Kari Byron
by Keith Daniels for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

MythBusters, Discovery Channel’s hit show which attempts to test popular legends, misconceptions, and tropes, is coming back on April 6th for their eighth year of bringing science with a heavy dose of explosives to television. Co-host Kari Byron started as an intern at fellow host Jamie Hyneman’s special-effects shop M5 Industries at practically the same moment the show first began filming. From her first appearance as a model for an experiment, her critical thinking, artistic sensibility, and on-screen charisma allowed her role on the show to grow until she became part of a trio of co-hosts with special-effects veterans Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci who now have their own shop, M7, and test myths for the show in parallel with the original core duo of Hyneman and Adam Savage. In 2010, Discovery Communications launched a new show on its Science Channel, Head Rush, in conjunction with President Obama’s STEM Initiative to promote science and math education. Hosted by Kari, Head Rush is a commercial free hour of MythBusters’ clips interspersed with educational segments and appearances from fellow Discovery stars aimed at getting kids interested in science. As a longtime fan of MythBusters, I was thrilled to talk to Kari recently about guns, religion, motherhood, and the upcoming season of the show.

Keith Daniels: So what are you guys working on today?

Kari Byron: Today I believe we are working on a go-cart that’s going to be an analogue for a Marlin fish to test whether a fishing reel can spin so fast it would catch on fire. So we’re going to hook a fishing line to it and then just run it as fast as the fastest ever recorded fish and see if it can catch on fire. You know how that goes, a little bit of a [inaudible], it’s probably lots faster. [Laughs] We like to live in the absurd.

KD: You guys have actually had a suicidegirl on the show. Nixon from the Bone Room in Berkeley, CA.

KB: Yeah, we’ve had her on a couple of times.

KD: Do you know her personally, outside of the show?

KB: Just from the Bone Room! I’ve gone in there a couple of times. She’s a smart girl, really interesting.

KD: You started a new show, Head Rush, as part of the “STEM initiative”. What is the STEM Initiative?

KB: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics is what the acronym is for. It’s trying to get kids interested in science and math and keep them interested. It’s part of a push to try to get the next generation into problem-solving, really.

KD: What are some of the limitations of television for depicting science?

KB: Limitations? I don’t think we’ve run into limitations, so far. The hardest part is that, something like Head Rush, we try to make it a commercial-free enterprise, make it something that we don’t have to throw commercial money into, and it makes it really difficult, because obviously television is a profit-generating method of getting information across. Doing something like Head Rush is a really ambitious project. We have to ask a lot of people to work for very little money -- just kind of do it for a good cause. I think the limitation of science on television is that you’re trying do it within an industry.

KD: Is that frustrating? I mean, here you’re doing this almost for charity, and on the other hand Discovery has a half-dozen shows about ghosts and Bigfoot.

KB: [Laughs] Well, here’s the thing. As a skeptic, I believe you’ve got to question everything, including skepticism. If people want to investigate ghosts, go ahead! Investigate ghosts! I think it’s important to have an open mind and try it all. I personally don’t believe in ghosts, and I don’t believe in Bigfoot, but I would never fault anybody for giving it a shot.

KD: But you don’t feel that the science content is in any way a token effort as far as the network is concerned?

KB: [Laughs] I would say the network is pretty wholeheartedly for science. I don’t think it’s a token effort for them. I think it’s actually something that they believe in pretty strongly. [Baby begins to cry] Hold on a second, let me hand off my daughter to my husband.

KD: Sure! Has becoming a mom with a daughter made that issue more personal for you? Do you worry about what sort of world she’s going to grow up in?

KB: Oh absolutely. I’ve got as much optimism as pessimism when it comes to [the future]. I mean, she was born into a world that had our first black President; she’ll never know a world that didn’t. In general, just watching her... a child has this sort of questioning spirit that’s enlightening to me. Sometimes, in the past, I became kind of closed off and had a lot of cynicism, but when I became a mom I started to see the world with her eyes.

KD: She has no preconceived notions.

KB: Yeah, exactly. She’s like a [inaudible]. She knows knows.

KD: You’ve referred to the science content on Head Rush and MythBusters as “hiding the broccoli in the cheese sauce”. Is that how you felt about science growing up? That it was like eating broccoli?

