Making Stuff, with Adam Savage

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startalk today.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Welcome to Startalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Star talk begins right now.

Co host today, Chuck Knight. Chuck. Hey, Neil. Always good to be here at the cosmic crib. And who are we making a sandwich with here?

We've seen him before. Yes, we have. We did. The one, the only, the inimitable Adam Savage. Adam, welcome back.

Adam Savage
Thank you very much. This is like your third time on Startalk. It's been too long since I've been. In this office, and it's been too long. We enjoyed your last visit, and I feel like we're lifelong friends, even though we've only had a few times together.

It feels like culturally. Culturally, yeah. Bouncing a lot. The cultural Venn diagram has quite the area where you two overlap, and that. Creates the friendship even without it does individual time together.

I see what you're doing and I think, oh, that's awesome. That's great. Cool, man. So we've got you on. You actually have a new book.

I do. Holy cow. I'll talk about your book. What are you saying you have? I'll do the talking about your book.

Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. That looks better, doesn't it?

Rosetta Stone
That is. That's called public relations. When he talks about his book, it's bragging. It's bragging when you talk about it. Public relations.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
There you go. But enough about me. What did you think of my book? So every tool's a hammer. Great title.

And this. You know, my favorite picture in here is. There's a lot of interesting pictures, like you and your workshop and your. My favorite is the stuff that you dumped out of your backpack. Oh.

But then neatly organized it. Oh, yeah. That was just cool. Like, seeing what's in. And I like John Hodgman's comment.

He said, this is a map of his brain. Nice. I thought that was a very good comment. If I feel like venturing into that unknown territory. Yeah.

Yeah. For some people, you don't want to go there, right? But for Adam Savage. Yeah. You want to see what's been driving him his whole life.

Rosetta Stone
That is so funny. Some people. You don't want to go there. Just my wife left her. She journals.

And it was Alan. She journals. She journals. And so the journal was on the bed. No, you did not.

No, I'm laying on the bed and watching tv. The journal is sitting right there. She comes in the room. She goes, oh, my God. I left my journal open.

She goes, you didn't read it, did you? Or I went, I don't want to know what's going on up there. I don't want any parts of what is happening in. Your wife said, I hope you didn't read my journal. That does not bode well what movie.

Adam Savage
Exists in which someone read someone else's journal? And it all turned out great point. That's so funny. There ain't no movie about that, right? I used to.

My twin boys used to, like, sit in their bunk beds and talk every night. And my mom was like, what are they talking about? I'm like, I don't know. That's their private moment. I'm not gonna listen.

Rosetta Stone
Yeah. I don't wanna know. Let them have their moment. But I wanna know what's on in his head, and so does our fan base. Now, that is so true.

Cause I have their questions. Cause this is a cosmic queries edition of Startalk. And we just solicited our fan base questions, knowing they'd land in the lap of Adam Savage. About just making stuff. Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
And so Chuck. I haven't seen them. Chuck reviewed them. Just this morning. I was actually reviewing them, and Adam hasn't seen them.

So let's see what you got. Yeah. And these are cool. And as usual, we always start with a Patreon patron because they support us. Because we're that low.

Rosetta Stone
Well, no, we're that high. We're that high that we have supporters. I want to be a member of Patreon so that I could get my questions answered by somebody. You can. You can actually donate to Patreon and then ask yourself a question.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's how I get on that list. Exactly. That's what I will do. I will ask myself. That would be funny.

All right, I'll do that. All right, here we go. This is bike and bird says, hey, Adam. We've all heard of examples of items or procedures getting discovered by accident. Microwaves, penicillin, even chocolate chip cookies.

Rosetta Stone
Through all of your different experiments, was there an outcome or product that was produced that was applied to another test or maybe even applications outside of the show? And this is that kind of like Texas. Did he invent anything? Did you ever invent anything by accident? It was a long way.

It was a long walk around the block. That was a whole off ramp. Took the cloverleaf to get back on. I have a comment and a question. But an autograph biographical story first, actually.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
And by the way, there's a word for that in science. It's serendipity. Okay. Yes, a great word. There was a moment, I can't think of anything we invented by accident.

Adam Savage
But I do remember we were on discovery. We were on Hawaii doing on mythbusters, shooting duct tape island. And this was the conceit. Jamie and I get stranded on a discovery. Jamie, your co host from, from Mythbusters.

So Jamie Hyneman and I get stranded on a deserted island and all we have is a pallet of several hundred rolls of duct tape. What do we do? That's. So we. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
So is MacGyver tuning into this episode? Right? We've got more things to do with duct tape. Exactly. So we made shelter.

Adam Savage
We actually made traps and caught chickens. We ended up making a 20 1ft long outrigger canoe with which we were able to get past the breakwater of the north shore of Oahu. But there was a moment when Jamie was asked to make a still for distilling clean water. Sorry, fresh water from the salt water. And so he was digging into the beach to make a hole.

And the procedure is you dig into the beach, you make a hole. It's going to be a kind of a damp hole because it's on the beach and you let sit in some plastic with a rock in the middle. And as water condenses from the salt, water collects on the inside of the membrane. You've put. You can catch it in a cup and drink fresh water.

