MARK ROBER: If you're creative but lazy, please watch this...

Jay Shetty 0:00 [camera clicking] What's

Jay Shetty 0:23 the earliest childhood memory you have that you feel defines who you are today? Is there a, a moment, a friend, an experience from school growing up that you're like, "That is why I am the way I am"?

Mark Rober 0:35 Hmm. [sighs] I think a defining moment, one that sticks out, I feel like... So my mom was... Oh, this is out of the gate. You're getting me talking about my mom.

Jay Shetty 0:48 [laughs]

Mark Rober 0:48 Uh, d- uh, my mom was like, had the biggest influence of, on my life by a very comfortable margin, and she was like a stay-at-home mom. Like, she barely graduated high school. Um, but she was just, um, so encouraging of us and, like, trying to m- turn us into, like, good humans. And so she would very... She would encourage just being creative and, like, out-of-the-box thinking and just, um... I remember one time, you know... And, and she, we did chores, like, as f- to raise a good human. Like, we had a list of chores from the time I was five years old, right? So I was helping prepare dinner, and I was in charge of doing the salad, and I was cutting the onions. And I was, like, crying 'cause I was like, "Oh, this is a thing. I don't like this." So I was like, "Well, I should go..." I remember upstairs we had these swim goggles, so I, I ran upstairs, got the goggles, not thinking anything of it, and just kept cutting with onions on. And now I know that's, like, a hack, like, people know about this, but I was, like, five years old.

Jay Shetty 1:47 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:47 This is, like, 1986. And I just remember her reaction to that. Just, like, she laughed, and she's just like, "No way." And, like, the encour- She took a picture. We have a family picture of it, right? And that's 24 pictures in those days, so if you're taking a picture, you mean it, right?

Jay Shetty 2:02 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Rober 2:02 It's on film. And it just felt really good to be in this environment where, like, that kind of thinking was encouraged. Um, that, it has just always stuck with me. And then, you know, just growing up, you know, if I took apart the remote control and I couldn't quite get it back together again, like, I didn't get in trouble for that. It was like, "Oh, what, what are you up to now?" Right? It's like, "What are you up to?" But it was more celebrated as opposed to something that was just overlooked.

Jay Shetty 2:31 Yeah. That's special.

Mark Rober 2:32 And I, and I feel today, like, that same feeling of, like, cr- creating content and sharing it with people and, like, getting that reaction of other people being like, "Oh, man, why didn't I think of that?" Like, I love hearing that 'cause that means it was kind of obvious, and you took things, uh, you know, things... Especially if I do a build. If I can do it with junk you have lying around your house, that's so much better than just, like, all these, the technical solution, right?

Jay Shetty 2:55 Yeah.

Mark Rober 2:55 And so that feeling of coming up with an idea, sharing with people, and getting feedback on it is just, like, it's kind of addictive.

Jay Shetty 3:02 Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful, and it's amazing when your parents encourage

Jay Shetty 3:04 it. When, when was the last time you shared that story with your mom?

Mark Rober 3:09 Um, so interesting story on that, Jay, which is that, like, um, uh, like six months before I made my first YouTube video she passed away from ALS, um, which I think is, like, kind of a beautiful thing in the sense that, you know, we can all disagree on what happens when you die, right? But this idea that, like, you never know the true measure of your impact in this life, right? You do, you know... You interact with other people, even if it's just, like, what do you say when the guy opens the door for you, you know, or you open the door for someone. Like, with her, you know, the channel now reaches, you know, we have 72 million subscribers and, like, billions of views a month, and none of that was on her radar. And, like, my mission is to get kids, you know, e- everyone, but especially the young folks stoked about science and education and curiosity because that's what she did to me. And this is also how I feel about, like, teachers. They're like seed planters, right? And just nobody knows the measure of, the full measure of their impact. And-

Jay Shetty 4:18 Yeah

Mark Rober 4:18 ... so I just think it's, it's, it's really sweet that, like, you know, when she passed away I think she felt really good about, like, the kids she raised. But, like, she just didn't know, like, her direct, like how she raised me and my siblings is now, like, impacting so many kids and, and people across the world.

Jay Shetty 4:39 Yeah.

Mark Rober 4:39 So it's, it's, it's really beautiful. Like, that's her version of, of living on and living forever, regardless of what you think what happens after we die.

Jay Shetty 4:48 Yeah. No, thank you for sharing that, man. It's so, it's so beautiful to hear that. As, as someone who's... My mom, who's, who's still with us, but the, but the impact she had on me as well, like, I feel like my mom showed me how to love. And if anyone ever feels loved by me or feels I can create a safe, loving space for other people, it's because my mom did that for me-

Mark Rober 5:09 Yeah

Jay Shetty 5:09 ... in the most difficult of situations and always made me feel like I had a shield of love around me. And so I've never really had to question whether I'm lovable or not-

Mark Rober 5:17 Mm.

Jay Shetty 5:17 .. which is just an insane superpower.

Mark Rober 5:19 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 5:20 And then all that love that you were given just spills onto other people. And then everyone's like, "Oh, how are you so loving and thoughtful?" And I'm like, "Oh, it's my mom." Like, it was like my mom just gave me so much that it had to spill out and spill over into other people. It's actually not me. And, and it's something that I hold very deeply as well, and I think moms, dads, teachers, mentors, guides, spiritual leaders, whoever your family turns to for support have such a big impact, and now YouTubers.

Mark Rober 5:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 5:50 Right? Like, now you. Like, there are so many kids and parents that turn to you for your content-

Mark Rober 5:55 Yeah

Jay Shetty 5:56 ... to inspire their children to think differently.

Jay Shetty 5:58 How do you get a job at NASA?

Mark Rober 6:00 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 6:01 Like, I just... When I, when I saw that, when I was looking, I was like, "How do you get a job at NASA?" Like, that sounds like made-up stuff.

Mark Rober 6:08 I mean, you get lucky, first of all.

Jay Shetty 6:10 [laughs]

Mark Rober 6:10 Like, you know, my resume was just in a stack of resumes. And yeah, the interview-

Jay Shetty 6:16 What did you do at college?

Mark Rober 6:17 So I studied mechanical engineering.

Jay Shetty 6:18 Okay, so you had that.

Mark Rober 6:20 Yeah, yeah. So for sure.

Jay Shetty 6:21 [laughs]

Mark Rober 6:21 You gotta start with an engineering degree.

Jay Shetty 6:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Rober 6:23 I'll give you that. Um, yeah, and, and-

Jay Shetty 6:26 From a good school.

Mark Rober 6:27 From a good school, yeah. I did undergrad at BYU, grad school at USC.

Jay Shetty 6:31 Yeah, so-

Mark Rober 6:31 In mechanical engineering, yeah. I remember going in, there's this old engineer there, Don Bickler, and when you interview there, you know, you go into his office. He shuts the door.

Jay Shetty 6:41 At NASA?

Mark Rober 6:42 NASA. This guy's a legend. Invented, like, the rocker-bogie system on the rover. And then you just, you stay in that room for, like, an hour, and he hands you a whiteboard, a whiteboard marker, and he just drills you on questions. And at the end of that, he comes and kind of offers the verdict, and when I left, he's like, "He's good. Hire him." So, you know.

Jay Shetty 6:58 Y- tell me what the questions are like. Like, what is that... How's that interview? C- because I imagine it's so different from any interview.

Mark Rober 7:04 Yeah, I mean, they're, like, technical questions, right? Like, um, here's a good one. If you have a, a fishing boat and you have an anchor, and then you take that anchor and you throw it overboard, and what happens to the w- water level on the ra- lake? Does it go up or down? And so it's, it's kind of like a riddle, but the point is you write out the equations on the board, the buoyancy equation, you know. You solve for this, and then the answer's pretty obvious if you can do that. So it's kind of like i- questions like this, technical questions, but they're just, like, rapid fire one after another.

Jay Shetty 7:36 Right, right, right.

Mark Rober 7:37 Um, and so then, yeah. So I worked at NASA for a decade. Uh, 10 of those, or about seven of those were working on the Mars Curiosity rover. So I have hardware that's, like, on the jetpack that lowers it to the ground, and then also on the top deck of the rover. So-

Jay Shetty 7:51 That you designed.

Mark Rober 7:51 That I designed, built, tested, integrated.

Jay Shetty 7:54 How many of you are working on something like that at the same time?

Mark Rober 7:57 Yeah, like, it's, like, probably 3,000 people-

Jay Shetty 8:00 Wow

Mark Rober 8:00 ... all told, like, have a hand in creating something like the Mars rover.

Jay Shetty 8:04 Wow.

Mark Rober 8:04 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 8:05 That's incredible.

Mark Rober 8:05 But it's cool, like, to, you know, just be in the backyard, you know, and you see that one dot in the sky that has, like, the reddish tint. You know, so you know that one's Mars, and you're just like, "Well, I've, like... I've touched something that's, like, on that planet and built it, and it's, it's still working 90 million miles away."

Jay Shetty 8:23 And where are you based? Are you based-

Mark Rober 8:25 This was in s- This was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so out in Pasadena here.

Jay Shetty 8:29 Okay.

Mark Rober 8:30 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 8:30 And how many people work out of there?

Mark Rober 8:32 Uh, like about 5,000, give or take.

Jay Shetty 8:34 Wow, it's huge.

Mark Rober 8:36 Yeah. It was so cool. It's like a college campus. Just like a free exchange of ideas. You know, talk about creativity. Just, like, everything is on the board, and it's just this engineering mindset of, like, you know, we don't know the right answer, but heck, we'll just run a ton of tests and figure out what it is.

Jay Shetty 8:52 What was the mindset you think you learned from working at NASA and the people there that you don't think most of us would come across in our daily life?

Mark Rober 9:00 I think this concept of, like, thinking like an engineer.

Jay Shetty 9:04 What does that mean?

Mark Rober 9:05 Yes.

Jay Shetty 9:05 I've heard that before. I've also heard, like, think like a rocket scientist, and I'm like, what does that mean?

Mark Rober 9:09 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 9:10 Yeah.

Mark Rober 9:10 So me, I... In fact, I have a, um, a toy company now, CrunchLabs, where, you know, basically it's, like, a really fun toy you get every month, and you c- the kids can put it together, and it teaches the engineering principles a- what makes them work. And on the side of the box, it says, "Think like an engineer." And the idea there is, like, it means that, like, you're not afraid of failure, and, you know, you, you're resilient because you know that failure's part of the process. Like, the point is to break stuff and test it. If you're not breaking stuff, it means, like, you're not really testing the limits. And then when you fail, it's... You don't internalize it, like, "Oh, I'm a failure." It's like, "Oh, great. We just learned one more way not to do a thing." You're excited, right? It's like, "Let's try something different." And so I think that, that philosophy applies to life and to challenge. Like, toddlers are like this, right? Like, when they fall, they're not like, "Oh, I look so dumb. I'm never gonna try and walk again," right? It's like they just get up and try again, and they're excited to try again. You know, the kid who's just tinkering in his garage and doesn't care and is trying stuff, like, that's the kid that's just, like, learning so much, right? And again, this is how you put a rover on Mars. You just break stuff and test it and test it and test it so you know the limits, and now you know exactly what will work when you go to Mars.

Jay Shetty 10:25 And what was the purpose of the rover?

Mark Rober 10:27 So essentially, it's just, like, to go to, you know... We want... It's good for humanity if we are a multi-planetary species. Uh, and so it's like this is the precursor to, like, humans going and living on Mars. So basically, it goes there and says, like, "Hmm, what's the soil like? Could you plant asparagus there?" Turns out you can. Uh, is there water there?

Jay Shetty 10:48 Wow.

Mark Rober 10:48 Yeah. Turns out there is. So all these things that we would want to have on Mars if we were living there, like the rover. You know, how much radiation is there here? So it can do a bunch of, "Let, let us learn the history of this planet," um, so that, A, we can potentially live there someday, but B, it helps us learn about ourselves. Part of what we know about global warming is by studying Venus, which is basically like runaway global warming. So by, like, studying other areas in the solar system, we're able to learn, like, more about h- you know, how, how Earth even came about and formed, which helps us to know how do we protect it in the future.

Jay Shetty 11:22 Wow. And so wait, when you

Jay Shetty 11:24 started to get this information and data back that you can grow asparagus-

Mark Rober 11:29 Mm

Jay Shetty 11:29 ... there's water there, what was the big discovery that the rover felt like it achieved that you all walked away with and said, "Oh, wow, this was mission accomplished"?

Mark Rober 11:37 I mean, with sci- Like, y- your objectives are always smaller than that, of like, we just wanna go there and answer whether or not there's water. Um, you know, life is always the big one. Like, if you can find life on another planet, like, that's pretty wild.

Jay Shetty 11:53 Yeah.

Mark Rober 11:53 Because if life came to exist twice in our own solar system, you know, then, like-... there must, like the universe must just be teeming with other forms of life. It's just like a really fascinating question, right?

Jay Shetty 12:06 Yeah.

Mark Rober 12:07 Sometimes you don't, you just go there to gather the data.

Jay Shetty 12:09 Yes, yes.

Mark Rober 12:10 And then you just look for something interesting to come from the data. But you don't necessarily know ahead of time. You can have objectives, right?

Jay Shetty 12:16 Yeah.

Mark Rober 12:17 But I think us just getting closer to live there and studying if life did exist there, are like always some... And, and is water there currently flowing? Those kinds of questions are, like, really interesting with Mars.

Jay Shetty 12:27 Yeah, the reason I'm mining it is for two reason, these questions to you, is one is I'm fascinated because it's so different from any world I've ever lived in, and so I'm like a kid in a candy shop right now.

Mark Rober 12:38 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 12:38 I'm like, "This is so cool." And, and then the second side of it is because I think it's a mindset thing, too. The idea that all of these really smart people are building something, and there isn't this big goal or objective. There's this idea of, we're gonna learn, and we're gonna grow, and we're gonna figure it out, and we'll discover something, is such a beautiful mindset for life.

