen? It's a what-if situation. And I start to think very carefully about what is the actual problem? And you could, as far as I'm concerned, quite safely manage to jump out of a car going at full speed if you were on something like a a shallow ski kind of affair that would just slide. There's no impact that's going to be happening as long as you are doing this in a controlled situation, which we would. Crazy people.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  They are insane. However, I was impressed with the fact that you used the term exoskin.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Because as a person who rides motorcycles.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  I didn't know you were biking.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Well, no longer because I got kids now. My wife won't allow me to do it.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Right, she doesn't want you to die.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, which, you know, the moment she says, here's a bike, I know our marriage is over.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  The best organ donors are motorcycles.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  That's right. However, there's a saying that we have in the biking community, better the cow's skin than my own. And that's for guys who wear leather when they bike. It's not a fashion statement. It's actually for your own safety.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  So what do they have against cows?

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this experiment with falling off the truck, they actually did something similar to that, but not with Jamie, that's the point.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they used a soccer ball and they launched it off the back of a 60 mile an hour truck and it launched it at 60 miles an hour and the ball just fell straight down.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Straight down.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. But Galileo could have known this, I mean, this was, so it's just fun watching them make this happen.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it was gonna happen that way. Galileo figured that out.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Figured it out. A pretty long time ago.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A pretty long time ago. You know, also, there are issues with whether advertisers will get in the way between whether they have an idea that they should perform or not.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Uh, now we're talking TV.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now we're talking TV. Let's find out.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  So early on, we thought, well, what about teeth whiteners? How well do over the counter teeth whiteners work as opposed to the medical grade?

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you're testing brands on that level.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Right. And we thought, oh, this no end of stuff we could test here. And Discovery was, oh, no, no, no, we have advertisers who sell toothpaste. And I don't begrudge them their business model, I understand that.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But really, it shouldn't be your job to tell people what product to buy, really.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  It shouldn't. I'm a little sad about it because I love the British version of Top Gear because I love it when they get behind the wheel of a car they don't like and they say, this is a piece of crap. That is something you will almost never hear on American television and that's too bad.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're all about the money. But the fact is, you wouldn't have a show unless some sponsor sponsored it.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's be grown up about it and understand that and find some other topic.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  I guess one of the early times I talked about this was at a hacker conference and they were expecting some sort of like, yeah, screw the man. And I said, look, that's their business model and it's one that's allowed me to do all sorts of wonderful stuff that you've enjoyed watching, so let's not begrudge them their own model. But it does mean, you know, that we won't test something that we've always wanted to test, which was the cleanliness of bottled water versus tap water.

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a New Yorker all the way and I go to other cities, I'm, what the hell are you guys drinking? It's like, ew, what is that?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Well, San Francisco ours is almost as good as New York tap water.

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, cities would let you contest cities.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Oh, you're totally right. We should totally do that.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the city pride.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  You know, New York City's tap water is so good because of how thriving the estuary of the Hudson River Valley is. And in San Francisco, we've got a pretty good one.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. Okay.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  You're a New Yorker by.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  I am.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Heritage, and I'm not, but New York water, I tell you, even I know that.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Oh, it's amazing.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  It's not as good as San Francisco, but San Francisco's water is fine.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll take you up.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it'd be fun. And then.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  We'll do the Pepsi challenge.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a Pepsi challenge. And then you, what you do is you serve the San Francisco people New York water or vice versa.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus you can get Icelandic water. They talk a lot about their water.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Local pride.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Is it well water? Is it a reservoir water? Is it glacial runoff? Then that way you can stay out of the.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Okay. I think that's, I think we've got a whole episode there.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Cool. And we can imply something about bottled water.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you know there's an annual tap water test?

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Did not.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Conducted by the American Waterworks Association. And the best tasting tap water in 2013 was Oklahoma City.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Get out of here.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I think I've been to Oklahoma City and I went to restaurants and they're putting like lemon wedges in the water.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Was this test done with lemon wedges in the water? Could that be why Oklahoma City has the best tasting water because it's lemonade without sugar?