However, Jamie noticed that when he dug in and tasted just the water that was being filtered through the sand, that it was much less brackish and salty. And so he got really excited about the idea that the sand of the beach itself was filtering the water. Interesting. And we explained that this was a whole episode about duct tape, and while this was really interesting, it really didn't fit within our narrative. Right.

But he kept insisting. And so we ended up shooting this whole sequence with Jamie, which I think we put on the web, because that was the most interesting part of that, that day for him, was the idea that the sand filtered the salt out. But this was a classic thing of Jamie going, this is the thing I'm interested in. And we're saying, no, that's not what the episode's about. He's like, I don't care what you're saying.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Make a new episode. And now I love all my water. Gritty. Yeah, just a little. I need just a little bit of grit in all of my water.

Adam Savage
Drink it out of my boot. Thank you. Cool. All right, cool. Next question.

Rosetta Stone
Great story. Great story. Great story. This is John Cole from Facebook, who says, between startalk and the tested YouTube channel, I am in heaven. Hello, Adam.

How do you get over the maker's equivalent of writer's block? Wow. What a great question. John Cole. You are thinking, my friend.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
So, do you ever walk into your garage and say, I don't know what I'm gonna put together today? Totally. But more than that, I also hit moments where I spend a whole day assembling something and realize that I've assembled it chirally backwards and that I have to take the whole. Explain what Kyra Lee means. Kyra is left.

Adam Savage
Your hands are chiral. I was gonna let Chuck explain. I'm so sorry, Chuck. What is chiral? It's the mirror image without the mirror.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Nice. Ooh, that was much more concise. That was way better than where you were going with. Yeah, it was. I was being way too wordy.

Cause you can make something that is the mirror image of itself. Right. And then you hold them together in their mirror images. Exactly. And our amino acids are.

Have one chirality, and they all have the same chirality for all life on Earth. And when we found amino acids in asteroids, we found that they were 50 50 of both chiralities. So we knew that it didn't care. And there wasn't one life form because amino acids aren't alive yet that overran the other. So our chirality is the one chirality in the whole world.

And there's suspicions that if there was another life form with the other chirality of our molecules, that you wouldn't be able to metabolize them if you ate them. Wow. Cause the molecules would fit together, might not even be able to taste it. Right. Oh, that's cool.

Rosetta Stone
And they would probably be like a guy. One half of his face would be black and the other half of his face would be white. It's really angry and sweet. And he's right. Exactly.

Adam Savage
So from a standpoint of making, whenever you have two parts that are chiral, it can be a devilishly difficult assembly problem because everything looks very similar, but the order of operations is very precise. Tetris is kind of like that. Two of the pieces are mirror opposite each other. So regularly in making, you hit a spot where you. I saw it, 3D Tetris.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I was thinking. Sorry. So you hit a spot where you've screwed something up and you feel. I feel really dejected about it and I don't feel like moving forward or I don't feel like undoing the 5 hours of work I've just done. Wow.

Adam Savage
And I'm angry. I'm pissed off. I feel sad about it. That's funny. Cause I feel the same way whenever I put anything together from Ikea.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Chuck, that table is upside down. It's a blister. Really? Yes, totally. Ikea is absolutely ripe for that kind of screwing up.

Rosetta Stone
But go ahead. And how does everything fit in a flat box anyway? Isn't this something that should not be able to fit in a flat box? That's so the Ikea card. All right, sorry, go ahead.

Adam Savage
There's a line from Mary Carr, who wrote Liars club, wrote about what she does with writer's block. And she says, if I can't think about what to write, I sit at my desk and I copy writers I love in longhand, because my fidelity at the desk is to be writing, whether it's my own writing or not. Wow, what an exercise. It's a beautiful exercise. And I take that to heart in the shop.

If I can't think of what to make, I organize something in my shop, a drawer, a shelf, a bin. I take something and I adjust because. So you do shop time no matter what? I do shop time. And I do so much more shop time than I ever did before, because I realized it's a deep part of that whole process of prepping the shop and prepping myself for the work I.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Do a little bit. Something like that. I have a book called the greatest wits of all time, and they're phrases out of letters and correspondence from people that have extraordinary wit. And I just read it. I say, wow, that was an awesome juxtaposition of words or phrases or rhythm, and that just sort of re baptizes me into a mood that I then say, okay, I'm ready.

I can. That feels fertile. There you go. So, do you ever suffer writer's block, Neil? No.

No. I go through this exercise. I have a lot of books written by writers who like writing about writing, also about whatever else they wrote about. Right. Did that sentence make any sense?

Rosetta Stone
It sounded very meta. It's a lot of inception. I would never want to write that sentence. That's only a speakable sentence. And so.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
And there's one sentence that I. I think I uttered this in our last recording. A sentence from the great Gatsby. This is a sentence where I knew I still have not become a great writer and maybe never will. Oh, wow.

Rosetta Stone
Okay, I have to hear this now. In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths. Amid the whispers, the champagne and the stars. That's a great. I can't.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I read that. I say, that's why I am not a novelist. Yes. And he is. You reminded me of one of my favorite pastimes.