Mark Rober 12:59 Mm.

Jay Shetty 12:59 Like, I think about even with what you were talking about with CrunchLabs, teaching kids at an early age to just experiment, play, break, live, without the goal of like, "Oh, I have to build..." I'm sure they, I'm sure CrunchLabs, yeah.

Mark Rober 13:13 No, you're totally right.

Jay Shetty 13:14 Yeah. It's like that's a great mindset because I feel like if you think about all the companies that we all use today, they didn't start off saying, "We're gonna build a billion-dollar company." They just built something that helped people and figured it out and pivoted and-

Mark Rober 13:27 Yeah

Jay Shetty 13:28 ... gave us another option. Then one day they were valued at billions of dollars. But today, there's a pressure I feel that people have where it's like, "If I build an app, it has to be a billion-dollar app. If I build a products company, it has to sell 100 million the first year. If I sell a apparel brand, I have to make a million dol-" Like, I feel like we put these goals and objectives, and you're actually saying, "Well, when we're [laughs] going to Mars, we're not thinking about those things."

Mark Rober 13:53 I mean, I completely agree with you. Like, I don't love when people expect you to know what you wanna be when you grow up, when you're like 16 years old. Like, nobody... Ask any adult, and if you ask them, you know, what they're doing, if they knew they'd be doing what they're doing now, if they say yes, they're totally lying to you.

Jay Shetty 14:08 [laughs]

Mark Rober 14:08 Like, nobody knows. And that's just the way life is. It's like a river that meanders, right? So it's like my advice, if you don't know what you wanna be and you're, you know, a teenager or something, it's like what do you love to do? Do you love to draw? Then, then just dominate it. Just draw like crazy and get so good at it, right? Maybe you love to write or to tell stories. Like, just do that, and then when you do that, like, then more doors will be open to you. So, like, this is kinda my philosophy with life, too. Like, I've had a lot of left and right turns to get me sitting across from you right now. And what I do is just, like, whatever's in front of me, I just give it every single thing I have. And I just try and just crush it and learn as much as possible. And then when you're done with that, it's like, "All right. Now what are my next options," right? And it's usually pretty clear, to be honest. Like, it's never like... I've honestly never h- had a moment in life, even quitting NASA [laughs] to go do YouTube stuff, where it's like, is this the right decision, is it not? It feels pretty clear if you've really committed yourself, and then you have all the new facts in front of you, right?

Jay Shetty 15:12 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 15:13 Before we get to that, what did you wanna be when you were a kid? And when people asked you that question that you-

Mark Rober 15:18 I wanted-

Jay Shetty 15:19 ... now hate

Mark Rober 15:19 ... I wanted to be... My first job I wanted to do was to design, uh, play places at McDonald's.

Jay Shetty 15:25 Oh. [laughs]

Mark Rober 15:26 You know, like the ball pit things.

Jay Shetty 15:27 I used to love those.

Mark Rober 15:28 I was like an architect of those. I remember I'd have all these drawings, like, "All right. We're gonna start with a ball pit."

Jay Shetty 15:33 [laughs]

Mark Rober 15:33 "Then we're gonna [laughs] go to the nets." And now CrunchLabs, which is this, like, actual place I have, it's like this Willy Wonka factory for engineering, is sort of the embodiment of that dream. 'Cause we have, like, secret passageways. You know, a Coke machine opens up into a claw machine that you can, like, take a picture-

Jay Shetty 15:49 It's like the North Pole.

Mark Rober 15:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 15:51 [laughs]

Mark Rober 15:52 We have, like, fire, like, pistons that you slide down from.

Jay Shetty 15:54 You're basically Santa.

Mark Rober 15:55 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 15:56 [laughs]

Mark Rober 15:56 That's right.

Jay Shetty 15:57 Yeah.

Mark Rober 15:58 Um, yeah. Like, I'm like Willy Wonka for engineering.

Jay Shetty 16:01 Yeah.

Mark Rober 16:01 Like, it has that vibe, right? It's like, uh, a rock, paper, scissor machine that it's a robot that beats you every time. A staircase that's an infinite Slinky staircase. The Slinky just goes. So it's like, you know, if you can dream it up, then you can build it. Like, that's the beauty of being an engineer, is like, if, if, if something doesn't exist and you want it to exist-

Jay Shetty 16:21 Yeah

Mark Rober 16:21 ... you can just will it into existence.

Jay Shetty 16:23 Yeah.

Mark Rober 16:23 And what a superpower.

Jay Shetty 16:25 Yeah. There's this, uh, there's this amazing... I mean, this is to- I'm going totally the opposite way, but, uh, you're reminding me of something beautiful. There's this, uh, beautiful verse in Eastern spirituality that says, "The mind moves faster than the gods."

Mark Rober 16:39 Mm.

Jay Shetty 16:39 And the point of it is this idea that the mind can create and build, and you can visualize. And it's based off of this character in Vedic history called Vishwakarma, who's the architect of the gods.

Mark Rober 16:52 Mm.

Jay Shetty 16:53 So he builds flying palaces and flying cities and... But he visualizes it all in his head before it becomes manifest.

Mark Rober 17:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 17:00 And it's that same idea of just, like, we... But do you know what's so interesting is we're talking about that, but we all know that it's so natural as a parent to go, "Okay, but get a real job."

Mark Rober 17:11 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 17:12 Right? So, like, you, you, you have this dream of, "I wanna design McDonald's-"

Mark Rober 17:16 Yeah

Jay Shetty 17:16 ... "playhouses," or whatever. And then family, friends, expectations, school, everyone goes, "Yeah, but get a real job." Like, I remember I was-

Mark Rober 17:23 Yeah

Jay Shetty 17:23 ... a kid who loved graphic design, and I love art direction, and I loved juxtaposition and imagery. Like, that was always my... I loved that. It's always been a passion of mine. And my family encouraged it. It was a good hobby. It was like, "Get a real job, though."

Mark Rober 17:38 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 17:38 I mean, engineering's such a great skill and such a great job, but how do you encourage young people, and how do you think about, when you're making content, to encourage people to live their passion but be pragmatic? And what does that look like? Because you-

Mark Rober 17:50 Yeah. I-

Jay Shetty 17:50 ... you've kinda pursued so many things.

Mark Rober 17:52 I mean, I think it's a yes/and situation, right?

Jay Shetty 17:54 Yeah.

Mark Rober 17:54 For example, for me, like, [laughs] I worked at NASA for a decade, then I worked at Apple for five years doing product design. I didn't quit Apple till I had 10 million YouTube subscribers. So, like, this idea of like I had to choose one or the other, right?

Jay Shetty 18:10 Yeah.

Mark Rober 18:11 You can kind of do both. You can moonlight as your passion, and then when that becomes big enough, then it's like, oh. And, and that isn't always the case, but I think there's a lot of situations, there's a middle of that Venn diagram where it's like you do the passion and pursue it as much as you possibly can while also having the real job, right? Um, I mean, that's like practical advice. Sometimes it does come to a point, you know, you hear these great stories of actors or something where it's like, "I'm just gonna really go for it," and then they land. But that's also, you know, the scientist in me wants to say, well, there's survivorship bias. So you only hear the stories-

Jay Shetty 18:47 Yeah

Mark Rober 18:47 ... of the ones that worked, and for the one that does, there's a thousand that don't. So, um, you know, I think when parents say that, they generally have their best interest in mind for the kid. They want them to be happy and have a life that they can... But at the same time, the kid knows what they're passionate. So I think it's a very healthy, a very healthy, like, you know, yin and yang there. I, I, I, I don't fault parents for saying that, but I think there's a lot of times you could still pursue the thing. You know, you just pursue both.

Jay Shetty 19:13 Yeah. I'd agree with you. So my life's the same story and, and I'm... That, to me, is the, to me, that is the best and most likely path for most people.

Mark Rober 19:22 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 19:22 Which is you're gonna have a steady job, you're gonna figure out something on the side, and you're gonna wait for the thing on the side to outpace the thing you're doing right now, and then... And it, and it bec- And it actually proves to you as an individual whether you really love it.

Mark Rober 19:34 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 19:34 'Cause you're doing it in your evenings-

Mark Rober 19:35 Yeah

Jay Shetty 19:35 ... you're doing it in your weekends, you're, you're doing it when it makes no money, you're doing it when it's inconvenient. And you're like, "Oh, well if I could do it when I was inconvenient, then when it's my full-time thing, I'm the luckiest person in the world."

Mark Rober 19:45 100%. Like, and when I started YouTube, like in 2011, no one knew you could like make money off of it. You know what I mean? It was like you just did it really as just a passion. Like I wanted to share these cool ideas with people. Now it's like the game has changed so much.

Jay Shetty 20:00 What was the pivot from NASA to Apple? Why did that come about? Why leave NASA?

Mark Rober 20:06 Um, well, actually, for two years I was at a Halloween costume company, Jay. Before then going to Apple. So that's like-

Jay Shetty 20:14 Halloween costume company.

Mark Rober 20:16 Yes. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 20:17 Wait, how do you go from NASA to a Halloween costume-

Mark Rober 20:19 Okay, that's the better question.

Jay Shetty 20:21 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Rober 20:21 [laughs] Which is... So my first ever YouTube video, I went to like a Halloween party, and I had an iPad on front, an iPad in back of me, and if you cut a hole in the shirts a- and you do a FaceTime call, it looks like you have a hole in your body.

Jay Shetty 20:35 Oh, yeah.

Mark Rober 20:35 So you wave, you wave your hand in the front, and the camera in the back shows it. And-

Jay Shetty 20:40 That's cool

Mark Rober 20:40 ... again, it felt like being five years old cutting onions. People at the party were like, "This is such a cool costume. What a cool idea. How did I not think of that?" So I went home, I put it on YouTube, and I... My life goal was to be on the Gizmodo, which is like an old tech blog.

Jay Shetty 20:55 Yeah, yeah, I remember it. Yeah.

Mark Rober 20:56 And so I made it on the cover of Gizmodo, and then quickly realized I need more life goals. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 21:02 [laughs]

Mark Rober 21:02 And so I was like, "I have more ideas," like, "I should just do one video a month." And for 14 years now, I've basically uploaded one video a month about an engineering build or an idea, and the channel's just grown from there. Um-

Jay Shetty 21:16 How did you get that out there on the cover of Gizmodo?

Mark Rober 21:19 Well, the, the... So the YouTube video went up, and it went viral.

Jay Shetty 21:23 Okay.

Mark Rober 21:23 So it was on the front page of CNN, like, it was like on all these, all these outlets covered it, including Gizmodo.

Jay Shetty 21:29 Got it.

Mark Rober 21:29 From there, the, the, the one complaint was that, "Cool idea, bro, but I don't have $1,200 for Halloween costumes," two iPads, right?

Jay Shetty 21:35 Yeah.

Mark Rober 21:35 And so I was like, all right. So I, I came up with an idea for next year where it was like a, a design printed on the shirt, like a, a guy's face or something that was like kind of his eye was pulled open, and then if you cut a hole out for the eyeball, and then there was a free app of an eyeball that moved around. Your eye would've worked great, Jay.

Jay Shetty 21:53 [laughs]

Mark Rober 21:53 Then all... You had a really cool Halloween costume for like the price of a T-shirt.

Jay Shetty 21:58 Yeah.

Mark Rober 21:58 Called Digital Dudz. So I launched that company nights and weekends, working all week while making YouTube videos, and, uh, while working at NASA, and it, it did pretty well. So then that did well enough that I sold it to some guys in the UK, and I went and worked for them for, for two years.

Jay Shetty 22:17 Wow.

Mark Rober 22:17 And it's like, it's such a... Right? This is my example. I mean, this is, this is exactly what I was talking about. I had this idea. I thought it was cool, so I moonlit nights and weekends, basically bootstrapped the company, and then when I launched the video the next year to explain what it was, that T-shirt idea, you know, we made our money back in eight hours, and then, yeah. So very meandering.

Jay Shetty 22:36 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 22:37 Did you always have the ability to turn an idea into action, and how... What have you learned about that, right? Like there's a big... A lot of people have good ideas, and I'm sure you hear all, hear them all the time. I hear them all the time. People come up to me and be like, "Jay, I've had this incredible idea. I want to build this thing," but then it stops there. It doesn't get somewhere. What have you learned about turning ideas into action? What's worked for you?

Mark Rober 22:59 My superpower is my naive optimism. Like, I'm just an idiot that thinks I can do it, and I don't see... Like, I just feel like, oh, this is so obvious, like, I can totally do this. If I knew the amount of work it actually would end up being, I'd be very discouraged. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 23:15 [laughs]

Mark Rober 23:16 But I'm just like an idiot who's like, oh, yeah, I could do this. Like, I think this makes sense. Like, I see the end goal, and so then any pitfall that comes along the way, like I'm so focused on this end goal and, and like that matters, right? Like the attitude you have and whether or not you believe you think you can do it. So then im- if I think I can do it, then the next step is like, well, let me break this down into all the steps, and step one is this, and I'm just gonna dominate that step, and then, you know, just kind of step through it. It's literally the engineering design process, but for ideas

Mark Rober 23:48 and businesses.

