Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Kari Byron

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Meet Kari Byron, amazing television host, actor, and artist. You may know her from Mythbusters or White Rabbit Project, but I know her as my good friend. It was an absolutely grand time catching up with her and I hope you enJOY!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Athlete's First Family podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson, on my own, standing on a stage, telling comedy words. Come and see me, buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and

don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know it's happening, and it is. The tour kicks off late September and goes through the end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at the Craig Ferguson show.com slash tour. They're available at the Craig Ferguson show.com slash tour or at your local outlet in your region. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Welcome to Joy the podcast. My guest today is a friend of mine, full disclosure, a good friend of mine and a good person and very clever and very interesting and she is a myth buster so that works. Her name is Carrie Byron and you're welcome. Enjoy.

Carrie, I want to ask you a question. Yes. This is a question although I've known you for many years. I have never asked you a question. Yes. This is a question, although I've known you for many years. I have never asked you this question, unless maybe I have asked you this question. But we'll find out. Are you in any way related to Lord Byron? Well, according to my father, yes. But my father was one of those big fish kind of guys that tells really great stories.

So sometimes I'm just going to go with yes, I have never fully, fully investigated it, but my dad used to have this big leather bound Lord Byron book that he would read in front of the fireplace and like 5 a.m. when I'd get up early, I'd curl up on his lap and he would read me poetry. And I didn't understand any of it till I was older, but he felt this,

I think it just gave him a sense of importance. So like on his deathbed, I read him Lord Byron poetry. Oh, wow. That's rather lovely. And I'm sorry to hear that your father's passed, but what a lovely thing to do. Was he able to hear you? Did he enjoy it and stuff? I feel like he did. He wasn't really in the state of it. So, you know. I gave my mother on her deathbed, I gave her a photograph of Tony Curtis. Tony Curtis had been on the late night show and that was my mom's favorite. And then she was dying and I told Tony Curtis, my mom was in the hospital.

She was very sick and I was going to leave after the show and he went oh and he signed a photograph for her and I gave it to my mom but I think I don't think she saw it but I like to think that she knew there was a picture of Tony Curtis signed by Tony Curtis on her lip. Yes! Anyway listen it's a rather poetic name for someone who I think of as being a... You're very sciency. You've come to my haunted houses in Scotland and you're like, ah, there's no such thing as ghosts and you're very sciency about it.

But of course, there are such a thing as ghosts, obviously. I wanted to be haunted so badly at your house. Like, I stayed awake. I walked around in the dark. I was like, bring it! Because I would love to be haunted. That would be so cool. Yeah, that's, they don't do it if you want it. Also, I think there were a couple of Scotsmen at the parties, be very happy to be haunting you in the middle of the night if they knew you were walking around the castle. I watched a couple of those gentlemen whittle you around

the dance floor. But- You do some real fun dancing at your parties. I have never done that kind of dancing. It's like Scottish line dancing. It is. It's real. It's reals before Instagram. Now, let me ask you this.

Because you are one of a select gang. Throughout the course of this podcast, I will talk to all of them, even probably including Jamie, is Mythbusters royalty. You were the only, for most of the time anyway, you were the only woman on the team, right? Well, we started out with Scotty Chapman. Scotty, yeah. She is just an amazing welder and very, very cool.

I was just the longest running and consistently the first one. I was just the longest running and consistently the first one. I was helping Jamie out behind the scenes when I was just interning. So like the very first episode I was there. But you were interning, right? That's what it was. It was just like, because you, I feel like maybe I'm making this up, but I feel like I think of you as you were a sculptress or a sculptor, right? That was your thing.

That's where you were going to do. You still do that? Yeah. I mean, some of them are behind me. That's what I was going to say. Are those ones behind you yours? Yeah. I mean, I've always done it.

I thought when I was in San Francisco that I was going to become this really cool sculptor and my life was going to be arty. And my creepy little sculptures didn't really sell that well. I couldn't make a living out of it. So I thought, oh my God, how could I still be a sculptor and do this kind of thing? But like it paid. So then I started trying to put together a portfolio so that I could maybe go work at, you know, work on Star Wars because Lucas Ranch was so close to us. And I wanted to be like Jamie and Adam and Tory

when I grew up. I wanted to do what they did. They were model makers. But I ended up using those sculptures that I had made artistically to impress Jamie. And he's like, okay, you know, maybe I'll give you a job. I won't pay you, but you can come work here. Yeah, that sounds very much like Jamie.

He's a very singular human being. I've always liked very much what he did on camera. I always got a sense of, there were people like you and Adam and Tory and Grant, God rest them, were very comfortable on camera and kind of loved it and were very natural. And Jamie always got a sense that he was kind of rather grudgingly doing it because he felt like someone, I felt like someone had told him he had to do it. And so he went, yeah, all right. I don't like it. Or am I making that up? Was that a character? No, no, there is no character like Jamie is Jamie. When I occasionally go visit his shop

and he orates the gearing of everything he's working on. Like it's the same stuff. Like he's working for some DARPA think tank or something at this point on some stuff I probably can't talk about. But I all spent an hour just listening to him explain projects. But he did MythBusters because it gave him an opportunity to do really cool, weird, wild stuff. Right. There was a lot of explosions. You guys blew up a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff.