KB: [Laughs] You know, I have to say I did. The reason that Head Rush became a passion project for me is that I’m trying to speak to the 12 year-old girl I used to be. I can’t honestly say I was interested in science or anything like that at that age. It’s kind of sad. Somewhere around puberty things become very, very difficult for us. You start being more interested in the opposite sex and rock stars, and your role models definitely change. Before that, science is fun, and it’s just kind of part of life, you know? Then all of a sudden, it becomes part of school, and it’s hard and it’s not quite like... Like how kids are continually interested in art because you get your hands dirty, you get messy -- you get into it and it’s very experiential. For some reason, somewhere around junior high, science often becomes a list of things to memorize. What are the properties of a cell? I think I became interested in science later in life because of the fact that I started to do it in a different way, and so I’m hoping to make Head Rush... an effort to get your hands dirty, to make science more like art.

KD: You mentioned earlier that being a mom has made you less cynical. There’s a quote on your wikipedia page about your art, that it helps you explore your “cynical view of contemporary issues”. What issues were you cynical about?

KB: Art just helps me quarantine the world into smaller pieces that I can digest. What isn’t there to be cynical about? [Laughs] I actually am trying not to be cynical and just to be skeptical. Politics. The government. That’s probably going to put me on a red flag list. [Laughs] Everything you come across is just... difficult and hard to digest. It’s hard to believe there are people out in the world who want to be serial killers. I like to try to find things you can’t be cynical or skeptical about. [Laughs]

KD: You started as an intern at M5 just when MythBusters was getting off the ground. Do you ever imagine a world where it didn’t get renewed for a second season and you went into special effects and modeling instead?

KB: You know, quite honestly I’m sooooo happy that MythBusters happened and I never got to break into the field of special effects, because I was trying to get into it just as it was taking a new turn. The kind of special effects I was trying to get into is almost extinct -- you know, the model making and the actual physical creation of small objects, the sculptural side. It’s so much about computers now. I never would have really gotten into the beautiful, old-school field where they were making giant puppets. There’s still a little bit of it, but it’s really scarse.

KD: I don’t know why, no matter how good computers get... I mean, your friends have worked at ILM, and the old Star Wars movies look so much better than the new ones.

KB: I know! See, I’m not sure if that’s just because that’s how I grew up and maybe I’m just kind of clinging on to that, but I absolutely feel that way. Remember the Dark Crystal? How cool was that freaking movie? I would watch that any day over all of the digitized junk that I see now. Sure, [digital effects are] beautiful, but the [old-school effects] are so visceral and so real -- the actual puppets and models, and actors interacting with monsters that they could see instead of a green screen.

KD: It might be a puppet, but it’s actually there.

KB: Yeah. Yeah!

KD: Are you still a vegetarian?

KB: I’m a pescetarian.

KD: So you eat fish.

KB: Yeah. Somewhere in my twenties I started eating fish again. It just became such a strange category. To explain your diet all the time is just silly. It’s just a personal choice, for no particular reason other than that’s how I like to eat.

KD: But I’ve read that your husband isn’t a vegetarian. You’ve talked about cooking steak for him. How do you deal with that?

KB: You do strange things for love. [Laughs] He’s a good ol’ southern boy. He likes his meat and potatoes. We are definitely on opposing sides of the spectrum in so many ways. I just love him. [Laughs] He’ll cook tofu for me; it’s a two-way street!

KD: You did mention, though, in the ‘Wet Jeans’ episode, that you have a fascination with blood.

KB: [Laughs] My grandmother was a nurse and my grandfather was a doctor, so I have a fascination with skeletons. I just think blood is really beautiful. That sounds really creepy, I know. I’m fascinated with the human body -- the fact that [we’re] just meat wrapped around these bones, the way it’s put together, and all these electrical impulses that make it move around. It’s an amazing, amazing creation.

KD: You’ve also said that you aren’t really a gun person, but you always seem to have a lot of fun with guns on the show. Has being on the show changed your opinion about guns?

KB: Here’s the thing. I like guns as a machine. I think they’re an amazing thing. I love learning about the physics behind them, and it’s really fun to shoot at targets. I still don’t like hunting. I find it kind of silly. I don’t necessarily have any different views on whether everybody should own a gun. I don’t own one myself, but I like shooting them. So I would say I’m somewhat... I don’t know if you’d say I’m conflicted, but I’m just.. [Dramatic breath] I’m a gun-holding pacifist, how about that?

KD: That pretty much describes me as well. I’m a gun-owner, but I’m also an anti-war Democrat.

KB: Yeah! I like shooting cans. I don’t want to kill anything.

KD: You’ve said that you don’t show your personal artwork in public anymore. Why? Do you think that will ever change once MythBusters ends?

KB: I don’t know. I couldn’t have predicted what I’m doing today five years ago. Maybe it will change. It’s definitely a personal exploration for me, and I don’t really feel the need to share that part of my personality with the world at the moment. Art is something that gets with you and stays with you, so I still do it. I just keep it to myself. [Laughs] I put it in my garage. Maybe someday I’ll show it.