Obviously, this is from the great Gatsbys, his party. Yeah. Yeah. You're reminding me of a line from Chandler. That's like a perfect simile.

Rosetta Stone
Plus, you mentioned and went amazed. Yes. As Mauds amid. It's very elegant. The whispers of the champagne and the stars.

Adam Savage
Incredible. You know, I didn't come here to feel inadequate. And yet. And yet. And yet, here we are.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
So what were you saying, Adam? I was saying it reminds me of this line from Chandler where his hero, Marlow, is sitting in a waiting room for too long, and he describes the time passing as the minutes tiptoed by their fingers to their lips. Lovely. Okay, so I have one. It's a quote from my father.

Rosetta Stone
Seriously, what the hell are you still doing here?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
You haven't moved out of the basement yet. That's a talk every father has. All right, what's next? You got there, Chuck? All right, here we go.

Rosetta Stone
Let's move on. Just to remind people, we got Adam here. Cause he's got a new book. Yes. We would have him anyway, even without the book.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let me just make that clear. Absolutely. Appreciate it. Okay. But he was made available to us by Simon and Schuster for free.

Right? She was, like, in New York doing media, and I guess we count as media. You do? We do. Yeah.

Rosetta Stone
Nice. I can handle that. Every tool is a hammer. Life is what you make it. I see what he did there.

Yeah. Very cool. Right? Right? So, Adam, every tool is a hammer.

Actually does sound like something Donald Trump would say, though. I'm just saying. No, the phrase of mine he's grabbed is, I reject your reality and substitute my own. Oh, very nice. Is that a quote from you?

Adam Savage
That is. And he actually quoted that? No, he hasn't quoted. He's just living it. Okay.

Rosetta Stone
I love it. All right, let us. Let's take Mitch Morris, who comes to us. We're doing well with the words, with the names today. That's because they're regular names.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Regular. Yeah, regular. How racist can you get? I can get a lot more racist. I'm just letting you know since we're asking.

All right, cool. But you are right. That is. It's extremely. What do you call it?

Rosetta Stone
Presumptive to me. All right, here we go. Mitch Morris from Instagram get a lot more presumptive.

Miss Morris from Instagram wants to know this. What is the most important tool ever invented? That's for the both of you. What an interesting little question. Very simple little question, but very interesting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I'll answer first. Cause I want him to bring closure to question. So when I was younger, I said, wow, this crescent wrench is really useful, right? Cause you can adjust it. And then I discovered the miter saw.

No, no, no. The vice grip. The vice grip. Oh. And I said, oh, I've died and gone to heaven.

Vice grip. And then you got better than vice grip. Yes, go ahead. The most important tool is money. To pay somebody else, you might have.

Just an important tool. I ain't fixing his plumbing. I'm gonna hire a plumber. Wow. That's gonna be my toolkit for this capital.

Rosetta Stone
You may have just answered the question. Okay. I have to say, in the circles I travel in, a crescent wrench is known as a nut corner rounder. And the vise grips are known as the professional nut corner rounder. Okay.

Adam Savage
They can mess up. Don't get me wrong corner around. It means taking your hex and removing the edges to it until it can. No longer be not corner around. I had to go to the simplest.

I mean, one of the simple machines, the lever. I feel like the ability to move heavy objects with a mechanical advantage. And the lever exists before the wheel or any rollers. To me, it's still in Archimedes who. Said, give me a lever and a place to stand and I can move the world.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I don't think he said leverage. Give me a place to stand. Give me a place. I think he was describing the obstacles. Yes, of course.

But I'm saying he doesn't. He. That was implicit. Okay. He doesn't say, give me a lever and a place.

Just give me a place to stand and I can move the world. Beautiful. There you go. Yeah, yeah. Next question.

Rosetta Stone
All right, good stuff. Okay. Lever. I'll give you a lever. I'll give you a lever.

Here we go. Next question. Here's the next question from Womu's shop. Wummu shop. Wumu shop.

Yes. Sounds problematic. It does. Do you have a brain injury that's preventing words? Had a stroke, can't pronounce woomoo shop.

Hi, Neil and Adam. You guys are both my heroes. Which would you say will be the more important for the future of invention? Good old fashioned mechanical know how or advancements in material science? Ooh.

That is inventing a new type of suspension bridge that is stronger and lighter versus discovering a stronger and lighter titanium alloy.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie, because we listen to star talk every night and support startalk on Patreon. This is startalk with Neil degrasse Tyson.

I got chuck nice with me. Yes, sir. And we're doing cosmic Aquarius. Yes, we are. And before we went to break, we had a question from Wumu shop, who says, hi, Neil and Adam.

Rosetta Stone
You guys are both my heroes. Which would you say will be the more important for the future of invention? Good old fashioned mechanical know how or advancements in materials science go. Good old fashioned mechanical know how. We are always gonna be advancing in materials science, and there will sometimes be things that we cannot replicate because we lose a technology or we forget a process.

Adam Savage
But as long as we have a deep foundation in mechanical knowledge, in making things, and the roots of the physics of putting stuff together, we can utilize those advances and we can adjust to the changes in the available materials as they come. Wow. Great. I only kind of agree with that. I'm agreeing 50%.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I'm into material science. It is one of the most underappreciated, unheralded branches of science in this world. Okay. All right. If you go back 50 years, hardly any.

