May 30, 2018 • 23 mins
Will and Mango pester co-host Kari Byron on how to build a human catapult, what the worst smells on set were, why Jamie's safety lectures might make you terrified of building anything... and how her new book 'Crash Test Girl' uses the Scientific Method to answer your biggest life questions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will? What's that mango? So you know, I'm
a fan of the show MythBusters, right, definite, And I
was reading Carrie Byron's new book where she talks about
one of the crazier explosions she's ever done, and it
involves a creamer cannon creamer light What do you mean
like coffee creamer? Yeah, it's like super explosive. She and
the team watched this YouTube video where this guy put
(00:20):
creamer over a lighter and it made a flame. So
they decided to supersize it by building a giant air
cannon and shooting it up into the air. And honestly,
this thing is so terrifying. The stuff goes up, doesn't
look like it's going to ignite, and then it just
creates a giant puff of smoke and then all of
a sudden, it just rips up into the sky and
makes this enormous fire bomb. It's insane. That sounds crazy.
(00:43):
But the funniest part, and the thing I would never
have realized from watching the show, was that the wind
changed mid explosion and all this hot, milky fire bombs
started raining down from the sky. And she and the
Bill team were responsible for the cleanup. So apparently coffee
creamer bomb residue is discuss Anyway, Carrie is one of
the most fun craziest jobs in the world, and we're
(01:05):
lucky to have her on the program today, So let's
dive in. All right, Well, today we've got the wonderful
(01:26):
Carrie Byron on the show, who most of you will
remember from the Bill team on MythBusters, but also the
host of head Rush, The White Rabbit Project, and so
much more. And now she's the author of a new
book that we're excited to talk about. It's called crash
Test Girl. So Carrie, welcome to Part time Genius there.
So Carrie, before we start, I'm gonna say I'm actually
from Delaware. I grew up with the punkin chunk and
(01:48):
just being a thing only we knew about. Thank you
for bringing it to a wider audience. And uh, I
know you've posted that and the large Dangerous Rocketship Festival.
Have you been surprised by the rise of the maker
movement over the last decade or so and how much
do you think MythBusters has contributed to it? You know,
the maker movement was coming about at the same time
(02:08):
as MythBusters. I think that was just the feeling that
was in the air at the time that people were
getting really d I y and we were all right
in that same wave. Um, you know, I don't make
magazine out here. I just wrote an article for him
because I'm totally a fan of all maker. Yeah. It
was such a fun movement to see, right, I mean
we were huge fans of Boeing Boeing and Wired and
(02:30):
then like, I feel like all of that stuff, the
d I Y stuff, exploded in such a big way
and and uh and I love that you sort of
come to it naturally, right, Like as an artist, I've
been doing it my whole life. I've always been somebody
who like to tinker and work with her hand. I
love the smell of you know, sawdust in the garage.
I like making things. But you know, I think maybe
it might even be my little rebellion to technology in
(02:53):
a bit, because everything you can do with the computer
factor and better. But I don't really like a racing
and you take a pencil and I you know, I
like building things with my hands and redimensions. Yeah. Well,
you know, the new book is super fun and I
actually love how you use the scientific method as a
means for examining, you know, your entire life, everything from
(03:14):
the fun parts of your life to the difficult things
you've had to face. But it speaks to so many
audiences that I'm curious who you actually were thinking about
when you were writing the book. Who is the book for? Well,
I'm not a writer, so for me, I only maken
write for the audience I know, which is myself. So
I kind of feel like I wrote the audience for
the person I was when I was twenty years old
(03:34):
and starting out in life, the person who just trying
to figure out how to take to how to create opportunities,
and how to make big moves. Um I, I, you know,
wanted to lay out all of my journey so that
maybe if I've made mistakes, that you don't have to
make any great I mean, I used the scientific method
(03:55):
as a critical thinking tool, but really it's just an
easy way to organize your thought process. So I think
in making any decision in your life, using the scientific
method is just all about being able to analyze the
results of the choices that you make. Well. I mean
that the structure of the books really fun, the contents excellent,
but I also just really love the sidebars that you
(04:16):
throw in there so weird and funny. Things I hadn't
even thought about, like the bad smells that are on
TV sets and uh, and also how you used things
like um blacknail polish to cover up grease on your
hands and stuff. I I thought those elements were really fun.
But would you actually walk us through some of the
smells that maybe people don't know about at home? I'm
(04:39):
a list maker. I've always just just for fun and
make a list of things. And bad smells was a
list that I had made and I was looking through
on my journals and like, I feel like this is
something other people might explaind amusing. Well, we had a
lot of bad melbum set because we worked with like
a lot of animals. We worked with a lot of
um toxins and you know every being from wolf hearing
(05:02):
from a female dog and heat to um brotting meat
that got left in the fridge over the weekend. I mean,
we had a lot of really disgusting smells. I remember
when You're doing Shark Week one time and we had
to figure out how to cure sharks skin for stand paper,
and when I was reading, like how they do that
Sailey is a p on the shark skin and let
(05:24):
it just brought in the peat. I had to pee
in a cup and put shark skin with kino sounds
like fish into that current and just let it um
fit and for mint in my own urine in the shop.