KD: Would you say that you’re kind of a private person in general? You mentioned in your column on geekmom that you were reluctant to get into Twitter, for example.

KB: Yeah, I really was. I like it now. I’ve kind of been having fun with it because I realized you only show what you feel like showing. I don’t live in the L.A. monster. I live in San Francisco where it’s a little different. There’s no real celebrity up here. We don’t have paparazzi and that kind of thing. You’re kind of just living your regular life, and unless we leave our little bubble you don’t even realize that you’re on a TV show that a bunch of people are watching. We’ve got this little skeleton crew of people. You see the same 15 people every day that you’re working with. It’s not quite as glamorous as I think you might expect. It’s really kind of a blue-collar job. We show up, we get dirty, it’s 8 to 6 every day. When I go home I’m with my daughter, with my husband, with my friends, and I keep it kind of private.

KD: A couple of weeks ago ago on Twitter you said that you were losing sleep worrying about how “gross and traumatic” an upcoming experiment would be. What was it?

KB: [Laughs] Well I can’t tell you exactly until it airs, but it involved a dead pig, and it was... explosive. There was a... let’s just say that pig was tenderized when we were done with it. It was really gross.

KD: MythBusters has never done many favors for the pig species...

KB: Well, here’s the thing. Science has not created a human analogue that is cheap, and the pig is cheap and it’s the closest thing we can get to testing on a cadaver -- and we’re not going to do that! So we have often turned to pig. It’s a constant battle with me. I’m always trying to get them to use something synthetic. There’s this funny turn -- now that we’ve used pig more, often the staff will, if possible, take that home, butcher it, and eat it. Jamie cooks his pigs, and we’ve got a guy on our staff who loves to take the pig home and cook it up. It feels somehow less of a waste to me, and I’m a little more OK with it if I know somebody’s going to eat it afterwards.

KD: Your co-stars are these guys with IMDB credits half-a-mile long, and I’ve seen people say, “Oh, they only put her on the show because she’s pretty.” How does that make you feel, and what’s wrong with being sexy, anyway?

KB: [Laughs] Well, it’s funny, that’s the kind of thing that in my twenties I would’ve taken as an insult, but in my thirties I take it as a compliment. Like, “Awesome! They think I’m pretty, and I don’t care about the rest of what they say, anyway.” I obviously didn’t get on the show because I’m pretty. I was working my butt off in the shop and just kind of ended up in front of the camera. I would like to think they put me on because I’m a critical thinker and I have creative ideas and they like me! I don’t really read the internet and take anything to heart. It’s just futile. If you read everything on the internet about yourself and believed it was true you would go insane.

KD: Just doing research for this interview... I can’t even... youtube comments are the worst.

KB: [Laughs]

KD: You guys have tackled some pretty controversial myths on the show, like the moon landing hoax for example. Have there ever been any myths that the network felt were too hot to touch?

KB: Ahhh... too hot to touch. You know, I don’t think there’s really been anything that we felt was too hot to touch so far. The one thing that we do try to stay away from is imitable behavior. We try not to give everyone an Anarchist Cookbook and show them how to do things that would endanger themselves. We try to stick with things that we can test and build and that are interesting without getting anybody hurt. We try to say, “Don’t try this at home,” but you can never get everyone to really not try it at home.

KD: You mentioned earlier that you consider yourself a skeptic. I know Adam in particular is really into the skeptic movement, going to TAM and all that. You’ve been in Junior Skeptic and some other skeptical publications, but you’re not as heavily involved. Do you just prefer to keep your opinions to yourself, or...?

KB: Not necessarily! If asked I will absolutely give my opinion. [Laughs] I think Adam has more hours in the day than most people. He’s like Einstein. He somehow gets so much more done. You’ll leave him in the evening and by the morning he’s all of a sudden built a scale model of his house and taken his kids to the zoo and come up with the next day’s production. He’s kind of insane. I don’t know how he does it. I think maybe he’s built some sort of time machine. [Laughs] I’m active in a lot of things but just kind of dabble in most.

KD: Well one thing I’m curious about. Do you believe in God? Are you an atheist?

KB: I am an atheist, but I don’t begrudge anyone for whatever belief systems they hold.

KD: Sure. Did you ever in believe in God? What age were you, and how did you realize that you were an atheist?

