The Lantern attended a lecture at The Palace Theatre featuring Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, hosts of the MythBusters television show on the Discovery Channel. The following are highlights of the question-and-answer portion of the show.

Has there been any time you truly feared for your lives on set?

Jamie Hyneman: Well, I think there were a few times we were in the middle of a project and we realized we probably shouldn’t be.

Adam Savage: The earliest wake-up call was the tree cannon. We built this cannon out of a tree and put five pounds of black powder into it after we found a licensed pyrotechnician who was legally allowed to pack five pounds of black powder into a tree. We asked him where he was going to stand when we lit it and he said “350 feet that way.” When we lit this thing, it blew up, hundreds of pounds of it flew over our heads and the pyro said “Wow man!” We learned then to fear for our lives.

How do you get away with some of the things you do on TV?

Hyneman: There are some things you want to do but you can’t get a permit for.

Savage: You just can’t find a permit to blow up a cement truck.

Hyneman: So we have a team of researchers who help us figure out how to get around some of these obstacles. We found that, because a police officer has to confiscate these things that aren’t legal, a police officer can legally possess them.

Savage: So if you want to do something illegal …

Hyneman: …You get a police officer.

Savage: And if you want to blow something up that’s really, really big …

Hyneman: …You get the FBI. The FBI calls these things “training exercises.”

What is the most rewarding part of being a MythBusters host?

Hyneman: Trying to make a buck –

Savage: – Jamie is.

Hyneman: Really for me: we’ve done 60 episodes and tested more than 150 stories. The more that we do, the more interested I’m getting in the actual subject matter. It’s just a wonderful opportunity to explore – I’m just fascinated with what we’re learning. It’s an ongoing adventure.

Savage: The most unexpected aspect is getting e-mails from science teachers saying that they’re using MythBusters for their lesson plans, giving them seeds for discussing science in class. It’s absolutely the single-most gratifying thing about doing MythBusters.

Do you believe what some people say – that MythBusters misrepresents the actual process of science?

Savage: We’re curiously, deeply fascinated by the science of doing this stuff.

Hyneman: But this is all new to us – exploring the science. We’re often not able to do proper science on the show. We’ve got a limited amount of time and can’t do things like large sample sizes.

Savage: Sample sizes greater than one.

Hyneman: It’s like something blows up and we say “myth busted” – it’s not real science. But what science teachers are doing is using us as a springboard to talk about actual science. I mean, we occasionally get something right, but we have so much fun doing this that it gets kids interested in science.

Savage: Jamie’s wife has actually been teaching science in inner-city schools for 20 years and she’s more than a little pissed off that he has this national “scientific” reputation.

The myths you take on are often complex. What type of formal training do each of you have?

Savage: The amount of access we now have to experts and professionals in all sorts of different fields is incredible. We don’t have any professional credentials to be doing this, by any stretch of the imagination.

Hyneman: I have a degree in Russian studies.

Savage: I’ve got a high school diploma and a couple pottery classes. But some experts appreciate our bootstrap approach to the science we do – they consider us leaders.

Are you ever surprised by the results of investigating a myth?

Savage: We’re surprised all the time. When you see us surprised on the show, we’re actually surprised.

Hyneman: One of our favorite episodes is “bullets fired into water.” It’s something most experts didn’t actually know what would happen.

Savage: They had no idea what would happen.

Hyneman: We started firing these guns into the water to see how far they would go.

Savage: When we fired the first bullet, we found out they were going four to six inches into the water and then disintegrating, breaking into little pieces and falling to the bottom of the pool.

Hyneman: The really nasty weapons immediately ruptured when they hit the water … even this thing called a .50-caliber.

Savage: There was a corresponding myth that it could detach the retinas from your eye, even with protective gear.

Hyneman: So when I picked up this gun, I was like “oh, shit.” The cartridge on this thing is about the size of a banana. It’s almost like a piece of farm equipment.

Savage: When he fired it into the pool, water hit the 25-foot ceiling. But the same thing happened – the round just sort of exploded on the surface of the water.

What is your relationship with each other really like?

Savage: I got married about a year and a half ago. I asked Jamie if he was going to come and he said: “No.”

Hyneman: There’s a certain dynamic in this relationship. We actually don’t really care what the other one thinks.

Savage: It’s the basis of a really good partnership. But there are some times I wish Jamie would just stop describing details of everything he’s doing all of the time.

Hyneman: It’s one of those things where the sum is greater than both of its parts. We’re able to have this sort of binocular vision about approaching a problem.

Obviously MythBusters won’t last forever – where do you see yourselves in 10 years?

Hyneman: We’ve been approached by the military, by different types of industries to do developmental work – there’s a certain appeal to this quick, no-nonsense approach we use.

Savage: Me? I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.