And I think that that is a that is a
vile smell that nobody should ever have knowledge of. I mean,
we had to capture parts and you know, examine the
(05:47):
constituents at the part, you know, to get to a
mass gestometer so we could find out what makes them
to smell. I mean, capturing marks from everybody you worked with. Still,
that's it's a kind of fun to get that behind
the scenes. You know, something else you talked about in
your book that that I found just very interesting was
you know, you talked about your family struggling economically, and
(06:09):
one of the scenes that really sticks out to me
is how you lived in your car at night and
all this sounds terrifying, but you know, you also built
this dummy to sit in the front seat to make
it look like there was a man sitting in the car.
And I'm curious, you know, how did you come up
with this idea and how do you know, as a team,
how to build a believable dummy. I just, you know,
(06:30):
sometimes it's just an essentity of the moment. And to
build a believable dummy, I've just always been somebody who
I think was meant to be in sort of a
special effects world. Maybe somebody I'll actually get there. They
got the way, But I just I always made things,
you know, I made I made cultures of people I'm
as a little kids and how aween, how every year
(06:52):
was in same So already knew that to make zombies,
it's really not that far off from me zombie. So
I just stuff like one of my dad's attle news
and put a hat on it and use the skeleton
mask for face. Nobody's gonna come up with that's really funny.
It's probably true. So for for me, MythBusters with so
much about settling bar bets, and I know you talk
(07:13):
about it, if I know, my friends and I at
at a bar and Della were actually we're discussing like
could the car from Night Rider really drive up a
ramp like that on the truck and not crash? And
then obviously the first thing you google, you see you
guys have covered it. But I'm curious what was the
writer's room like on the show and how did you
guys come up with ideas and more importantly, how do
you decide what not to do? Um? Well, we never
(07:35):
said no to things. We generally are like how could
we do these things? And you know we did have
done forammeters like it had to be buildable and had
to be visual. We couldn't have bog boogie. We can't
go find out a vampires don't like darlic. It has
to be something scientifics that we can actually come up
with the conclusion. So, um, you know, with all of
the diversity in the room, we have different people coming
(07:56):
from different backgrounds, and um, we could come up with
being most of wild and wacky contraption because I don't
think any of us knew that you couldn't do things.
You know, you could come up with like I remember
sitting there the first time it came up. The weirdest,
biggest thing that we could is when we had this,
Uh there was a smith about somebody who catapulted themselves
with a boom lift and they franked down the boom
(08:18):
look really hard, um with a chain or something, and
then when they cut it, it catapulted the guy in
the basket. Well, we tried it several times in you know,
its truest form, and it didn't catapult anybody. It just
bounced a little stuffing. Everybody's like, well, how are we
gonna actually catapult to die? And I was like, what
(08:40):
if we made an actual catapult? Because I'm not an engineer,
I don't know if it's possibility or not. And then
we came up with packing containers on top of each other,
welding a pivot where the wheels are of the catapult,
and actually franking it back for real and making a
battle sized catapult like lump and jumping and launching it
(09:02):
dunny as far as we possibly could, and it uh
didn't work well, but it was a fantastic thing to see.
I think engineering skills made it that. We just didn't
know whether things were actually impossible, so we went for it. Wow,
that's that's pretty great. Well, we've got plenty more questions
for Carrie. But before that a quick break. Welcome back
(09:33):
to Part Time Genius, where we're talking to Carry Byron,
author of Crash Test Girl. You know, one of one
of my favorite parts of the White House in somewhat
recent years has been the White House Science Fair, which
of course you hosted. I was curious, what was it
like getting that call and and then of course being
at the White House being able to promote science. Who
is so cool that I couldn't believe it. When I
(09:56):
feel my parents I was going to the White House,
They're like, what Just walking into that place, it's the
White House is just something you see in the movies
from far away. And actually getting clearance to walk inside
and being all of the the people do you see on
the news every day just walking around looking at their phone.
It was incredible. I got to, you know, go meet
(10:19):
all of these incredible kids that we're doing things, you know,
by age fifteen, that I could couldn't imagine doing. Now.
I met a kid who learned how to make a
better standbag by using the polymers from inside of a diaper,
and he actually created a sandbag that would absorb water
when there were floods and then go back to being
(10:41):
flat so it could be easily moved and reused. Like,
how did you think of that? You're leavin I mean
aspiring and humbling, And at the time, it was persident
Obama and just having him come and give me a
hug and say my name in a speech. Felt it
felt like I've made it, you know what I mean,
It's pretty cool. I'd say that actually does qualify as
(11:01):
having made it. So congratulations on that one as well. Yeah,
I mean, it's so fun to see your president just
so excited about science and in all of these kids.
