Anytime that a Mythbuster visits Dragon Con, it is sure to be an interesting and fun panel. The hour with Tory Belleci and Kari Byron in the Hilton Grand Salon West Saturday at 4PM was no exception. The room was full to capacity, and there was a general mood of anticipation as everyone filed to a seat. Byron wasted little time in teasing a big announcement that would be made public for the first time. The reveal finally came toward the end of the panel as Byron played a teaser video for the audience. Belleci, Byron, and Grant Imahara will be reunited for a Netflix original series called “White Rabbit Project.” The show will feature 10 themed episodes that will cover the science behind things like jet packs and fast cars. The series will premiere on Netflix on December 9.
Aside from the announcement, Byron and Belleci enjoyed telling stories of their time on Mythbusters. Byron said that they could talk about Mythbusters all day, and they often do. Belleci started off the panel saying that he loves coming to Dragon Con, and that even though they hadn’t been for 7 or 8 years, it felt like coming home again.
The conversation ranged from their favorite explosion to the grossest moment to the most disappointing myth. Belleci’s grossest moment definitely grossed out everyone listening. It was during testing the myth of your tongue freezing to a pole. They used a cow’s tongue before trying it with an actual human tongue and built an apparatus that kept the tongue warm. However, the tongue also had to be covered in saliva. To solve that problem, they set up a beaker for everyone to spit into over the course of a week or so. Old saliva in and of itself smells pretty bad, but then Byron had to microwave it to heat it up. The microwave was located in the office, so she had to walk through with this reeking beaker of warm saliva. Belleci said that everyone was dry heaving. Byron then had to take the warm saliva and paint it on the cow’s tongue. To mess with her while she was doing that, Belleci swapped out the beaker of saliva with one filled with water that looked identical, unbeknownst to Byron. He later came along and picked up the beaker, acting like he was going to take a sip of it. Byron stopped what she was doing and dared him to take a swig. Belleci, knowing it was water, went ahead and took a big swig of it. Byron immediately threw up.
Belleci’s story served as one example of a point he made later that one of the biggest things he learned on the show was that there is no dignity in television. Byron agreed saying that they learned to be comfortable with farting on camera and putting their bodies on the line for all kinds of things. Belleci did note, however, that if they wanted to do something super dangerous or illegal they really just had to get the FBI, fire department, and police department involved and they could do whatever they wanted.
The panel was fast-paced and conversational and the culmination of the announcement of the new show with the three of them was a perfect cap on the whole hour.
