What Adam Savage Has Been Up To Since Leaving MythBusters
It will probably not surprise you to hear that there is life after MythBusters.
Well, maybe not for we the television audience, who will remain forever mopey and depressed that there are only 296 episodes to rewatch and even so, we already know exactly what blew up and whether or not the myth was busted even before we crack open that pint of Ben and Jerry's and settle down to binge watch through a veil of nostalgic tears.
For the stars we loved, though, there is life after MythBusters and especially for Adam Savage, who now gets to live a life of building cool stuff and messing around all day and somehow still makes a pretty tidy living from it.
So what has Adam Savage been up to since MythBusters? Keep reading to find out ... that is, if you don't think you'll end up feeling insanely jealous of his eternally charmed life.
Adam Savage still does MythBusters, only with kids
Adam Savage has replaced the stalwart, uber-serious Jamie Hyneman with a bunch of teens and pre-teens. They're not just any teens and pre-teens, though; they're the sorts of kids who make you reflect on your own life with deep regret and wonder why you were not building robots, programming computers, remodeling houses, and inventing stuff well before you hit puberty.
As a bonus, Savage's new co-hosts seem like they might be at least marginally easier to work with than Jamie Hyneman, so there's that. If nothing else, they at least express occasional emotion.
"When big things fall on big things, the pure delight on their faces, they can't hide it. That's why we're doing this," Savage said at the summer Television Critics Association press tour in 2018. But don't let the presence of minors lull you into a false sense of responsible science or anything. "It's not a show about teaching these guys how to do stuff," Savage said. "It's not a kids' show. These are the new MythBusters and I'm their camp counselor and their advisor and sometimes their test subject. ... They're going to be blowing up stuff just as big as we did."
So just to confirm, the show's premise is to give dynamite to children and let them blow stuff up on national television, right? Cool. Just please point that cannon away from the suburbs this time, okay?
Adam Savage wrote a bromantic tome
The thing about Adam Savage is he's the bromance every dude wishes he could have. Imagine hanging out with Adam Savage in your workshop and building stupid stuff all day over a six-pack of beer. Heck, even most women wish they could have a bromance with Adam Savage.
Sadly, the closest you'll probably ever come to being bromantically involved with Adam Savage is when you read his book, which has the very relatable title Every Tool's a Hammer. Because who among us hasn't beaten a doorknob to death with a heavy flashlight because you locked your keys in the house and were late getting the kids to daycare? No?
Anyway, one Boing Boing reviewer calls Savage's book "a wonderful read, in which Adam shares his own personal guidelines for creativity, from inspiration to execution." So if you've ever wanted to build a giant Totoro costume and all you really need is some inspiration to get started, well, this book might help you out with that.
Adam Savage calls the book "a chronicle of my life as a maker," but it's really a love letter to other makers, and to those of us who want to be makers but still haven't grabbed the airbrush by the trigger. "Grab hold of the things you're interested in, that fascinate you, and ... dive deeper into them to see where they lead you," he wrote. How bromantic.
He's involved with nonprofits
If you spend enough time with Adam Savage or if you're just following his current activities online (because spending actual time with Adam Savage is still something most of us only dream about), then you probably get the feeling that "making" — which is essentially just the blanket term for the art of building random cool stuff — is going to one day save the world and all of the universe, too.
In late 2016, Savage announced the establishment of a new nonprofit called Nation of Makers, which is essentially an organization that helps makers share ideas, projects, resources, and whatever else they feel like sharing with the broader maker community. According to Nation of Makers' website, their mission is "to build a society where everyone has access to the tools, technologies, experiences, and knowledge to make anything." Cool, so one order of a bandsaw and a 3-D printer, please.
Naturally, Adam Savage is on the board of directors, so the organization is off to a solid start at "making" the world a better place. Har har.
Savage got to be an extra in a short for Blade Runner 2049
Adam Savage is, among other things, a huge fan of sci-fi in general and Blade Runner in particular, that once-cult classic that's now practically mainstream and even had a well-reviewed sequel that came out in 2017. And if you're Adam Savage, well, you can do things like call up the Blade Runner people and say, "Hey, I wanna be an extra" and they'll be all, "Hmm if we let Adam Savage be an extra maybe he'll be friends with us," and then the next thing you know you're on the set of a Blade Runner 2049 short getting ready to play a street merchant in Future Los Angeles. "It's like a fantasy camp day!" Savage gushed during the Tested mini-documentary that covered his experience.