Just that really was such a highlight. But um, I'm curious.
You know, your tasks in that buildroom seemed to be
(11:24):
so different. You know, you're you're like making ballistics with creamers,
You're building a vomit chair for making people nauseous, uh,
you know, and and also making these china shops for
bulls to run through. Like how do you research these projects?
And do you have go to reference books or reference
sites that you used to turn to? I mean we
used to We started out with books on the show.
(11:45):
That's how long ago that we had started. As we
progressed through you know, the internet is just a wealth
of knowledge and it's easy to find experts to help
you out in anything. So you know, we would just
get on the phone and you call somebody in Arizona
and be like, hey, so if I were going to
blow something up, underwater, how would you do that? More
(12:09):
and more famous. It was a lot easier to make
those at a point of reference, and we didn't sound
like crazy people. But you know, we we we start
where everybody will start. We start on Google or you know,
smokes with a good way to find a couple of myths,
or you know, just kind of follow the leaves down
the internet rabbit hole. Yeah, and and and most of
them turned out. I mean, of course we have no
(12:30):
idea how most of them turned out, because I'm sure
we we we get to see the best of the best.
But it did sound like only a few of the
myths on MythBusters ever went really wrong. You know, you
talk about the cannon incident in particular, that was near disastrous,
But I'm curious about some of the smaller, like funnier
things that just ended up not working on set, and
how you came up with some fixes for those. Yeah,
(12:51):
I was trying to like some of the stuff. I'm
not sure you'd need it. But I didn't always watch
all the episodes because I was so busy making the
show that more and think that so when people have
questions sometimes I'm like, did that happen on TV? Here
did that happen in real life? A lock of fuel
myths has to make us still um And it turned
up that was illegal, but it didn't make the show.
(13:13):
But I said the day trying to put together a
giant still to still rocket fudle from alcohol, and it
went wacky and totally exploded, and I was on my
own in the shop, just like feeding it with a broom,
trying to break things so that I could not catch
things on fire. And I just wish some of time
with stuff like that that went slightly wrong and actually
(13:36):
made air. It was us being crazy. So you haven't
asside in the book that Jamie was more diligent about
the safety of magnets than he was table saws. Can
you talk a little bit about that? Oh well, no,
I just mean that he took it very He was
tilaging about safety on everything. Jamie had these um safety protocols,
and he'd walk around and give you the tour of
how to do things safety. He also accompanied it with
(13:57):
the most forwarding story he designed for teaching cool. You
can just hear about the table saw. You would hear
about a time the table stock kicked it back. A
board that wlintered off and entailed the man and hear
all the glory details of it, so that you would
now look at every tool as if it were trying
to attack you and had peace. It was terrified. And
(14:21):
I think that he emphasized magnets because they seem so innocuous.
When you think magnets, you know, it doesn't have teeth
like table stoic come bad. They just like magnets. But
magnets really strong, said the ones he had told tape
off a finger, it could, you know, pull something from
the other side of the room. They were so strong,
and you know, until you along the way, I think
(14:42):
you Gus had a really dark way of explaining safety.
I think one of the things people don't think about
when they're watching a show like this is what it
might be like being a woman on the set of MythBusters.
And you talk about this, and you know, many times
you make light of it understandably and kind of embrace it,
but you know, dealing with pregnancy on set and then
postpartum depression, as as well as things like being forced
(15:05):
to wear prosthetic breast to see if people tip better.
And I'm I'm curious with with all of this in mind,
how many women were actually on set, and you know,
in these situations, how do you speak up in these
kinds of environments. Well, like to me, I mean, it's
the only woman that you saw on camera. But we
did have some women behind the scenes. You know, we
had producers, directors, researchers, um are, we had a female
(15:28):
sound downy as well, So it wasn't just me, and
so it was it was definitely helpful through the years
as the production went on, we had more and more
women working behind the scenes. At times could have it
was difficult. It was definitely difficult pregnant because nobody intelligence
to have children. Even just getting a sort of body
on the set, it was always a little bit of
(15:50):
a struggle because all the guys on set were like
wanting to spy in the bushes like us, right right. Um.
The hardest thing I think it was probably finding out
that the other two guys I was working with UM
for grant, when I thought that there was a paid
disparity that they were making UM specifically more than me.
I sort of thought I had a moment that I
(16:11):
had a little normal ray moment where it's like sweet
a minute, that's not okay, And it was quite a
fight to get to be paid to stain guide. So
from that point on, I actually put it in my
contract that if I had the same title and I
had the stink job, I had not painting that I
know I was reading about. That just makes you so sad.