I'm not bragging about this advance. I'm just citing it as a difference in our lives. You go back 50 years, hardly anything was made of plastic. Correct. And almost everything is made of plastic today.

Rosetta Stone
And it's working out great for many. Things, as long as you don't have to throw it away. Okay. It's working out great. The plastic is stronger, it's more reliable than other materials, and you can mold it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
And just think of the things that having simple, quote, standard mechanical knowledge is. So what? Look what this material can do. They're materials now that have memory of a shape they once had. Okay, so you can deform it, sleep.

On it, then you, like, wet it, and then it goes back to the previous shape. That got nothing to do. Nothing in your lab, nothing in your garage is ready for that. But within the one is better than the other. Mechanical knowledge can push humanity forward on its own, whereas material science can't.

Adam Savage
Necessarily. With the good materials, you don't need the mechanical knowledge. It's built into the material itself. I totally disagree with that. Smackdown.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Meet me in the octagon. Yes. Smackdown. We actually. So, as an aside, I just finished a new show for the science channel called Savage Builds, in which I build absurd things every week.

Adam Savage
In the first episode, we made a suit of Iron man armor in 3d printed titanium. Wow. Speaking of material science, I discovered that when you 3d print titanium, you can attenuate its grain structure so that it is far stronger than normal titanium because it can give it these super tight little crystalline grain. Get closer. Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Wow. Except that makes it denser, it seems to me. In this case. No, it's still 45% the weight of steel. Interesting.

Okay. Okay. As stronger, stronger. If it made it denser, you would lose some of the value of it being light. Yeah.

Adam Savage
No, this stuff was amazing. We had potato chip thin pieces. They were bulletproof bullets. Slid right off of this. Wait a minute.

Rosetta Stone
Is this something that was already discovered? Oh, yeah. No. Ge is using 3d printed titanium in their jet engines right now. Okay.

Adam Savage
Absolutely. You discovered. No, no, no. This is a property that you've found for yourself. I was working with McComber out of.

Rosetta Stone
Right. There's an amazing engineering school called the Colorado School of Mines. Yes. Everyone knows that those guys are incredible. And I worked directly with them in their additive manufacturing department.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay, so he just figured out a brilliant new material to make armor for knights 600 years late. Exactly. Man, that's great. Yeah. But I can't wait to see what new material it's coming down the pipe and how that might transform how we live.

I think about that all the time. Okay. Yeah. All right. Excellent question once again from our listening audience.

And just for the point of we transition from, ooh, that's cheap, it's made of plastic. To, oh, that's made of plastic. Fine. I don't have any problem. It'll last forever.

Right. That happened in. We're about the same age. That happened in our lifetime. It did, yes.

Okay. Just I totally agree. Just. I don't want to smack you down too hard. Just the octagon will decide this.

Okay, does anyone know what the octagon? I'm sure they do. And there's a lot of UFC fans right now. I don't know what the Venn diagram is. Right now.

Rosetta Stone
There's a guy calculating an equation of kick ass. All right, now, so this is Mike, okay? This is Mike Puma king, mocking. Pump making. Pump making.

I don't know. Okay. Mike said, these people, I think they're just screwing with me. You think so? I really do.

They're like, is it Chuck? We're going to just make up names. All right, here we go. Mister Savage, what is something that you would think will be possible to build in the future that is now considered science fiction? Ooh, very good.

That's a great question. Room temperature superconduction. Wow. Well, you went for a big one. I did.

Adam Savage
Oh, I'm really excited about, speaking of material science. I'm really excited about graphene. He came back. Came back to me. That's true material science.

Rosetta Stone
All right, so now.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
That'S your answer. That's my answer. Room temperature superconduction is going to be. I believe it will happen in our lifetimes that, and once that happens, will. We actually be able to have spaceships that stop and hover?

Adam Savage
I don't know. At least we'll be actually, one of the things we'll learn a significant amount about is our brains. It's the processing power of our brains. I feel like as computers become more powerful, they're going to become a real interesting window into consciousness and sentience and what it is to think about the thinker. Nice.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
You know, I hadn't quite heard it put that way, but now that I have, I agree 100%, because it's hard for the brain to study itself. But if we make computers that are becoming better, better approximations of our brain, now we have something we can study, and so we would asymptotically come to an understanding of our brain simply by making our computers that much more complex, possibly one day achieving consciousness themselves and becoming our overlord. And there you go. That's how the story ends. I think if we ever made a machine conscious, the first thing it's gonna say to us is, what the did you do?

Rosetta Stone
That's so true. All right, next question. All right, cool. Good question. Cosmic queries version of startalk.

Let's see now. Here's somebody he calls himself or herself the dragon horde of dice. Dragon horde of dice. There you go. That person.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Mama probably did not give that person that name. No, but I think her name is Kate. Cause it says. Okay, so there you go. Hey, for Adam, since I know you do cosplay.

Adam Savage
Mm hmm. What is the most complex, mechanical, prop costume you've ever tried to build? Like, a prop or costume that had no moving parts or could collapse, expand, or something that you made may have tried to just recreate? Did you make transformers proud ever? Oh, gosh, no.

