'Mythbusters' co-host, YouTube favorite make science fun at Santa Rosa show

If you slept through science class in school, going to a live stage show that demonstrates how molecules move might not sound exciting. But imagine a show with two lively hosts inviting audience members onstage to act out “the dance of molecules.”

In “Brain Candy Live,” objects light up, burn up and blow up, and even veteran showmen Adam Savage and Michael Stevens can’t always predict what might happen.

Stevens, creator host of the popular YouTube channel Vsauce, and Savage, longtime co-host of the Discovery Channel TV series “MythBusters,” bring their new fun-filled road show to Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts next week.

“We are storytellers, so we like being entertaining at the same time as we’re educating. The underlying point is always to try and help the audience understand,” Savage said by phone from a recent tour stop in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

“We do a lot of audience participation. We talk about how molecules move and how they dance, and the fact that molecules have their own ways of vibrating. We bring people up from the audience to demonstrate this,” Savage said.

The fast-paced live show aims to translate abstract concepts into a visual experience.

“You can see mist or smoke in the light, for instance. Albert Einstein figured out the size of atoms by staring at dust in the sunlight in a cafe,” he said. “So almost the same thing that the audience is looking at onstage also helped Einstein unlock a key measurement for the universe, with nothing but deduction.”

Savage contends that if you’re smart enough to do your own job, you’re smart enough to understand what scientists do, if it’s explained and demonstrated in an entertaining way.

“I think a lot of people don’t think of themselves as smart. Specifically, they think of science, and understanding science, as something smart people do,” Savage said. “I thought of science that way, really, up until I was doing a science show, Then I learned directly that there are really smart scientists, just as there really smart carpenters and plumbers, and there are idiots in all of those fields as well.”

Savage, 49, lives in San Francisco and grew up in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Michael Stevens, 31, is from Los Angeles, “by way of Kansas,” Savage said.

“Mythbusters,” co-starring Savage and Jamie Hyneman, premiered in 2003 and continued airing worldwide until last spring. By then, live tours had become a natural extension of the television series.

“I’d been touring live for a good portion of the last five years with Jamie Hyneman. Then Jamie got tired of touring and decided to stop doing it last year,” Savage said.

“I was looking around for someone else to tour with when my management company, William Morris Endeavor, said ‘We also represent Michael Stevens.’ So I immediately jumped on that, because I think Michael’s amazing, and that’s been borne out. He’s a master explainer, but also never underestimates the intelligence of his audience,” Savage said.

The title of the “Brain Candy” tour is borrowed from a 1996 film by the Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall.

“We all loved that title. It refers to the delight one feels in understanding something for the first time. That’s what we seek to give the audience throughout the show. And I happen to know, peripherally, the Kids in the Hall, so we asked their permission and they said, ‘Yeah, go ahead and use that title with our blessing,” Savage said.

“We’ve had the most fun putting this tour together. The idea of it was there at the beginning - how to make a good, geeky, fun, entertaining science show. We started with our director, Michael Weber, with the idea of ‘Let’s make this into Blue Man Group meets TED Talks.’”

Loyal fans of “Mythbusters” will find plenty to like in the “Brain Candy Live” shows, Savage predicted.

“Fans of “Mythbusters” will find themselves in familiar territory, as well as new territory,” he said. “It’s a pretty lively and large production. We are a two-truck, two-bus show, so we are traveling with a crew of about 12 people, plus Michael and me,” he said.

The tour started in North Carolina in February and has traveled all over the U.S.

“We’ve been playing to almost entirely sold-out crowds. The response has been delightful. I look out and I see every age group from 10 to 80 out in the crowd,” Savage said.

Best of all, the audiences appreciate the unpredictability of a show filled with scientific stunts and gadgets.

“Last night, our final effect that we close the show with didn’t work and one of our stage hands had to run to a truck that was parked two blocks away from the theater to get a replacement for the thing that makes the final gag work,” he said.

“Michael and I filled the time and talked to the audience and took extra questions. The audience was with us the whole time, and when the effect finally went off, they went bananas and jumped to their feet. It couldn’t have gone better.”

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.