Jay Shetty 23:48 Walk us through the engineering design process for anyone who doesn't know what that is. Like, break that down for us. Make it simple, but-

Mark Rober 23:54 I think the idea, it's just like you, you have an end goal, an objective, and break it down into the steps, and know what you don't know, and, and test what you don't know, is kind of like, you know, g- get your, give your best shot at it. You kind of in, in engineering, let's say if I'm designing a piece for the Mars rover, I think, okay, I think it needs, you know, maybe it's a, the, the, the wheel for the Mars rover. I think it needs to probably look like this. I'm gonna design it in CAD. I'm gonna analyze it analytically with computer programs, but that's not what I fly to Mars. I take that-And then I build it, and then I test it to see if it matches. And then sure enough, oh, it does match up. All right, now it's good enough. I've tested it, now I can fly it to Mars. So I think it's this idea of like building iteratively and, and, and breaking things. Like part of designing that is I would make one and I would smash it with a bunch of stuff so I know the limits of the wheel, right? So again, th- we call that a failure, and others outside of engineering, but we embrace that, and it's like, great, now we know. Now let's tweak it, and we're gonna, we're gonna... Now, now we can build something better, right? But I think a lot of times in life, if you get a bad grade on a test, then you internalize that, "I'm not good at math." Or a relationship fails. You're like, "I'm just not good at this love thing." Or a business fails, and you're like, "I guess I'm not a good businessman." But if you, if you look at it like an engineer or even like a video game, I think is like a good way to do it. Like, if you, if you frame your challenges like a video game. No one, no one picks up a controller to play a video game and falls in a pit, let's say Super Mario Brothers or something, and thinks, "I'm s- I'm a failure." Like, "Ah, how embarrassing. I'm terrible at video games." No. You're immediately like, "Oh, shoot. What did I just learn from that? Now I'm gonna j- I'm gonna jump a little faster. I'm gonna run a little faster, jump a little..." You're excited to try again, right? So just the framing of it, it turns from fear to curiosity where you're like, you wanna get up and try it again. So if it's like... A- and you know, you asked me, like, oh, when you have ideas, like, I'm thinking of it like a video game where it's like I wanna rescue Princess from Bowser. So when I get the sliding green turtle shell, which could look like a lot of different things, I don't internalize that I'm a bad player. I'm like, "Got it. I know the shell comes right here. I'm gonna jump a little faster."

Jay Shetty 26:10 Yeah.

Mark Rober 26:10 Right? And that is a life hack. Like, truly. This happens to me all the time on just whenever we wanna do a big video. We just filmed a video where, um, [lips smack] I made a soccer goalie robot that goes back and forth at, like, 80 miles an hour, and then Cristiano Ronaldo tried to score on it.

Jay Shetty 26:26 [laughs]

Mark Rober 26:26 Right? It took us like a year to build.

Jay Shetty 26:28 Yeah.

Mark Rober 26:28 So we tracked the ball, and in the first six milliseconds, when the ball has gone from, like, here to here, I- I just moved it, like, maybe an eighth of an inch. We know exactly where the goalie [chuckles] needs to be to stop that ball. So it's hilarious to see. You know, he tries to do it, and of course...

Jay Shetty 26:45 He misses.

Mark Rober 26:46 No. He's... There's no way he can score. It's way too fast.

Jay Shetty 26:49 No.

Mark Rober 26:49 From the penalty kick area.

Jay Shetty 26:51 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 26:51 He kicks it 80 miles an hour, and the robot's just like, woop, just goes, and it stops.

Jay Shetty 26:56 Oh my gosh.

Mark Rober 26:57 So the point is, though, with that video, I mean, there was tons of sliding green shells and setbacks, and you know... And, and that doesn't mean it doesn't sting, by the way. Failure still can sting. This isn't some fake Pollyanna attitude, right? But it's this idea of like, oh, dang it. But I'm, okay, here we go. We're going at this again, right?

Jay Shetty 27:17 Yeah.

Mark Rober 27:17 And I think that can help you accomplish so much more in life and, and just have honestly better relationships even, right?

Jay Shetty 27:25 Yeah.

Mark Rober 27:25 Because it's just like the way you approach it is like, okay, what did I learn? Versus internalizing that it's something about me.

Jay Shetty 27:31 Yeah. Well said.

Jay Shetty 27:32 Really well said. And I love the video game analogy because you're so right. You, you die, and even though it says game over, you don't feel that way.

Mark Rober 27:39 No.

Jay Shetty 27:40 You're like next, next pl- you know, you wanna get another life. You wanna play again. Like, you never, ever... And it's so crazy 'cause I'm like, it actually says game over.

Mark Rober 27:47 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 27:48 And you don't care.

Mark Rober 27:49 No.

Jay Shetty 27:49 And whereas if someone says game over in real life, where you get rejected or you don't get a job and you apply for one, that hurts much worse, and I guess because it feels like it has real stakes, whereas a video game-

Mark Rober 28:01 I think it's more like you internal- you think that makes you-

Jay Shetty 28:04 Yes

Mark Rober 28:05 ... unemployable.

Jay Shetty 28:06 Yes.

Mark Rober 28:06 You internalize what that means about you, but you don't do that in video games. You don't say, "I'm a bad video game player."

Jay Shetty 28:13 Mm-hmm.

Mark Rober 28:13 And I think the same is true in life. Like, anyone who's got to somewhere in life, they started out sucky at that.

Jay Shetty 28:18 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 28:19 Right? And then they just learned and iterated and overcame. It's the same thing you said with companies. Like, no Fortune 100 company t- today started out doing what they do now.

Jay Shetty 28:29 Yeah, that's right.

Mark Rober 28:29 They've pivoted 15 times, right?

Jay Shetty 28:31 Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Rober 28:32 And I, so I think it's this ability to just, like, not internalize what it says about you-

Jay Shetty 28:36 Mm

Mark Rober 28:37 ... um, and just almost flip it. Like, I'm a person who, who embraces failure and celebrates it, lets it sting.

Jay Shetty 28:44 Mm.

Mark Rober 28:44 Just like in a video game. It sucks to miss that key jump on level 8-1 on Super Mario Brothers [chuckles] with the little platform.

Jay Shetty 28:51 Yeah.

Mark Rober 28:51 But it's like, dang it, we're going back. Because you're focused on the end goal.

Jay Shetty 28:55 Yeah.

Mark Rober 28:55 You're focused on what that would feel like, not the pits and the mistakes.

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Jay Shetty 30:20 What's a failure that you ever experienced in life that you did internalize? Did that ever happen?

Mark Rober 30:26 I got married pretty young, and then it's very amicable, but, like, five years ago, I split with, with my wife. Um-For, you know, I'm pretty private with my private life [laughs] for like reasons and stuff. But, um, and I was like really cautious to get out and like date again. It just, it took me a year to even like start. Um, and I don't know, it felt like I was just very protective. Like I didn't... I wanted, if I was gonna find my person, like I wanted them to love me and not the thought of me or, you know, you just want it to be authentic, right? Um, and so like I never, I, I just wasn't... I was being very cautious about everything. I did find someone that I thought was like, this was, this was it, and I, for the first time, like really opened my heart, right? Like being really, really open. And like the worst possible situation happened where it was like it was, um, it felt, it was like a betrayal. Something happened that it was like, it was essentially this, the worst case where it's like, "Okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna really lean in," and then it happened, and it was absolutely the worst pain like I've experienced as an adult. It was like really, really hard, and it was hard to feel like I would ever find this thing that I felt like other people have found, and I've, I'd never felt it my whole life. Um, and so taking a beat after that was like... I think it was hard. That was like a really, really difficult period for me. Um, but then I honestly, eventually I came around to this Super Mario thing, and I'm like, "You know what? Like, it's just a number. Like, I just gotta put in the reps. I gotta like put the work in."

Jay Shetty 32:17 Mm.

Mark Rober 32:17 And so I did that, and then again failed. I did like, I was like, "I'm gonna m- in 30 days I'm gonna like try and..." [laughs] This, I'm such an engineer. I basically made a goal where it's like I'm gonna go on 30 FaceTime dates in 30 days.

Jay Shetty 32:32 [laughs]

Mark Rober 32:34 And just like 20 minutes, just to get a feel, 'cause you know in the first three minutes-

Jay Shetty 32:38 Yeah

Mark Rober 32:38 ... if there's a connection or not, right?

Jay Shetty 32:40 Yeah.

Mark Rober 32:40 And I did that, and it was, again, Jay, and these are like amazing, accomplished, attractive, lovely human beings, lovely women, right? And I felt nothing. And I was like, "Damn," like, "I think, is this me?" So I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna do one more," and then I did one more, and that's my partner.

Jay Shetty 33:01 Ah.

Mark Rober 33:01 And she's my life partner. It's like it. And it was a, it was a matter of like, it was a like half-hour in, it was like, "Yep, this is it." Like, and it feels like coming home. It's like when you find the right person, it feels like home. It's just like, um, yeah, and it's just like no reservations. And like we're both the same way, and she had the same experience.

Jay Shetty 33:23 Yeah, she's wonderful, man.

Mark Rober 33:24 Yeah, and you met her. And she's had the same experience where she just never felt like she'd found it, and immediately we're just like, "This is it."

Jay Shetty 33:31 Mm.

Mark Rober 33:31 "Cool. Done. Close the spreadsheet."

Jay Shetty 33:33 [laughs]

Mark Rober 33:33 [laughs] Delete it.

Jay Shetty 33:35 So you did engineer your way to love.

Mark Rober 33:37 I did engineer my-

Jay Shetty 33:38 It does work

Mark Rober 33:38 ... which is funny.

Jay Shetty 33:38 It does work, yeah.

Mark Rober 33:39 Because she's the oppo- She's more like you, Jay.

Jay Shetty 33:42 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 33:42 And she just puts it out to the universe.

Jay Shetty 33:44 Yeah.

Mark Rober 33:44 So she's the, uh, she's the dreamer and I'm the thinker.

Jay Shetty 33:47 Yeah.

Mark Rober 33:48 And we each try and take credit for us getting together.

Jay Shetty 33:50 [laughs]

Mark Rober 33:51 She's like, "Look, I put it out to the universe." I'm like, "No, I put in the work."

Jay Shetty 33:53 Yeah, you put in the work.

Mark Rober 33:54 You know? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 33:55 Yeah, no, I love that. I, I mean, to me, I, I mean, I'm, I'm actually, people know less about... I'm, I'm a bit of both as well. There's a-

Mark Rober 34:03 Yeah

Jay Shetty 34:03 ... there's a engineer in me, not, not in the way you are, but in that practical, pragmatic approach to what it really takes-

Mark Rober 34:10 Yeah

Jay Shetty 34:10 ... to getting the reps in. And, and I like that, that it even applied to love, that doing 30 FaceTime calls and 30 dates, that is what it takes to figure out if you have a connection with someone and to speed it up. I always...

Jay Shetty 34:23 I do what I call, for myself, immersion weekends, and so if I'm really fascinated by something, I will find a coach, find the book, find the TED Talk, find the course, and do it all in one weekend to figure out whether I care or not.

Mark Rober 34:36 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:37 And I do these immersion weekends all the time where I'll literally obsess over something for 48 hours, and if I really like it, then it becomes a part of my consistent schedule. And if I hated it, I won't go back again, and I'm okay. And I've loved doing that over time where I'm like, "I'm fascinated by this. I don't have time to go on a weekly course. I don't know if I wanna invest that time. I don't wanna commit to a retreat. Who knows?"

Mark Rober 34:58 Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:59 "But I could do it for a whole weekend."

Mark Rober 35:00 That's genius.

Jay Shetty 35:01 Yeah, it works, it works wonders for me.

Mark Rober 35:02 And that goes back to kinda what I was saying before too, just like w- whatever's the step in front, dominate it.

Jay Shetty 35:07 Dominate, yeah.

Mark Rober 35:08 See it. And if, and if you really immerse yourself, like it will be very clear at the end of that weekend if this is something you wanna do more versus like just dabbling in it, right?

Jay Shetty 35:16 Dabbling, yeah.

Mark Rober 35:17 What's an example... I'm gonna turn the tables on you.

Jay Shetty 35:19 Go on.

Mark Rober 35:19 What's the last thing you did like that, like an immersion weekend?

Jay Shetty 35:22 The immersion weekend?

Mark Rober 35:23 Yeah, like for-

Jay Shetty 35:23 I, [laughs] I'll be honest with you. I just did it this weekend.

Mark Rober 35:26 Mm.

Jay Shetty 35:26 It was, uh, acting.

Mark Rober 35:27 Oh, nice.

Jay Shetty 35:28 So I've been getting all these opportunities to like audition for like TV and film, and I've just been kinda going back and forth. I've spent a lot of time on movie sets with actors that I coach-

Mark Rober 35:38 Yeah

Jay Shetty 35:38 ... not in acting, in-

Mark Rober 35:39 Yeah, yeah

Jay Shetty 35:39 ... in my work. And I've spent a lot of time on movie sets, but I've never been the person doing it, and I've done a few cameos here and there. And because I was getting all these opportunities, my question always is, do I love the process?

Mark Rober 35:50 Mm.

Jay Shetty 35:50 I'm not interested in the result or is it cool. I'm like, do I actually love doing the thing?

Mark Rober 35:55 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 35:56 And so this whole weekend, I had an acting coach. I was with him for three hours a day.

Mark Rober 35:59 No way.

Jay Shetty 36:00 I was doing all the reading pre of the scripts that they sent me. I was doing the reading of books outside of it around acting and writing, just to see if I enjoy the process.

Mark Rober 36:09 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 36:09 And I was like, worst case, I'm gonna hate the process and learn some skills.

Mark Rober 36:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 36:13 Best case, I'm gonna love it, and it's gonna open up new opportunities. I loved it. I had a great time.

Mark Rober 36:17 Really?

Jay Shetty 36:18 Yeah, I was reading scripts. I was learning about characters. We were doing scene study and analysis. Like, it was, it was almost like just reading material and discussing it with someone, and then trying to figure out what the actor's objectives were and what their tactic is and what their motive is. It was fascinating.

Mark Rober 36:34 Really?

Jay Shetty 36:35 Yeah.

Mark Rober 36:35 I love it.

Jay Shetty 36:36 So it was just-

Mark Rober 36:36 So you're gonna do more then. It was a time-

Jay Shetty 36:38 I, I'm gonna do more coaching. I'm gonna take more classes, because it was just so-

Mark Rober 36:41 Totally

Jay Shetty 36:41 ... it was so fun. And if it becomes something that I enjoy enough, I would pursue it professionally. But even if I don't, it's just something that I'm currently immersed in.

Mark Rober 36:50 I feel like you would be great.