Honestly, that wasn't his favorite. That was like one of my favorites. You were. You seem to be very drawn to explosions. Do you still get to get your explosions fixed now? How do you get your your Semtex fixed these days? Well, I do black powder artwork, so I'm still very... Do you really? Yeah. Yeah. I'll send you some. Give me your address. I'll send you some. I do black powder artwork, so I'm still very... Do you really?

Yeah, yeah. I'll send you some. Give me your address. I'll send you some. Don't send me any black powder. That's not going to work well. You can't send that through the mail. It is all...

It's already been set off. So I take canvases, cover them in a watercolor paper, And then I do these controlled explosions. They're not very big because I'm doing them in my backyard. Oh my God. I live in a city, I'm not supposed to. It's all right. Yeah, don't tell anybody, anybody. But I have a storage of really old dirty black powder.

Like not the clean kind, cause they changed the recipe, but like the old stuff that they would put in canons. So I have this old black powder. And when I was on MythBusters, I learned how much I loved the detritus that was left behind when we do explosions. And so I'm like, I wonder if I can make that into artwork.

So I started exploding things on paper and using clay to mask things off. And I made these kind of really cool explorations in what's left behind, which is basically at that point, just a charcoal painting. And then I discovered there's other artists that do this. There's like a really famous Chinese artist that does this much bigger and better than I do.

But it's just another way I can have an expression of art while still blowing stuff up. But it's gotta to be abstracts. It's not like you set something off and suddenly there's a horse or something like that, right? It's actually both. I do a lot of abstract stuff. All of my abstract stuff has a theme of connectivity, humanity, and quantum physics. But then every now and then, I will do pieces where I take this polymer clay and then I will extrude it into these long, skinny pieces.

And I will put it on a paper. I did one recently for my friend who had lost her dog. And so I did a portrait of her dog using this clay to kind of mask off an area that would create negative space. Oh, that's cool. And then I exploded black powder behind it. Right. And it makes this really cool charcoal painting, but it's almost like, it's like when you look at a, the negative space is white and then the background is black. Then the background is the explosion.

Yeah, but it creates this sort of chaos because like the little, the grain that I use, I use a really big grain because I like how it shoots around the page and makes these little squiggly marks and then parts of it kind of explodes harder. Does it say paper on fire? Do you have to use special paper? Are you going to blow up your paper?

Well I've done a lot of experimenting as you know I like to do. And I figured out, if you contain the black powder, it creates an explosion, and that's when things get destroyed, and there's just chaos. But if it's open air, it just goes, and it just leaves charcoal behind. I mean, mind you, my daughter hates it because the smell of sulfur wafting up into her room.

She's like, oh, it smells like smoky farts. I hate it. Well, I do quite like the smell of smoky farts. Or I was going to say sulfur and then I said smoky farts. But actually, I think I meant smoky farts. What I'm saying is that that's kind of my smell is smoky. I like to go smoky. I remember actually there was an episode of Mythbusters where you guys did collect your farts in a jar. There was... Yeah, we did a lot of...

Farts are funny. They are. Like, watching episodes. I totally agree. They always killed. But they... But they... I do remember, because I remember seeing you doing set ups and Adam doing set ups and cat cows and stuff like that to try and collect to see how much

Was it was how much gas a human creates in a day or something? I don't know. It was some it was fantastic I remember that there was a lot of things. I think I worked on the one that do girls fart. I mean Wow that made it as far as the show Wow, that made it as far as the show. To girls' far. I mean, yeah, it was a bunch of mini myths. And that one, they rigged up a pair of hydrogen sulfide detecting panties. Right. I hate it when Jamie says panties. It freaks me out.

Pants, as your people would say. Pants is fine. Yes. I'm in London right now, so you can say pants mean underpants. I can say pants. Yeah. Well, pants and then it'll be underpants. But if you said trousers, it's a whole thing.

You know how it is. Tell me this though. Before you were in Mythbusters, because I know I met you when you were doing Mythbusters, because I was such a fan of the show. And then you guys came down and we started kind of hanging out and stuff like that. But before your life in MythBusters, I mean, you were straight out of college, right? No-ish. So, after college, I packed a backpack and I traveled around the world for about a year. No way.

Where did you go? Dirty style, country to country. I started going west from California. So I left San Francisco. Right. I almost said that you're okay. This is going to date me. In 1998, I left.

Right. And I went to Rarotonga and Fiji and New Zealand, Australia. That's fascinating. Worked my way up through Bali, through Southeast Asia, Japan, India, Nepal, worked my way over to Europe, then down to Egypt a couple times. I just kind of kept moving. And I started out the trip with another girl, and then a couple countries in, we split off and did our own thing. So I was traveling alone a lot

and making friends along the way. And it was- You have a daughter. Would you let your daughter do that now? I feel like at that age, she would be an adult. And it was the most transformative educational experience I ever had. I feel like my entire life has been shaped around the mission to build bridges and connect with people and just feel that humanity.

And I learned so much about myself and the world. And when I left college, I was still in that sort of like crazy phase. And I feel like it grounded me in a really interesting way. Where did you go to college? What did you study? San Francisco State. I wanted to go for film, sculpture. Just something arty at the time,

which is how I kind of ended up on the fusters. Does that come from your parents then? Were you an arty family? No, I mean the Byron's. Well, that's what I was going to say. But Byron was, first of all, he's Scottish. And I think he was a bit of a drunk, actually, Byron. Oh, yeah. He was a bit of a drunk, actually, Byron. Oh yeah, he was wild.