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, gotta take a break. When we come back, more of part two of the Mythbusters interview.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. Chuck Nice with me.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In studio.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In New York.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Speaking of New York.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 18:43Speaker 03

  You said Oklahoma City won the best tasting water for 2013.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that, I, I didn't, it was the American Waterworks Association, Oklahoma City, but I'm thinking, I thought New York had some awesome water.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then I looked at their list.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So the year before it was Fremont, Nebraska. Before that Greenville, South Carolina, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, 2010. Macon, Georgia, 2009, Louisville, Kentucky, 2008. I'm saying, what's going on here? If you have good water, you ought to be. Win in every year.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's up with that?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  What is up with that? Every year, a different place has the best water?

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They say New York has the best pizza because we have the best water going into the dough.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  That makes the dough better.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, perhaps.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I think it's just our general awesomeness, I'm just gonna say.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Awesomeosity.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Awesomeosity.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so we're, that's our, part two of our Mythbusters interview with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyman. Jamie Hyman is the bald one with the hat, in case you get him confused. You know, they're famous for their experiments of blowing stuff up. I had to ask him, what happens if you get injured?

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out. Show me your scars.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  I think I've got about a hundred scars on my hands. I've got one on my forehead.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Got about fifty, sixty stitches in my hands. I broke my finger about two months ago.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These from explosions or power tools going awry?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Actually, the most common injury on our set is from moving safety equipment.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Those blast panels that we carry around it, they're.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  OSHA would be proud.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Right? They weigh close to a couple hundred pounds and, you know, we have to use a bunch of them. So you get your fingers in between them, they're.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  So I got my finger in between and broke my left metacarpal.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  That's happened three times and those are the most serious.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Four times, I was the fourth.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Oh, was it?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the most trips to the hospital from that type of injury.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So have other people been injured, like producers?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Other crew members have broken fingers and gotten a couple of stitches here and there, but by and large, that's it. It's all relatively minor outpatient procedures.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any members of your production crew that you want to make sure they get injured?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  No, not anymore.

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So no matter what you say at the beginning of a show.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As you blow stuff up, somebody's gonna imitate what you're doing. Is there some liability to that as well?

• 20:42Speaker 01

  We've been very lucky. Well, one thing is we always play up how much our safety procedures are.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Discovery Channel viewers, they're a notch above others.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I think so. We've been blessed that no one seems to have tried anything super dangerous and gotten hurt doing stuff.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we're pretty prominent about, don't try this at home and that kind of thing. And when you think about it, I mean, there's so much violent, just out of control, crazy stuff on the television, even in the news that you see all the time. We shouldn't be really held accountable for it.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, of all the violence you're exposed to on TV, why turn to you guys?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're gonna call us the scapegoats. We have had people try stuff we've done in order to save their lives. And been successful at doing that. We did a couple of episodes on escaping from an underwater car. And one of the things we learned during our episode is that as a car is sinking and it still has air within the car. You actually won't be able to open the door because of the pressure differential.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Pressure difference, yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Until it actually settles on the bottom. So even after the car is full of water, if it's moving through the water, there's still a pressure differential.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  And even so, it has to fill with water once it's there. And that's kind of the cool part as far as the drama in us experimenting with this is that you have to wait until it's almost too light. You had to sit there and watch every last bit of the air disappear. And then you open the car door and you will be able to.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Amazingly, we had this truck driver in San Diego who had a seizure and drove off the end of a pier. He came to in the cab of his truck in blackness and realized he was in the water. And he thought, right, okay, what did the Mythbusters say to do in this case? Oh, you've got to let the cab fill up with water. So he opened a vent. This is some big cojones on this guy. He opened a vent and let his cab fill up with water, held his breath and opened the door and swam to safety and emailed us to thank us.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's happened about six times across the world.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, a couple of police officers in the Midwest in the winter also went in the drink and credited us with getting them out in time.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  But so far, thankfully, no kids have improvised explosives. And after 10 years, it won't happen.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  No, and like I said, we really big up all of the safety procedures. We're standing in full safety gear. You have eye protection, ear protection, helmets, glass panels. You know, the FBI taught us a really great method is you don't know what's going to happen with an explosion. Put something big between you and it, like a building.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Well, and I can tell you also that we've run across things that we could put out there and say, don't try this at home and all that kind of stuff, but there are episodes that we've canceled because we're not in the business of like, this is dangerous. Now, here's how to do it.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know, it's not just, don't try this at home, it's don't try this ever at any time, anywhere. Absolutely. And even about home. And not even about home. Please don't try it at home, especially my home, that's what I'm saying. So this thing about the doors, an important fact, it's, you know, do you ever notice airplane doors? They seal from the inside out. Inside out. Right, the doors on the inside and presses against the outside fuselage. That's because when you're flying, the air pressure's higher inside the plane than it is outside, and that air pressure helps to keep the door shut. Nice. Yeah, so that way the locks and other things, you're not fighting what nature's trying to make happen anyway. Right. And I just resaw the Bourne trilogy, and in the second one, he drives off the bridge. Right. He knew, because Bourne is a smart dude. Yep. And plus he can kick your butt. Still true.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The car goes off, the Jeep goes off, he waits for it to fill up, then he opens the door. Then he goes out, then he, right. Got that all figured out. So, I mean, here's the thing, just don't drive your car off into a body of water. How about you just practice some traffic safety? I can tell you, as an astronomer, we've, we gotta be the safest job in the world. Because the black hole is really far away. No chance of getting sucked in. Yeah, we're, we're good with that. Chuck, we gotta take a break. When we come back, more of StarTalk Radio's interview with the Mythbusters. What did I just say?