Jay Shetty 36:51 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Rober 36:51 I... It's like you have to, um... Yeah, putting yourself in the shoes of the person, like I don't even know what to do with like my face.

Jay Shetty 36:58 Same. Same, man. [laughs]

Mark Rober 37:00 Like, it's like, it's like if I'm supposed to be sad, then I really wanna just like-... you know, pout my lip. And it's like, apparently that's not what you're supposed to do. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 37:07 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 37:08 But that, that's what was so, that was what's so fascinating about it, and I think we're both talking about this idea of learning something deeply, was when you're sitting down with a professional, the way they talk about it, and he was talking about like the Stanislav method and the Chekhov method-

Mark Rober 37:21 Yeah

Jay Shetty 37:21 ... and th- there's all these, there's, there's systems of why the best are the best. Like, they're not-

Mark Rober 37:26 Yeah

Jay Shetty 37:26 ... they're not just the best because they have it. They've studied systems, and they've worked at it. And so to me, he was just like, "There's this method where it's called to act as if." So you can't relate to what the character's going through, but you have something that happened in your life that makes you feel that way that the character's-

Mark Rober 37:43 Yeah

Jay Shetty 37:43 ... feeling, and you channel that. And so to me, it was just, I was just fascinated by the empathy that actors have to have, the compassion, the connection to embody characters.

Mark Rober 37:54 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:54 But that was my most recent discovery.

Mark Rober 37:55 I love that.

Jay Shetty 37:56 Yeah.

Mark Rober 37:56 And my thing right now-

Jay Shetty 37:57 Yeah

Mark Rober 37:57 ... again, like I'm kind of with you. I love mastery, like finding... Mine's public speaking. I hate public speaking.

Jay Shetty 38:02 Oh, yes.

Mark Rober 38:03 Hate it. But my goal is just be really good at it in like a year. So I'm currently working up... I'm actually doing a TED Talk in April. Actually, this is cool to actually mention to you, 'cause I haven't really talked about this publicly much. But we're doing... So through the YouTube channel, we've learned how to like hide the vegetables, right?

Jay Shetty 38:21 Yeah.

Mark Rober 38:21 Basically teach science, and you don't even know it's happening, right?

Jay Shetty 38:24 Yeah.

Mark Rober 38:25 So we're taking all the learnings we've taken th- from that, like 'cause kids can watch or people can just watch whatever they want to on YouTube, but they choose to watch this, and we're making a full science curriculum.

Jay Shetty 38:34 That's amazing.

Mark Rober 38:34 Third to eighth grade. It involves, you know, has my fellow YouTube friends. You know, I just got Cristiano Ronaldo, and we're filming him. He's part of it. Just a bunch of people in it, but then, you know, resources for the teachers, really cool hands-on activities they do in class, everything. And then it's gonna cost about, it's gonna cost us about like $55 million to make, and then we'd make it free forever for all time.

Jay Shetty 38:58 Where will it go? Online, so you don't have... It won't be in your school?

Mark Rober 39:01 No.

Jay Shetty 39:02 Okay.

Mark Rober 39:02 It's like a, it's like online. Teachers can use it. It's a full... It adheres to all of the standards, right? Because teachers will tell you, like they can't teach a kid if they don't have their attention. And what [laughs] I've learned to do on YouTube is getting their attention. So for example, the electricity and magnetism lesson, we just filmed this. There's an MRI machine. I put a watermelon inside it. I'm holding like a 10-pound hammer. And then you essentially flip on the MRI machine. And, but, you know, the hammer just flies out of my hand, destroys this watermelon. And now, Jay, I've got your attention, and now I can say, "You know, there's invisible magnetic fields all around us that exist."

Jay Shetty 39:36 Yeah.

Mark Rober 39:37 Right? And that-

Jay Shetty 39:38 And so teachers can use these in school. They could play that video.

Mark Rober 39:41 And it has, you know, the whole lesson, what they say back to the kids. It will replace their science curriculum, right?

Jay Shetty 39:47 Wow.

Mark Rober 39:47 And it's going to cost, it's gonna take us like three years to make.

Jay Shetty 39:49 Why is it gonna cost you $55 million?

Mark Rober 39:52 It's, it's a huge undertaking. There's like 46 different units. Like, it's sci- it's, it's all sixth through eighth grade science, and then also third grade through, through fifth grade, so.

Jay Shetty 40:03 And you're funding it?

Mark Rober 40:04 Yeah. And, uh, I mean, w- yes, and there are already some generous people who are coming out and-

Jay Shetty 40:10 Yes

Mark Rober 40:10 ... helping it fund. But like regardless, I was, we had started funding it myself anyways with the profits we had from CrunchLabs. So we're gonna announce that at the TED Talk, and like that, I really wanna nail that presentation, so it's like-

Jay Shetty 40:22 I'm happy to help, man-

Mark Rober 40:23 Okay

Jay Shetty 40:23 ... if you need any help.

Mark Rober 40:23 Okay, that's true.

Jay Shetty 40:24 I was lucky. My parents forced me to go to public speaking drama school when I was 11.

Mark Rober 40:27 Oh, really?

Jay Shetty 40:29 [laughs] So all, all my stage speaking skills, uh, from having studied it for seven years, eight years, and so-

Mark Rober 40:35 Yeah, you're a master

Jay Shetty 40:36 ... one of my favorite-

Mark Rober 40:36 Okay. Yeah. I'll re- I'll record the rehearsal, and I'll send it to you, and then you-

Jay Shetty 40:39 Yeah, yeah. Happy to. I mean, they have pros there, obviously. TED have such a great scripting team-

Mark Rober 40:43 Yeah, they do

Jay Shetty 40:43 ... and a great-

Mark Rober 40:44 Yeah

Jay Shetty 40:44 ... pro speaking team.

Mark Rober 40:46 They're not Jay Shetty, though.

Jay Shetty 40:46 That's gonna be... No, that's gonna be amazing.

Mark Rober 40:48 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 40:48 I'm excited to see that.

Mark Rober 40:49 I'm pretty stoked. I like, I feel like it's the most important thing I'll do my whole life.

Jay Shetty 40:52 But

Jay Shetty 40:53 I love that you're doing things that scare you.

Mark Rober 40:54 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 40:55 Like, even at this point, having had so much success and having-

Mark Rober 40:58 Mm

Jay Shetty 40:58 ... you know, being, you know, the spokesperson for science-

Mark Rober 41:01 Mm

Jay Shetty 41:01 ... across the world.

Mark Rober 41:02 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 41:02 It's incredible to see you say, "I'm still scared of this, and I'm gonna do it."

Mark Rober 41:06 No, like I crave it, Jay.

Jay Shetty 41:08 Yeah.

Mark Rober 41:08 Like, I also like, uh, uh, I started like going to the gym two years ago. Same thing, where it's just like I just love an opportunity for mastery. It is this video game thing, right?

Jay Shetty 41:19 Yeah.

Mark Rober 41:19 I think a lot, if you say that I've seen success in my life, a lot of it comes down to this mentality of it's like I just love working on something and the feeling of incrementally getting better. I mean, that's how our brains work, right? Your... I mean, a lot of studies have showed if you get a huge raise, and then, and then your salary's flat for 10 years versus incrementally go up to that 10 year, like you're much happier. You have way more dopamine to your brain if you incrementally level up. This is, again, how video games even work. You start the video game with a wooden sword and three heart containers.

Jay Shetty 41:50 Yeah.

Mark Rober 41:50 Because they reverse engineer. You love just like little levels up. So opportunities that life provides you to just find something like that and then get better at the end of a couple years or months or whatever, decades, nothing better.

Jay Shetty 42:05 How do you keep the childlike fun energy, playful energy that you have, that your work requires, and at the same time run businesses? Because to me, that's the balance that young entrepreneurs, seasoned entrepreneurs, everyone runs into, where it's like running the business is a serious business.

Mark Rober 42:24 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 42:25 But then the business is all about play, curiosity, fun, crazy experiments, right?

Mark Rober 42:30 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 42:30 And we'll get into some of the videos that, that you love the most, but how do you think about the curiosity, creativity part of the business and then the running of a business?

Mark Rober 42:40 Yeah, I think it's good. I, I, there's been studies that look at like successful mid-range comp- These are companies worth, say, 50 to $500 million or something, or even 10 to $500 million, and what all of them have in common is there's one person who is like, has the swim lane of being the creative, the big thinker, you know, the 10X thinker, and then one person who's logistics, right? So, you know, one person who can build the thing and one person who can run the thing. And I was very lucky, a buddy of mine, Jim-You know, worked at Google. I knew he had a very analytical brain, and I said, "Hey, I'm thinking about starting this company, CrunchLabs, you know, make me a model, financial model to see if it works," and he did, and educated me on how they work. It's still the model we use today, and the company's doing very well. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 43:28 Wow.

Mark Rober 43:28 So he's been the one to like, in my opinion, make all the, all the boring stuff I don't want to look at, Jay. Oh, we have to have like a, a warehouse that ships out the stuff. Like, I don't... Just find a good one.

Jay Shetty 43:39 [laughs]

Mark Rober 43:39 You know? [laughs] And he'll geek out over it-

Jay Shetty 43:41 Yeah

Mark Rober 43:41 ... and he has them, you know what I mean? And I'm thinking about like, "Oh, this is... We could do this, you know? Or we could do this." So I think truly if you're starting a business and you're the creative one, just don't try and do the other thing.

Jay Shetty 43:53 Yeah.

Mark Rober 43:54 And the good news is if you're the creative one, the other one's a lot easier to find. Like, the creative, like the good, that, that's more of a rare talent.

Jay Shetty 44:01 Yeah.

Mark Rober 44:01 So just find someone to help you.

Jay Shetty 44:03 Yeah.

Mark Rober 44:03 Don't you-

Jay Shetty 44:04 I- it's great advice.

Mark Rober 44:05 Yeah. At some point if you're small, if you're doing something small like a Halloween T-shirt company, [laughs] like you can be both, but at some point it'll just get way too hard.

Jay Shetty 44:12 Yeah. No, I fully agree with you. We did the same, and I remember when I brought on one of my partners in the early days, everyone was like, "You don't want to give away a percentage," like, "Don't do that. You know, you- it's all your creativity." And I was like, "You have no idea how much time," because I said to him when I met him, I said, "All I want to do is think, study, and teach, and create. Like, that's, that's where I want to live. Like, that's my s- strength, superpower. That's my fascination. Like, I love reading and studying and learning about psychology and ancient wisdom and science and behavioral science." And I... That's, that's what I love reading, studying, learning, observing humans, and then turning into stuff that people can use to make their lives better.

Mark Rober 44:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 44:50 But I don't want to run any of the other stuff.

Mark Rober 44:53 100%.

Jay Shetty 44:53 And-

Mark Rober 44:53 So I think knowing that and owning that-

Jay Shetty 44:55 Yeah

Mark Rober 44:55 ... like is a key to staying happy and honestly fighting burnout.

Jay Shetty 44:58 Yes.

Mark Rober 44:58 Like, I think a lot of times when people feel burnt out in a creative endeavor, it's because they lost sight of what got them in it in the first place, and they're managing 15 people, and they're a manager now. They're not a creative.

Jay Shetty 45:09 Yeah.

Mark Rober 45:10 And they're like, "Why am I doing this? I'm not getting the satisfaction." It's like, oh, because you're not doing what you started doing.

Jay Shetty 45:14 Yeah.

Mark Rober 45:15 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 45:15 What did you

Jay Shetty 45:16 learn at, what did you learn at Apple that you didn't learn at NASA?

Mark Rober 45:20 Um, Apple [laughs] I would say [laughs] like NASA I feel like had a ver- a lot of smart people. At Apple, you had to be pretty smart, but a very good communicator, which is like a... I, I just keyed in on this. And communication and, and sharing ideas and like telling stories matters a lot in... You know, people think I'm a good engineer. You know, I, I can build cool stuff, but it's like I'm an okay engineer, Jay, but I'm a pretty damn good storyteller.

Jay Shetty 45:50 [laughs]

Mark Rober 45:50 Like, [laughs] and in the videos you're telling stories, right? Like this video with Cristiano Ronaldo where he's, like, with the goalie robot going back and forth. Like, it starts out like, "You know, this is my childhood dream. I want to do this thing," and I even... Landon Donovan takes me out, and he's like a coach, and he's like-

Jay Shetty 46:07 Yeah

Mark Rober 46:07 ... "Dude, you suck." You know?

Jay Shetty 46:08 [laughs]

Mark Rober 46:08 He... And so it's like, okay, well, if I can't do it with my athletic prowess, I'm gonna do it with my brain. So now I'm gonna make this goal, right? So you like you case the whole thing in a story-

Jay Shetty 46:16 Yeah

Mark Rober 46:16 ... right? And I think at Apple I learned that. There were some very, very good engineers who were also incredible communicators of like explaining ideas and, you know, that's what really makes us special as a species, ab- ability to cooperate on large scale, and we do that through telling stories.

Jay Shetty 46:33 Mm.

Mark Rober 46:33 Right? That's... We've, we've evolved to tell stories.

Jay Shetty 46:36 Yeah.

Mark Rober 46:37 Long before you could write stuff down, w- we communicated through telling stories and making somebody feel something.

Jay Shetty 46:42 Yes.

Mark Rober 46:42 That's the exact... That's how you make a viral video. You just, you have to evoke a visceral response.

Jay Shetty 46:47 Yeah.

Mark Rober 46:48 And if you can do that, that helps you at work because it convinces everyone else like, "Hey, this is a good idea. Let's all do this." Helps you in your relationships. Like, if you can really create that visceral response by connecting with the human, then, you know, your partner will... Your, your, your child or friend will accept your apology, right? Like, like, um, it'll help you, yeah, just personal life, business, anything by tapping into the ability and owning the ability of like, I need to say this in a way that connects heart to heart, not brain to brain.

Jay Shetty 47:19 Mm.

