Sometimes, when Danny Forster finds himself suspended hundreds of metres in the air or wedged beside a stone crusher 30m below ground, he wonders why he hadn't focused more on his schoolwork.

Of course, as host of Extreme Engineering, it is Danny's great honour to give Discovery Channel viewers a closer look at some of the world's largest engineering projects, from the Arizona Cardinals stadium to the tallest building in Madrid. Given his morbid fear of heights and his healthy suspicion of giant stone crushers, though, it's just not always his great pleasure.

If his attention hadn't wandered from his masters thesis in architecture to an ad on Craigslist.com, he'd probably be working in a firm right now, safely ensconced in - rather than on - a skyscraper somewhere.

Or maybe not. In professional matters, Danny doesn't always follow the predictable path. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1999 with a BA in architectural history, he moved to New York City to pursue a dual career as a stand-up comedian and real estate broker. (These are actually related professions, since purchase prices in Manhattan are funnier than Seinfeld.) Danny also started Urban Filter, an Internet site that helped recent graduates find apartments in major cities. But when he later sold Urban Filter during the dotcom boom, he did not get rich. Once again, he took the road less travelled.

Still, it was quite a trip between that road and the road they're building under Kuala Lumpur, an enormous winding tunnel that doubles as a flood drain. That's one of the amazing places Danny has explored as host of Extreme Engineering, including construction sites in South Korea, New Orleans, Russia, Spain and a working aircraft carrier in an undisclosed location in California.

At each job site, Danny gets his bearings and gives the audience a behind-the-scenes perspective. He helps out, fools around, and asks anyone he can about the big ideas and the tiny details that comprise some of the most incredible building projects ever attempted. Like, "how much force is exerted on this arresting wire?" or, "how do you make a tunnel-boring machine turn?" and, "are you sure this will hold my weight?"

Between barely-believable adventures with the Discovery Channel, Danny finally did complete his degree in architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. When he's not battling his fear of heights or bantering with welders twice his weight, he is a practising architect in Boston, Massachusetts.