page_title: MythBusters
section_title: Popularity and influence
hierarchical_section_title: MythBusters / Popularity and influence
caption_attribution_description: English: President Barack Obama records an episode of the Discovery Channel's television show "MythBusters" with co-hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage in the Library of the White House.
context_page_description: MythBusters is an Australian-American science entertainment television program created by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internationally by many television networks, including SBS Australia, and other Discovery channels worldwide. The show's original hosts, special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, used elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages, Internet videos, and news stories. The show was one of the most popular on Discovery Channel, being preceded only by How It's Made and Daily Planet, both in Canada.
  Filmed in San Francisco and edited in Artarmon, New South Wales, MythBusters aired 282 total episodes before its cancellation at the end of the 2016 season in March. Planning and some experimentation took place at Hyneman's workshops in San Francisco; experiments requiring more space or special accommodations were filmed on location, typically around the San Francisco Bay Area and other locations in northern California, going to other states or even countries on occasion when required.
context_section_description: Hyneman and Savage have appeared on numerous entertainment programs, such as Good Morning America, the Late Show with David Letterman, NPR's news program All Things Considered, the syndicated radio Bob and Tom Show, and in the movie The Darwin Awards (as two military surplus vendors who sold a JATO rocket to the main character). Skeptic magazine's Daniel Loxton interviewed the duo in a 2005 article titled "MythBusters Exposed". Hyneman and Savage spoke at the annual convention of the National Science Teachers Association in March 2006, and the California Science Teachers Association named them honorary lifetime members in October 2006. In 2009, they were the featured keynote speakers at RSA Conference. They also are occasionally interviewed for articles by Popular Mechanics and are featured in that magazine's September 2009 issue.
  Hyneman and Savage occasionally appear at colleges around the United States to talk about what it is like to be a MythBuster; the show consists of an interview and discussion to give the audience the opportunity to ask the MythBusters questions. The Build Team members have sometimes made appearances in similar capacity. They hold lectures in both collegiate and corporate settings, though the technical colleges tend to be the most enthusiastic. They have spoken at WPI, RPI, MIT, Michigan Tech, UC Berkeley and many others.
  Adam Savage has written a primer on mold-making for Make magazine, and has been featured guest at the San Mateo Maker Faire since 2008. Kari Byron was interviewed on The Late Show, on January 16, 2006.
  People involved in survival stories reported in local newscasts have sometimes mentioned previous viewings of MythBusters as an influence to their actions. Twenty-three-year-old Theresa Booth of St. Martin, Minnesota, credits a MythBusters episode for her and her infant child's survival. On April 3, 2007, she skidded off the road into a drainage ditch which had filled with flood water from the Sauk River. Unable to open the door, Booth recalled the Underwater Car myth and waited until the pressure equalized to open the door. On October 19, 2007, in Sydney, Australia, a teenager named Julian Shaw pulled a fainted middle-aged man off the railway tracks near a train station to safety below the platform. He pulled back as the train passed, citing that the "Train Suction" episode affected his response.
  The 3rd Annual Independent Investigative Group IIG Awards presented an award to MythBusters recognizing the promotion of science and critical thinking in popular media on May 18, 2009.
  On the May 1, 2008 episode of CSI, "The Theory of Everything", Hyneman and Savage appeared in a cameo as observers taking notes during a test to determine whether a taser bolt can set someone on fire under various circumstances (which was later tested on MythBusters itself).
  During August 2008, Hyneman and Savage appeared on the stage of NVISION 08, an event sponsored by Nvidia, having been asked by Nvidia's Creative Director, David Wright, to provide a visual demonstration of the power of the GPU vs a CPU. They did this by creating an image of the Mona Lisa with a giant parallel processing paintball gun, setting a world record for largest paintball gun in the process. An encore of the demonstration was given at YouTube Live featuring Hyneman standing in the path of the paintballs wearing a suit of armor.
  On the April 17, 2012, episode of NCIS, "Rekindled", the character Abby Sciuto demonstrates a thermite fire to her boss, Jethro Gibbs, by playing a clip from the MythBusters episode "End with a Bang". Gibbs asks if the men in the clip are pyromaniacs, and she replies, "Scientists, Gibbs! Okay, yeah, they're kind of pyromaniacs too."
  Hyneman, Savage, and others from the MythBusters crew have appeared at The Amaz!ng Meeting, and subsequently were interviewed by Dr. Steven Novella and the "skeptical rogues" for the podcast The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. On April 16, 2010, Hyneman and Savage received the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism from the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy.
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caption: At the White House
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