Cy Tymony Transcript

December 8, 2007

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Announcer: You’ve been listening to “Sound Authors” where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about “Sound Authors” and Dr. Kent’s guests visit soundauthors.com. Back to Dr. Kent and friends.[music]

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to “Sound Authors”, my next guest is Cy Tymony, Real Life MacGyver. In grade school he defended himself from bullies with the help of a spring-loaded shocker hidden up his sleeve. Since then he’s authored five books and more than a dozen articles. His wizardly has landed him on CNN, NPR and now “Sound Authors”, welcome to the show.

Cy Tymony: Thanks for having me.

Kent: You know, when I was a kid I got picked on quite a bit, I could tell some funny stories, I sure wish that I knew how to make some contraptions to ward them off. Can you tell me a bit about that to start off?

Cy: Well, you know, I was kind of small as a kid and the upper class bullies would just try to wrestle with this and play with this and all that, you know just what goes on in every playground. So I got tired of that, so what I just, at home I just wired up a coil and a battery and a capacitor and I just had a little spring-loaded cardboard thing up my sleeve. And almost it works like a flash on a camera, where you push a button, it charges up a little coil and it sets off a little high voltage flash, you know nothing to really hurt anybody but….So I waited for the next bully to grab me from behind and then I just, you know the sleeve thing came out and just touched the back of his neck and boom he didn’t know what happened, he just released me real quick and that was the end of that. People saw that and I never told anybody how I did it.But I just got a love of science and being resourceful and like the spirit that along in my Sneaky Uses series of books.

Kent: And you get a chance to work with kids all the time, you get to relive that moment with kids all the time. Tell me a little about your work with schools and all of that.

Cy: Well, yeah. I do a lot of events at bookstores but I love going to schools and libraries. And I kind of wait for the kids that the teachers send in and they sit there and they’re a little cynical and they’re too good for the class, you know my presentation. And then I’ll show them something that they can do with everyday objects, and their eyes just light up or their jaws drop and I always get a kick out of that because the rest of the kids are usually enthusiastic already but…Like at my website, sneakyuses.com I have some free how-to video clips. They show you how to test your money with a magnet, how to make a boomerang out of cardboard like from an old greeting card or postcard. In the books I also show how to turn a penny into a radio, how-to take a regular AM/FM radio and turn a screw in it and pick up airport broadcasts. And in my latest book, “Sneakiest Uses for Everyday Things” I included a whole section in there on energy fundamentals and alternative energy because when I would do these events I would ask the teachers, just about energy.I would say; do you know how solar works, or do you know how atomic energy works, or some ancillary questions, like do you know why we have to refine oil or why we have to enrich uranium, or how the difference between a diesel engine and a regular engine and they couldn’t really answer the questions. So I said I was going to put a bonus section in the next book about energy, because it’s always in the news and we should at least know the fundamentals in a fun way.

Kent: What is the response from kids? Do they love this stuff, do they write back to you?

Cy: Oh yeah, they really love it. I usually give away little free project sheets and also like I say, I put on my websites some free projects for educator resources for teachers and parents to go further with science. But they just…my books tend to focus directly on usual things and practical things that you could do with everyday things that you already have so you don’t have to go out and find anything.And the whole point is, the message of the book is not just science and history or resourcefulness but it’s appreciating what you already have to the fullest. And to do that, you have to, you know at least with everyday objects you have to know a little bit about science, and or just read about what other people have done.And I also give funny stories about prison escapes, and a lifesaving event on September 11 and the World Trade Tower elevator, where a window washer saved six men with his squeegee and things like that, that people just generally don’t know. It tends to lead them to other science books and not just to pass a test.

Kent: What do you find yourself doing during the day? Do you dig around on Google and find interesting things? Do you tinker? What do you do?

Cy: Well, it’s a big variety of marketing, promotion, writing, then I have a little team of people; old, young, men and women, that I have to test out some of the things I’ve given them. Because I’m a little bit too familiar with some things, so they’ll test it out, they’ll point out, ‘oh well, he didn’t explain this properly or I couldn’t get this to work properly’. So I’ll smooth things out that way.And then writing, Googling and researching and some things I can’t put in because you know they could be dangerous or incendiary or some things just don’t fit. And I want it to have everything in there, just not crafts or decorations but it has to have a practical purpose, some things just for trivia too.

Kent: So when I was a kid, I remember my folks would boot me out of the house; I’d try to watch the television and they’d say get out of here and I’d have to go down to the river and skip rocks. What was your childhood like, how did this…how did you get this real life MacGyver sensibility here?

Cy: Well, basically, my parents bought me science kits and they would have instructions to make 10 or 20 projects but I also loved science-fiction and some of the shows on TV like “Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, “Wild, Wild West”, “Get Smart” and later the James Bond movies. So this gave me ideas and also comic books too, with super villains, superheroes. So this gave me more ideas to take the little science kit devices and go a little bit further with it and try to emulate some of the super villains and superheroes and gadgetry. And I always worked on that and later I started researching people who, you know scientists, especially people who saved lives and went camping and took this or that situation where people overlooked something and then they were able to make something out if it.So I always wanted to find a book like that and so I decided to write the first one which was “Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things” and that came out in 03 and then later “Sneakier Uses” which came out in 05 and then “Sneakiest Uses” this fall.