I mean, I am not entirely proud of some of the things that that side... I believe that his father brought venereal diseases to like the Cook Islands. I think there's been a lot of mayhem, but... He would definitely be canceled now, Byron, if he was around, yeah, it was no way he had survived social media. No way. There's so many people now that would not have survived that. Uh, although I don't know how you cancel a drunk poet, but you, they probably could a drunk poet with a title.

You're like, well, that's it. You're canceled. I don't care. I don't care. I don't think it would matter. But the fact that- He had a lot of bastard children. He had one child that he claimed. Now this is sort of the ancestor that I tell my kid about

because I was so proud. So he had a daughter, Ada of Lovelace, who she was really sick when she was young and her mother was not into Lord Byron, so she stole her way and tried to break the poetry out of her with math. She made her study math so hard. Kind of like pray the gay away, but with math? That's crazy! Yeah, she's just like, I'm gonna get all the art out of you, I'm gonna train you in math. So when this woman grew up,

she hooked up with this guy, Charles Babbage, and he had created a counting machine, like a giant calculator. She used that machine as an application to create rugs with pictures on them. She was the grandmother of computer science because she's the one that figured out with all those ones and zeros, you can create pictures. So we wouldn't have computers today if it wasn't for that connection between art, science.

So she's the revolutionary. Yeah, that is fascinating. It was also, I mean, the idea that math would push the art out of someone is such a ridiculous notion. You think of Leonardo da Vinci, who is pretty much a mathematician who did art or an artist mathematician, pretty good one at it as well, actually, and probably gay. I've heard that. I've heard that.

Yeah, I think so. I think back then, the sexuality in medieval Italy, middle ages in Italy, it was like, ah, you know, whatever, you know, male, female, male. It's a fluid. Hey, what's the coming to go? It doesn't matter. Everything is fine. So you leave there and you go to myth. How did you end up? You just went to myth versus as an intern job. That was because of the connection with Industrial Light and Magic, right?

Was that the thing you wanted? Well, there's... At the time, MythBusters wasn't there. So I just got a job for Jamie. Oh, right. It was just Jamie. You were just working for Jamie? How did you meet Jamie, for God's sake? I can't imagine Jamie's a person that you would meet socially.

How the hell did you bump into Jamie? Yeah, it wasn't socially. No, I can't imagine. So he had sort of a general manager of his shop that was teaching a sculpting for special effects class to college kids. And one of my friends took that class. And he was like, oh, Gary, you would love this.

Like, it's this incredible workshop. Like, you should go hit him up and see if you can get an internship because this is what you've been trying to do. And I heard he gives everybody their first job. So I put together a portfolio and he introduced me to Jamie. And the next day I was back. I mean, I had a job as a receptionist and I called in sick. Just started showing up at Jamie's shop, like just in case Jamie was going to throw me out. Because, you know, at first he wasn't really that impressed with me,

I have to say. He was just like... He's a tough guy to impress, you know. I mean... It takes a minute. It takes a minute. Welcome. My name is Paola Pedroza,

a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. Join me on the Ghost Therapy Podcast. Whoa, my lights in my living room just flickered. I'm a little nervous. I'm excited. I'm excited and nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing.

I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great-grandmother, my abuela, and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm going to have to really think about. Wow. OK. That's crazy. Yes, that is accurate.

Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever wonder what it's like to be on the phone with an NFL general manager as you finalize the biggest contract in NFL history? I'm AJ Stevens, vice president of client strategy at Athletes First, where we've negotiated $1.4 billion in current NFL quarterback contracts. Introducing the Athletes First Family Podcast, the quarterback series. Along with my co-host Brian Murphy, Athletes First CEO, we're pulling back the curtain on how these historic deals come together. You'll hear directly from the agents who've shaped the NFL's financial landscape. The ones who negotiated Justin Herbert's extension and Deshaun Watson's fully guaranteed contract

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Something about Mary Poppins? Something about Mary Poppins, exactly. Oh man, this is fun. I'm AJ Jacobs and I am an author and a journalist and I tend to get obsessed with stuff. And my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast the puzzler dressing dressing French dressing exactly now you can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered

straight to your ears I thought to myself I bet I know what this is and now I definitely know what this is this is so weird definitely know what this is. This is so weird. This is fun. Let's try this one. Our brand new season features special guests like Chuck Bryant, Mayim Bialik, Julie Bowen, Sam Sanders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and lots more. Listen to the Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

That's awful. And I should have seen it coming. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photo journalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I

tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims but heroes or villains or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What happened though with MythBusters? It's such an odd thing because it was such a strange... I always felt very connected to MythBusters. I always thought that the late night show I did and Mythbusters were kind of out of the same thing, where they were anomalies. They shouldn't really have happened.

They shouldn't really have been successful, but they both were by people who kind of like drifted into it, kind of sideways. And the idea of, you know, when you became, you know, visible and famous and stuff like that, because it doesn't sound like to me that that was something that you were cultivating or even wanted to be part of. So I know you said I looked like I was comfortable on camera, but I was not. I am a shy person that pretends to be extroverted. So I mean, it was hard at first. Yeah, I think at first.