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back, StarTalk Radio. Tyson here, Chuck Nice there. That's right. Hi Chuck, how you doing? I'm doing good. You know, we're on the internet, StarTalkRadio.net, and you can find archival shows there, and there's even a list of the music that we play. That's very cool. For all the ins and outs of these, of these segments. And they all have to do with whatever we're talking about? Yeah, whatever. Which is a very cool way to tie that. I don't even choose the music, we got top people working on this in our factory. And also, StarTalk has a Twitter handle at StarTalk Radio, so find us there. Check out what's going on. So, this is part two of the Mythbusters interview.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Occasionally, sometimes they find things in their work that surprises even me. Let's find out. What is the weirdest urban legend that turned out to be true?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Elephants afraid of mice.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, don't say that.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  We were in South Africa filming with sharks and bad weather kept us off.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, because everyone for Discovery Channel has to do sharks at some point.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've done Shark Week twice. Three times.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is rites of passage.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. But bad weather kept us off the water, which was a disaster from a production standpoint. So, we went in inland and thought, well, let's just produce five minutes of filler. Let's do Elephants Are Afraid of Mice. So, we found someone with some mice. We found a nature preserve with some sad elephants, and we set up a procedure.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  We got a big ball of dung. Elephant turds are like basketballs. And we hollowed out a space in the bottom of the turd.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Big enough for a very unhappy mouse.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, one very unhappy mouse in there, tied monofilament onto it and went hid behind a bush. And the people at the game reserve opened the fence, they knew.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Elephants walk on paths that are predictable.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we thought this was a fluff piece, the elephant's not going to be able to see what the little mouse.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  We thought our biggest problem was going to be, what do we do when the elephant steps on the mouse? Do we film it? Do we show it?

