Mostly I make lists for projects. This can be daunting. Breaking something big into its constituent parts will help you organize your thoughts, but it can also force you to confront the depth of your ignorance and the hugeness of the task. That's OK. The project may be the lion, but the list is your whip.
Whether it's the experiments on 'MythBusters' or my earlier work in special effects for movies, I've regularly had to do things that were never done before, from designing complex motion-control rigs to figuring out how to animate chocolate.
I'm obsessed with the form of a toolbox. The idea of a portable kit that has everything you might need ignites something inside me. It's like Batman's utility belt.
Back when I was a professional model-maker at Industrial Light & Magic, my specialty was hard-edged construction - spaceships, miniature sets, and architectural stuff. These objects were sometimes just 12 inches across yet needed enough detail to fill a movie screen.
We didn't set out to be educators or even scientists, and we don't purport that what we do is real science but we're demonstrating a methodology by which one can engage and satisfy your curiosity.
The idea of an ordered and elegant universe is a lovely one. One worth clinging to. But you don't need religion to appreciate the ordered existence. It's not just an idea, it's reality. We're discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day.
I think at this point, there's a certain bizarre chemistry between Jamie [Hyneman] and I that we can't ignore a lot of the mechanics of, that we're quite aware of. Half of it is absolutely genuine, and half of it is us playing around with that fact.
Don't work for fools. It's not worth it. Getting paid less to work for people you like and believe in is much better for you (and your career) in the long run.
From earliest times, humans - explorers and thinkers - have wanted to figure out the shape of their world. Forever, the way we've done that is through storytelling. It is difficult to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
The 'Mythbusters' crew, we monitor the Discovery boards, we look for the new ideas that are being forwarded on those boards, and we keep track of what's going on, we keep updated.