I'm obsessed with the form of a toolbox. The idea of a portable kit that has everything you might need ignites something inside me. It's like Batman's utility belt.

I have some ideas on how to fix that. They're not very good ideas, but at least they're ideas!

Gravity. It's not just a good idea; it's the law!

Of course, I love tools. I also love arranging them, to the point where I came up with a name for my organizing metric: first-order retrievability.

I think at this point, there's a certain bizarre chemistry between Jamie [Hyneman] and I that we can't ignore a lot of the mechanics of, that we're quite aware of. Half of it is absolutely genuine, and half of it is us playing around with that fact.

Mostly I make lists for projects. This can be daunting. Breaking something big into its constituent parts will help you organize your thoughts, but it can also force you to confront the depth of your ignorance and the hugeness of the task. That's OK. The project may be the lion, but the list is your whip.

Fractals, the theory of relativity, the genome: these are magnificently beautiful constructs.