Mark Rober 47:19 Whereas at, you know, NASA it was like, "Well, you know, our rover is 20% faster-

Jay Shetty 47:24 [laughs]

Mark Rober 47:24 ... on the gigahertz," [laughs] and it's like nobody cares, right?

Jay Shetty 47:26 Yeah.

Mark Rober 47:27 Apple I feel like is a very good example of this, right? Like AirPods is an example. Like the com- the, the advertisements for AirPods, they're just... Technically they're just better than any other head- you know?

Jay Shetty 47:35 Yes.

Mark Rober 47:36 They're... any, like, ear, in-ear product out there. But the commercials are like the dance. It focuses on the feeling, right?

Jay Shetty 47:43 Yeah.

Mark Rober 47:44 Like what does it feel like to have these things? Not like here's the tech spec of why it's better.

Jay Shetty 47:48 Yeah.

Mark Rober 47:49 And as a result, I think they're... Like if they were a standalone company, it would be, the market cap would be like, I don't know, it's something crazy like-

Jay Shetty 47:55 Just for the AirPods.

Mark Rober 47:56 Just for the Air- It's like $50 billion-

Jay Shetty 47:58 Wow

Mark Rober 47:59 ... market cap just for the AirPods. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 48:01 Crazy. That's crazy.

Mark Rober 48:03 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 48:03 Yeah, it's such a... Hearing you say that is, is fascinating because yeah, I read a study years ago. It was early days, but New York Times did a study on 7,000 pieces of viral content, and the output was the 7,000 pieces of viral content, they made people feel five things. One of five things. The first was adventure, which yours, your content does all the time. Humor, your content does that, too, or comedy obviously. Uh, the oth- the third feeling was negativity.

Mark Rober 48:36 Yep. Anger.

Jay Shetty 48:36 Like the news. Anger.

Mark Rober 48:38 Yep.

Jay Shetty 48:38 Rage.

Mark Rober 48:40 Yep.

Jay Shetty 48:40 Yours does not do that.

Mark Rober 48:41 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 48:41 [laughs] Uh, the fourth was inspiration, so you felt inspired after watching it, and the fifth was surprise.

Mark Rober 48:47 Mm.

Jay Shetty 48:47 And so those were the five emotions, and they're all feelings. Like, and I always share that with people because I'm like, "Your content's trying to teach me something. It's trying to tell me something."

Mark Rober 48:57 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 48:57 And you're talking about adding value, but when you're trying to add value, you're not making me feel anything, and if... And it's what you were saying about hiding the vegetables.

Mark Rober 49:04 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 49:04 It's like if you're making people feel entertained, then you're learning about engineering and process and design and everything. But if I'm like, "I'm gonna teach you engineering," now I'm not... I'm feeling bored.

Mark Rober 49:15 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 49:16 And that's not on the top five list.

Mark Rober 49:17 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 49:18 And so I'm not feeling anything. I wanted to ask you about... I want to get tactical with you because you're also a YouTube creative genius.

Jay Shetty 49:24 It's like what was the journey from zero to 1,000 subscribers?What does that look like for someone if someone's trying to do that as stage one?

Mark Rober 49:33 There's a lot of really good reasons to start a YouTube channel or to be a creative. There's only two bad ones.

Jay Shetty 49:38 Tell us.

Mark Rober 49:39 To get rich and to get famous. [laughs] And I think that's, like, the mistake a lot of people... Especially now that you know you can get rich and famous, and I think we both started in this game. It just wasn't the same. Like, th- you didn't realize that was it, right? And we ca-

Jay Shetty 49:54 [laughs]

Mark Rober 49:54 Our passion was like, "We love this," right? Um-

Jay Shetty 49:57 I thought it was gonna be... I thought I was gonna... Because I was a consultant at the time.

Mark Rober 50:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 50:00 So I was at Accenture.

Mark Rober 50:02 [laughs] Oh, really?

Jay Shetty 50:02 I... Yeah. I thought I was gonna be a consultant by day-

Mark Rober 50:06 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 50:06 ... and just upload videos by night and weekends because I was like, "This is a fun hobby." It was, it was just-

Mark Rober 50:11 Yeah

Jay Shetty 50:11 ... a creative outlet for me.

Mark Rober 50:12 Totally.

Jay Shetty 50:12 I was like, I was doing live events, teaching wisdom, and teaching classes and meditation, and I would teach at my local gym. I would teach at-

Mark Rober 50:19 Yeah

Jay Shetty 50:19 ... my local college, I'd... Whatever. And I loved it, but I was like, "Oh, I'd like to share that with more people. I'll just upload some videos." And yeah, I had no idea that any of this would ever happen. So and, yeah, we started... I started 2016. You started 2011.

Mark Rober 50:35 Yeah, but ultimately 20-

Jay Shetty 50:36 Yeah. Yeah

Mark Rober 50:36 ... I mean, like, to your point, like, it takes forever to get 1,000 subscribers, and so I think the, the trick is just to make content, just to do it. Don't overthink it. D- you know, the temptation is you wanna make the perfect thing, and again, going back to an engineer, you build prototypes.

Jay Shetty 50:51 Yeah.

Mark Rober 50:52 Like, the biggest mistake when you wanna make something is like, "I wanna build the final thing." Any object in this room was not built... Like, this was not the final form. This was not the initial version of this microphone. Like, it started very simply, and then it iterated and iterated. And so it's the same thing with, like, creating content or making anything or trying anything, like set a low bar. You know, I like to say, like, make your goal to, to fail 10 times. Like, flip it. Make the goal, like, I wanna make 10 videos, and my goal is that they don't get more than 100 views, in a sense of, like, don't make your metric, "But I'm not rich yet, and I'm not famous yet, therefore I'm a failure."

Jay Shetty 51:31 Mm.

Mark Rober 51:31 Like, make your me- like, destigmatize the failure-

Jay Shetty 51:34 Mm

Mark Rober 51:34 ... and just go for it. And make that... So make the goal, you know... Maybe a better way to say this, make the goal to just upload 10 videos in 10 weeks. That's my goal. I, I don't care about metric. I don't care about views. And you will learn so much more through that by then... And then iterating and seeing what worked. Back to a video game. "Okay, I said this thing. I started this way. Aha, the algorithm seemed to really like that." You know, and that's what the audience wants, so now I'm gonna lean into that, right? So it's like just gamify it in that sense, and it w- it will be great. Don't do it to be rich or famous. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 52:07 Yeah. It's great advice. I remember I got to... I got my first thousand subscribers in a month on YouTube.

Mark Rober 52:12 Mm.

Jay Shetty 52:13 And I was over the moon. Like, I was so excited. I couldn't believe it. Like, I was like, this is-

Mark Rober 52:18 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 52:18 I'd never stood in front of a r- I'd maybe done one talk, which was a work event, which had 1,000 people in the audience, but I'd never done my own event-

Mark Rober 52:26 Yeah

Jay Shetty 52:26 ... with 1,000 people. I'd mostly... If I'd done my own event, maybe 50 was the most I'd ever had in my own live events. So 1,000 subscribers, this is insane. And I remember saying it to my friends, and they were like, "Yeah, it's probably cool." Like, you know, "Good for you." Like, you know? And it felt like a failure because it... to them, not to me-

Mark Rober 52:42 Yeah

Jay Shetty 52:42 ... because they were just like, "Oh, it's 1,000. Like, I guess it's gonna... You know, nah, yeah." And it was just so interesting for me to see like, oh, it was good I didn't feel that way because-

Mark Rober 52:50 Yeah

Jay Shetty 52:50 ... I would've stopped.

Mark Rober 52:52 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 52:52 But 1,000 to me was a huge win.

Jay Shetty 52:54 What's the difference between getting from 1,000 to 100,000? Like, what is changing in skill set, mindset, ability?

Mark Rober 53:02 You start to get, like, a process down. You start to be able to, um, figure out your own voice. I think, like, from about 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers, you start to understand who you are. You know, and a good place to start, by the way, is just copying other channels that you like. Like, don't be ashamed at the beginning just to copy someone else's style and i- you know, if you don't know where to start, if you don't have something, and you'll start doing it, and you'll try something one time, and it works, and it sticks, and then you, you know, you start to find what your own voice is.

Jay Shetty 53:32 You've only ever... You said you've only ever made one video a month.

Mark Rober 53:35 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 53:36 How did you not get sucked into the landscape when it was like people were making a video a day, people were making three videos a week, people were make... You know? How did you stay true to... Was it just that your creative vision was so big that you could only ever do one a month?

Mark Rober 53:51 Partly that, and just, like, again, I, I wasn't doing it to chase the views. And you're absolutely right. There was a time in the YouTube algorithm where daily vlogs-

Jay Shetty 53:59 Yeah

Mark Rober 53:59 ... is how you got all the views.

Jay Shetty 54:00 Early.

Mark Rober 54:01 And I said, "Great." Like, great for everyone else. Like, I am enjoying it this way. This is what I like. This is, like, the pace I'm comfortable with. Like, I'm very protective. I'm very good at saying no. [laughs] Like, that's my superpower and just, like, I can have that restraint, and I... you know, I've got a nice comfortable jogging pace on my treadmill, and I'm gonna stick with that. Um, so and even today, you know, good at saying no.

Jay Shetty 54:28 What was the hardest

Jay Shetty 54:29 thing you ever said no to?

Mark Rober 54:31 You know, early on there were some opportunities to do some, like, Discovery Channel shows that I would've loved as a kid, but then it's like when I had everything else going on, like, I don't know. You just get opportunities that come by that you don't... It's almost not hard to say no 'cause it's like unless it's an absolute hell yes, I don't even consider it, right? And I think that is... That can be a superpower is, like, laser focus. Like, I, I don't often, like, pick something that I'm just like, "Oh, I'm on it," but, like, if I do choose something that it's like I want it, like, I can be like a pit bull [laughs] on it where it's just like I, I, I will not fa- Like, I, I don't know. At some point, if it's not working, you need to pivot, and I do, but it's like I just get so obsessed with accomplishing the thing that, um-I can just exclude everything else.

Jay Shetty 55:20 Mm.

Mark Rober 55:20 So I, I'm, I don't have this temptation of like, "I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try this," and now you're just diluted across the board, right? 'Cause that applies not even for business, but in your relationships, right?

Jay Shetty 55:30 Mm-hmm.

Mark Rober 55:31 In life. If, if you are stretching yourself thin... You know, I'd much rather give like five people in my life like very deep depth and have that richness of human connection than to spread that thin across 50.

Jay Shetty 55:43 Yeah.

Mark Rober 55:44 Right?

Jay Shetty 55:44 Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's a... Yeah, there's almost like there's the experimenting phase where you're trying lots of things out-

Mark Rober 55:50 Yeah

Jay Shetty 55:50 ... but then when you know who you are, and you know your voice, and you know what you're building-

Mark Rober 55:53 Yeah

Jay Shetty 55:54 ... you gotta stick to that. And, and it, and it does make all the difference. And you gotta know when to let something go. Like, the, the videos I used to make on Facebook when I first started as a creator, I don't make them anymore. And it's not because they weren't amazing and they didn't change my life, it's just that's not who I wanted to be forever.

Mark Rober 56:10 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 56:10 And they would've been really successful now if I carried on making them, but I wouldn't have felt happy. And so I chose what I wanted to do, which was this, and telling stories in a certain way that's allowed my life to also be fulfilling as well as successful, rather than keeping, keep doing something because the algorithm wants it.

Mark Rober 56:29 That's right.

Jay Shetty 56:29 And, and it doesn't... That, that gets really dry to... It, it gets really tiring, I think, and creators get burnt out chasing the algorithm, which I think we've both seen probably a lot of.

Mark Rober 56:38 Yeah, I think that's right. I think when you crank up that treadmill speed to a sprint pace, that's exciting at first. And it's like, whoa, all these opportunities are coming. But, you know, the dopamine wears off and you're still sprinting.

Jay Shetty 56:50 Mm.

Mark Rober 56:50 And to me, that's the definition of burnout, when you're not getting like the positive feedback and you're like really, really going for it. So to the extent that you could just like keep your treadmill at a jogging speed, in creating and in life, I think like that's, that's the power of saying no.

Jay Shetty 57:05 Yeah.

Mark Rober 57:05 And being okay with saying no and not feeling guilty about it.

Jay Shetty 57:08 What was

Jay Shetty 57:09 the, uh... I'm looking at your most popular videos, and obviously, World's Largest Jello Pool, Can You Swim in Jello? 203 million views six years ago. That video, what went wrong trying to get that video?

Mark Rober 57:21 I lost 10 pounds making that video.

Jay Shetty 57:23 How-

Mark Rober 57:23 I'm not kidding.

Jay Shetty 57:24 You couldn't eat.

Mark Rober 57:24 Because, because we were make... I get... When I get stressed, I don't eat. We were making it in my brother's backyard, because to make Jello... No one's ever done this on the internet, by the way. To this day, I'm the only person who'd ever made, like, an actual Jello pool. Because Jello, as you know, you have to get it really cold. You gotta first of all boil it, and then it's gotta put it in the refrigerator, right? So we had like six, you know, 55-gallon drums [laughs] that we boiled Jello in, basically, drained it in this pool that we'd, we'd built. And then he lived in Utah, so it was like the perfect temperature. It didn't freeze overnight, but got cold enough. And so it took a full week, and it failed eight different ways.

Jay Shetty 58:04 [laughs]

Mark Rober 58:04 And we'd have to tweak and, and, and change it. A storm came. We're covering it with a tarp. But eventually we got that money shot of, like, a kid belly flopping on this pool of Jello and, like, me swimming in it.

Jay Shetty 58:17 [laughs]

Mark Rober 58:18 And, uh, it felt really good. That's like a, actually a v- it turns out a very technically difficult problem. Again, my naive optimism was like, "Oh, I got this. I can do this," right?

Jay Shetty 58:27 Yeah.

Mark Rober 58:28 And it was very, very tricky, but we pulled it off.