You look at places like toy companies or NPR or
(16:31):
like Discovery just assume they're like happy places and totally
equal in things. And and the fact that you had
the same title and even some seniority and you weren't
getting paid that is it's just so disturbing. How did
you discover that? Like, how how did you figure out
that you weren't getting paid the same amount? You know,
it was through casual conversation because we were you know,
(16:54):
we we had a season coming up and we had
contract negotiations coming up, and um, they're talking about how
much we should ask for to get and I was like, wait,
you're getting white. It was it was one of you know,
it was just you know, since we all did have
the same title and think we all expected we're being
paid the same we started talking about, you know, what
we should negotiate for the next season, and I it
(17:15):
was just sort of a shocking moment. For me, that's
when I decided to do what you should do when
you you're you're kind of out of your your league,
you find expert help. So I went and I got
an agent, and from then on we negotiate all our
contracts as a leagueable nation. All right, well, we have
a few more questions on a kind of a different note,
but before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
(17:53):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking to the
author of a brand new book called Crash Test Girl,
Carrie byron Um. You know, I, I don't know if
I've just been living in a cave and hadn't heard
about the White Rabbit Project, And after reading about your descriptions,
I definitely want to binge watch this, but I was
hoping could you tell us a little bit about the
project and what some of the more fun experiments you've
done on it are. So White Rabbit Project was, It's
(18:16):
based on that moment where you're on the internet, you
guys know this, and considering where you came from, where
you kind of falling down a rabbit hole because you
looked up Belcro and all of a sudden, you're you're
you're looking at the space program like it's just this
one thing reads, the next thing reads the next thing.
So we had um themes for each episode like Superhero
Powers that you can create with technology now, or Key
(18:40):
Forces or Great American Heights. Um. So, one of my favorites,
which I believe is the first episode in the series,
is called Superhero Powers, where we each pick one that
we could try to create with technology, and I picked
mind control, and um, it is hilarious. I looked up
toward you a bunch of electrodes, find amuts of dinner
(19:01):
and made sure that uh I, I could control him
with electrodes. They were attatched to me, so sort of
like my brain powering my arm and my arms powering
his arm. And then we sat down for a big,
messy spaghetti and wine game. I mean it was. It
was delight. It was a delayable, fun, weird show to do.
It's on Netflix. You can still catch it. Um we
(19:22):
had a full season airing. I don't think it got
promoted like it should because we only did get the
one thing. Well, we'll definitely be I'll definitely be checking
it out. So. Um one of the things you hit
it at was this wonderful relationship with the fans of
MythBusters and how some of their ideas uh lad to
um things on the show. I'm curious, what are the
(19:43):
best fan ideas that came through that that you might remember,
or what are the best interactions you've had with fans? Oh,
you know, with the message boards and with our relationship
with them. You know, we could constantly talking with the fans,
and you know, even if we did an episode that
they didn't like our methodology or how did it, we
would go back and revisit it and do it again
because you know, we would actually be talking with them
(20:04):
on the message sports. But I remember my favorite was
a fourth grade class found this ancient myths about paper
being used as armor in ancient China. I was obsessed
with it. So I pitched it and pitched it and
pitched it until they did it. And you know, we
made a whole student armor out of paper, and we
(20:25):
tested it with arrows and with swords, and we did
it with a medal as well, and found out the
paper actually was a viable option up until you know,
guns were invented. But that was from a fourth grade class,
and who was just you know, they're like, let's been
this Midbusters. I love that. That's pretty awesome, you know,
and and hearing about, you know, working with kids, and
(20:47):
and hearing questions from kids. I'm curious about the projects.
I know you do projects with your daughter. Can you
tell us a little bit about some of those. Um, well,
my daughter and I do a lot of projects right now.
We're even just slime. Like we're with you on that.
My counter is covered with shaving cream and glue and glitter.
(21:08):
That's I would say, our current passion. Yeah, I hear
you on that. We've got a room, a craft room
full of slime of giant. I'm curious now whether Elmer's
sells more glue for school use or more glue for slime.
I remember even looking it up online to order another
bottle of it, and even in the description of what
(21:30):
Elmer's glue is, it says great for making slimees. I
think you can see how much the business has has changed.
Oh my god, we should and slime about a year ago.
Higher that are just people wishing slime. I'm like, what, Carrie,
tell us, what's next? But what's the next big project
(21:51):
that you're excited about? All right, Well, I am still
doing TV I've got a bunch of diffinent works I
can't talk about. But what I can talk about is
the next checkmark on my bucket list. Um, now that
there's book things over with, I want to make toys.
So I have just recently joined a startup called Smart Girls. Um.
It is a scrappy startup. It's it's ethosis that it's
(22:12):
trying to teach computer science two girls who might otherwise
not be engaged. You're interested in it. So I we
make coding robot dolls for girls. Um, it's it's called
Smart Girls. So I go check this out. There is
a really cool self balancing segway Barbie. That's our first project,
and we have a million toys coming up in line
(22:33):
that are really really wild. Um, I'm gonna be a toymaker.
That is so much fun. It seems like you have
enough projects going right now, Carrie. I I don't think
you need to handle that much more. This is all
really fun and really exciting, and I hope our listeners
will check out your new book, Crash Test Girl. But Carrie,
thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you guys.