I have not done a Transformers costume. A few years ago. I've been obsessed with armor since 1981, when I went and saw Excalibur with my dad. I love Excalibur. John Borman, my top five favorite films.

Amazing fan. And then I learned disturbingly. Yeah. That I know the fact you're about to tell me. Go ahead.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Oh, really? No, no, no. Maybe not. I don't know the fact. Please excuse me.

Am I having a private conversation with my man here? Okay, so Excalibur from the early 1980s. John Borman, an early film that had Patrick Stewart in it. Patrick Stewart. Liam Neeson.

Liam Neeson was in it. And Gabriel Burns, and so is Helen Mirren. Helen. They're all in this movie. Okay.

It's the King arthur story told. So thank you much. Later, I realized, I think half the reason why I liked the movie was because of the soundtrack. Oh. It is very powerful, wagnerian, and that which is not wagnerian comes from Carmina Burana.

Very emotional, energetic music that you're just feeling every scene. Then I thought to myself, maybe the movie's not so good. But the music was amazing, and that completely compensated for it. I watched it recently. It's still super campy and still really impressively great.

Rosetta Stone
But did you watch it on mute? No, with subtitles and mute. Try that next time. I did not apply a control, Chuck. Okay, good.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay, so what's your answer? So I've been obsessed with armor since then, and I actually, when I was a junior in high school, in 1984, I went to. I built a suit of armor out of roofing aluminum with my dad and wore it to school on Halloween and passed out of heat exhaustion in third period. This is all up, just up north at Sleepy Hollow High School. Hence your Twitter handle.

Don't try this. Exactly at home. A few years ago, I called up Terry English, who's the master armorer that built all the armor for Excalibur. He lives in the southern tip of England in Cornwall, and I went to his studio a couple summers ago and spent ten days embedded with him. As his assistant, while he and I.

You were an apprentice. Weird. Me. A suit of King Arthur's armor from Excalibur. You were an apprentice?

Adam Savage
I was an apprentice. And we made me my lifetime goal. Suit of armor of Arthur's armor from Excalibur. Wow. Pretty intense.

It was so intense. It was amazing. He lives in this incredible sort of overgrown shop in Cornwall. So he is you in England. Yeah, totally.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Whoa. There's only room for one per continent, I think. I don't know.

Adam Savage
That was by far my favorite mechanical prop construction. But it was not. It was not electronic or anything, just mechanical. Hammering aluminum all day long. Chain mail and everything.

Yeah, there's. Yep. Absolutely. Wow. That's pretty wild, man.

Rosetta Stone
That. Hey, congratulations on that. And you still have it? Oh, yeah. I wear it every chance I get.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
How do you get it through TSA? I actually, I. When I. Whatever. They were known back then.

Adam Savage
No, I made. I actually took it to New Zealand last year to make a little film with Peter Jackson about it where a demon tears my arm off. We called it a farewell to arms. Okay, things are getting weird real quickly here. When I carried the armor with me, I was thinking, this is priceless to me.

I can't really insure this. So I checked it as luggage with a gps transceiver in my luggage so I could monitor it being loaded onto my plane. That's pretty wild. If the airline was going to tell me they couldn't find it, I wanted to know that I could find it. I got to tell you something.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Plane goes down, they can't find the black box. But he found it on the suit of armor. We found the suit of armor. I don't know anybody else is. I have no idea why all these people are dead.

Rosetta Stone
But we do have an awesome suit. Of armor right now.

Oh, my God. Dang, dude. Wow, man. That's pretty wild. You're far weirder than I ever.

But wait a minute. Extrapolated for you. Yes. Wait. You and Peter.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Jack, I knew you were Peter Jackson. Are making home movies occasionally. What's going on? And for those who didn't know, the Lord of the Rings series was mostly filmed in New Zealand by Peter Jackson. And Peter Jackson was inspired to.

Adam Savage
One of the key inspirations for him in making Lord of the Rings was Excalibur. So I'm not the only one who likes Excalibur. It's my top five movies. Important film. But other four are really weird.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Not that, but that's in there. That's sweet. Okay. I can't say it's one of my favorite. Yeah.

Okay. I'm not cool enough. All right, I need help. Here we go. One other thing.

Rosetta Stone
Go ahead. These five movies are, like, the only five movies I've ever not only seen a zillion times, but sat through the director's narration. Narrator. Right. The director's commentary.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Because you have to like the movie. So much that zillow's. You don't even need to watch this next iteration of it and hear somebody just talk through it. Yep. Nice.

That was. Well, you've also seen it that many times. Well, that's part of that. That's how you earn the director's cut at that point. Exactly.

Yeah. Right. I. Now I got to know, what are the other four? Yeah, no, I do, too.

Really? Yeah. Cuz if that's. If that's part of the top five. Yes.

Rosetta Stone
There's four other movies that. Okay, number one, director's cut. Number one, the Matrix. Okay. That's number two.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
All that jazz with Bob Fox. Okay. It's his movie. Yeah, that's a good one. Sort of playing Bob Fosse.