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It smashes, it's Bambi meets Godzilla.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the elephant comes out on cue and darned if it didn't come screeching to a stop once the mouse came out. Yeah, and it very carefully, almost tiptoed.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  No, totally, totally, totally.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  And.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Disney style, tiptoeing around a mouse.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  So then we're thinking, well, maybe the elephant's never seen its own dung roll by its own accord.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe it's afraid of its dung.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  So, we removed the mouse, we had another elephant come through, we moved the dung, elephant didn't do a darn thing.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then we repeated.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the control that you're trying to put into it.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  We posited that that must be a control, then we added another mouse and did it with a different elephant.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  And the same thing happened.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Got the same.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it wasn't just a neurotic?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Not a neurotic elephant. We did have, and this is another thing that I love. We were doing an appearance at a college a few years ago, and this eight-year-old girl raised her hand. She was like, "I wanted to know why you used a white mouse in the experiment. Elephants are afraid of mice because they're not very natural. And why didn't you use a more natural colored mouse?" And I said, "You're absolutely right." It's because we weren't thinking far enough ahead. We thought we were doing a fluff piece and we were just wanted something that was bright on camera.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She was all over that.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  She was totally all over. More power to her.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  A future scientist.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We failed.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, unbelievable. First of all, here's two things I'm thinking here. Yeah. All right. One, elephants have very large brains. Maybe they're not afraid of mice. Maybe they're extremely compassionate. Oh. They just didn't want to step on something so small and helpless. Confusing fear from protect from. For protection. Whoa. That that's number one. Number two, the little girl had a point. Maybe elephants are racist.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Okay, something to consider. They don't like the white mouse. Right, exactly. Give me some black mice. Right, you know what I mean? And then I could chill with them.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  That's like any of a half dozen Disney films where the black animal is the, like the crows. The villain, the crows. The crows, wasn't that in Dumbo actually? That's correct. The crows are the. The crows were the black people. They were. They're just like. Now you know better than that. You know, no elephant can't fly.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Boy, you better put that feather out your trunk.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's interesting. They didn't, they didn't test all the controls.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  They didn't test all the controls.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They could have, you know, but this, this goes way back. It's not just an urban legend, which is what we say these, these modern things are.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It goes way back. There's a book published in AD 78.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  That's way back.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pliny the Elder.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm not familiar.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think they had first and last names back then. It was like, you don't know Pliny?

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Pliny the Elder, not Pliny the Baker.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get yourself some Pliny. I actually own this book. It's a book called Natural History.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have the first English translation of it, which was from 1600s.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Oh, cool.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it is the repository of all knowledge of the day.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All natural knowledge of the day.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  So it's like the first encyclopedia.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's essentially the first encyclopedia. And for those younger listeners, it's like Wikipedia but in print. Okay, so.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  I didn't realize that. You do date yourself when you say encyclopedia.

• 29:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they don't know what the hell you're talking about.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Nobody knows what the hell you're talking about.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Encyclo?

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does encyclo mean? Where's the wiki? Where's the wiki? So here's the quote, it's a great quote. Of all other living creatures, elephants cannot abide a mouse or a rat. Oh, so even back then, he knew that. Oh, yeah, that's hot. That's a, he, he, he knew it. Fascinating. So it's not, we don't know why elephants would react that way. And some people have challenged their results, other than the eight-year-old girl. Right. That this is a general result. But it's still fun to know that an elephant can, on some conditions, tiptoe around a mouse. When we come back, more of StarTalk Radio's interview with the Mythbusters.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back for the last segment. Yes, I'm a little crestfallen that this is the last. Crestfallen. I thought you from the hood.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every now and then, this whole SAT word comes out of Chuck's mouth. Yes, this is true. This is why I got beat up a lot in the hood. And it's your Ivy League education, just busting out, you can't hold it in. So the Mythbusters interview with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. This is the last segment. And in this next clip, we hear how they wanted Mythbusters to be different from other science TV shows. And they hypothesize why they think it's become so popular. Check it out.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  In the end, we really wanted to make sure we weren't just doing like a science demo show.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that that would be bad.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, but most science programming up until us, where it was practical stuff, is what we'd call demonstration programming, the stuff Bill Nye does. Here is the concept of this, and here's a model that shows it.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a liquid nitrogen and here the, yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  And but we have.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A bed of nails.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Jamie's got a degree in Russian language, and I've got a high school diploma. We have no idea what the results of any demonstration we're about to do will be. Our ignorance is the audience's ignorance. We're a genuine experimentation show.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said you have a high school diploma, it means you don't have a college diploma.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  That's, that's true.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying to get the euphemisms.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Well, and that approach points out a fundamental thing to Mythbusters, this thing about experimentation as opposed to demonstration and the fact that we're not educated formally as scientists. It points out that, you know, science isn't just for guys in lab coats. We kind of came into this by accident and we were presented with these urban legends to debunk or whatever. We just want to do a good job. So we applied our minds to it and we figured, well, like we do with anything in our normal work, which was special effects before this, we're methodical about it. You know, you have a beginning point, an end point, you have a body of work in the middle, you march through it carefully to make sure that you cover all the bases and you're doing a good job.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Well, that just happens to be pretty darned close to science.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  That's the thing, we never set up to actually illustrate the scientific method. It just turns out that when you're telling a narrative about trying to figure something out.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comes out and that's what it is.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  That's exactly what it is.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And science is messy and it's a deeply creative process, trying to come up with hypotheses and trying to figure out ways to remove variables and figure out your own bias.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the strongest points of your show, at least from my point of view, is you get to see how you think about the problem.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how often do you get to see a scientist think about a problem? Never. You just see the result. It's in the journalist's public account of what you did. And so we're a participant with you as you do this.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Well, and you use a word like a hypothesis and a lot of times people's eyes glaze over it. You don't even have to call it science, just call it being curious about how to find out how things work. It's posing a question and then methodically going about getting an answer. So that's what we do and that's one of the reasons the show's had such appeal with people of all ages and all types of backgrounds.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I would have thought it was your beret. I thought that's why people watch the show.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  The beret's at least 50%.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotta be at least.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  The other 50% is explosives.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the recipe.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beret blows stuff up.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  It goes a decade of TV.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is the beret now surgically attached to your skull?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  He's wearing a new one, which I'm one of the few people that can tell immediately. His previous one, we were doing a story about shooting grenades out of the air.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just like a Michael Jackson story where his

