If we're reviving everything then start with Mythbusters
If we're reviving everything then start with Mythbusters
I absolutely loved mythbusters, but honestly I think it ran it's course. They were kind of running out of things to test towards the end.
Also search for Streamlined Mythbusters - they're fan-edits that remove fluff (lots of fluff in the later seasons) and rearranges the shows so each myth is played straight through before going to the next myth in the episode; instead of showing pieces of 3 different myths at a time bouncing between them.
138“Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.” -Adam Savage
That single quote is the core of Mythbusters, and only the original Mythbuster team truly had that chemistry to pull it off on national television.
54My favorite episode is the one where they tried to turn a city bus at 50 mph to test a scene from a movie called "Speed".
It didn't matter how the passengers were arranged in the bus, the bus just wouldn't turn over. In fact, the bus was more stable in a corner when ghe weight was evenly distrubuted, to the surprise of nobody with a mechanical engineering degree.
The most instructive part for me was what they did have to do to make the bus barely tip over. They had to fasten a big piece of steel plate to the roof, disable the air shocks on one side, and put all the "passengers" (barrels of water) on one side.
Thus reminding everyone that engineers know more about how to build a bus than movie writers do. Which shouldn't be a surprise.
42RIP Grant, you are missed
32I don't think you could revive Mythbusters.
I don't think Adam and Jamie are at all interested in doing the show anymore. If it wasn't them, you'd have to re-cast, and it would be really hard to get that kind of chemistry, while also finding people with the right technical background for the show. The Build Team members were fun, but they couldn't do it, although they tried with projects like the White Rabbit project.
Plus, I think the world has moved on. There are plenty of YouTube channels where people build crazy things, or test myths, or whatever. But, that's in short, 5-10 minute videos. A full hour (well, 45 minutes) of reality TV is different. Also, they tested so many myths over the years, that the only ones left are TikTok trends or gossip or whatever. Not the kinds of beliefs that go back decades.
30Mythbusters is the reason I went into STEM. On year my parents even bought me tickets to see the tour, as a Christmas present. I also still watch Adam's YouTube channel weekly (Tested).
25Love it. RIP Grant.
25No way they would make that show today. I wonder if the airing of the last episode will be a point that future historians mark as special. That and the same month one of the Voyager proves started dying NASA announced it was studying UFOs.
Just a reminder that Ancient Aliens is on its 19th session with 240 episodes. You know just in case you wanted to spend the weekend not wondering if hospitals will be replaced with herbal medicine and laying on of hands.
25It was revived in 2017. I think that's all that needs to be said on the matter.
If you like this kind of content, there are loads of YouTube channels doing these kinds of 'experiments' they tend to be more specialised, but that's a good thing and they often interact with each other to share expertise.
23See, this is why I don't like debunking shows in general, and I find the skeptic movement to be overrated and simply draws less criticism that it deserves.
MythBusters avoided the one mistake that all debunkers make. First off, they didn't come off as thinking that they were smarter than anyone else, they don't mock people for believing false information, and they never bring religion into it.
They just talked about whatever misconception, then they tested to see if it worked or not
19Yeeeeah, no, that's weird. Discovery rebooting it with different people would almost certainly suck, if you just want to hang out with that sort of engineery-makery-SFXy content there's tons of ways to do it now and Savage is a successful youtuber in that space. Pair it with Imahara's hearbreaking passing and that just sounds all kinds of depressing.
I'd sure love it if Discovery wasn't actively burying the old episodes, though. That'd be nice.
18Mythbusters is good just because of how down-to-Earth and raw it is.
They show the audience what they want to see. They ask the questions the audience wants asked. They give rationales that make sense, most of them.
It's a very human show, even if it requires a lot of science and engineering to make it work.
The producers did a fine job with it. I'm glad it's not over-edited or following a checklist of what a show needs to be in order to be successful.
Its format and presentation fit the content like a glove.
16Mythbusters really was the best TV has ever had to offer in its heyday.
9"Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!"
This is the essence of science. Being wrong is exciting because it means that you're on to something. The way scientific theories are made is by challenging what you believe -- trying to prove your idea wrong. If you repeatedly can't prove it wrong then you're probably approaching something that is true which continually adds to the certainty that you're onto something. That's what the sigma certainty means in scientific discoveries. It refers to the possible margin of error in a discovery.
The sigma certainty is essentially, 1 sigma is about 85% certain - or a 1 in 7 chance you're wrong, 2 sigma is about 97.75% certainty - or a 1 in 45 chance you're wrong, 3 sigma is about 99.98% certain - or about 1 in 5000 chance of being wrong, etc. It depends on which scientific field you're in as to which level of sigma is considered enough for something to officially become an accepted theory, in Astronomy a 6 sigma is where the line is drawn which is about 1 in 500 million chance of being wrong (~99.9999998% certain).
7Didn't they stop because they ran out of myths that wouldn't give people explicitly dangerous information like their bomb recipe
5Been rewatching mythbusters and man its a great show. Entertaining, educational and great hosts. RIP Grant. 😭
Watched the one about hot water tanks either being a bomb/or being a rocket last night. Was a super good one.
4a bull moves very gingerly
I imagined a bull in a red wig with purse in hand holding up plates and wondering where he'd store those in the kitchen if he bought a set
4This kind of is the opposite and explains how that bill nye show didn't last, it was a killjoy show, that wasn't open to changing its mind and hated the idea of learning anything new
3I'd like Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars or Monster Garage back. I liked the "just get it running" attitude over the muscle car and motorcycle shows.
3There was a recent corridor crew video that had Mythbusters energy about seeing if Arnie using mud to hide from the Predator's thermo vision was realistic. It had a similar surprise outcome. Worth checking out!
2Like restarting the original show - 100% would Love! Remaking it as all other 2023 shows - No thanks.
I also don't believe the modern world would allow what we had. Insurance, getting access to locations (because insurance, general costs) all those fun things.
And nobody under 30 would watch it if episodes were longer than 3 minutes. I can make fun of them because they left after the first line of this comment :)
-4We have the bitch from it pushing oil over renewables
And they test Tide products
So it’s basically still around
-5