Okay. Three, the conversation. Ah, such a good movie. Oh, man. Now, Francis Ford Coppola.

Rosetta Stone
Coppola is the conversation. Conversation. For it's a toss up between. Wait, conversation. That's with the man and a woman.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes. Okay, go ahead. Movie. Movie. Okay.

Rosetta Stone
All right. Go ahead. Go ahead. Conversation. And then there's probably a.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
A toss up here, but the west side Story. Amazing. That's great. Story. And.

And then Excalibur. I think it's fifth out of those five. I. Look, I say there's at least nine films in my top five. That's good.

Adam Savage
The top five lists actually can go quantum, and we can fit lots of dimension on. You've got timelines on your. So those five are so unlike each other. And there's. What an eclectic mystery.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's really weird, but I totally. So I used to dance. Okay, so hence the bob Fosse. Have you done dancing with the stars? No.

That's so shame. I know. I suddenly want to see you on the show. When I was dancing, no one was publishing my books. Another publishing.

I don't need to dance anymore. Okay. So, what, Chuck, do you love strictly? I'm serious. You love strictly ballerina?

I dance it for nobody. Okay. My people have come a long way. Copy that. Okay.

Okay. All right, so there's that. And I wrote a column for a magazine under the pen name of Merlin, so I have extra interest in the Merlin arthurian legends. And I have the Malory book in vellum. So there's that matrix, of course.

Is the Matrix one of. Of course, not two or three main charts has to be there. There are two other movies. And the conversation was just so, so well done, amazing. And there are no explosions.

There's no chase scenes. It was a story. Well done. And so there I am. Nice.

Those are my five. Well, listen. So there you go, people. Now you know what you're doing Netflix and chill with Neil's list.

Adam Savage
That's a weird list. What a weird list. And Netflix. West side Story is New York. It's the city.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I'm half puerto rican. My mother's name is Shrunchita. Malia Feliciano Tyson. Okay, that's her name. West side Story is such a masterpiece.

And is it a masterpiece? Masterpiece, masterpiece. And while I don't know how to compose music, if I ever could, I'm imagining that I could compose the music that's in west side Story. Wow. That's where I'm thinking.

That's what I would reach for. And that would be your north star. That was my. That'd be my north star. I like beautiful.

He's beautiful. I love Adam.

Rosetta Stone
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Tubi. It's more popular than influencers. See you in there, Addie. Hey, did you know there's a little pink pill? Wait, a what?

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Adam Savage
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
So next question. What was that? All right, so this was main from Minnesota, who said, as a builder, I remember failed projects more than the successes stop there. So tell me about failures relative to successes. Well, and we talk about this a lot these days, failure is a really popular word.

Adam Savage
Silicon Valley says, you know, build fast and break things. We talk about educating kids. We talk about teaching them how to fail. And I have a particular take on this because I think failure is a. Fine word, a version of that from the nineties or eighties, which was shocking when we first heard it, was, if it ain't broke, break it, break it.

Yes. So that way you might invent something better than the thing you had before. And just because it worked doesn't mean that's the best version of what it could be. Indeed. Or you just end up with a lot of broken shit.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
If you're not creative, there's always broken shit. Don't heed that advice if you're not creative. All right, so go ahead. But we don't really mean fail. Wrong turns on the path to get to a success are not failures.

Adam Savage
They're simply iterations. And I'm here. And that's not a euphemism or anything. No, my smells like one. What I want to preach is that both science and art are iterative processes that include tons of wrong turns.

And the wrong turns aren't outliers. They're part of that process. And we go up the path and we're like, okay, this isn't the path. So let's go back to the fork and continue down another path and see it if that's the path. And so, yes, I also remember my failures more than my successes, because that's where I learned the failures are the failures.

The wrong turns I took to get to the right turns are the places that I learned the most about myself and about how to build things and about how to recover from those moments. You know what they say about rocket launch failures, that they're not failures, they're just experiments rich in data.

Right. In the movies, there's always the guy who says, my experiment was a failure. No scientist says that. No, we don't. We don't.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Actually. It's well designed. A negative result is actually useful information to you, publishable information. We don't. You have to say that when somebody else is paying for what you do.

Yeah, but. But all of our. This. I was just reading an article the other day about how science. How journals, publishing journals, don't highlight null results.

They don't value it in the publishing journal. And we should. And we should. It's a problem. That's true.

Rosetta Stone
I never thought of that. But, yeah, there is a great deal of value. You what not to do. Exactly. It tells the next person what not to do.

Look, this is what I did. It didn't work out, and now I don't have to waste time going down. That, because scientific inquiry, that is equally as important as a brand new factor. Oh, no. That makes a lot of sense.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Chuck has a new hero of the recent months who may have been responsible for setting us down the wrong path, because his mantra was, failure is not an option. This was from Apollo 13, and this is Jean Krantz. And so failure is not an option. And then that became America. We're not gonna fail.

And then we lost track of the value of failure. We lost track. The most surprising thing I learned from doing Mythbusters for 13 years was how surprisingly creative the scientific discipline is and how it mirrors the creative discipline. To me, conducting and building experimental methodologies is every bit as creatively satisfying as making a sculpture, painting a painting, or writing a book. I agree 100%.