But it kind of gets easier, right? Didn't it get easier over time? I mean, how long you guys did that show for? About 10 years? Yeah, over 10 years. Yeah. I mean, it becomes a thing. And then Grant coming in, he came in on season two

or something, season three, is that right? I don't remember what season. Seasons are difficult for me because this was like wild west of networks and you know we made more than 350 episodes but like the first season of Mythbusters was like three episodes and then the second was like 10 and they realized our contracts only needed to be renegotiated per season so all of a sudden the season would be 36 episodes. Oh man, that's awful. That's awful. Do you still, I mean, what does it look like now

post Mythbusters? I mean, we lost Grant, which was such a terrible, terrible shock. I mean, just awful. And everyone seems to be doing rather well actually. You know, I mean, you now have the, you're like, you're the science thing that you do. What is that? So, you know, after MythBusters, Tori and I tried and tried to come up with other shows that might do the same thing or give us this great experience. And it, you know, nothing took off past a season. Right. But, you know, we were friends

and we wanted just to keep working together. Sure, of course. You know, if you want to scoop right now, the reason that I'm setting up this studio and it looks so blank right now is that Tori and I might be pre-production putting together a podcast. So- Oh, that's a great idea.

I mean, of course, that's the way to do it now as well. I mean- I mean, obviously. You can have this podcast. I'm going to do this until my contract's up and then I'm not doing it anymore. Then you're out. Yeah.

Well, I like to quit things. I just like to, ah, it's enough of that. I'm just trying something else now. Yeah, see now with your career. Yeah, I'm like, ah, it's enough of that. We can try something else now. But so what would you do in the, if hypothetically you and the great Salvatore Bellici

were going to do a podcast together, and I'll have to get him on this, or else he'll be mad at me. And also I would like to talk to him. But what would you do in your podcast if you were going to do a podcast with Tori? So we had always said with, you know, the real show was never what you guys saw.

The real show was the hilarity behind the scenes because we were all friends. I mean, we were pranking each other. We were talking about weird stuff that we saw. We're like, oh, my God, did you see that thing about the zombie hands? You know, we would spend all this time with the weirdness of trying to produce the show. You know, hey, can you give us a cow stomach with all the ventricles attached? Like, there's so many behind-the-scenes stories, plus all of the weird intricacies of the conversations that we would have.

So it's basically going to be like, what's going on now? What things interest us? Related possibly to something back on MythBusters, because that's our shared history, and we have so much of it. And then, you know, maybe talk to some experts about things like cryogenics. Like let's go talk to a professor that can tell us if it's possible. Do you know anything about cryogenics? Look, I'm 62 years old now, Carrie, so I'm kind of much more interested in cryogenics

than I used to be when I was younger. I'm going to be honest with you. It's like trying to make a cow out of hamburger. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. Alright. Well, back to philosophy then. So, what about the singularity?

What about putting a human personality into the machine? The Deus ex machina. Is that going to happen? Can you get into the machine, the DSX Machina. Is that going to happen? Can you get inside the machine? Can humans live as? I am not an expert. I am somebody who likes to talk to experts. I think that we're not going to be able to do that,

because the mysteries of all the electricity that happens to us and why it happens, I mean, we're just these electrified meat puppets that you know it's a mystery why we exist. I don't think that that's gonna happen but I am incredibly impressed by what AI is doing and I have a lot of friends. I live in the Silicon Valley and I have a lot of friends in DC and all of the policy and I know I know people in AI that are, you know, the luminaries and they are hopeful, they are fearful and they are astounded by how quickly it's developing.

And now AI through the internet, it's not just AI talking to us, it's AI talking to each other. So there's just this whole undercurrent of robots talking to each other. And it's, the thinking is getting more human. Can we listen to them? Can we conduct surveillance on these robots as they talk to each other? Presumably they're not keeping secrets. No, I don't think they're hiding it. I don't think we would fully understand it, but they,

I mean DeepSeek is the latest AI to come out. And I was really, really. Right, that's the Chinese one, right? Yeah, I was really interested in this because it shows you its thinking and how it comes to its conclusions, which is, it's a little different. And it's so human in the way that it relates. I think that that's what's so interesting to me is that people are trying to make it have humanity

so that it can connect with you better, so that you can feed the beast, so you can give it more material. It's wildly interesting, but it also only can feed off of what we give it. So I do think that humans and their creativity, if you don't put it online, it doesn't have it. Yeah, or just take the battery out. I mean, I always thought that about terminators, like just unplug it for God have it. Yeah, or just take the battery out. I mean, I always thought that, but Terminators, like, just unplug it for God's sake. Just kill the battery.

Yeah, just get the battery out of there or pour some water on it. Every time you drop it in the toilet, that's it. That would take care of it. But the... Just flush the Terminator. Grab his head, stick it in the toilet, flush it like an old high school movie. Look, Terminator, what's that? That looks like, I think John Connor's in the toilet, Terminator, and then it's swirly

and you're done. I think that there's so much talk about it though, the AI. Every conversation I have with everybody right now, at some point, if you talk to anyone for more than 10 minutes, you talk to them about AI, once you get past the election or whatever. And I'm fascinated because most people I talk to are quite afraid of it. But these are the people who don't use it.