In the short, Savage appears in the background just behind Dave Bautista. His character doesn't have any speaking lines, but he can be seen trying to sell bags of blood to a vendor because the Blade Runner universe is gross and people eat nematodes and deal in black market bodily fluids. But it's not like one of those "blink and you'll miss it" sorts of appearances. Any true MythBusters fan would be able to identify him without much effort, even if they didn't know in advance he was there. So cool. Must be nice to have that kind of sci-fi clout.
He hosted a SyFy Network podcast
Both Adam Savage and Jamie Hynneman seemed to be cool with the end of MythBusters. After so many very long seasons of working with someone you don't actually really like that much, well, it was comfortable for them to finally part ways. But knowing Adam Savage the way we do, it must have been hard for him to put all that geeking out behind him. Because if there's one thing that Adam Savage clearly loves to do, it's geeking out in a public forum. That's probably one of the reasons he signed on to host the 2017 15-part Syfy podcast called SYFY25: Origin Stories.
The series featured discussions with some legendary names in science fiction, like voice-of-Yoda Frank Oz, Star Trek scriptwriter D.C. Fontana, and scriptwriter Ron Moore, who won an Emmy for his work on Battlestar Galactica (the newer one, not the awful one that ran for two seasons in the late 1970s). So not only did Savage get to spend lots of time talking publicly about science fiction, he got to do it with some of the biggest names in the industry.
Adam Savage told Space.com that the series was meant to examine science fiction not just as a genre but as a cultural force that transcends our petty human differences. "That's what science fiction has always been to me — a wonderful Trojan horse that bypasses people's partisan filters to talk about culturally important issues," he said.
Adam Savage sells bags made of recycled sails
Adam Savage is a Mythbuster, a maker, a special-effects guy, a blower-upper, and a purveyor of travel accessories. Wait, what? Yes, one of Adam Savage's latest projects is selling bags made out of recycled sails. According to Wired, he designs the bags in collaboration with a San Francisco company called Mafia Bags, and markets them under his "Savage Industries" brand. The coolest part: They're made out of recycled boat sails.
Wired says the recycled sails give each bag "unique quirks," as well as a "broken-in look." They are well-designed, with magnet closures instead of velcro or snaps, and a system of springs inside the lip that keep the bag open while you're rifling around inside it.
Adam Savage launched his line of bags with the gadget version, but you can also get a Savage Industries beach tote or a cooler. Most of the bags come in white only, presumably because sails also mostly come in white, but at the time of this writing there's also a black version of the smaller bag available. Don't be put off by the mostly-white options and the dirt that will inevitably and permanently collect on the surface of your $225 bag, though — Savage told Wired that the dirt is actually a "patina," so it's all good. Even though everyone knows that "patina" is just a fancy word that antiques dealers use to make their customers feel good about the filth of the ages.
Adam Savage is the editor-in-chief of an online magazine
Savage's biggest post-MythBusters project is Tested.com, where he serves as editor-in-chief. What is Tested.com, exactly? Well, evidently, it's a website that covers "anything that's awesome." Okay, awesome.
More specifically, Tested.com is an online magazine that focuses mostly on scientific topics like nature, exploration, emerging technologies, groundbreaking new products, and Adam Savage being in a Blade Runner short. Just in case you're not sold yet, here are a few recent examples from the Tested lineup of awesome topics: A video profiling a spacesuit replica builder, another video that follows Savage as he builds a liquid nitrogen powered engine for a Starbucks video (uh, what?) and yet another video that follows him around while he visits the Space Shuttle Discovery at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Dulles, Virginia.
It also seems like Adam Savage chronicles many of his activities at the website, meaning you can geek out vicariously through someone who has enough time and money to actually geek out as a profession.
He's appeared in live stage shows
If you've missed Adam Savage on MythBusters and you think all his other projects just can't fill the void, well, you can have the experience of a lifetime at one of his live stage shows. Yes, that's right, a live stage show where Adam Savage runs around being charming and blowing things up.
In 2016, Savage launched "Tested the Show: Journeys," which was evidently loosely based on the Tested website, though the Tested website doesn't really seem to be tightly focused on anything. Still, the show sounds like it would have been fun — it debuted at the Castro Theatre during the 2016 Bay Area Science Festival. It included an appearance by Simone Giertz, otherwise known as "Queen of Crappy Robots" and was mostly a celebration of multimedia, costuming, and Adam Savage's huge collection of cool stuff. But alas, it seems to have been a one-off event so sorry if you missed it.
