The Conversation That Changed Adam Savage’s Life
What professional would Adam Savage LOVE to talk to? What conversation had a HUGE impact on Adam’s career? In this live …
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March 5, 2026
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"Harmony in Every Heartbeat
What professional would Adam Savage LOVE to talk to? What conversation had a HUGE impact on Adam’s career? In this live …
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What conversation changed YOUR life?
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Unsurprisingly, Da Vinci is the embodiment of both residency (him being protected by the patronage of the Milanese Duchy and then King of France's courts) and of science and art meeting up.
2:04 I like genocide monkeys. But I’ve always looked at humans as a parasite or bacteria. Attacking each other, multiplying and spreading across the globe. Changing landscapes, creating paths, literally lighting up the planet at night. It’s kind of eerie to think about.
Adam… I'M GRATEFUL for that! But… I'm also envious. Cape Cod… The connections that your parents had… William Steig etc… I guess I had my own mentors; I can think of a few. But the tiny ember did not grow into a great flame. shrugs
You stated something about Art and Science being two different facets of the same/similar process. In the end I believe that we will find "Metaphysics" and "Quantum Physics" as being the same. (I view Metaphysics without the New Age voodoo, crystal dangling hocus pocus.)
Encouragement – such a critical element in a child's creative expression; I did not receive any, but I persevere and still try to be creative in my adult life.
I can assure you animal care staff are always excited to talk about their animal charges, and it never hurts to ask. Even if they have to rush off, I've always found that they will give quick answer, or otherwise direct you to another resource where you can get answers. I'm a zoo docent, and we all love to infodump all the time whenever we can.
I’m paraphrasing but it went something like this. I was struggling with a big decision and living a life that made me miserable. I was stagnating and vacillating after university ended and living a life for someone else. “Josh, you will never fully benefit from the lived experiences of others. Sure, you can intellectually understand what they did or learned or went through, but to live means you need to go and experience it for yourself, even if that means you fuck up, make mistakes, get hurt, or fail miserably. The lessons learned are yours and only you can learn fully from them. What you read in books or hear from your friends are good guides but if you want to say you lived, you gotta get out there, make the decisions and live with whatever happens. Understand the risks as best as you can with the information available to you, but don’t let fear run your life.”
Qué hermosas palabras. A reflexionar🎉
Whale says- 'Put me back in the sea please. Stop harpooning us thank you very much.'
10:20 brought up a memory for me.
I had a bad experience with art in middle school. I was in a required art class, and we were learning about painting. We picked up brushes, and were told to paint something inspired by Japanese culture. I drew a piece inspired by The Great Waves Off Kanagawa. I used 'repetition' I think we called it, and created the black and white outline of an ocean wave composed of smaller circular bubbles. My teacher commended it at first, but encouraged us to use color! When I took color to the piece a lot of the intricacies were lost. I wasn't great at filling in the black and white outline. The teacher saw it, and gave a look of concern. "What happened?" That was enough. I didn't try to paint again until college.
I feel that so often, all kids need, heck even what most adults need, is to have someone simply treat them as a human being.
No talking up, no talking down, just two unique human beings having a conversation.
So so so so often, all people need is to be seen.
I would bet the conversation that changed Adam’s life, sounded pretty close to this. Mr. Savage if you can’t afford an attorney the court will appoint one.
Hello Adam, Tested and the comments, I have been subscribed to Adam for a few years now. But, I've just started watching these videos of people asking Adam questions. The title of this video and the question and Adam's answer made me feel so happy.
In my childhood, I had a very judgemental father, uncle, and grandparents. Anything that my dad, uncle, and grandpa wanted me to learn, I was never into it. My dad was a mechanic. While I was and still am into cars, I was never shown anything about them because I guess from a young age I never showed any interest, so my dad didn't have me learn. I got interested in the inner workings of cars later on in life.
My uncle HATED that I was interested in computers. As did my dad and my mom's parents too, to be honest. My uncle told me, "You better not be thinking about computers. That doesn't make any money."
My dad told me that arts and craft kind of stuff is for girls and always called me "Suzy" when I didn't want to do something "manly".