People who use it are not afraid of it at all. I talked to a surgeon who was like, oh, this is the greatest leap for surgery. This is amazing. This is just, it's changing the game. We're going to be able to save so many more lives with this kind of technology. I mean, he was really gung ho about it. He loved it. I mean, it's like any technology, that little iPhone in my hand revolutionized my life. I have so much more connectivity, but it's also something that sucks me into the light.

You know? Yeah. It's tough. But I mean, that's, if you're talking to people who are afraid, I'm thinking that you're mostly talking to adults who came up without it. I only have two children and one of them already is an adult. So yeah, I talked to one child pretty much. That's it. And he's 14. So I mean he's not afraid of that at all. Yeah, of course you're right.

But I'm so one of you were asking post mythbusters. I am currently the director of the National STEM Festival, which is basically the nation's science fair. Right. And a lot of these kids are using AI machine learning in such interesting ways to try to come up with solutions to big challenges around the world. I mean, everything from there's this kid Tyler in Connecticut who's come up with a cost-effective test that can find iodine deficiencies. And all of the data that comes from that is going to actually create a base for us to understand why millions of people

have an iodine deficiency. And he's come up with a $2 saliva based color metric test that can, that you can send in, get results quickly and find out if you have an iodine deficiency. Why would that be important about having an iodine deficiency? What would that do to you if you had an iodine deficiency? There's also sorts of like neurological and physical issues that come from any sort of deficiency. Right.

I mean, some of these kids are using it for like, last year there was this one girl who used pictures of eyes and the machine learned to be able to detect if you had anemia because anemia is a real problem. It can create all kinds of problems, especially if you're sick and old. And her grandmother had anemia and it was undiagnosed. So she came up with a way for machine learning

to predict anemia through pictures of your eyes. I mean... That's pretty cool. So non-invasive kind of testing like that. I mean, and presumably then if you can do it from an eye scan, you can do it from a computer. Because like I'm in Britain right now and they have socialized medicine here and they're always struggling about trying to get people into offices and having the right amount of

people. So I guess if you can test people using machinery, so that you know, you can scan the idea of having a medical done by a robot. I quite like that idea, especially the prostate exam. I feel like that would probably be, if there was a way to do that, well, it is done digitally, I suppose, but it's a different type of.

But if there was a way to do it, that it was, you know, a little less, I don't know, if it was a little more camera-ish, I'd be up for that. Okay, I'll put it out to all these genius kids and see if somebody can come up with something. Get your kiddy think tank going and say, look, I'm feeling like testing is the key. Early detection is the key on all of these things, right? So I'm not just talking about that, though. I'm talking like any illness, early detection, right? If you know early, you can do something about it.

I feel like the development of vaccines seems to kind of go hand in hand with that as well. These kind of weird new vaccines that they're developing, that people are talking about vaccines for cancerous conditions now and stuff like that. I think that's incredible to me that that kind of thinking is going on. Do you see a lot of that in the young people that you talk to? Because obviously if you're doing that, that they are embracing the AI in a way that older people just don't or can't? Yeah, I mean, I feel like they're just using it as a tool like any other tool. I mean, just using it as a tool like any other tool. I mean, they're coming up with apps that find

early Parkinson's markers or I mean, even in 2016 when I did the White House science fair, there was a girl who had figured out a way to diagnose cancer early using computer modeling. I mean, they've been doing this for a while. And if you think of it as a tool rather than the evil robot that's coming for your information, it's less scary. Yeah.

I wonder about all that kind of the robot want your information. I mean that, do you worry about that? Do you worry about data harvesting in your own life? Do you have firewalls put up? I mean, you're computer savvy. You know how to do all that. I do my best, but honestly, I think it has it all anyway, because I'm also somebody who shops online. I love that.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, if one piece of the machinery has it, it all has it. You go to a store to buy a pack of gum or something, they'll say, can we have your email address? And like, you have it. You have it. Just let me scan my card and it'll come up. You already have all of that information. It's interesting to me though, because I think of you, last time I saw you in San Francisco, when you came, I was doing a show and you came and you had turned up in one of those self-driving cabs.

Oh yeah, yeah. Which I still haven't done yet. Is that freaky? Do you kind of, Are you okay with it? Okay. Granted, I have been here in a beta testing city for Waymo, for Cruz, for Zucs, for years now. So I was in some of the early prototypes of Waymo way back in the day. And I was part of the test program.

I signed up immediately to try these because I'm a super curious person and I just, I wanted to know more. So I interviewed and talked to all kinds of people that made the cars and were creating them. And, you know, they hire hackers and they hire all sorts of people to try to muck it up to see if they can actually throw the cars off track. But the last time I got into a rideshare vehicle, I had a driver that had a movie going on over here, was talking on a phone here, had me in the back seat.

I was driving a little bit crazy, right? Yeah. I'm not going to say that that's the rule, but it happens. When you look at the robot car, it's got over 60 cameras, lidar, radar. It has a 360 view going on that you can actually see, which by the way, they only put that up for you to see the car doesn't need it. It just wants to show you like, I can see that cat running out into the street. I can see that bicyclist over there. It's not going to hit anything if it can help it. Like it's paying so much more attention. It doesn't have to worry about fog or rain or night. Like a lot of people can't see at night as well. The robot can. Like it's got all the instrumentation. It has to follow the laws. It's brilliant.

