MythBusters - Popularity and Influence

Popularity and Influence

Hyneman and Savage have appeared on numerous entertainment programs, such as Good Morning America, the Late Show with David Letterman, NPR's news program All Things Considered, the syndicated radio Bob and Tom Show, and in the movie The Darwin Awards (as two military surplus vendors who sold a JATO rocket to the main character). Skeptic magazine's Daniel Loxton interviewed the duo in a 2005 article entitled "Mythbusters Exposed." Hyneman and Savage spoke at the annual convention of the National Science Teachers Association in March 2006, and the California Science Teachers Association named them honorary lifetime members in October 2006. In 2009, they were the featured keynote speakers at RSA Conference. They also are occasionally interviewed for articles by Popular Mechanics and are featured in that magazine's September 2009 issue.

Hyneman and Savage occasionally appear at colleges around the United States to talk about what it's like to be a MythBuster; the show consists of an interview and discussion to give the audience the opportunity to ask the MythBusters questions. The Build Team members have sometimes made appearances in similar capacity. They hold lectures in both collegiate and corporate settings, though the technical colleges tend to be the most enthusiastic. They have spoken at WPI, RPI, MIT, Michigan Tech, the University of Florida and many others.

Adam Savage has written a primer on mold-making for Make magazine, and was a featured guest at the 2008, 2009, and 2010 San Mateo Maker Faire. Kari Byron was interviewed on The Late Show, on January 16, 2006.

People involved in survival stories reported in local newscasts have sometimes mentioned previous viewings of MythBusters as an influence to their actions. Twenty-three-year-old Theresa Booth of St. Martin, Minnesota credits a MythBusters episode for her and her infant child's survival. On April 3, 2007 she skidded off the road into a drainage ditch which had filled with flood water from the Sauk River. In a local newscast, she is described as opening the car door as soon as it entered the water, and credits her watching of the show (specifically, the episode of the Underwater Car myth) for her knowledge of how to survive the accident. On October 19, 2007 in Sydney, Australia, a teenager named Julian Shaw pulled a fainted middle-aged man off the railway tracks near a train station to safety below the platform. He pulled back as the train passed, citing that the "Train Suction" episode affected his response.

The 3rd Annual Independent Investigative Group IIG Awards presented an award to Mythbusters recognizing the promotion of science and critical thinking in popular media on May 18, 2009.

On the May 1, 2008 episode of CSI, "The Theory of Everything", Hyneman and Savage appeared in a cameo as observers taking notes during a test to determine whether a taser bolt can set someone on fire under various circumstances (which was later tested on MythBusters itself).

During August 2008, Hyneman and Savage appeared on the stage of NVISION 08, an event sponsored by Nvidia, having been asked by Nvidia's Creative Director, David Wright, to provide a visual demonstration of the power of the GPU vs a CPU. They did this by creating an image of the Mona Lisa with a giant parallel processing paintball gun, setting a world record for largest paintball gun in the process. An encore of the demonstration was given at YouTube Live featuring Hyneman standing in the path of the paintballs wearing a suit of armor.

On the April 17, 2012 episode of NCIS, "Rekindled", the character Abby Sciuto demonstrates a thermite fire to her boss, Jethro Gibbs, by playing a clip from the MythBusters episode "End with a Bang". Gibbs asks if the men in the clip are pyromaniacs, and she replies, "Scientists, Gibbs! Okay, yeah, they're kind of pyromaniacs too."

Hyneman, Savage, and others from the MythBusters crew have appeared at The Amaz!ng Meeting, and subsequently were interviewed by Dr. Steven Novella and the "skeptical rogues" for the podcast The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. On April 16, 2010, Hyneman and Savage received the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism from the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy.

On October 18, 2010, President Barack Obama, as part of the White House Science Fair, announced he had taped a segment of MythBusters and would appear on December 8, 2010. Obama's segment covered the Archimedes Solar Ray myth.

Both men appeared at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on October 30, 2010 in Washington, D.C. They had an experiment with the crowd involving the wave. They had the audience make various noises (e.g. popping their cheeks or laughing) all at the same time. They also had everyone in the crowd jump up at the same time to see if it would register on a seismograph.

Hyneman and Savage received honorary doctorates from the University of Twente in the Netherlands for their role in popularizing science, on the occasion of the university's 50th anniversary, on November 25, 2011.

As of November 2011, all five MythBusters have also appeared in new shows, segments or specials for Discovery's Science Channel including: Head Rush (Kari, 2010–present); Punkin Chunkin 2010 (Adam and Jamie); Flying Anvils 2011 (Tory); Road to Punkin Chunkin 2011 and Punkin Chunkin 2011 (Tory, Grant and Kari); Large Dangerous Rocket Ships 2010 and Large Dangerous Rocket Ships 2011 (Kari); "Killer Robots: RoboGames 2010" (Grant); Curiosity (Adam); and Savage and Hyneman are judges on the game show Unchained Reaction which premiered in March 2012.

Aired on February 12, 2012, Adam and Jamie lent their voices to The Simpsons episode "The Daughter Also Rises" to be featured on a show similar to Mythbusters called "Mythcrackers" in which Adam and Jamie take on the classic myth that a cat will always land on its feet. In the episode they don't want to harm a real cat so they took a Build A Bear carcass, stuffed it with ballistics gel, shot it with a 20' barrel steam cannon, then made a scatter plot of the remains. By the end of the experiment, Jamie asked, "What was it we were trying to prove again?" to which Adam replied, "Don't know, don't care."

On October 3, 2012, Kari and Tory made a guest appearance on the Discovery series Sons of Guns. They test-fired some of the weapons in the Red Jacket shop, then watched as the staff re-tested a myth busted by the Build Team in 2008: that a propane tank could explode when hit with a bullet.