But wait ... according to a Boing Boing writer, there's also the "Brain Candy" show, a live touring show billed as "crazy toys, incredible tools, and mind-blowing demonstrations for a celebration of curiosity that's an interactive, hands-on, minds-on theatrical experience like no other." Brain Candy wasn't a one-man show — Savage teamed up with YouTuber Michael Stevens (known as Vsauce) for the event that did, in fact, feature explosions. Sadly, it only ran through May 2018 so don't bother frantically Googling for tickets or anything because you missed that one, too. Sigh.
Farewell to Arms, starring Adam Savage
Adam Savage is clearly not uncomfortable in front of the camera, but there's a pretty big difference between shooting little videos for YouTube and the major production of working on a weekly television series. So it wouldn't be a surprise to hear that he missed that big production stuff so much that he sought similar experiences out even after MythBusters was over.
Fortunately for our beloved former Mythbuster, filmmaking opportunities seem to keep presenting themselves. According to Tested, in 2018, he visited Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop in New Zealand and made a short film entitled Farewell to Arms, which features himself in a suit of armor and a bright red skirt fighting some weird creature that looks like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer demon procreated with one of the rubber suits from the set of the original Star Trek. After a short battle, the demon removes one of Savage's arms, Monty Python-style, complete with gushing blood ("Farewell to Arms," ha ha).
The film is presented as a part of a series, and it isn't just an original story with low-budget special effects. It's also a behind-the-scenes look at how Weta Workshop puts together an epic film like Lord of the Rings, though granted, the special effects in that one were way, way better.
He builds some pretty cool costumes
Anyone who's followed Adam Savage even since before he left MythBusters knows about his annual Comic-Con tradition. But if you don't know, here's a quick rundown. Each year, Savage dresses up in super impressive, head-to-toe costume, and goes incognito through the crowd, though it's kind of easy for people to figure out his identity just based on how awesome his costume is.
Over the years, he's been Chewbacca, Hellboy, Kylo Ren, Totoro, and King Arthur. But his most epic costume was the one that he spent 14 years and $15,000 building. "My most expensive costume build — that's going to have to be Kane's suit from Alien," he told CNBC. All those years he spent on the thing included researching the costume, gathering the pieces to make it, and figuring out how to make it all fit. And Savage isn't just content to build a costume that's almost perfect. In fact, he even hired people to help him with the castings and molds. Some of the materials came from as far away as Italy and China.
Admittedly, $15,000 is a lot to spend on one costume, but Savage says it helped that it took him so long to actually complete the project. "I spread it out over 15 years, so it didn't hurt my wallet as bad as it would have in one fell swoop," he said.
Adam Savage and the space shuttle replica
Adam Savage is a dad, and he's also an empty-nester. And like all dads, he has a special appreciation for kids and young people. So when he decided to undertake a huge project in celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing, he recruited 40 different makers from all over the country, including a group of students from Kennedy High in Richmond, California. Together, the group created life-sized replica pieces of an Apollo 11 command module hatch.
According to Tested, Savage used 3D scan data and original drawings kept in the Air and Space Museum archives to create a digital model of the hatch. It was then separated into individual components, which were distributed to the 40 makers who helped Savage complete the project. Unlike Savage's other projects, though, there was room for artistic license. The makers were free to create their components in any color or finish, as "a celebration of different fabrication techniques, some traditional, some cutting edge."
The pieces were sent to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., where Savage assembled them live, in front of an audience, into a complete command module hatch. Pretty cool stuff.
Adam Savage has a new TV show on the Discovery Channel
Adam Savage must have truly missed life as a TV star because it really didn't take him very long to settle back into yet another series. This time, he doesn't have to share the limelight, and his name is even in the show's title. Called Savage Builds, the series airs on Discovery Channel and follows Savage as he builds stuff. This dude basically gets paid to work on his hobby, which must be nice.
Anyway, Savage Builds launched with an epic episode featuring Adam Savage building a flying, bulletproof Iron Man costume. No, really.
According to The Verge, Savage 3D printed the suit out of titanium, then he shot his gun at it to prove it was bulletproof and make everyone watching go, "Coooool!" Then he enlisted the help of a guy named Richard Browning, who's famous for building a working jetpack. And yes, the suit could actually fly, although Savage himself wisely decided not to be the pilot after he had some trouble mastering the whole jetpack thing even without the addition of a 25-pound titanium suit. So Browning made the test flight, and it was pretty impressively successful. No word yet on when the duo plans to start fighting crime.