If for example like say like a person wanders out into the road and the option the car has is to either hit the person or drive off the road and hurt you. What does it choose? Okay, it doesn't have the morals to make those decisions, but I don't know that I can answer this with any expertise because I think you'd have to ask them on this one. Right, okay. I do know that it's going to try to avoid conflict altogether and stop.

I don't think that there is a- Well, that I can relate to. I, certainly, I was like, oh no, it's fine. I'm like, oh, no, it's fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's OK. I mean, what would you do if your choice was to run into this person or that person? Like, you're going through the calculations of how to get out of it. I'm pretty sure that the robot has it because it's AI machine learning constantly.

And it's been training in places like San Francisco, if it's a hard place to drive. Roads all over. There's things everywhere. Yeah, I mean, it really is. It's a very busy city. Just this wild people and one-way streets. I mean, you couldn't throw it in a more chaotic situation. So it is learned how to maybe go this way and avoid everything.

I rented a Tesla truck in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. I was doing a show there. And Tomas and I rented a Tesla truck in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. I was doing a show there and Tomas and I rented a Tesla truck and we put it in self-drive to take us around and it was freaky. And at one point I intervened because I thought it was going to hit a car. And there was some debate between Tomas and I. Tomas thought it was going to hit the car. I thought it was going to hit the car. I thought it was going to hit the car. But then I thought, I should have given it the chance

to not hit the car, but I just didn't. But I want, I mean, you're right about, you know, the distractedness of drivers, like, you know, human drivers, people texting people on their phones, people, you know, doing stuff. It probably is a better driver, right? And, but where am I going to get, if I'm in a taxi that doesn't have an actual driver, where do I get my racist opinions from?

I won't be able to get my racist opinions from a cab driver. Where will I get them? If only they were... I mean, there's still the internet in your hand on your phone. You can TikTok that if you'd like. I'll be able to get my racism from other places. Yeah, there's plenty. There's plenty. There's plenty.

There is plenty. But I feel like it is an interesting thing. How do you use it in your life now? Would you use it for art? Do you use it for art? Is that a... Well, like, if you're creating a sculpture, would you take the... Would you bring in an... Would you get AI to help you conceptualize

it or maybe even make models for you? No. No, I mean, for me, all artwork is for me to go through some sort of journey of curiosity. So I don't need any, I don't need any assistant. But what I do use AI for is when I don't understand something. And okay, so National STEM Festival, right? Right. These kids, we find kids from every state and territory. We try to find a representation from all over the country.

So it's going to be the best of the best kids. Okay. Some of their projects, when I'm reading the champions, I don't understand them. They are so complex. I have literally taken the text from one of their projects and put it through AI and said, can you explain this as if I am a 12-year-old? Oh, wow. It will explain the science of their project to me so that I can understand it and they are you know seven through 12th graders so I'm currently using AI to help me be a better person be a smarter person. I very much relate to that.

relate to that. Welcome. My name is Paola Pedroza, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. Join me on the Ghost Therapy Podcast. Whoa, my lights in my living room just flickered. I'm a little nervous. I'm excited. I'm excited, nervous.

You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandmother, Abuela, and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm going to have to really think about. Wow, OK. That's crazy. Yes, that is accurate. And she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm going to have to really think about. Wow.

Okay. That's crazy. Yes, that is accurate. Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever wonder what it's like to be on the phone with an NFL general manager as you finalize the biggest contract in NFL history? I'm AJ Stevens, vice president of client strategy at Athletes First, where we've negotiated $1.4 billion in current NFL quarterback contracts.

Introducing the Athletes First Family Podcast, the quarterback series. Along with my co-host Brian Murphy, Athlete's First CEO, we're pulling back the curtain on how these historic deals come together. You'll hear directly from the agents who shaped the NFL's financial landscape, the ones who negotiated Justin Herbert's extension into Sean Watson's fully guaranteed contract

that sent shockwaves through the league. This isn't just about the numbers though. It's about the untold stories behind these massive negotiations and the relationships the NFL superstars like Dak Prescott, Tua Tunga-Valliloa, and Jordan Love have with their agents at Athletes First. For the first time ever, the agents who orchestrate these deals are sharing the details of the negotiations and everything that led up to their clients signing on the dotted line. Listen to the Athletes First Family podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Something about Mary Poppins? Something about Mary Poppins, exactly. Oh man, this is fun. I'm AJ Jacobs and I am an author and a journalist and I tend to get obsessed with stuff. And my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my

podcast, The Puzzler. Dressing. Dressing. Oh, French dressing. Exactly. Oh, that's good. Now you can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. I thought to myself, I bet I know what this is. And now I definitely know what this is. This is so weird.

This is fun. Let's try this one. Our brand new season features special guests like Chuck Bryant, Mayim Bialik, Julie Bowen, Sam Sanders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and lots more. Listen to the Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's awful. And I should have seen it coming. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers,

writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains,

or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I get into this thing recently. I listen to audio books all the time on my phone. I find it very like I'm driving or if I can't sleep, because you can like and be off and you can listen.

And it's like, because I am who I am, I listened to this book, A Biography of Socrates. Because I thought I should know about Socrates more than I do. And it was a biography about Socrates. And I thought that is the best biography. That was so helpful. And then I saw it was a biography for young people. And I thought, that is the best biography. That was so helpful.

