Thread 16700797

now that the dust has settled, was it good pop science, or was it slop?

>>16700797 (OP)
kino. Inspired a lot of future engineers and prop makers

>>16700797 (OP)
>now that the dust has settled
It ended 7 years ago.

but for the record, it was surprisingly rigorous

Adam = Reddit
Jamie = 4chan :)

what was the worst accident they had?
i remember adam burning some hair on his head but the door slam on his fingers got me fucked up

First few seasons were good. They had some interesting myths, video shooting style was fantastic and there was lots of crew background talks. Later on they added more popsci myths, special effects type video shooting and they cut almost all of background crew talks. Kari and Tory have a podcast where they talked about some of this and how the producers were dicks.

>>16700862
Adam lip was sucked by a vacuum pump. That was the worst I think.

>>16700858
>it was surprisingly rigorous
Was it though? I found that they had some experiments they should have done more often with similar and different setups. A lot of it was along the lines of "we rolled the die and got a 4, therefore we conclude that all die rolls give you a 4." Though I understand that entertainment was the primary motivator behind this show and doing the same thing x times does not make for good TV.

>>16700872
>Was it though?
For what could be realistically done with a one-hour TV show format and still remain entertaining? Yes. Ex. Would the results for the "helium in a football" test have been more rigorous if they'd done 100 launches instead of 10? Yes. Would it have been entertaining to see them do another 90 launches? No. They walked the balance between rigor and entertainment as best as they could.

>>16700862
In one of the stone cannonballs myth they had a freak shot skip off the hillside behind the range and blast a hole through somebody's house. Had to go through a whole investigation, make public apologies, and the whole incident caused them to *considerably* overhaul their safety guidelines and procedures for the remainder of the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMZ25Bz6TBs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWABxh0sb4I

>>16700806
I grew up watching this. What are the kids watching today?

>>16702242
They don't watch TV anymore. They doomscroll Instagram reels.

>>16702242
Black people trashing stores on TikTok

>>16700862
Kari Byron during the chinese water torture sticks with me. Also Adam getting "pranked" by being shocked by an electric fence transformer during baghdad battery was cringekino.. poor guy.

The questions Adam goes through on his youtube channel are pretty interesting and you get a neat insight into the show. There's a lot of work that goes behind the shit they do and while it fell off towards the end I still think it was highly entertaining show and admittedly, was fucking awesome when you were watching it as a kid.

>>16703012
>Also Adam getting "pranked" by being shocked by an electric fence transformer during baghdad battery was cringekino.. poor guy
but he's reddit. that means he deserved it... didn't he?

>>16703078
He's definitely reddit but watching the show growing up he always seemed like a nice enough guy.. but really that's a horrible "prank"; would hate to have it played on me. You think you're going to get some weak zap but you get electrocuted like you're cattle. Apparently the producer that set that up got fired by Jamie.

>>16700797 (OP)
>This + How it's made + Junkyard Wars + that one show about robots fighting
Kino. Pure kino. Entertaining and inspiring.

>>16700797 (OP)
>pretend there's a controversy over whether some dumb movie CGI stunt could've happened IRL
>design dumb test
>test fails
>rule everything "Plausible" anyway because your test sucked and you know it and you can't rule out the possibility that aliens secretly gave them antigravity tech or something
>halfway through the series decide you're bored of working and hand off the show to a group of annoying college kids consisting of the asian who does everything, the goonbait hot chick, and the useless dumb white guy

It was the genesis of the "I FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE" movement. Before mythbusters all the cable science/history channels were actual serious documentaries and shit.

>>16700797 (OP)
Part pop science part slop; They applied a very loose attempt at scientific method and statistics in most of episode, while explaining the science behind a bunch of phenomena.
On the other hand, some myths were just an excuse to do dumb stuff or blow things up for the spectacle.