Jay Shetty 58:31 What, what was the hidden vegetable in the Egg Drop From Space video? 140 million views two years ago. Like, what was the, what was the hidden vegetable there?

Mark Rober 58:39 Yeah. There again, that video had so many failures in it, Jay. Like, we tried originally to put a, a, a, a, basically a model rocket on a h- on a hot air balloon or on a weather balloon, and then guide it over a mattress so that where it would let go and drop the egg on the mattress. We tried that three different times, and this was costing me like 30,000 times a drop. And eventually I t- called up one of my buddies at NASA. He's the lead when we try and land something-

Jay Shetty 59:06 [laughs]

Mark Rober 59:06 ... on another planet. And I was like, "Adam, how do we do this?" And he's like, "Oh, what you're trying to do is create a guided missile, and there's like 100 people in the United States who know how to do that, and they've all signed a very large stack of papers saying they won't tell anyone." [laughs] So we're like, "Oh, we shouldn't try and guide this rocket down then. Well, let's go 100,000 feet up, you know, basically to space, drop this thing," and then we landed it like the Mars rover. So in that video, we learned about terminal velocity, and we learned about, like, space environments. But kids know about-

Jay Shetty 59:39 That's... I love how, I love how you were bugging a NASA friend-

Mark Rober 59:42 Yeah

Jay Shetty 59:42 ... who's d- dealing with, like, solving, like-

Mark Rober 59:44 Yeah

Jay Shetty 59:44 ... discovery and problems.

Mark Rober 59:46 It's literally the man who, like, invented-

Jay Shetty 59:47 Yeah

Mark Rober 59:47 ... how you land on Mars.

Jay Shetty 59:49 Yeah.

Mark Rober 59:49 And it's like my phone-a-friend.

Jay Shetty 59:50 You're like, "Can you teach me how to drop a egg-

Mark Rober 59:53 Yeah

Jay Shetty 59:53 ... on a, on a mattress?"

Mark Rober 59:54 And he's like, "Yeah, no, that's called a missile." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 59:57 [laughs] That's amazing.

Jay Shetty 59:59 Well, who have you met through doing all of this work that you've just been so... like, you've learned from or you've been inspired by, or someone that you've met through this crazy journey that you've been on that has kinda left a mark on you, or someone that you always looked forward to getting to know and you've got to meet?

Mark Rober 1:00:14 Yeah. I would say, I don't know, weirdly, like, a, a mentor for me actually has been Jimmy Kimmel. Like, you know, he saw one of my videos, like, a decade ago and said, "We should get this guy on the show." And his staff was like, "After, like, one or two times going on the show that he really likes you." And I'm like, "You say that to everyone." But, like, the fourth time I was like, "I think he does really like me." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:00:37 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:00:37 And so now he's like, uh... He, it was his idea even to start CrunchLabs, the company, 'cause people would tell me all the time, like, "You need to do a podcast. You need to write a book. You need to go on tour." And when I double-click on it, 'cause again, I'm good at saying no, it always came back to like, "Oh, so you can make more money." And it's like, "Oh, good, great news. I don't spend a lot of money, so I've got enough money. I don't need to do that," right? And his point was like, "Yeah, but you could reach more brains deeper." And, and that's the idea with CrunchLabs. It's like you're in the trenches. You're not just passively watching a video. It's a really fun toy, and you're in the trenches. And you get 'em every month. And he was totally right. Like, the amount of letters we get from parents saying, like, "This has changed the way my kid sees the world, sees themselves," right? They love it. They go out to the mailbox every month waiting for it to come. Makes a great Christmas present, by the way, Jay.

Jay Shetty 1:01:27 [laughs] There we go.

Mark Rober 1:01:28 Makes a great Christmas present.

Jay Shetty 1:01:29 Yeah. I was about to say, it's, uh... No, it sounds like the perfect gift. I mean, I've, I think I'll have to... I'm gonna, I'm gonna get some for my niece and nephew.

Mark Rober 1:01:36 Okay.

Jay Shetty 1:01:36 Yeah. I think, I think they'll love it because my, my... I can see... My nephew's, like, 10 years old.And his brain's like that.

Mark Rober 1:01:44 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:01:44 Like, he wants to build stuff, he wants to break stuff, he wants to figure things out. Uh, my niece is more into like Gabby's Dollhouse and stuff like that.

Mark Rober 1:01:51 Well, the good news, Jay-

Jay Shetty 1:01:52 It's like, "Oh, all right"

Mark Rober 1:01:52 ... it's funny you mention that.

Jay Shetty 1:01:53 "Go on then."

Mark Rober 1:01:53 We just, uh-

Jay Shetty 1:01:54 No, have you got Gabby's Dollhouse, man?

Mark Rober 1:01:56 More or less. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:01:57 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:01:57 We, it's called Creative Kit. So what I do is creative engineering. The engineering part we've got covered. Build Box is the toys I was saying, and then we have like a robotics one. But like, the creative part we never... So we've like studied what creativity is, and now there's a version called Creative Kit that it, it's like six years old and up, and it's a little bit of a Trojan horse to get more girls in STEM, but also it's for boys as well. But they, they get a world. Every, every month it's a different part of a little town they build. And the important part is like it's within guide rails. If you tell a kid, give them a piece of paper and say, "Come up, you know, draw something," they're like, "Uh." But if you say like, "Draw s- draw an animal doing something really, doing their hobby, you know, in a place you wouldn't expect," well, now they have like a seed, right? So it's this idea of like the first one's a tree house, but then you name, it's a little animal's friend that comes with it. And then we're getting that within guidelines to think really creatively. And, and what this research shows, you can m- watch these alpha brainwaves in your, in... Is the more time you spend in this space, the m- easier it is to do it. So it's just like a muscle that you develop. So it's basically giving kids time in this space to be more creative.

Jay Shetty 1:03:04 Did you always want your work and your products to help kids? Like, was that the goal for the YouTube channel from day one? Was it like, "I wanna help young people figure out, young kids figure out..."

Mark Rober 1:03:14 I don't think so-

Jay Shetty 1:03:14 No

Mark Rober 1:03:14 ... to be completely honest. Like, I think it was more just like, I love sharing ideas. Like, I love the aha moment when you learn something new. Um, and I love even more is like giving that to someone else. Like, here's something I was just talking about with my partner the other day, which is such a cool thing to do. I don't know if you've ever done this. If you're ever laying underneath a tree-

Jay Shetty 1:03:34 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:03:34 ... and you just look up, or anything where there's like a bunch of little things, and you close one eye, and all the leaves feel like they're kind of, or branches kind of feel like they're at the same plane. Because with one eye you don't have three-dimensional, you know, 3D. But when you open both eyes and realize like, "Oh, now I know which leaf is in front of me and which one is farther," like if you've never done this, you should do it. And it's remarkable, and it's just, it, it's immediately just like a, a teachable moment that shows like, oh, like our brain, because the right eye is a little bit different from what the left eye sees, the brain does all this incredible math to tell you how far and close something is.

Jay Shetty 1:04:11 Hm.

Mark Rober 1:04:12 And just to g- to get that moment. And then now once you know that you're like, wait, with animals, I have noticed like predators, you know, a hawk or a lion, they have eyes on the front of their face-

Jay Shetty 1:04:22 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:04:22 ... so that they can see three-dimensional. But if generally speaking, if you're a prey, a zebra or a deer, your eyes are on the side. They don't have the depth perception, but now they can avoid the thing that has three dimensions that's trying to get them, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:04:35 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:04:35 So it's this like idea like when you just learn something cool like that, uh, just that nugget, and now you've updated your framework for the natural world around you, is so exciting and beautiful and addictive to me, and I love to give that to other people. And what I've found, I especially love to give that to the, to the young folks.

Jay Shetty 1:04:54 What are you doing

Jay Shetty 1:04:55 to constantly learn things like that? Like, where are you coming across statistics, facts, human behavior, animal... Like, where are you exposed to this? Where are you finding it and discovering it in a way that's helping you feel like you're always on the cusp of something cool?

Mark Rober 1:05:10 Everywhere, truly. Like, I think the, the answer to this question, I think what you're driving at, is it kind of starts with a curiosity, right? Just, and observing, and being like, even if there's like a weird, on the side of a building or something there's like a pipe that comes out, I'm like, "What? Why, why is that pipe there?" Like, I've never seen a build, a pipe come out there on a building. And it'll drive me crazy, to be honest. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:05:34 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:05:34 And I, and I like have to figure it out. But the step one with the scientific method too is just observation.

Jay Shetty 1:05:39 Mm-hmm.

Mark Rober 1:05:40 Right? The most interesting thing to hear in science isn't like, "Eureka," like, "I found it." The most interesting thing in science to hear, like the one thing you wanna hear is like, "That's interesting."

Jay Shetty 1:05:49 Hm.

Mark Rober 1:05:50 Like, "Hold on a second."

Jay Shetty 1:05:51 Hm.

Mark Rober 1:05:51 Right? Like, "That wasn't expected. Let me double click on that and see what's going on there."

Jay Shetty 1:05:57 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:05:57 So I think part of learning a bunch is just having a curiosity mind, just asking the question.

Jay Shetty 1:06:03 Yes. Yes.

Mark Rober 1:06:03 Right? And I think that's what I try and do is like I am a fire start... My, my videos are not gonna teach you everything you need to know about the natural world, but like what I can do is I can like, I can f- I'm a fire start. I'll start that fire in their brain, and then they get addicted to this feeling, right? I'm like the gateway drug dealer [laughs] to this-

Jay Shetty 1:06:22 Yeah, yeah

Mark Rober 1:06:22 ... aha feeling, and then they wanna go out and learn more, right?

Jay Shetty 1:06:25 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:06:26 And like that, that's beautiful, and that's a gift that you can give someone that will last their whole life long.

Jay Shetty 1:06:31 How

Jay Shetty 1:06:32 do you, how do you come up with creative ideas, having made a video a month for 10 years?

Mark Rober 1:06:37 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:06:38 How are you coming up with new ideas? How, how, what's your creative process? Do you sit down in a room, lock away? Are you on your laptop?

Mark Rober 1:06:45 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:06:45 Are you talking to people? Are you with a team?

Mark Rober 1:06:47 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:06:47 What's your process?

Mark Rober 1:06:48 Can I tell you one that you bleep out on this?

Jay Shetty 1:06:50 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:06:50 But you could play it, but then I want your reaction on camera.

Jay Shetty 1:06:53 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:06:58 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:06:58 That's so good. That's so good.

Mark Rober 1:07:01 It's so good.

Jay Shetty 1:07:02 I love that.

Mark Rober 1:07:03 Is that not so good?

Jay Shetty 1:07:04 That's... Why do I have to bleep that out? I love that.

Mark Rober 1:07:06 No, because I don't want someone to steal it.

Jay Shetty 1:07:07 Oh, right.

Mark Rober 1:07:08 You know what I mean?

Jay Shetty 1:07:08 Oh, yes.

Mark Rober 1:07:09 It's such a simple thing. I could tell you it. You're like, "Banger."

Jay Shetty 1:07:12 I, yeah, I love it.

Mark Rober 1:07:12 You wanna know what that is, right?

Jay Shetty 1:07:14 Yeah. That is amazing.

Mark Rober 1:07:15 Is it so good?

Jay Shetty 1:07:16 That's so good.

Mark Rober 1:07:17 So it's just like when, when I can get that reaction-

Jay Shetty 1:07:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Mark Rober 1:07:20 ... I, I'd like, I, that, the ideas list is long. I always thought you'd run out of ideas, but it's like, I, I always-

Jay Shetty 1:07:26 But it has to be a hell yes.

Mark Rober 1:07:27 It has to be a hell yes.

Jay Shetty 1:07:29 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:07:29 But I, I always tend to have like a year and a half worth of ideas. So like, we have every single video we're making in 2026 already like planned out and in process and stuff.

Jay Shetty 1:07:37 So you're never trying to react to what's happening in the world-

Mark Rober 1:07:39 Never

Jay Shetty 1:07:39 ... or you're not trying-

Mark Rober 1:07:40 Never.

Jay Shetty 1:07:40 Yours is evergreen content.

Mark Rober 1:07:41 Evergreen.

Jay Shetty 1:07:42 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:07:42 Never. I want it to be evergreen.

Jay Shetty 1:07:44 Yeah, you're not trying to react to like everyone loves AI right now, so we're gonna do AI. Everyone loves robotics, so we're doing, right.

Mark Rober 1:07:49 We can't. I mean, all the videos now cost, we don't do a video that costs less than-Half a million dollars

Jay Shetty 1:07:56 Wow

Mark Rober 1:07:56 Right?

Jay Shetty 1:07:56 Every video is $500,000.

Mark Rober 1:07:57 Yeah, because we're just like, you know, we're doing [laughs] stuff that's never been done before. So there's like a lot of R&D that goes into making a soccer robot that moves at 80 miles an hour.

Jay Shetty 1:08:05 Oh, yeah.

Mark Rober 1:08:05 [laughs] Right?

Jay Shetty 1:08:06 That's, that's probably the best goalkeeper that Ronaldo's ever faced in his life.

Mark Rober 1:08:09 For sure it is, yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:08:10 Yeah. That's crazy. I w- I can't wait to see that video.

Mark Rober 1:08:12 It's funny, he's very competitive.

Jay Shetty 1:08:14 Of course. I, I've obsessed over Ronaldo since I was 15 years old.

Mark Rober 1:08:17 [laughs] I see. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:08:17 Because I, I was a United fan, so when he came to United when he was 17-

Mark Rober 1:08:21 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:08:22 ... I've, uh, been a big fan for, like, 23 years. So watching... I know how competitive he is, and I'm like, watching him fail is gonna be an interesting, uh-

Mark Rober 1:08:30 His team warned us. They're like, "He doesn't..." In the end, like, there was a way... We kind of had a, a built-in weakness he could exploit.