It fun talking to you. Thanks again for listening. Part
(23:07):
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Jason who
Guess what will? What's that mango? So you know, I'm
a fan of the show MythBusters, right, definite, And I
was reading Carrie Byron's new book where she talks about
one of the crazier explosions she's ever done, and it
involves a creamer cannon creamer light What do you mean
like coffee creamer? Yeah, it's like super explosive. She and
the team watched this YouTube video where this guy put
(00:20):
creamer over a lighter and it made a flame. So
they decided to supersize it by building a giant air
cannon and shooting it up into the air. And honestly,
this thing is so terrifying. The stuff goes up, doesn't
look like it's going to ignite, and then it just
creates a giant puff of smoke and then all of
a sudden, it just rips up into the sky and
makes this enormous fire bomb. It's insane. That sounds crazy.
(00:43):
But the funniest part, and the thing I would never
have realized from watching the show, was that the wind
changed mid explosion and all this hot, milky fire bombs
started raining down from the sky. And she and the
Bill team were responsible for the cleanup. So apparently coffee
creamer bomb residue is discuss Anyway, Carrie is one of
the most fun craziest jobs in the world, and we're
(01:05):
lucky to have her on the program today, So let's
dive in. All right, Well, today we've got the wonderful
(01:26):
Carrie Byron on the show, who most of you will
remember from the Bill team on MythBusters, but also the
host of head Rush, The White Rabbit Project, and so
much more. And now she's the author of a new
book that we're excited to talk about. It's called crash
Test Girl. So Carrie, welcome to Part time Genius there.
So Carrie, before we start, I'm gonna say I'm actually
from Delaware. I grew up with the punkin chunk and
(01:48):
just being a thing only we knew about. Thank you
for bringing it to a wider audience. And uh, I
know you've posted that and the large Dangerous Rocketship Festival.
Have you been surprised by the rise of the maker
movement over the last decade or so and how much
do you think MythBusters has contributed to it? You know,
the maker movement was coming about at the same time
(02:08):
as MythBusters. I think that was just the feeling that
was in the air at the time that people were
getting really d I y and we were all right
in that same wave. Um, you know, I don't make
magazine out here. I just wrote an article for him
because I'm totally a fan of all maker. Yeah. It
was such a fun movement to see, right, I mean
we were huge fans of Boeing Boeing and Wired and
(02:30):
then like, I feel like all of that stuff, the
d I Y stuff, exploded in such a big way
and and uh and I love that you sort of
come to it naturally, right, Like as an artist, I've
been doing it my whole life. I've always been somebody
who like to tinker and work with her hand. I
love the smell of you know, sawdust in the garage.
I like making things. But you know, I think maybe
it might even be my little rebellion to technology in
(02:53):
a bit, because everything you can do with the computer
factor and better. But I don't really like a racing
and you take a pencil and I you know, I
like building things with my hands and redimensions. Yeah. Well,
you know, the new book is super fun and I
actually love how you use the scientific method as a
means for examining, you know, your entire life, everything from
(03:14):
the fun parts of your life to the difficult things
you've had to face. But it speaks to so many
audiences that I'm curious who you actually were thinking about
when you were writing the book. Who is the book for? Well,
I'm not a writer, so for me, I only maken
write for the audience I know, which is myself. So
I kind of feel like I wrote the audience for
the person I was when I was twenty years old
(03:34):
and starting out in life, the person who just trying
to figure out how to take to how to create opportunities,
and how to make big moves. Um I, I, you know,
wanted to lay out all of my journey so that
maybe if I've made mistakes, that you don't have to
make any great I mean, I used the scientific method
(03:55):
as a critical thinking tool, but really it's just an
easy way to organize your thought process. So I think
in making any decision in your life, using the scientific
method is just all about being able to analyze the
results of the choices that you make. Well. I mean
that the structure of the books really fun, the contents excellent,
but I also just really love the sidebars that you
(04:16):
throw in there so weird and funny. Things I hadn't
even thought about, like the bad smells that are on
TV sets and uh, and also how you used things
like um blacknail polish to cover up grease on your
hands and stuff. I I thought those elements were really fun.
But would you actually walk us through some of the
smells that maybe people don't know about at home? I'm
(04:39):
a list maker. I've always just just for fun and
make a list of things. And bad smells was a
list that I had made and I was looking through
on my journals and like, I feel like this is
something other people might explaind amusing. Well, we had a
lot of bad melbum set because we worked with like
a lot of animals. We worked with a lot of
um toxins and you know every being from wolf hearing
(05:02):
from a female dog and heat to um brotting meat
that got left in the fridge over the weekend. I mean,
we had a lot of really disgusting smells. I remember
when You're doing Shark Week one time and we had
to figure out how to cure sharks skin for stand paper,
and when I was reading, like how they do that
Sailey is a p on the shark skin and let
(05:24):
it just brought in the peat. I had to pee
in a cup and put shark skin with kino sounds
like fish into that current and just let it um
fit and for mint in my own urine in the shop.