And then I saw it was, you know, a biography for young people. You understand? It was for teens. And I was like, ah, geez. But it helped. You know, I understood it a bit more. They simplified it a little. And maybe I'm not as smart as I thought I was.

Well, I mean, on Mythbusters, when we were making the show, I think the reason was so successful is because like I am not a scientist. So I'd have to hear the complicated story and then be able to relate in a simple way. So I would hear it until I could understand, you know, a scientific principle and so that I could explain it. So we used to say, if you want to explain something to a 35 year old, explain it like they're 12. And if you want to explain it to a 12 year old, explain it like they're 35,

because we always underestimate young people and overestimate us. It's very poignant and very true. And I wonder, given the interaction that you're having currently with young people and, you know, does it make you... Because you hear so much derision heaped on the young right now about their entire generation and, oh, with their being, having pronouns and what this and all that.

And people from my generation and younger just heap so much hate on the young. Does it make you optimistic or are you more optimistic dealing with kids or are we right? Are they all a bunch of fundamentalist douchebags? I think any group of people that you brush with these grand broad strokes, it's going to be easy and reductive to to come up with your ideas about them. Well said madam, that's true actually. You're right, it is. You know, sweeping generalizations are the basis of all fascism, I suppose aren't they? Let me tell you this, if you need a moment of hope, if you need a moment to feel like we're going to be okay, If you need a moment to feel like we're gonna be okay, really listen and hear what these kids are doing and saying.

They are solution seekers and innovators, and they are looking to problems instead of like, oh my God, this is crushing, this is awful. How am I gonna wake up tomorrow? They're like, huh, what can I do about this? What can I do about this particular problem myself? And it's beautiful to see the hope that they have. And I think hope begets hope.

And all of a sudden, everybody's feeling a little bit better about their neighbor. I mean, we were, just as a species, we were created to be tribal. You know, I'm at my high school, think the high school over there is terrible. And they think that we're terrible. Shelbyville, Springfield, Shelbyville, Springfield. Exactly. And the internet has created just bigger tribes. And so it's become a little,

it's become a little divisive and angry. And if you, if you fall into that and stop realizing that we're all the same tribe, that we all really want the same things, we wanna know where our next meal is coming from, we wanna know that our family is safe and healthy and we want a roof over our heads. Anything beyond that doesn't matter and we all want that, that we're all just the same

and you start looking like Mr. Rogers for the helpers and start looking towards these kids that are trying to solve the biggest problems of the world it just it makes you feel good and it makes you feel like you want to be one of the helpers and for me since I'm not one of these brilliant scientists kids I am going to amplify their stories I am helping get them on their local news stations so that they can create hope in these little pockets all over the country. I want to elevate them on a national stage,

which is why this is the National STEM Festival, so that politicians and industry leaders and everybody can support them and hear their stories and maybe take that hope back to where they are and create more hope. I really feel like this small C, this STEM festival that we're creating is gonna have this incredible ripple effect of just creating more and more positivity.

And who knows if this kid in New York who's learning how to gamify some sort of issue over here meets a kid in Kansas and the two of them come together in the future and we've created this little community and all of a sudden they're curing cancer. I just, I feel like there's ways that you're going to look at the youth and it's going to make you feel good about the world. Turn off the news and start looking to the kids. That's very encouraging.

It's very encouraging. And I think I agree with you. I think that the human mind has, for the most part, a magnifying quality. What I think it does is if you look at something, anything you look at, it magnifies it. It's part of the process that I think we go through. So if we look at the problem, we magnify the problem.

If we look at the potential solution, we magnify the potential solution. And I think it's an emotive thing. Like if I concentrate on what, and this is where I think social media is misleading, because the algorithm will give you what it thinks you want. And actually, maybe that's what you wanted a thought process ago. But now if it's like, oh, I want to look at fights, I want to look at street fights,

I want to look at more street fights, I want to more and more street fights. And the algorithm will do that. Whereas what you need is you need to stop looking at that and you need to look at how people don't do that. And I think what's very encouraging about what you're doing is the fact that you're concentrating on the solution. Which is interesting because if you take an engineering mind, an engineering mind looks at the problem, it concentrates on the problem and will find the solution from the problem.

But I think an artist mind looks at the solution and does the solution. It doesn't look at the problem. It just goes straight to the solution. Let's have the solution. And I think they're both essential. I think these different ways of looking at the world, this duality, I think is essential. It's very helpful, I think,

that people like you are doing that. It's great that you became famous in science, even though you were just an intern trying to get a job with Jamie. It was very, I love that. It opened up the world to me. It really did. It kind of showed me how science and art are so similar.

And I think I became just a super STEM advocate just because I saw how positive an impact that MythBusters could have on kids. And it really kind of led them into these careers. And I was just like, oh my gosh, how do we harness that? How do we make, you know, MythBustery inspiration happen with lots of kids? And then just, you know, one thing led to the next.

