The Explosion Show has Tory Belleci bringing the science of awesome
The Explosion Show has Tory Belleci blowing up, literally. He spoke to Hidden Remote about his new Science Channel series about the science of explosions.
Tory Belleci is starting 2020 off with a bang—all in the name of science. The MythBusters alumni is starring in Science Channel‘s The Explosion Show, bringing everyone’s dreams of blowing up all kinds of things to life.
But this isn’t just wish fulfillment. Belleci and his co-host, Nitro Circus star Streetbike Tommy Passamente, are showing TV viewers what goes into making things explode. They also take fans inside careers that deal with explosions, like being a bomb squad officer or making those huge Hollywood fireballs we all know and love.
It’s an awesome new project that combines our love of blowing things up with a true passion for science, and something that TV audiences will get a huge kick out of.
Learn more in our Tory Belleci interview below and be sure that you don’t miss tonight’s premiere of The Explosion Show on Science Channel at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT!
Hidden Remote: The Explosion Show is a fantastic concept. How did you come up with the idea for a TV show solely about blowing stuff up?
Tory Belleci: I was on MythBusters for like a decade [and] my favorite moments were always blowing stuff up. I was like gosh, it would be so fun to do a whole show where we’re just constantly blowing stuff up.
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I came up with The Explosion Show almost like a joke, and I took it to Jeff Tremaine, the guy who created Jackass and pitched it to him. He said I love it, let’s develop it. So we developed it, took it to Science Channel and sold it. It’s basically like Dirty Jobs, but Explosive Jobs. We cover a variety of people’s jobs and what they do when blowing stuff up.
HR: What kinds of safety meetings or network discussions did you have to have doing a show called The Explosion Show?
TB: From the name, you get the show. It’s a no-brainer. But we were like, what was this show going to look like? We wanted to have some science in there. We wanted it to be fun. And we learned a long time ago that if you want to do anything illegal, talk to the authorities.
We went to the Riverside County bomb squad, we went to the FBI, we talked with fireworks experts—anybody who is a professional in their field doing explosives. And they basically let us do whatever we wanted.
HR: Did you have particular favorite explosions? Ones that surprised or startled even you?
TB: We went to a fireworks factory and they make big fireworks displays [for] music festivals or sporting events. They taught us how to make our own fireworks and then they let us create our fireworks display. We went out in the desert in the middle of the night, and we had a big fireworks display.
But then we were impressed with the concussive explosiveness of these fireworks. We were like God, what would it be like to be standing in the middle of a fireworks display? So we talked to the bomb squad, they lent us some bomb suits, and we stood in the middle of a fireworks display to see what that was like. And it was awesome.
HR: Was there anything you couldn’t manage to blow up, for whatever reason?
TB: No. We went to New Mexico Tech, which is a school [where] you can get a degree in blowing stuff up, and we take those kinds of ridiculous requests to them because they can basically do anything. We threw everything at them. They were like oh yeah, we can figure that out. We can do that.
We never got any pushback but we’re hoping, if we get a season 2, there’s so many other avenues that we didn’t explore. For example, exploding silos. There’s an occurrence that happens when grain silos get too much dust; [if] there’s a spark or an open flame it’ll ignite the dust. It’ll actually blow up the silo. So we want to do something like that.
HR: How has the work you did on The Explosion Show compared to the stuff we’ve seen you do in MythBusters and White Rabbit Project?
TB: What’s nice about this show is I didn’t get hurt that much. (laughs) On MythBusters, I was always the human guinea pig. With this one there were a few times where we put our bodies on the line, but for the most part, what I love about this show is the comedy. The team that produced the show are just hilarious writers, hilarious editors. We got a chance to see the episodes and it’s educational, exciting, but it’s a comedy. It’s so funny.
HR: Speaking of those other shows, you have a new co-host here in Streetbike Tommy. What made him the perfect co-host to work with on this?
TB: The way that worked out is he’s from Nitro Circus, and he worked with Jeff in the past. They were like we want somebody that doesn’t have the science background, but who is genuinely curious and likes to blow stuff up. Tommy was the perfect fit because he’s a total goofball but he’s also completely fascinated by the science of what we were doing.
We had never met before and they introduced us; we kind of hung out a week before the show started and we instantly became good friends. It was such a perfect buddy team where we’re just bouncing around, being goofballs, hanging out with these professionals, but at the same time seeing some really cool stuff.
HR: Is there anything you want the audience to take away from the series?
TB: Our first thought was we can’t just blow stuff up for no reason. We want this to be a show with purpose. So to be able to go and hang out with people who deal with explosives, like the FBI or the bomb squad or quarrymen, where we’re working side by side with people who use explosives, it’s fascinating. You see how they use explosives in engineering, how they use it to protect people. It was fascinating to be able to weave in history and science in this show where we’re blowing stuff up.
HR: So honestly, how cool is it to say you’re doing a show called The Explosion Show?
TB: It’s exciting to be doing something that was an idea and [I] didn’t think anybody would actually go for it. It was more like, “Ha, The Explosion Show, like that’ll ever get made!” And the more we developed it and the more people started thinking about it, everybody got super-excited and we got a show.
This stemmed from, this is the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard [and] nobody will ever buy that show—and now everyone’s like oh my god, how come no one’s ever done this show? (laughs)
The Explosion Show premieres Jan. 1 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Science Channel.