What Happened To Kari Byron From MythBusters?

It takes a lot of star power for a TV personality to effectively engrave oneself into the shared memory of a generation, and even more so to accomplish such a feat without the benefit of being one of the cast members with the most screen time. Kari Byron's spirited, fiery-haired presence as a member of the Discovery Channel's "MythBusters" crew was as memorable as it was endearing to the varied demographics who loved the show. Her zest for learning encouraged thousands of viewers, young and old, to view and consume the world with wonder and critical reasoning.

Byron's time on "MythBusters" and its Build Team was characterized by her ingenuity, team-building skills, and scientific prowess. Being the only woman on the show's regular cast for the majority of its time on air, Byron served as much-needed representation for women and girls in STEM, breaking down barriers and portraying productive collaboration with her male co-hosts while holding her ground.

In the time following Bryon and the rest of The Build Team's departure from "MythBusters," Byron has participated in multiple other scientific and learning-based projects from subsequent ventures in television, streaming, and other forms of content creation. Furthermore, she has committed immense time, energy, and expertise to the cultivation of STEM skills in students, offering up the same enthusiasm and infectious joy we once saw every week with each eagerly awaited installment of the "MythBusters" series.

Kari Byron was featured as a guest and project model for the second pilot episode, during which the show's two cast members, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, tested whether or not an obese person could get stuck on an airplane toilet. Byron served as the model for the prop used to test the myth. 

At the time the pilots were being filmed, Byron was actually an art student just starting her internship with Hyneman's special effects company, M5 Industries, and volunteered to help out on the show. After the incredible success of Season 1 of "MythBusters," the Discovery Channel approached Savage and Hyneman with the desire to add more episodes to the show's second season. The original duo decided to expand their crew to accommodate the demand for more output. Representatives from the Discovery Channel informed Savage and Hyneman that Byron's presence during the pilot had garnered great interest, and they encouraged them to call her with an offer to join the show. Byron accepted and joined the "MythBusters" Build Team alongside co-stars Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci.

The Build Team contributed greatly to the overall success of the show by bringing variation in personality and varying strengths in creativity and engineering. They tested a myriad of goofy myths; from skepticism about cheese to common misconceptions about waxing body hair, the Build Team approached even the silliest of myths with zeal. In 2014, after a decade on the show, Byron and her fellow Build Team stars departed from the series, leaving Savage and Hyneman to finish out the show's final two seasons.

Kari Byron's departure from "MythBusters" certainly wasn't the end of her career in explorative and educational television. In 2015, a year after The Build Team hung up their "MythBusters" hats, Byron and her former co-host and friend, Tory Belleci, were invited to join the Travel Channel to host their 11-episode series, "Thrill Factor," in which the duo travel across the United States to encounter thrilling experiences such as famous rollercoasters and daring stunts all while gathering and assessing data about how the human body reacts to fear and thrills in these environments.

In an interview with CNET, Byron elaborated on her desire to participate in "Thrill Factor," saying, "After 'MythBusters' ended, I was looking for fun projects that are both intelligent and entertaining ... I always loved being a part of smart TV. 'Thrill Factor' and Travel Channel called at just the right time. Who wouldn't want to do a show about the science of thrill rides?" Her adventures with "Thrill Factor" proved fulfilling in more ways than one as it presented Byron with another opportunity to explore the juxtaposition of entertainment and scientific reasoning that made STEM concepts digestible and fun for the average viewer.

After 12 years of the "MythBusters" classic format, the show drew to its graceful end, but audiences' thirst for exciting science remained present in the absence of the beloved series. Hoping to continue the legacy of "MythBusters," Netflix reassembled The Build Team comprised of Kari Byron and her former co-stars, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara, for "The White Rabbit Project," a series very similar to the premise of "MythBusters" with a few historical, conspiratorial, and pop cultural twists that creators hoped would set it apart from its predecessor.

Byron contributed the same talents she had honed over 10 years with the Discovery Channel to discuss, strategize, construct, and execute experiments that test and explore concepts like the viability of human superpowers, jailbreak methods used by infamous criminals, and unconventional historical weaponry. Byron and her team also explored more social and psychological phenomena, such as understanding how scam artists operate, and the love/hate relationship between the average person and everyday tech.