KB: I think somewhere around the second grade. I remember specifically having this conversation with my grandmother... I had a lot of little friends, and one of them was a Buddhist. I remember [my grandmother] telling me that that little girl wouldn’t go to Heaven, and I just couldn’t wrap rationalize that this little girl wouldn’t go to Heaven because she believed in something else. It got me really questioning. I just kind of quietly stopped believing, and I didn’t go to church after that with my grandmother any more unless she really asked. I didn’t believe it. I started out religious I guess. Semi-religious. I had holiday Catholics as parents. [Laughs]

KD: As a parent yourself, would you like your daughter to be a non-believer as well? Or will you present both sides and see what she comes up with?

KB: What I’d like [my daughter] to do is to be a critical thinker. I would really like her to keep that child-like critical thinking that she has. I won’t force any belief system that I have on her, but I’m not going to present a case [for her] in something that I don’t personally believe in. If she comes home someday and says she wants to believe... I will love her no matter what she does, [Laughs] but I’m not going to present a religious case to her. I’m not religious; I don’t believe in it, and I sometimes find it a little bit dangerous. But I will love her no matter what she decides.

KD: Dangerous in what way?

KB: I’m a true believer in science -- it’s subject to change and evolve. I have a hard time sometimes with the un-evolving, stern, ‘this is the way it is’ answers that religion gives you.

KD: The Build Team started off kind of informally, but it’s become a codified part of the show. You have your own shop now, M7. Do you, Tory, and Grant really work completely separately from Adam and Jamie, and does that ever make you miss the old days?

KB: You know I don’t really think about the old days so much. I think we all romanticize whatever we’ve done in the past. I really like that, in the past five years or so, have become completely autonomous and work on our own as well because it gives us more to tackle. It would be impossible if we all worked as one team to get out the volume of shows that our audience demands. So the ability to work separately and get more done is very beneficial to all of us.

KD: The work schedule on MythBusters is pretty crazy. I’ve read that you work sometimes 46 weeks out of the year. How hard is it to find time for your own life?

KB: You know, we manage. You just do what you’ve got to do. I don’t think there’s anybody out there that isn’t working their butt off these days. It’s a hard economy, and the fact is I think that most people work as hard as we do. There’s barely any such thing as a one-income family anymore. I make sure that the first thing my daughter sees in the morning is me and the last thing she sees before she goes to bed at night is me. I think she’s at least got me as a role-model of somebody who’s working very hard and loves her very much to try to create a good life for her. We just do what we can and try to make the time that we have together with our family quality.

KD: What sort of music do you listen to? Who are your favorite bands?

KB: That’s a hard one. My husband is one of those music nerds. He’s got the biggest collection you can imagine. We’ve got some diversity. My all-time favorites from when I was younger are Mazzy Star and Jane’s Addiction. These days I really like... have you heard of Lenny and the Piss Poor Boys?

KD: Nuh-uh.

KB: They’re fun. I like that guy. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jessie Mae Hemphill. Do you know who that is? He’s like an old, blues-y singer. I recently discovered Headcat, Lemmy’s new band. That’s pretty fun. Drive-by Truckers...

KD: The last interview we did was actually with Mike Cooley from Drive-By Truckers.

KB: They’re cool. I saw them at Outside Lands and I was just like, “They’re even great live!”

KD: What myths do fans have to look forward to this season? What are some of your favorites?

KB: I know that this season we are starting off April 6th with some myths about guns. We took some movie myths about guns and we started to test those. It’s hard to remember because we don’t think in terms of “seasons”; I think of what I’m doing now: can a fishing-reel catch on fire? We did some stuff from Youtube where this guy shot into a lake-bed and his bullets started to spin. A lot of people thought that was a hoax, and so we went to a frozen lake in neck-deep snow and shot guns to see if we could get a bullet to spin. We did some good car crashing myths. It’s just a lot of mayhem. [Laughs] You’re going to like it.

KD: You haven’t felt like, after eight years, that it’s become more difficult to find new subjects to tackle?

KB: Not really, because we have a really active audience. Our audience participates with us. They go on the message boards, they do research for us. They’re constantly finding new stuff for us to do, and the list that we’ve compiled alone... We just tested one of my very favorites that I think originally came from a fan. It’s a historical myth called “Paper Armor”. In Tang Dynasty China they made armor out of paper and it was comparable to steel armor. If we’ve got thousands of years to pull from, I don’t think we’re ever going to run out of myths.

MythBusters returns with an all-new episode Wednesday, April 6th at 9PM ET/PT.
Like MythBusters? Join SuicideGirls and talk about the show with fellow fans in our MythBusters discussion group! Thanks to members DevilsReject, Panther289, bendingunit23, and other members of the group for their question suggestions.

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Kari+Byron/