• 34:03Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The beret lit up on fire.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  No, Jamie was throwing grenades for me to shoot at and he said, "I'll give you one chance to shoot my hat," and I hit it.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he tossed his hat.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  He tossed his hat and I hit it with a shotgun round that has hundreds of holes in it.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that means you're pretty handy with a shotgun.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  We both turned out to be pretty good at trap shooting.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, of course, shotguns, it's a spray.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  It's a bit of a spray.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just have to sort of point it rather than

• 34:27Speaker 02

  We also tried doing it with just a pistol and it's a whole different world.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These guys are out of control.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  They are out of control.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, when he first said, oh, he shot my hat, I'm thinking it's, it's, it's who's the dude with the bow and arrow and the apple?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, William Tell.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  William Tell, right. And then, yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Was it on your head is the question. He shot my hat, was it still on your head?

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I like to think of Mythbusters as not something that simply debunks or explores urban legends, but it is a demonstration of how science works.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is. And I'm impressed that it has attracted that much interest. That tells me that there's an underbelly out there. There's a, there's a hidden geek in us all.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  In everyone.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In everyone.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  There really is.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the show airs in every region that carries Discovery Channel. So it's Eastern and Central Europe, Denmark, I got a list here. Finland, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Greece, Spain, Brazil. And so it has an appeal.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Worldwide.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that is extraordinary. And so I'm wondering if this is the beginning and the saga will continue. But I wonder if it's some of the seeds planted that will render science as a mainstream activity.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  You know, I think in one way it could, but here's what you get most people that's when they, when you say science.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Science is hard.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I know, but so

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Science is hard.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it can be fun. It can be hard and fun.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, plus, what did John Kennedy say? We go to the moon, not because it's easy. Oh, you want to imitate his words?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  No, no, no. But you know how we go to the moon? I just love that.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know more of what he said?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Uh, let me see. Uh, because we can.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that was Obama.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  No, that was Obama. Oh, I'm Obama Kennedy. We go to the moon because we can. Yes, we can. Okay.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Obama Kennedy, that's a really Irish sounding name.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  That's gonna be my-

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Obama Kennedy.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  If I have another kid, I'm gonna name it Obama Kennedy.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we choose to go to one, not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Because it's hard.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in school, I used to wrestle. I wrestled not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sometimes you want to do something hard, because then at the end of the day, you are in a new place, a place that others aren't there, because it was hard.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Nice. I'm inspired, Neil.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're out of time. Chuck, thanks for being on StarTalk Radio.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Always a pleasure.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is the end of our part two episode with the Mythbusters. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you to keep looking up.