Rosetta Stone
But I think it's better when you call it a wrong turn, the way you put it that way, because if you think about it, just from the. From a standpoint, everybody can identify driver's standpoint. Driver's standpoint. When you make a wrong turn, how many times have you done that and discovered something that you really like? Oh, there's a botanical gardens over here.

Oh, there's a. Oh, my God. Even though that process is the soul of stand up company. Oh, absolutely right. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Always. Every joke, every joke, even. Listen. It's the same process. Even when the joke works.

Adam Savage
Yes. You go back and you try to crack it open and see how it works. Break it. Even better. If it works, break it.

Rosetta Stone
I know. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Super.

Wow, lane. What a great question. You're a hero, Lane. That's what you are. You are.

All right. This is Chris goes to the park. Thank you, Chris.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
All right. Thanks, Chris. Chris. He says, hey, adam, are there any inventions your team created on mythbusters that you have kept or that you might still use today? Ps.

Rosetta Stone
Loved your show growing up. It inspired me to study engineering. Now I'm an engineer. Ooh. Ooh.

Adam Savage
That'd always be amazing to hear. There's nothing that we kept from the public on mythbusters, except for one thing. Ooh. Cary grant and Tori were. Wait, wait.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I didn't understand the question. Do you mean, is there something you made on mythbusters that the public never saw, or. No. Or is there something you made that. You took home with you, something we came up with, or that we discovered on mythbusters that we have somehow kept from the public?

That's not how I read the book. Well, no, he meant. But I like that. Is there anything that you invented or came up that you were like, wow, this is so good, I'm actually gonna put it to use in my life? Right?

That's how I read it. Yeah. Wow. Yes. I mean, really, it was the more the process of telling the stories on myth.

I mean, but wait, that's not as interesting a question as the one you thought it was. I was going to say. All right, let's assume it was the question you thought it was. Exactly. Which is.

Adam Savage
Carrie, grant, and tory were testing the explosive. My co hosts on mythbusters, carrie byron, tory belleci, and grant imahara, they were testing a story that involved a commonly available. A commonly available material that is as close to a description as I'm going to get and its explosive properties. And what they determined with this use case scenario was so spectacularly, terrifyingly explosive that we agreed to destroy the footage of the explanation and never tell how we got to that. And I thank you for that.

Oh, yeah. No. Bomb squads the world over know what we figured out on our own, right. And are thankful that we've decided not to put that in the episode. So.

Rosetta Stone
Yeah, it's like, yeah, but our engineer. Ben, just found it on YouTube. Right? Did you know if you took cotton balls and chewing gum, you could actually bring down the World Trade center? Like what?

Yeah. No, that's crazy. Yeah. So, okay, so the answer is. Yes, you did.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes. Yeah. So you quarantined that information? We did. And just sit.

Rosetta Stone
To hell with it. The world doesn't need it. It will not be better for this bit of knowledge. Okay. Now, just between us, what was the, what was the, what were the materials?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Just between you and us, no one's listening. What were the materials?

Rosetta Stone
All right. I don't want to know, to be honest. Cause I can't be trusted. All right, this is ringamilly who says, how do you create new things that haven't before been thought of? In other words, what is your process for creative discovery?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Good. You know, is there any process that says, well, you know what? Boom. Well, I don't know if there's. I don't know if it's reasonable to think about something as, I want to make something that's never been thought of.

Adam Savage
I don't think we have the choice to sequester an invention or a build or something creative into a category before it's been made. And everything we made is based on everything that we've seen. So just as is it Newton that said we stand on the shoulders of giants? Yes, Justice Newton says that we all do. It's called if I see farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants who have come before me.

And that is one of the greatest descriptions of culture that anyone's ever penned. That that's exactly what's happening. When I was, you know, especially now, when I was 17, I saw alien. It took me five years to get the aesthetic of HR Giger out of my system. I had to recapitulate the aesthetics that he was doing because I found it so powerful until I kind of understood it.

That recapitulated. So that person is the what to the movie? Yeah, he does. HR Giger designed the alien. He said it like well, but we all know HR Giger.

HR Giger, sorry, crazy German who designed all of the creatures and alien technology from the original movie Alien, Ridley Scott's first science fiction film. And, of course, with Sigourney Weaver. Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton. That's one of my top five. An amazing film.

I mean, it's a gothic horror film, not a science fiction movie. But my issue with it was that the aliens still had, like, a mouth, a jaw. Teeth, yeah, but he had a mouth and a mouth. A mouth and a mouth. I mean, that's pretty creative.

Yeah. No, no, I'm just thinking most life forms on earth do not have a mouth and teeth like trees and worms and butterflies and this sort of thing. So I. If you're gonna have a complete alien, you should be more creative than even that. Like the blob, 1958, Steve McQueen movie.

Rosetta Stone
Yes. That's got no bones. Nothing. It's terrifying. What?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
It wasn't. It was a blob. It was a blob. It was completely terrifying. Eat your blood.

Suck your blood. And do you know when the blob first landed? You know what color it was? It was transparent. It only turned red after it ate its first victim.

