Busted: Discovery show hosts reveal truth behind myths
Jeff Sullivan
Issue date: 4/25/08 Section: News
04/25/08 - With a nearly full-house yesterday and a line stretching along Ranger Road, Kari Byron and Tory Belleci of "Mythbusters," a Discovery Channel show, discussed their experiences last night in Edwards Auditorium.
Amid uproarious laughter, cheering, shouting and even one marriage proposal from the crowd, the two Mythbusters fielded questions from the audience.
Byron and Belleci discussed some of their behind-the-scenes experiences on the show, like when they tried to recreate an ancient siege weapon, called a ballista, using cow tendons and sinew. When they came back from the butcher shop, they were surprised to find that their "tendons" were actually bull genitals.
But that wasn't the only time bovines came up. Byron and Belleci once tried to bust a myth regarding the phrase, "like a bull in a china shop," where they essentially put the myth to the test with real live bulls.
"We set up a china shop inside of a bull pen ... and we let this bull in," Belleci said. "This bull was like this graceful little ballerina, dancing around the shelves and didn't knock anything over."
When asked by University of Rhode Island Police officer Mark Chearino if the team has ever feared for their lives during a taping of the show, the two responded that they always feel very safe on set and that no major injuries have ever occurred.
"We're rarely fearing for our lives, because we actually have insurance, believe it or not," Byron said. "We are insured by the same people that insure Jackass. We have a whole safety form that you have to check all the boxes, 'deadly pathogens,' 'venomous animals,' and we've checked every box at one point or another."
Byron described her first day on the set of the show, when Jamie Hyneman, one of the show's hosts, paid her $100 to take a three-dimensional scan of her backside.
"A hundred bucks? Nobody's going to see this anyway," she said. "Now you Google my name and it's the first thing that comes up."
Amid uproarious laughter, cheering, shouting and even one marriage proposal from the crowd, the two Mythbusters fielded questions from the audience.
Byron and Belleci discussed some of their behind-the-scenes experiences on the show, like when they tried to recreate an ancient siege weapon, called a ballista, using cow tendons and sinew. When they came back from the butcher shop, they were surprised to find that their "tendons" were actually bull genitals.
But that wasn't the only time bovines came up. Byron and Belleci once tried to bust a myth regarding the phrase, "like a bull in a china shop," where they essentially put the myth to the test with real live bulls.
"We set up a china shop inside of a bull pen ... and we let this bull in," Belleci said. "This bull was like this graceful little ballerina, dancing around the shelves and didn't knock anything over."
When asked by University of Rhode Island Police officer Mark Chearino if the team has ever feared for their lives during a taping of the show, the two responded that they always feel very safe on set and that no major injuries have ever occurred.
"We're rarely fearing for our lives, because we actually have insurance, believe it or not," Byron said. "We are insured by the same people that insure Jackass. We have a whole safety form that you have to check all the boxes, 'deadly pathogens,' 'venomous animals,' and we've checked every box at one point or another."
Byron described her first day on the set of the show, when Jamie Hyneman, one of the show's hosts, paid her $100 to take a three-dimensional scan of her backside.
"A hundred bucks? Nobody's going to see this anyway," she said. "Now you Google my name and it's the first thing that comes up."