And I think that that is a that is a
vile smell that nobody should ever have knowledge of. I mean,
we had to capture parts and you know, examine the
(05:47):
constituents at the part, you know, to get to a
mass gestometer so we could find out what makes them
to smell. I mean, capturing marks from everybody you worked with. Still,
that's it's a kind of fun to get that behind
the scenes. You know, something else you talked about in
your book that that I found just very interesting was
you know, you talked about your family struggling economically, and
(06:09):
one of the scenes that really sticks out to me
is how you lived in your car at night and
all this sounds terrifying, but you know, you also built
this dummy to sit in the front seat to make
it look like there was a man sitting in the car.
And I'm curious, you know, how did you come up
with this idea and how do you know, as a team,
how to build a believable dummy. I just, you know,
(06:30):
sometimes it's just an essentity of the moment. And to
build a believable dummy, I've just always been somebody who
I think was meant to be in sort of a
special effects world. Maybe somebody I'll actually get there. They
got the way, But I just I always made things,
you know, I made I made cultures of people I'm
as a little kids and how aween, how every year
(06:52):
was in same So already knew that to make zombies,
it's really not that far off from me zombie. So
I just stuff like one of my dad's attle news
and put a hat on it and use the skeleton
mask for face. Nobody's gonna come up with that's really funny.
It's probably true. So for for me, MythBusters with so
much about settling bar bets, and I know you talk
(07:13):
about it, if I know, my friends and I at
at a bar and Della were actually we're discussing like
could the car from Night Rider really drive up a
ramp like that on the truck and not crash? And
then obviously the first thing you google, you see you
guys have covered it. But I'm curious what was the
writer's room like on the show and how did you
guys come up with ideas and more importantly, how do
you decide what not to do? Um? Well, we never
(07:35):
said no to things. We generally are like how could
we do these things? And you know we did have
done forammeters like it had to be buildable and had
to be visual. We couldn't have bog boogie. We can't
go find out a vampires don't like darlic. It has
to be something scientifics that we can actually come up
with the conclusion. So, um, you know, with all of
the diversity in the room, we have different people coming
(07:56):
from different backgrounds, and um, we could come up with
being most of wild and wacky contraption because I don't
think any of us knew that you couldn't do things.
You know, you could come up with like I remember
sitting there the first time it came up. The weirdest,
biggest thing that we could is when we had this,
Uh there was a smith about somebody who catapulted themselves
with a boom lift and they franked down the boom
(08:18):
look really hard, um with a chain or something, and
then when they cut it, it catapulted the guy in
the basket. Well, we tried it several times in you know,
its truest form, and it didn't catapult anybody. It just
bounced a little stuffing. Everybody's like, well, how are we
gonna actually catapult to die? And I was like, what
(08:40):
if we made an actual catapult? Because I'm not an engineer,
I don't know if it's possibility or not. And then
we came up with packing containers on top of each other,
welding a pivot where the wheels are of the catapult,
and actually franking it back for real and making a
battle sized catapult like lump and jumping and launching it
(09:02):
dunny as far as we possibly could, and it uh
didn't work well, but it was a fantastic thing to see.
I think engineering skills made it that. We just didn't
know whether things were actually impossible, so we went for it. Wow,
that's that's pretty great. Well, we've got plenty more questions
for Carrie. But before that a quick break. Welcome back
(09:33):
to Part Time Genius, where we're talking to Carry Byron,
author of Crash Test Girl. You know, one of one
of my favorite parts of the White House in somewhat
recent years has been the White House Science Fair, which
of course you hosted. I was curious, what was it
like getting that call and and then of course being
at the White House being able to promote science. Who
is so cool that I couldn't believe it. When I
(09:56):
feel my parents I was going to the White House,
They're like, what Just walking into that place, it's the
White House is just something you see in the movies
from far away. And actually getting clearance to walk inside
and being all of the the people do you see on
the news every day just walking around looking at their phone.
It was incredible. I got to, you know, go meet
(10:19):
all of these incredible kids that we're doing things, you know,
by age fifteen, that I could couldn't imagine doing. Now.
I met a kid who learned how to make a
better standbag by using the polymers from inside of a diaper,
and he actually created a sandbag that would absorb water
when there were floods and then go back to being
(10:41):
flat so it could be easily moved and reused. Like,
how did you think of that? You're leavin I mean
aspiring and humbling, And at the time, it was persident
Obama and just having him come and give me a
hug and say my name in a speech. Felt it
felt like I've made it, you know what I mean,
It's pretty cool. I'd say that actually does qualify as
(11:01):
having made it. So congratulations on that one as well. Yeah,
I mean, it's so fun to see your president just
so excited about science and in all of these kids.
Just that really was such a highlight. But um, I'm curious.