Whoa. Yes. You didn't know that. I did not know. We didn't know that.

Rosetta Stone
Why? I know that. Okay, so. And it can come through the vents into the. So that's.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
To me, that's creativity. Yeah. Okay, so I don't think that you can say to yourself, I want to think of something that's never been thought. I think you have to just keep on thinking, what do I want that doesn't exist? What do I want to make extant that I can't obtain or I can't get?

Oh, so your urges are guiding your creativity. Totally. Oh, there you go. Absolutely. And actually, that's what this book is to me.

Adam Savage
It's a permission slip to everyone to follow those weird urges. I call them secret thrills. So you should have titled it follow your weird urges, be a best seller overnight. Publisher rejected that sign. Is it too late to change that title?

Rosetta Stone
Because that's a damn good title. Let's just remove the COVID Right. Right. Follow your weird words. You can draw it on the.

Adam Savage
I know what I'm signing in your book, Neil. So. So we have to go into lightning round now. Okay. Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
We have a few minutes left. Okay. I need from you soundbite answers. Great. Okay.

Are you ready? Yep. Chuck, go. Here we go. This is Olivia waits from Instagram.

Rosetta Stone
She wants to know how long does it take to usually come up with a truly new idea that is impossible to quantify? Next. There you go. Can of slicker. Sick.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Wait, wait, wait. Let me ask. What's the longest and shortest time it took you to come up with a new idea? Oh, just like at the range. Impossible to quantify the range between 1 minute and 17 hours.

Okay, good. There you go. I'll accept. Pull that one out of his answer. Sorry.

Rosetta Stone
We were looking for two days. Wrong answer. All right, go, go. Canasa liquor. What?

That doesn't sound. I think somebody made. Nevermind. What is your most unique out of left field? Inspiration that has ever happened to you or even surprised you.

That is weird. Where did you find inspiration in a place that you never thought you would. Good. Oh, wow. I'm gonna need time to think about that one.

Adam Savage
I don't have a soundbite answer. You have till the end of the show. Okay, next question. Okay, here we go. Julie, let me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let me word that question. Maybe it's the same question. Among all your sources of inspiration, what has been the most fertile. Reading? Actually always reading about the first experiment of something that was discovered.

Adam Savage
Reading Fizeau's speed of light experiment is so thrilling. Okay, good. Wow, what a great answer. Even better question. Sorry.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Fujot is in Doppler Fujiu and late 19th century early. He calculated the speed of light with the clockwork and mirrors. Okay, there we go. Next. There we go.

Rosetta Stone
This is Juliak from NB says, or from says. If you had unlimited resources and time, what would you build? Ooh. Oh, I'd build a spaceship, and I'd go to the moon, and then I'd go to Mars. There you go.

Adam Savage
With unlimited resources and material. Yeah, totally. I would start some interplanetary exploration. Beautiful. I love it.

Rosetta Stone
All right. In this office. I love that answer. All right, last question. No, no, that's it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I don't think we have time. Yeah, we got final reflections. Chuck, give me your final reflection. I am going to now pursue my weird urges. Weird urges.

And I am really happy. Was it illegal? Go for it. I'm happy I have permission to do so. Okay, Adam, you got this book.

Presumably, there's still stuff in you that's not in this book. Otherwise, buy the book, and then we don't have to ever watch you again. Right. So. Oh, yeah, I help some stuff.

Tell me something that's not in the book that we should carry with us. Oh, wow.

Adam Savage
That all human beings really want to do is tell each other stories. And that's both science and art. It's how we understand the universe, even. If the story you're telling is how to build something. Indeed.

Rosetta Stone
Oh, I like it. Very nice. So what I'd like to think, if I can add to an earlier question about creativity, to have a thought, to see what everyone else has seen and think what no one else has thought. That's a commonly invoked definition of genius. But maybe it's not genius that we're honoring there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Maybe it's hard work where you have a lot of dangling thoughts within you because you've read a lot of books, you've seen a lot of movies, you've spoken to a lot of people, you've done a lot of tinkering, and they're sitting there waiting in your head. And then you walk amid all of these dangling parts, and you say, give me two bits of that one part of that one part of this because they're available to you to draw from. And out of that comes a brand new idea, a brand new object, a brand new concept. So I think the people who are cited as the great inventors and geniuses of the world are simply those who have more bits and pieces in their lives waiting to be assembled into something new. Hmm.

Adam Savage
I totally agree. Very nice. It's beautiful that you agree with that because I pull that from the cosmic perspective. Adam, thanks for being on startalk. Chuck, as always, you're my man, dude.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
You've been listening to possibly even watching this episode of Startalk Talk featuring Adam Savage, formerly of Mythbusters, and now he's just making stuff. And he's got a science channel program that I can't wait to catch. Give me the name of it again. Savage builds. Savage builds.

Rosetta Stone
Nice. Sounds angry. May 12 June 12 June 12 there we go. Summer 2019 on the science Channel, I've been your host, Neil degrasse Tyson, and as always, I did you to keep looking up.

E
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F
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Making Stuff, with Adam Savage

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1. Introduction

2. The Creative Process

3. Importance of Failure

4. New Materials in Science

5. Q&A with Listeners

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