Kent: You’ve sold over 100,000 of these books.

Cy: Yeah, the first two so far have sold over 100,000 because schools buy them, parents love them, they’re only like $10.95 and I always say, “Well, you know for the price of a movie ticket, you’ll be a genius.” You know just laughing like that.They’re designed with nice cute illustrations and you can jump in anywhere and I put survival information in there like say, how to start a fire with water or how to make a compass without a magnet. I always tend to focus on the unusual more than people don’t know.

Kent: Can you give me an example of something that would be really intriguing that I could try here at home?

Cy: Oh sure. Say if you’re like in holiday time, we’re all handling bigger bills, even kids are given 20s and 50s by there relatives to go get something for their other relatives, so we also have great printers, like the $35 or whatever that can print up stuff so more counterfeiting can take place. So basically, say if you wanted to be sure that your money’s not counterfeit; all you have to do is fold a bill in half and hold it up in the air and then take a strong magnet and bring it near the corner of the bill. And you’ll be surprised to see that the bill will tend to pull into the magnet like it’s a magnet itself because there are iron particles in the ink of real currency. So if it’s counterfeit then the bill wouldn’t move.And I have a little video clip of that, how to do that at sneakyuses.com on the Free Projects page. So that’s a practical thing that anybody can do is test their money. Like I say, you can make an origami Frisbee, you can make a cardboard boomerang that goes off the palm of your hand, and you just flick it off and it goes off 20 feet and comes back, you can make that out of anything; cardboard that you would throw away from a cereal box.

Kent: Even, even I could do that? See I know I used to get real boomerangs when I was a kid and I could never get it to come back.

Cy: Yeah, the problem with those is that a lot of times they’re big and heavy and wood and they can get a little dangerous too if they come back and hit you in the head. But these are just pieces, little pieces of cardboard and the right angle. If you flick it off properly, like I said, it will go out at least 20, well it can go off at least 20 feet when you practice it does come right back to you.And also every lesson in the book teaches a principle that teaches you like the Bernoulli principle, how planes fly, and curveball curve and sailboats sail into the wind and why cars have spoilers on them. So I give examples of when you make something or do something unusual, how it relates to science and helps you out with science projects too.

Kent: Were you good at science, were you good at school?

Cy: Yeah, I was naturally interested in science, not some of the other subjects but I just couldn’t keep me away from science books and articles and any character that would see. Like I would be attracted to watching “Gillian’s Island” and seeing The Professor and he would take coconut and bamboo and he’d make a bowling alley or a golf cart; everything except for a raft, that seemed to be a bit beyond him.But I liked other characters like Q in the James Bond movies; I found out that there’s a real life Q named Charles Clayton Hunton and he was the inspiration for Ian Fleming for Q. And World War Two they had gadgetry built into the Air Force fighter pilot uniforms in their buttons, their boots, their hats, their badges; they were regular James Bonds. Way back in the 40’s and I have pictures of those items and also their stories of resourcefulness on my website that talk about how they built an airplane inside of a prison using wood from their beds and sheets off of their beds for the body of the plane in a prison called Colbitz in Germany.

Kent: Well, you’ve certainly made a fan out of me. I’m going to get on your website, www.sneakyuses.com is that right?

Cy: That’s it. And the books are available anywhere, any bookstore, or online at Amazon, or Barnes&noble.com. But at sneakyuses.com if you go to Free Projects page, you’ll see how to make the boomerang, how to test your money, how to do all sorts of things, I have about 10 video clips there and other projects. And links to science camps, science museums, scholarships so that way parents and teachers can keep their kids you know in a good track of science, if they want to find out how to keep their interest going.

Kent: And you’ve got a lot of competition out there with these widescreen TVs and crazy video games and all that that we didn’t grow up with. How are kids…do they like this real science instead of watching TV?

Cy: Well, it complements that, it complements that because like you said they have cell phones that can bring in video and music and take pictures, they have Playstations and stuff but without an appreciate of things like that, you know sometimes you can miss that.But also we’re sometimes put in situations when the power goes out or survival situations where you do need to know or you should know just some fundamentals and that’s why the first two books have a survival section in there. So that you may not have to build or do these things but it’s great to know how to do some unusual things just in case. And the third book, “Sneakiest Uses” has an energy fundamentals section and alternative energy projects which is good to know now days too.

Kent: Thank you so much for being on this show. Cy Tymony’s new book is called “Sneakiest Uses for Everyday Things” it’s on Andrews McMeel Publishing, we can find that in all stores and we’ll visit his website atwww.sneakyuses.com. Thank you so much.