Jay Shetty 1:08:37 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:08:37 And he did a pretty good job finding it, but between you and me, Jay, we might have, like... We, we made sure there was a weakness. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:08:44 You should just, you just... Now all you have to do is create robots that look like humans that are designed like your 80 mile per hour goalkeeper and sell them to these teams.

Mark Rober 1:08:52 Sure. [laughs] To teams.

Jay Shetty 1:08:53 Like, that's the next thing.

Mark Rober 1:08:54 That's-

Jay Shetty 1:08:54 Can you pull off selling-

Mark Rober 1:08:55 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:08:56 ... an AI computer to Barcelona or Real Madrid or-

Mark Rober 1:09:00 That's a banger idea, Jay

Jay Shetty 1:09:01 ... That'd be, that'd be amazing.

Mark Rober 1:09:02 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:09:02 So,

Jay Shetty 1:09:03 but okay, so what, so what's the creative process then? Now you planned out, uh, that far ahead. I love the idea you just gave me-

Mark Rober 1:09:09 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:09:09 ... that we'll bleep out, but what, how, how does... Obviously, that one makes sense, and you're like... The, the thing about good ideas is when you hear them-

Mark Rober 1:09:16 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:09:16 ... you go, "Of course."

Mark Rober 1:09:17 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:09:18 But coming up with it is not that easy.

Mark Rober 1:09:20 Yeah. I would say, and I, I don't have a good answer for this-

Jay Shetty 1:09:23 That's okay

Mark Rober 1:09:24 ... except ex- no, but except to say, because I get asked this a lot, right?

Jay Shetty 1:09:27 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:09:27 It's like, I think it goes back to just, like, my brain is always on, right? It, the inspiration for ideas can come, you know, and, and it's just from a conversation I'm having with someone.

Jay Shetty 1:09:38 Mm-hmm.

Mark Rober 1:09:38 Or I just read something on Reddit, or I'm driving down the freeway and I'm like, "Hold on." Or I did this, uh, you know, for... I'll give you two examples. One, I did this, um, obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard that's kind of popular on the channel right around COVID. And I was l- you know, they were stealing my bird seeder, so it's like, all right. But they were stealing my bird seed. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna make them earn it. So I, I made an eight-part Ninja Warrior obstacle course and put the bird seed at the end, and sure enough, like, they solved it. It was very entertaining, but, like, the idea for that came from me just laying in bed-

Jay Shetty 1:10:06 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:10:06 ... and just hearing them on the roof and knowing they're stealing my bird seed. I was like, hold on. I should do, like, man versus animal, engineer versus animal. Or another one, I made this glitter bomb series where, like, someone legitimately stole a package from my porch. I felt really sad. It was a sliding green shell in Super Mario Brothers. It stung. And then I was like, hold on a second. Like, if anyone can do something about these porch pirate punks, it's, like, I helped put a rover on Mars. I could design something. So then it's, like, four phones, cup of glitter. We track it. There's fart spray. It's, like, a whole thing, right?

Jay Shetty 1:10:37 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:10:38 And eventually that one took us all the way to, we shut down, like, three scam call centers in India by tracking them down and glitter bombing them and doing all these other pranks, and then putting that video out in the world. It gets 100 million views with, like, a bright spotlight, and, and we shut them down. So it's like, again, I couldn't have predicted you would land there.

Jay Shetty 1:10:57 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 1:10:58 If you just follow the natural steps, it just happens.

Jay Shetty 1:11:00 Was there a video that you did 'cause you thought... But you did it because you just had to put something out, and you're like, "It's a terrible idea," but then it turned out to be amazing.

Mark Rober 1:11:07 Yeah. I did a video on bedbugs [laughs] 'cause I just thought they're fascinating. Like, what is up with bedbugs? They, like, suck human blood, and if you s- if you see bedbugs, they have to be fed, like, every three days. If you see a bedbug in your house, that means they fed on you. All they can eat is blood. And so it's like, there's just a lot about them that's fascinating, and my team was like, "This is gonna kill the channel. No one's gonna watch this." And I was just so curious about it, right? So I just went down the rabbit hole deep, and it turned out to be, like, I think an interesting piece of content that has, like, I think 80 million views or something.

Jay Shetty 1:11:42 Wow. That's amazing.

Mark Rober 1:11:43 So I think if you just approach it with curiosity and legitimately, like... You know, I don't pre-write my videos. If I have an idea, I go learn about it, and then once we have the, the, the, the footage, it's like, all right, what's the story here?

Jay Shetty 1:11:57 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:11:57 And I think if you have the right attitude, there's always a really cool story to find.

Jay Shetty 1:12:02 Yeah, absolutely.

Jay Shetty 1:12:03 Absolutely. What's, what's a question that you still don't have the answer to, but you can't stop thinking about? Do you ever get into that loop of, like, I wish I understood how this worked?

Mark Rober 1:12:13 I don't know. There's, like, kind of unanswerable questions, like where is all the life in the univ- Like, if life exists here, especially if... So NASA's... There's a moon called En- Enceladus in our, in our solar system that has a, a molten lava core, and the outside is ice, right? Water. Uh, water, frozen water. So somewhere between the molten lava core and that, and that surface, there's a 70-degree ocean. It's warm. It's water. It's, that's where life formed. We know that's where life formed on this planet. So NASA's building a probe to go out there essentially. We're gonna drill through the ice. We're gonna put a submarine down there and basically see what eats it, right? [laughs] And if, if something is there, for life to exist twice in our own solar system kinda independently, then it's like, whew, w- where is all the rest of life in this huge, huge, huge universe, right? There's, I think, something like, there's a million times more stars than there are grains of sand on the whole planet. The bottom of the ocean... I mean, think about the ne-

Jay Shetty 1:13:19 That's insane

Mark Rober 1:13:19 ... the last time you picked up a handful of sand. Every one of those sand pieces represents a million stars. I'm talking bottom of the ocean. How unfathomable.

Jay Shetty 1:13:29 That's bizarre. That is completely unfathomable.

Mark Rober 1:13:32 It's unfathomable. So but then, like, it's called Fermi's paradox, but there's a few hypotheses of, like, well, then why don't we see other signs of life in the universe? And it's a very fa- if, if you want a fascinating rabbit hole, look up Fermi's paradox. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:13:45 Yeah. What, what have you learned so far? We ju- is it that life form looks different? We can't see it? Is it-

Mark Rober 1:13:51 Well, we don't know, but, like, some of the hypothe- some of the hypotheses on why we don't know is, like-It could be, um, there's like super predator civilization... There's super predator, um, um, organisms out there that as soon as you get past a certain point, then like, "Okay, now this is a problem. We're gonna go take care of these people." So they extinguish life if it gets too high 'cause it could be a threat. It could be... Another one is like intelligences get to a, a glass ceiling where they destroy themselves. When you have the energy that can take you to interstellar, to another system, well, you could probably use that energy on yourself. And, you know, when we... A lot of organisms fight each other, and y- you know, that could be a pretty darn good thing for us to be looking at as a, as a civilization ourselves, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:14:42 Yeah, for sure.

Mark Rober 1:14:43 Like, where you just get too hard, and then it just, it collapses in on itself.

Jay Shetty 1:14:46 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:14:46 Is another hypothesis.

Jay Shetty 1:14:48 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:14:48 One is like they know about us, but it's ki- we're kind of like an endangered species, like an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon, so they're like, "Shh, just, like, leave them alone."

Jay Shetty 1:14:56 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:14:56 We're like so basically in a zoo over here, right?

Jay Shetty 1:14:58 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:14:58 So there's all these, like, really fun hypotheses on what could be the explanation as to why, so.

Jay Shetty 1:15:04 That's good.

Mark Rober 1:15:04 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:15:05 That's what keeps you up at night.

Mark Rober 1:15:06 Yeah. I, I think it's a fun-

Jay Shetty 1:15:07 Yeah, yeah

Mark Rober 1:15:07 ... those kind of things are, like, fun to think about, right?

Jay Shetty 1:15:09 Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Actually-

Mark Rober 1:15:10 But n- next time you are near sand, truly-

Jay Shetty 1:15:13 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:15:13 ... think of me, Jay.

Jay Shetty 1:15:14 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:15:14 Take a scoop of that sand and just look at how many grains of sand.

Jay Shetty 1:15:18 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:15:19 That each one of those is a star with planets. Like, the potential. I don't know. That's just such a... It breaks your brain.

Jay Shetty 1:15:25 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:15:26 But it's such a beautiful thought of, like, the potential of, of life.

Jay Shetty 1:15:29 You've not been to space yet, right?

Mark Rober 1:15:31 Not yet.

Jay Shetty 1:15:31 Not yet, okay. Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:15:32 [laughs] Not yet. There's some plans on the horizon.

Jay Shetty 1:15:34 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 1:15:35 You'll go to space, too. Like-

Jay Shetty 1:15:37 Hopefully

Mark Rober 1:15:37 ... I think it's gonna come pretty commonplace.

Jay Shetty 1:15:39 Yes.

Mark Rober 1:15:39 Like, you can get to Australia in, like, I think 90 minutes through space. So it's... Then that's... There's a, there's a financial incentive to travel quickly.

Jay Shetty 1:15:48 To travel quickly.

Mark Rober 1:15:48 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:15:49 Absolutely. 90 minutes to Australia from LA?

Mark Rober 1:15:51 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:15:52 Wow.

Mark Rober 1:15:53 You basically just go up.

Jay Shetty 1:15:54 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:15:54 Go over fast, and the Earth also moves a little bit.

Jay Shetty 1:15:57 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:15:57 And you come back down.

Jay Shetty 1:15:58 That's crazy.

Mark Rober 1:15:58 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:15:59 That's crazy. 90 minutes.

Mark Rober 1:16:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:16:01 Wow. Has someone done that yet?

Mark Rober 1:16:02 Uh, no, but, like, that, that's the math, right?

Jay Shetty 1:16:05 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:16:05 I mean, we don't have the ability.

Jay Shetty 1:16:06 We don't.

Mark Rober 1:16:07 Southwest for space hasn't been invented.

Jay Shetty 1:16:09 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:16:10 But, like-

Jay Shetty 1:16:11 Southwest for space

Mark Rober 1:16:11 ... essentially that, right, wherever there's, like, a lot of financial incentive to do a thing-

Jay Shetty 1:16:15 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:16:15 ... like, innovation will be placed towards that.

Jay Shetty 1:16:18 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:16:18 So.

Jay Shetty 1:16:19 What do you get excited about with what's happening with technology, with AI, with this? Is there anything that you get super excited about right now, and what do you get scared about on the other end, or things you get worried about?

Mark Rober 1:16:30 There's a famous sort of, one of the early thinkers, and this... In 2015, I was talking with all my buddies about this, about AI. Nick Bostrom wrote this book about super intelligence, and his beginning analogy to the book is, like, imagine there's some sparrows and they find the egg of an owl. Just so you know, owls eat sparrows, right? Just so we're all clear. Then they're like, "Hey, we're gonna raise this owl. We're gonna put, raise him in our nest, and it's gonna love us, and then we can use the owl to, like, go hunt for us. We're gonna use the owl to do, you know, all these things that will be really useful." And, you know, of course, if you just carry that-

Jay Shetty 1:17:05 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:17:05 ... if that actually happens, the owl is born thanks to the sparrows for incubating it, but it doesn't end well for the sparrows. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:17:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 1:17:14 That's a real concern. I share that concern with, like, a lot of people. That could be an outcome of AI. I do think it, the, the, the best case scenario though, I think there are some upsides where it's like it solves a lot of the scarcity thing. A lot of the wars and terrible things that have happened in, you know, our history of civilization is the scarcity thing. So if, if unlimited energy and resources and stuff, and, and something that helps allocate those resources, that, that could be good, right? It could reduce human suffering a lot.

Jay Shetty 1:17:45 Mm-hmm.

Mark Rober 1:17:46 So, I mean, nobody really knows, Jay. Like, I don't know. I'm curious where you li- where you land on this.

Jay Shetty 1:17:52 I... The question I get a lot is do I think AI will ever have a soul, and my response is I don't know if AI will ever have a soul. I just hope the people building it have a soul, because ultimately to me, it's the Frankenstein piece of anything we make becomes us, and there's a part of us that's within it. And so if we're scared of an ability that humans have, then we'll be scared of the more bigger, powerful thing that we create that has more of it in it. And so to me, it's more about, again, I think we've... I think there's that beautiful statement by Mark Twain where he said that history never repeats itself, but it always rhymes. And I think we've had enough experiences in history with technology. Like, let's take social media, for example.

Mark Rober 1:18:36 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:18:36 It started, we didn't really care about how it was gonna affect us. Everyone had it, and now we're talking about mental health, kids, phones. Not just social media, phones, technology early on in life, right? And it's like we know that that's how everything goes.

Mark Rober 1:18:51 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:18:52 So scaremongering doesn't work because AI's here to stay. It's not disappearing tomorrow. So trying to scare everyone from it is not gonna help because it's gonna be here. So I don't love the fear factor piece because it doesn't solve the problem.

Mark Rober 1:19:05 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:19:05 But the fear factor piece should lead us to being more informed and prepared for what do we do about it when... So for example, hindsight is 2020. If we could go back to 2004 when Facebook was created and YouTube in 2010 or 2009-

Mark Rober 1:19:22 Yeah, they-

Jay Shetty 1:19:23 2000-

Mark Rober 1:19:23 ... they acquired it in 2008 or something. I forget.

Jay Shetty 1:19:26 Yeah, Google. Yeah, so-

Mark Rober 1:19:27 You should know. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:19:28 Yeah, yeah. So you have all of that, and then, but my point's like if you could go back then and go, "Okay, let's make some guardrails. Kids shouldn't be allowed a phone by this age. Uh, social media should have verified access." I don't know. I'm making up things right now, but the point is how do you prepare for the things that are to come rather than go, "All right, we'll just deal with the whole fact that generations have mental health issues now," and now we're dealing with the reactive way. I think humans are... We, we kind of set ourselves up for failure every time.