And I, the way that this festival came about is I was interviewing people at South by Southwest. Okay. And I was interviewing the secretary of education. And I'm like, oh, I've got this opportunity. I'm going to corner this guy. So I was like, listen, I hosted the White House science fair and it hasn't existed for a decade and I want it back. How do we make that come back? Tell me you're going to bring it back. And it kind of, I got him to offer on camera that, you know, if I would build it, he would let me take the keys. And so this entire thing has just sort of sprouted into,

this is the second year of it. And one of the things- What does it stand for STEM? Science and technology? Science, technology, engineering, and math. Okay. I like to say science fair, but STEM festivals seemed like it was more all encompassing

for a lot of kids. So we went with that. But I did my research. I went and found all of the people that worked on the first science fair that I had hosted with Bill Nye. And they said that their one regret was that they tied it to an administration

so that it became partisan. And that makes it go away when another administration comes in. So we decided my business partner, Jenny Bucos and I, that we were going to take that aspect away, take the politics out of it. And so we work in conjunction with all the government agencies and they are there and they are part of it, but nobody owns it. It's completely on its own. We get all of the funding from the STEM community. So we actually get businesses, everyone from Autodesk to Nokia to GM to IndyCar are all helping us sponsor the festival because they're creating the workforce

of the future with these kids. So we get the whole STEM community to support these kids. We separate it from government to make it bipartisan. And it's really just all about supporting brilliance, supporting excellence and supporting these kids. So it's not just focusing on the kids, but the entire STEM community is showing up. I think it's great. I mean, for you, I mean, because I know you and I know you are not putting it on. You are relentlessly positive, which is very interesting to me. Do you ever get discouraged? Do you ever feel like, oh, fuck this, I can't listen to it? I mean, because look, you give me five minutes with a politician, I can't.

I lose the will to live. Any of them, no matter what stripe they have, they're just foul people. They're awful. All the headline grabbers, so I gotta say, so one of the things that was always great about Mythbusters is the audience was very broad and it was eight to 80, it was men and women, it was blue, it was red, we did so many things

that just people communally enjoyed. So, you know, it didn't matter where I was or who I was talking to. Like I could walk up to the bluest of the blue or the reddest of the red and build some bridges because I do like creating that community of we're all more alike than different. And so when we, as the company that I am founding

with Jenny Bukos, which is Explorer, which is an educational platform, we conceived of this great idea. We wanted to make STEM week. So we partnered up with- Like Shark Week, but with math? Yes! Yes! Yes, I love it! We want national STEM week to happen

that is just celebrating STEM and all things that are STEM. So we partnered up with COSI, which is like the number one science museum out in Ohio. And we authored this bill that went onto the floor that was introduced by Republicans to the floor and is now we're getting both Republican and Democratic support to create the STEM Week Act to make an official national. Congratulations. I think you're the only one that's crossing the floor right now. That's amazing. We're trying. We're trying. We're doing our best. But it's going places because, you know, it's not necessarily the hairline drabbers.

It's the people that are doing the work that are really, really these. They were lovely. And I was walking into offices all over the Capitol building of different parties and one thing you can get behind is smart kids and I I think you'd have to be going so it's a unifying event here yeah yeah it's it's also it's it doesn't seem to me to contain a very an obvious polemic right away. I mean, who can be against kids saving Earth? I think that's okay. But I think that's also the plot of Space Jam. Oh no, it's cartoon characters saving Earth. But it's very similar. But listen, I wish we had more time. Well, we do have more time because we're friends and I'll talk to you again,

but we don't have any more time right now for this, but I'll be out on the West Coast soon. Are you going to be there for a while? Yeah, I'll be here. So I will come to your show. And if you could bring your wife, because I really like her. I will bring my wife. To be honest, when Megan goes somewhere, it's because she wants to go there. It's that I don't bring her anywhere.

She goes where she wants to go there. I don't bring her anywhere. She goes where she wants to go. Yes. I realize this. Yeah. I think we know the power dynamic in my house is fairly obvious. And I'm fine with it. I'm very happy with it. All right. Well, tons of love to you. Thank you so much for being on. And I'll speak to you very soon. I think I'm out there in a couple of weeks. I'll give you a shout. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Anytime I can get you in there. I think I'm out there in a couple of weeks. I'll give you a shout out. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, anytime I can get you in there.

The only reason I'm doing this podcast is so I can just, you know, shoot the first few. I know. All right. You swear a lot less in podcast land though. I'm doing that on purpose. Good for you. I'm very impressed. I'm a pirate off camera.

I know. I know. That's OK. That's OK. Some of it's got to be for you. You got to have your own thing. All right. Get the fuck out of here. All right. We're done. Mwah to you. Mwah.

Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show, and in your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment, to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dressing. Dressing. Oh, French dressing. Exactly. Ha ha! Oh, that's good.

I'm AJ Jacobs and my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast, The Puzzler. Something about Mary Poppins? Exactly. This is fun. You can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. Listen to The Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver, and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast, now MiniQuestions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe and Cord Jefferson. Listen to MiniQuestions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers. $1.4 billion in NFL quarterback contracts.

The untold stories behind the biggest deals in football history. I'm AJ Stevens, vice president of client strategy at Athletes First, introducing the Athletes First family podcast, the quarterback series. My cohost, Brian Murphy, Athletes First CEO, and I are sitting down with the agents who have negotiated contracts for Justin Herbert,

Deshaun Watson, Dak Prescott, Tula Tunga-Vaioloa, and Jordan Love. Listen to Athletes First Family Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.