Despite Byron, Belleci, and Imahara's best efforts and time-tested expertise on camera, "The White Rabbit Project" failed to garner the following "MythBusters" had enjoyed since becoming a 2000s cult classic series, and the show was canceled after one season.

After "MythBusters," "The White Rabbit Project," and "Thrill Factor," Kari Byron took a break from TV hosting gigs and set aside time to write her memoir "Crash Test Girl: An Unlikely Experiment in Using the Scientific Method to Answer Life's Toughest Questions," which was published in 2018. In this work, Byron allowed readers a look into her past, including her life as a struggling artist prior to her big break in TV, her enriching experience as a member of the "MythBusters" team, and the nitty-gritty happenings in between episodes.

She explained how her exposure to the scientific method through "MythBusters" gave her unexpected tools to navigate life's complications. Byron explored her struggles and experiences with her career, love life, finances, and mental health, guiding readers through the tried and true steps of the scientific method to address the goings-on of life. She enthused the benefits of asking questions, forming hypotheses, experimenting, analyzing results, and drawing conclusions.

Byron used her memoir to celebrate her many successes both professionally and personally while acknowledging sacrifices and hardships. She addressed themes like resilience, bravery, and the intersection of science and the beauty of the human condition. She also took the opportunity to affirm that science is for everyone, and has a purpose in facets of life where we least expect it.

Kari Byron's natural curiosity and congenial nature recommended her for a brief and meaningful return to TV in 2021 to host the Science Channel's "Crash Test World," a show that took Byron across the world to experience different approaches to big scientific and social questions. Over the course of the series, she engaged with diverse demographics from students and tech gurus to farmers and urban planners in the U.S., Germany, Qatar, and Israel to explore the intersection of technology and humanity.

A unique aspect of "Crash Test World" compared to Byron's previous roles in science television was the highlighted social aspects of the show, the openness to new people and new ideas, acceptance, respect, and acknowledgement of how history shapes modern society. The emphasis on cultivating togetherness in a divisive social climate was something Byron cherished most about this format. 

"I loved making 'Crash Test World,'" Byron told PopCulture.com. "Each day I walked away from filming feeling hopeful for our future. In this show, I talk to people working on solutions and big ideas that make their world and ours a better place. I am excited for viewers, especially families, to watch together and share this journey with me."

In the wake of "MythBusters", Byron was overjoyed to discover that the show, which had not been intentionally designed to integrate STEM processes into the minds of its audience members, had serendipitously encouraged and inspired young people to engage with science and critical thinking. In a talk she gave at the University of Illinois, she explained how a happy accident had developed into an impactful resource for students. 

"The most incredible byproduct of 'MythBusters' was that teachers started taking little clips of the show and then used them to develop a lesson plan around physics or critical thinking ... It became an educational tool," she said (via The Daily Illini). She also touched on how humbling it was to learn that a project she had invested a decade of her professional life in had cultivated a fervent interest and excitement for science in young children.

After the COVID-19 pandemic brought the word to a screeching halt, Byron began brainstorming ways to recapture that same excitement for students in online education. She merged the scientific and social learning objectives of "Crash Test World" with the critical thinking exercises of "MythBusters" and "The White Rabbit Project" in the development of an educational streaming platform called EXPLR Media. The service offers content formatted for classroom and home use, and would cover a wide variety of social and STEM subject learning materials. Byron explained that the home version served as a platform for educational videos to be explored as a form of enriching entertainment whereas the classroom version includes more structured lesson plans to help teachers reinforce their course material.

In mid-2025, Kari Byron and her former "MythBusters" co-host and close friend, Tory Belleci, started the "Mythfits" podcast wherein they discuss backstage insights from their time on "MythBusters," as well as their other projects, interests, technology, and of course, discuss popular myths. The overall tone of the podcast is on brand for Byron, combining entertainment, education, community, and enthusiasm.

Byron and Belleci use the platform to host other professionals, experts, famous personalities, and content creators to share their specialized knowledge and delve deep into myths and oddities across the internet. The pair has covered topics such as AI's impact on "mythbusting" and art, space exploration, post-mortem effects on the human body, the paranormal, and a multitude of other topics. 

For listeners tuning in for a healthy dose of nostalgia, the former "MythBusters" spend time discussing memorable moments, favorite myths tested, lesser-known instances of conflict that never made the final cut, and their fellow cast members, especially the late Grant Imahara, the third member of The Build Team who died suddenly in 2020.