Mark Rober 1:19:57 Yeah. I mean, it's just so hard without the evidence, right, to convince someone-

Jay Shetty 1:20:01 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:20:01 ... at Facebook when money's to be made, right? Like, I mean, I completely agree with you.

Jay Shetty 1:20:05 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:20:06 But like there's just so many unknowns unknowns. Um, yeah

Jay Shetty 1:20:11 Yeah, it's like how do you not... How- It's, it's not about reducing innovation or doing something, it's how do we protect the vulnerable? And so if we're saying that kids under a certain age are vulnerable to X, Y, Z, in the same way as-

Mark Rober 1:20:24 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:20:24 ... you know, like cigarettes or-

Mark Rober 1:20:25 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:20:25 ... alcohol-

Mark Rober 1:20:26 100%

Jay Shetty 1:20:26 ... or, you know, whatever it is.

Mark Rober 1:20:28 Yeah, yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:20:28 It's like we agree, we all agree that until this point your brain is not developed yet.

Mark Rober 1:20:33 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:20:33 What should we allow and not allow?

Mark Rober 1:20:35 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:20:35 You know, like kids who are watching you, they're having the best time ever.

Mark Rober 1:20:37 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:20:37 Like, it's amazing. I wish more people were watching you.

Mark Rober 1:20:39 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:20:40 And, but how do you regulate the things that are [laughs] not doing what you're doing?

Mark Rober 1:20:43 I would say though, like I think for people listening, I think it could feel very doomsday. You hear really scary things-

Jay Shetty 1:20:50 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:20:50 ... and it's like at the end of the day, it's such a life hack to just control what's in your sphere of influence.

Jay Shetty 1:20:56 Yeah, of course.

Mark Rober 1:20:57 And it's like I think, you know, when I, when I get like that and I get nervous, like well what can I do to move the needle in my own sphere of influence? And, you know, I'm, I'm not creating an AI company [laughs] so it's like it's a little bit out of my hands in that sense. But it's like...

Jay Shetty 1:21:13 Well, I think you... I mean, I was gonna bring this up anyway and it, and it connects to what you're saying right now. I mean, I know you and Jimmy have partnered multiple times-

Mark Rober 1:21:20 Mm

Jay Shetty 1:21:20 ... to do incredible things-

Mark Rober 1:21:21 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:21:21 ... for our planet.

Mark Rober 1:21:22 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:21:22 Which thank you-

Mark Rober 1:21:23 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:21:23 ... for being just such, you know... Whenever people are like, "We made the right people famous," I'm like, "Yeah, we did."

Mark Rober 1:21:28 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:21:28 Like, you know, it's, it's amazing to see you guys-

Mark Rober 1:21:31 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 1:21:31 ... using your platform to do the thing that inspiring all these kids and families and parents and young p- it's all young people that are following, you know, both of you. And for you to galvanize whether it's Kai and, you know, all the guys who are in this space and all the biggest creators and celebrities jumping in and, you know, I think this year you raised what, 40 million?

Mark Rober 1:21:51 40 million.

Jay Shetty 1:21:51 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:21:51 So the first year we did-

Jay Shetty 1:21:53 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:21:53 ... this is MrBeast and I, right?

Jay Shetty 1:21:54 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 1:21:54 We did Team Trees, so we did $20 million to plant 20 million trees, and then a few years later we did Team Water. That was $30 million to-

Jay Shetty 1:22:02 That was cleaning up the beaches

Mark Rober 1:22:03 ... 30 million pounds of trash from the oceans. And then this year we- the audacious goal of $40 million to give two million people clean drinking water for decades. And we did it, but what's the cool thing about that, Jay, is the median donation was like $5.

Jay Shetty 1:22:18 That's amazing.

Mark Rober 1:22:18 So that's, that's tooth fairy money, that's big sale money, right? There were some big donors in there, but like on average it was $5. And what's so cool about that is then, you know, they're thinking like global citizens now. Like they could have spent that on $5 on candy, on Pokemon cards, but they spent it on someone else to get clean drinking water for five years. Again, kind of planting seeds, like someone who now thinks that way, who, you know, picks up trash now 'cause they see it, 'cause they're on Team Seas, right? They don't, they don't litter. They, they take care of the environment 'cause they're on Team Trees. Like that, that kinda impact... This is why I love working with young people. It's like, it's the same thing with like going to another planet, like the trajectory you have. In fact, there's motors we have on these, on these, on these spacecraft, we call them mouse fart motors where it's like it's the tiniest little poof because that difference in trajectory 90 million miles away is the difference of-

Jay Shetty 1:23:14 Wow

Mark Rober 1:23:15 ... hitting a planet and missing by 100 million miles, [laughs] right?

Jay Shetty 1:23:19 Wow.

Mark Rober 1:23:19 So it's like the same idea like is sort of with life, and this is why I love young folks, like the, the clay isn't hardened yet and so they're impressionable. And at that age I think we've evolved to think our parents are dumb. Like that's... So you leave the tribe, like that's-

Jay Shetty 1:23:33 Yeah

Mark Rober 1:23:33 ... in our brain. So to be a voice that can be there to be like, "Hey," you know, to guide in a way that even parents can't because they're willing to listen to me, is kind of a big responsibility and one that, you know, I love opportunities to flex that muscle.

Jay Shetty 1:23:50 I love that, man.

Mark Rober 1:23:51 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:23:51 It's amazing. It's incredible watching you both do it, and the fact that you keep taking on a bigger challenge every year and killing it is ama-

Mark Rober 1:23:57 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:23:57 ... is amazing. And yeah, it's setting such a beautiful example. It's awesome to see, you know, you guys could be doing anything as well, and to see you both focus on meaningful challenges in the world, and issues in the world, and helping galvanize so many-

Mark Rober 1:24:11 Yeah, that's it. Galvanize a bunch of other creators.

Jay Shetty 1:24:12 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:24:13 I mean, at the end of the day it only works 'cause so many creators join in.

Jay Shetty 1:24:14 Yeah, yeah. But, but I mean, but you guys-

Mark Rober 1:24:16 Getting it started

Jay Shetty 1:24:17 ... spearheading it.

Mark Rober 1:24:17 Sure, yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:24:18 No, for sure. I love that you get everyone involved, but you need a couple of people to spearhead it and you guys do an amazing job of that. So Mark, it's been amazing getting to know you more today.

Mark Rober 1:24:27 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:24:27 It's been, it's been... I feel like I've, I've laughed-

Mark Rober 1:24:30 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:24:30 ... I've nearly cried.

Mark Rober 1:24:31 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:24:31 I've, uh, I've def- you definitely got me thinking, and you definitely got me even just... It's, it's... What I love is when you meet someone in this format where they're not on screen in their world-

Mark Rober 1:24:43 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:24:43 ... and you totally have an infectious energy about the world and curiosity and science, and like you got me excited.

Mark Rober 1:24:51 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:24:51 Like, I'm like, "I need to be re- I need to be reading more of what you're doing."

Mark Rober 1:24:54 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:24:55 And, and that's the best feeling for me where I'm like, oh no, you live, you breathe it, you sleep it. It's, it's who you are.

Mark Rober 1:25:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:25:01 And then when someone's around you, it's like I'm inspired by everything you're fascinated by and it's, you know, lit a spark, as you were saying, like lighting a fire. Like-

Mark Rober 1:25:09 I love to hear it, Jay

Jay Shetty 1:25:09 ... you've done that for me.

Mark Rober 1:25:10 That's my favorite thing.

Jay Shetty 1:25:11 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Rober 1:25:11 Like I love that feeling. I love giving that feeling to others.

Jay Shetty 1:25:13 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:25:13 So thank you for the time.

Jay Shetty 1:25:15 Yeah. Mark, I, I end every episode of On Purpose with a Final Five. We ask these to every guest. The questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. So Mark Rober, these are your Final Five. Question number one is, what's the best advice you've ever had or received?

Mark Rober 1:25:29 This too shall pass. Like, which is like, it's, it, it will get easier, but also you're not as good as... If you're, if things are awesome, like it will come back down as well. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:25:40 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:25:41 So the regression to the mean.

Jay Shetty 1:25:42 That's good.

Mark Rober 1:25:42 I have to answer in like a sentence you said?

Jay Shetty 1:25:43 That's fine.

Mark Rober 1:25:44 Okay, yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:25:44 That's fine. Yeah, that's... Yeah, sentence. Uh, question number two: what's the worst advice you ever had or received?

Mark Rober 1:25:53 Like don't go to bed angry.

Jay Shetty 1:25:55 Hmm.

Mark Rober 1:25:55 Like you're... Just the idea like-

Jay Shetty 1:25:57 Go to bed. [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:25:58 Just go to bed. You're in an emotional mind frame. Like let it pass with anything, not even with a partner. Just like let it pass and hit it when you're not thinking with your lizard brain.

Jay Shetty 1:26:07 Yeah.Yeah. It's true, actually, yeah. It's, and, and also sleep is good for you. So-

Mark Rober 1:26:11 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:26:11 ... if, if you're gonna stay up angry, it's like-

Mark Rober 1:26:13 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:26:13 ... probably not gonna help. Uh, question number three, uh, what's something you learned recently that blew your mind?

Mark Rober 1:26:20 That spiders' legs are hydraulic, which is why [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:26:24 I didn't know that, yeah.

Mark Rober 1:26:25 This is why when they die they're curled up.

Jay Shetty 1:26:28 Oh.

Mark Rober 1:26:28 It's because there's no more pressure in the system. Basically, they put fluid into it. So you can actually take a syringe and put it into a spider's back and put air into it, and their legs will open and expand.

Jay Shetty 1:26:38 Oh, wow. Wow.

Mark Rober 1:26:39 The more you know, Jay.

Jay Shetty 1:26:40 I know, I know. [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:26:41 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:26:41 I'm like... What's something you've recently learned about yourself? Question number four.

Mark Rober 1:26:47 That, like, if I'm having a thought that's not productive, like rumination or, like, perseverating on a thing, I wanna think it away. And you aren't your thoughts. Like, your mind is the sky, not the weather. And if you just don't give it life, like, it, it'll pass.

Jay Shetty 1:27:05 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:27:06 And you don't have to think about it, right?

Jay Shetty 1:27:07 Yeah.

Mark Rober 1:27:08 That's hard to do, but, like, I mean, you know this with meditation. Like-

Jay Shetty 1:27:11 Yeah, yeah

Mark Rober 1:27:11 ... you know this better than anyone. As an engineer, I had to learn this, you know, [laughs] on my own.

Jay Shetty 1:27:16 Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's a beautiful thing to remember, though, that don't believe everything you think, and-

Mark Rober 1:27:20 Mm

Jay Shetty 1:27:21 ... your thoughts are not true. And absolutely, you're, you're the sky, not the clouds, and-

Mark Rober 1:27:24 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:27:25 ... yeah. No, beautiful. Uh, fifth and final question we ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show: if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Mark Rober 1:27:35 Um-

Jay Shetty 1:27:36 Apart from buy CrunchLabs for Christmas.

Mark Rober 1:27:37 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:27:40 [laughs]

Mark Rober 1:27:40 Before you can share a piece of social media information that makes you angry, you have to explain what a reasonable, thoughtful person on the other side of that argument would say.

Jay Shetty 1:27:52 Oh, that's good.

Mark Rober 1:27:53 And if you can do that and put that into the prompt, then you're allowed to hit share.

Jay Shetty 1:27:57 That's good. I like that.

Mark Rober 1:27:59 I think that would solve, like, 99% of the world's problems.

Jay Shetty 1:28:02 I love that.

Mark Rober 1:28:02 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:28:03 I, I was giving a presentation recently. Um, Kerry Washington invited me to speak at her Day of Unreasonable Conversations, which is all about sparking-

Mark Rober 1:28:11 Mm

Jay Shetty 1:28:11 ... better conversation, and I had to do a presentation on how do we have healthier conversations online. And there was a statistic, I did some research, that found that when people had to read before they retweet-

Mark Rober 1:28:23 Mm

Jay Shetty 1:28:23 ... it dropped shares by up to 70%.

Mark Rober 1:28:26 Wow.

Jay Shetty 1:28:27 Because people don't read what they share. So l- you're going even one step further to comprehend and to actually understand a different perspective. But even read before retweet.

Mark Rober 1:28:39 That's amazing.

Jay Shetty 1:28:39 Like, it just dropped shares, you know? And so, yeah, I love your law. It's a great one. It's a really, really great one-

Mark Rober 1:28:45 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:28:46 ... because, yeah, it would, it would change so much. Mark, it has been amazing talking to you today.

Mark Rober 1:28:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:28:51 For the two people who have never seen a Mark Rober video-

Mark Rober 1:28:54 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:28:54 ... uh, make sure you go subscribe to Mark's channels. Uh, I am definitely getting, uh, some of the gifts for my, uh-

Mark Rober 1:29:00 CrunchLabs?

Jay Shetty 1:29:01 Yeah, CrunchLabs. I'm, I am definitely getting some of the CrunchLabs for my niece and nephew-

Mark Rober 1:29:05 Good

Jay Shetty 1:29:05 ... this Christmas. I think they're gonna love it.

Mark Rober 1:29:07 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:29:07 I can't wait. And, uh, Mark, thank you for so much, for how you show up, your creativity, uh, coming on the show today and sharing so openly and vulnerably, and, uh, I look forward to getting to know you better, man. Thank you so much.

Mark Rober 1:29:19 Thanks for having me, Jay. This was awesome.

Jay Shetty 1:29:20 Thank you. If this is the year that you're trying to get creative, you're trying to build more, I need you to listen to this episode with Rick Rubin on how to break into your most creative self, how to use unconventional methods that lead to success, and the secret to genuinely loving what you do. If you're trying to find your passion and your lane, Rick Rubin's episode is the one for you.

Speaker 1:29:43 Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value. Like, as an artist, if you like it, that's all of the value. That's, the success comes when you say, "I like this enough for other people to see it."