You know, your tasks in that buildroom seemed to be
(11:24):
so different. You know, you're you're like making ballistics with creamers,
You're building a vomit chair for making people nauseous, uh,
you know, and and also making these china shops for
bulls to run through. Like how do you research these projects?
And do you have go to reference books or reference
sites that you used to turn to? I mean we
used to We started out with books on the show.
(11:45):
That's how long ago that we had started. As we
progressed through you know, the internet is just a wealth
of knowledge and it's easy to find experts to help
you out in anything. So you know, we would just
get on the phone and you call somebody in Arizona
and be like, hey, so if I were going to
blow something up, underwater, how would you do that? More
(12:09):
and more famous. It was a lot easier to make
those at a point of reference, and we didn't sound
like crazy people. But you know, we we we start
where everybody will start. We start on Google or you know,
smokes with a good way to find a couple of myths,
or you know, just kind of follow the leaves down
the internet rabbit hole. Yeah, and and and most of
them turned out. I mean, of course we have no
(12:30):
idea how most of them turned out, because I'm sure
we we we get to see the best of the best.
But it did sound like only a few of the
myths on MythBusters ever went really wrong. You know, you
talk about the cannon incident in particular, that was near disastrous,
But I'm curious about some of the smaller, like funnier
things that just ended up not working on set, and
how you came up with some fixes for those. Yeah,
(12:51):
I was trying to like some of the stuff. I'm
not sure you'd need it. But I didn't always watch
all the episodes because I was so busy making the
show that more and think that so when people have
questions sometimes I'm like, did that happen on TV? Here
did that happen in real life? A lock of fuel
myths has to make us still um And it turned
up that was illegal, but it didn't make the show.
(13:13):
But I said the day trying to put together a
giant still to still rocket fudle from alcohol, and it
went wacky and totally exploded, and I was on my
own in the shop, just like feeding it with a broom,
trying to break things so that I could not catch
things on fire. And I just wish some of time
with stuff like that that went slightly wrong and actually
(13:36):
made air. It was us being crazy. So you haven't
asside in the book that Jamie was more diligent about
the safety of magnets than he was table saws. Can
you talk a little bit about that? Oh well, no,
I just mean that he took it very He was
tilaging about safety on everything. Jamie had these um safety protocols,
and he'd walk around and give you the tour of
how to do things safety. He also accompanied it with
(13:57):
the most forwarding story he designed for teaching cool. You
can just hear about the table saw. You would hear
about a time the table stock kicked it back. A
board that wlintered off and entailed the man and hear
all the glory details of it, so that you would
now look at every tool as if it were trying
to attack you and had peace. It was terrified. And
(14:21):
I think that he emphasized magnets because they seem so innocuous.
When you think magnets, you know, it doesn't have teeth
like table stoic come bad. They just like magnets. But
magnets really strong, said the ones he had told tape
off a finger, it could, you know, pull something from
the other side of the room. They were so strong,
and you know, until you along the way, I think
(14:42):
you Gus had a really dark way of explaining safety.
I think one of the things people don't think about
when they're watching a show like this is what it
might be like being a woman on the set of MythBusters.
And you talk about this, and you know, many times
you make light of it understandably and kind of embrace it,
but you know, dealing with pregnancy on set and then
postpartum depression, as as well as things like being forced
(15:05):
to wear prosthetic breast to see if people tip better.
And I'm I'm curious with with all of this in mind,
how many women were actually on set, and you know,
in these situations, how do you speak up in these
kinds of environments. Well, like to me, I mean, it's
the only woman that you saw on camera. But we
did have some women behind the scenes. You know, we
had producers, directors, researchers, um are, we had a female
(15:28):
sound downy as well, So it wasn't just me, and
so it was it was definitely helpful through the years
as the production went on, we had more and more
women working behind the scenes. At times could have it
was difficult. It was definitely difficult pregnant because nobody intelligence
to have children. Even just getting a sort of body
on the set, it was always a little bit of
(15:50):
a struggle because all the guys on set were like
wanting to spy in the bushes like us, right right. Um.
The hardest thing I think it was probably finding out
that the other two guys I was working with UM
for grant, when I thought that there was a paid
disparity that they were making UM specifically more than me.
I sort of thought I had a moment that I
(16:11):
had a little normal ray moment where it's like sweet
a minute, that's not okay, And it was quite a
fight to get to be paid to stain guide. So
from that point on, I actually put it in my
contract that if I had the same title and I
had the stink job, I had not painting that I
know I was reading about. That just makes you so sad.
