Jamie Hyneman: We don't have formal training, that makes what we're ex...

I think LEGOs are one of the best toys ever developed. While LEGOs are sold in kits in order to build specific things, there [are] very few people who leave their LEGOs in those kits. It very rapidly becomes an open system where you can build whatever you want. That's the one thing that signifies my entire life and my career. I learned at an early age that I could make the things that I wanted. That's a very powerful thing to realize as a kid. LEGOs were a key part of that.

Jamie Hyneman

powerful kids thinking

Science isn't just for scientists and guys in lab coats. It's something that everybody can do.

Jamie Hyneman

labs coats guy

Sometimes the best people to be around are not exactly like you - because if they were, what is the point? If they contribute something different than you can, that is when they are valuable.

Jamie Hyneman

different sometimes people

If at first you don't succeed, C4

Jamie Hyneman

succeed ifs firsts

Duct tape is not a perfect solution to anything. But with a little creativity, in a pinch, it's an adequate solution to just about everything.

Jamie Hyneman

tape creativity perfect

Fun for us just happens to be screwing around with anything that gets our attention and is thought-provoking.

Jamie Hyneman

thought-provoking fun attention

When I figured that I could do anything if I was simply methodical about it. I went to the library - and this was before the Internet - and I searched for a career that was creative, would not fall into a routine, involved problem solving and making things. It also had to be dynamic. I came up with special effects.

Jamie Hyneman

careers creative fall

I didn't do the engineering, and I didn't do the math, because I thought I

Jamie Hyneman

engineering should-have math

We have relatively little time and a whole lot of curiosity, so the most efficient way to get there is what we do, and that often happens to be some form of science.

Jamie Hyneman

curiosity littles way

I've learned that I can pretty much do anything I've wanted to as long as I was methodical and diligent about it. It may not sound very exciting really, but it works.

Jamie Hyneman

graduation inspirational long

We may not have a sample size larger than one, or we may not have unlimited resources - it's a TV show, and we generally turn these things around in about a week or so.

Jamie Hyneman

tv-shows tvs may

Any day we create that much shrapnel is a good day.

Jamie Hyneman

good-day

One of our neighbors is a salami distributor, and they pretty well - I mean, we used their salami to make a rocket engine out of. They just look at us and they're amused, they're fine with it.

Jamie Hyneman

rockets mean looks

I don't think our death ray is working. I'm standing right in it, and I'm not dead yet.

Jamie Hyneman

rays standing thinking

All of the experiments are really cool. Probably one of the better ones is "Running in the Rain." It depends on circumstances: how fast are you running, if there's wind, or any of the other things involved with the circumstances of running in the rain. That's a favorite, I suppose.

Jamie Hyneman

rain running wind

Actually I'm pretty adamant about, you know, the whole God thing and it seems that skeptics are by and large atheists or something approaching that, which I strongly identify with. So it turned out to be a good thing and I have become enthusiastically part of it.

Jamie Hyneman

skeptic good-things atheist

I have to say for both of us [ with Adam Savage], this experience that we've been having here has changed us dramatically, and we've evolved since we've come on the scene with Mythbusters, because of what we've learned, and that, I think, is the biggest reward for us.

Jamie Hyneman

savages rewards thinking

I would love to have access to a company like Caterpillar. I would make all their stuff remote controlled and work ten times as fast.

Jamie Hyneman

caterpillars company stuff

One of the things I'm likely to start building in my shop is a vehicle wherein each wheel has basically a flight-simulator base as its suspension. It's known as a hexapod; it's basically a tripod but each leg is two pistons. So you have six axes of freedom on it. This will be something that can not only do what lowriders do, but shorten or extend its wheelbase and jump forwards, backwards, or from one side to the other. In an off-road situation it could be rolling at speed toward a ravine and then leap across it.

Jamie Hyneman

axes wheels two

From our point of view, we're just curious, we're poking around and having fun. If it's science, if it's accurate, if it's not accurate, we did the best we can to keep things clean and understandable, but we're just having fun, so sue us if we got something wrong.

Jamie Hyneman

clean views fun

We don't have formal training, that makes what we're experiencing a little bit more accessible to the viewers. If we actually knew what we were doing ahead of time, it would just be like talking at you, instead of experiencing the situation with you.