Toxic masculinity and fake encouragement turn away people. I have been stuck in a rut for probably a decade. Feeling like what Mythbusters, Bill Nye, and BattleBots did to inspire my creativity were always dashed by people telling me, "You can't do that. You need a "REAL" job. What they don't know is that my dad's father has also inspired me, along with my shop teacher. My dad's father does woodworking. His creativity is so amazing. I always loved to see what he could do. My shop teacher let us make tables and we had to do basically everything by ourselves which meant no interference from him. Just suggestions. I worked after school for almost two weeks on that table to get it right. That was the first time I ever created anything, and it was so much fun!
What a good emotional video! And I agree, those who don't put you down are the most positive influential.
Beautiful thoughts. Thank you for sharing! I hope I'll still remember to take them to heart when I have kids.
Artist in residence at NASA? Well, somebody there does those illustrations of how buildings or rockets might look in the future. When I was in high school, I wrote a term paper about space colonization. One of the places I contacted was Ames in San Jose, CA (I think) and their public relations office sent me a few illustrations of how space colonies might look like in the future. Someone drew those.
Of course, now, having an artist on staff at NASA would be considered wasteful and they would get fired. And, with advances in AI, NASA would get AI to do the illustrations.
Im starting believe that Adam writes the Raymond Redington quirky stories in The Blacklist
Thx for this, Adam! Great message!
It seems to me that what you are describing about those conversations is not so much encouragement, but recognition and acceptance as an individual and an artist. Encouragement is nice, but it seems to me to be shallower and more easily dismissed than acceptance by another artist or another human being.
I've struggled with doing art my entire life. I recently remembered an incident in grade school…probably 3rd grade art class. We were doing calligraphy and we had to do this thing where copied the Bill of Rights with our pens. I did it and was very happy that I didn't fuck it up, didn't drip ink, etc. But I didn't write it in the correct script…it was in my cursive hand writing. I showed it to my art teach who looked up from her desk and just said "you wrote it in your hand writing not the Old English" and went back to her papers. I remember being crushed in side. Fast forward to high school freshman year and I failed art…because I wouldn't turn anything in because I hated it all.
I immediately was like Genocide Monkeys would be a great band name!
Loved this , what a fabulous pep talk.
Wasn't working at Mythbuster's like being an artist in residence for all of you?
The key thing with all these stories about Adam in his teens and twenties is that he was already in a Billy Joel video by the time he was having most of these experiences! 😂
I was once a 'geek in residence'. Working at a tiny little museum/gallery in the highlands of Scotland (Timespan). I had just completed a PhD in Computer Science so rather than their normal Artist in Residence they invited me to be a 'Geek in residence'. It was there that I bought a DSLR, first flew a drone and played with some video. 10 years later I am now a filmmaker! Definitely changed my life.
You’re so interesting to listen to mate. Love it,thank you and the people who asked the questions you answered 👌
Wonderful video. Made my day. Love it.
The opposite of blowing on the embers is putting a damp cloth over them. This advice can be applied to parents, teachers, and – as in your case – family friends.
Often times, science seeks to discover the limits and rules of reality, while art seeks to break them 🤷🏻♂️
District 9 is one of my favorite Sci fi movies it dosent treat the alians as "Traditional alians" meaning it doesn't open with an invasion per say the city folk have been dealing with these alians for what seems like months now because they have an entire shantytown set up where the mother ship is. Also the cat food thing was hilarious
I love those stories of the people who encouraged you when you were a child & young man. I want to be the kind of person that stokes someone's flame instead of putting it out 🙂
I like the part about trying to be encouraging and finding more of the positive aspect of a given situation, we always try to remind each other that if we need to bring correction to some body or point something out that might seem negative it always helps to feed them a Hero sandwich first. Man you are amazing with how well your playing guitar, oh, it sounds like one strings went out of tune on you?
You attribute FAR too much intelligence to whales (01:21).
Someone I admired told me my art "had no soul" while I was in high school. I didn't start drawing with confidence again until this year, about 30 years late.
what if you talked to an actual elephant in a room? like a full on real life elephant in your shop?
Dan Reynolds (Imagine Dragons lead singer/ song writer) was telling the story where he wrote the beginning of his first song ever and showing it to his dad. His dad recognized the value of that moment, went into full respect mode and discussed the work of his son together. He said if his dad acted in any different kind of manner, he probably wouldn't have given creating music a second thought…
There is something to the whole art and science overlapping, especially art as an esthetic. There has always been an understanding to aerospace engineering that vehicles that fly well also look pleasing to the eye.