You look at places like toy companies or NPR or
(16:31):
like Discovery just assume they're like happy places and totally
equal in things. And and the fact that you had
the same title and even some seniority and you weren't
getting paid that is it's just so disturbing. How did
you discover that? Like, how how did you figure out
that you weren't getting paid the same amount? You know,
it was through casual conversation because we were you know,
(16:54):
we we had a season coming up and we had
contract negotiations coming up, and um, they're talking about how
much we should ask for to get and I was like, wait,
you're getting white. It was it was one of you know,
it was just you know, since we all did have
the same title and think we all expected we're being
paid the same we started talking about, you know, what
we should negotiate for the next season, and I it
(17:15):
was just sort of a shocking moment. For me, that's
when I decided to do what you should do when
you you're you're kind of out of your your league,
you find expert help. So I went and I got
an agent, and from then on we negotiate all our
contracts as a leagueable nation. All right, well, we have
a few more questions on a kind of a different note,
but before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
(17:53):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking to the
author of a brand new book called Crash Test Girl,
Carrie byron Um. You know, I, I don't know if
I've just been living in a cave and hadn't heard
about the White Rabbit Project, And after reading about your descriptions,
I definitely want to binge watch this, but I was
hoping could you tell us a little bit about the
project and what some of the more fun experiments you've
done on it are. So White Rabbit Project was, It's
(18:16):
based on that moment where you're on the internet, you
guys know this, and considering where you came from, where
you kind of falling down a rabbit hole because you
looked up Belcro and all of a sudden, you're you're
you're looking at the space program like it's just this
one thing reads, the next thing reads the next thing.
So we had um themes for each episode like Superhero
Powers that you can create with technology now, or Key
(18:40):
Forces or Great American Heights. Um. So, one of my favorites,
which I believe is the first episode in the series,
is called Superhero Powers, where we each pick one that
we could try to create with technology, and I picked
mind control, and um, it is hilarious. I looked up
toward you a bunch of electrodes, find amuts of dinner
(19:01):
and made sure that uh I, I could control him
with electrodes. They were attatched to me, so sort of
like my brain powering my arm and my arms powering
his arm. And then we sat down for a big,
messy spaghetti and wine game. I mean it was. It
was delight. It was a delayable, fun, weird show to do.
It's on Netflix. You can still catch it. Um we
(19:22):
had a full season airing. I don't think it got
promoted like it should because we only did get the
one thing. Well, we'll definitely be I'll definitely be checking
it out. So. Um one of the things you hit
it at was this wonderful relationship with the fans of
MythBusters and how some of their ideas uh lad to
um things on the show. I'm curious, what are the
(19:43):
best fan ideas that came through that that you might remember,
or what are the best interactions you've had with fans? Oh,
you know, with the message boards and with our relationship
with them. You know, we could constantly talking with the fans,
and you know, even if we did an episode that
they didn't like our methodology or how did it, we
would go back and revisit it and do it again
because you know, we would actually be talking with them
(20:04):
on the message sports. But I remember my favorite was
a fourth grade class found this ancient myths about paper
being used as armor in ancient China. I was obsessed
with it. So I pitched it and pitched it and
pitched it until they did it. And you know, we
made a whole student armor out of paper, and we
(20:25):
tested it with arrows and with swords, and we did
it with a medal as well, and found out the
paper actually was a viable option up until you know,
guns were invented. But that was from a fourth grade class,
and who was just you know, they're like, let's been
this Midbusters. I love that. That's pretty awesome, you know,
and and hearing about, you know, working with kids, and
(20:47):
and hearing questions from kids. I'm curious about the projects.
I know you do projects with your daughter. Can you
tell us a little bit about some of those. Um, well,
my daughter and I do a lot of projects right now.
We're even just slime. Like we're with you on that.
My counter is covered with shaving cream and glue and glitter.
(21:08):
That's I would say, our current passion. Yeah, I hear
you on that. We've got a room, a craft room
full of slime of giant. I'm curious now whether Elmer's
sells more glue for school use or more glue for slime.
I remember even looking it up online to order another
bottle of it, and even in the description of what
(21:30):
Elmer's glue is, it says great for making slimees. I
think you can see how much the business has has changed.
Oh my god, we should and slime about a year ago.
Higher that are just people wishing slime. I'm like, what, Carrie,
tell us, what's next? But what's the next big project
(21:51):
that you're excited about? All right, Well, I am still
doing TV I've got a bunch of diffinent works I
can't talk about. But what I can talk about is
the next checkmark on my bucket list. Um, now that
there's book things over with, I want to make toys.
So I have just recently joined a startup called Smart Girls. Um.
It is a scrappy startup. It's it's ethosis that it's
(22:12):
trying to teach computer science two girls who might otherwise
not be engaged. You're interested in it. So I we
make coding robot dolls for girls. Um, it's it's called
Smart Girls. So I go check this out. There is
a really cool self balancing segway Barbie. That's our first project,
and we have a million toys coming up in line
(22:33):
that are really really wild. Um, I'm gonna be a toymaker.
That is so much fun. It seems like you have
enough projects going right now, Carrie. I I don't think
you need to handle that much more. This is all
really fun and really exciting, and I hope our listeners
will check out your new book, Crash Test Girl. But Carrie,
thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you guys.
It fun talking to you. Thanks again for listening. Part
(23:07):
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