← On Purpose with Jay Shetty
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Mark Rober: Feeling Stuck in a Rut? Use THIS Simple 3- Step Method Engineers Use to FINALLY Turn Your Ideas Into Reality!
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- [00:00]
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Kalpen (Kal Penn)
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Mark Rober
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- [01:07]
Mark Rober
We.
- [01:07]
Jay Shetty
All want to live with more purpose, more connection, and more joy. Sometimes that starts with a small piece of wisdom, a perspective shift, a grounding practice, or a story that makes you feel less alone. On TikTok, those moments are being shared every single day. Millions are finding people who show meditation techniques, discuss the science of the mind, or share daily habits that many find helpful. Others are opening up about their own journeys, talking about well being, resilience and healing in ways that can make you feel seen. And what stands out is the way it's shared. Ideas spread quickly and support can grow from a single post. And it all happens in a welcoming and supportive space. TikTok stimulates your mind in more ways than one. It's a place for learning, for mindfulness, for tools that support healthier habits and reflections. If you're searching for growth and connection that resonates with your own unique journey, you'll find it on TikTok.
- [02:09]
Mark Rober
If you're not breaking stuff, it means like you're not really testing the limits. And then when you fail, 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.
- [02:21]
Jay Shetty
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier and more healed. My guest today is Mark Rober, engineer, YouTuber, and one of the most creative minds online whose experiments and inventions have inspired Millions to fall in love with science and curiosity again. In this episode, we explore how to stay creative, turn failure into fuel, and reconnect with the sense of wonder we often lose as adults. Please welcome to On Purpose, Mark Rober. Mark, it is great to have you here. Congratulations on your incredible success.
- [02:57]
Mark Rober
Thank you.
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Jay Shetty
And I'm excited to dive into your mind.
- [02:59]
Mark Rober
So good to be here. Let's do it. Are you gonna make me cry, Jay?
- [03:03]
Jay Shetty
Are you a crier?
- [03:04]
Mark Rober
I get. I can't get emotional.
- [03:07]
Jay Shetty
I'm the crier in my relationship. Are you the crier in your relationship?
- [03:09]
Mark Rober
Well, we both kind of cry.
- [03:13]
Jay Shetty
How long have you been together now?
- [03:15]
Mark Rober
Yeah, over a year.
- [03:16]
Jay Shetty
Over year.
- [03:16]
Mark Rober
But that feels like, relationship wise, we, We. It happened fast. I mean, as an adult, you know what you want, right? And so it feels like seven years and dog years. Relationships. It's been seven years for the one.
- [03:28]
Jay Shetty
I love it. I love it. Well, if you're allowed to cry here, definitely. But no, no pressure. No, we don't want any acting tears.
- [03:35]
Mark Rober
I'm a terrible actor, so you're in luck.
- [03:37]
Jay Shetty
I love it. I want to start off just by, like, the first question I have for you is, what's the earliest childhood memory you have that you feel defines who you are today? Is there a moment, a friend, an experience from school, growing up that you're like, that is why I am the way I am.
- [03:56]
Mark Rober
I think it's a finding moment, one that sticks out. I feel like. So my mom was. Oh, out of the gate. You're getting me talking about my mom. My mom was like, had the biggest influence on my life by a very comfortable margin. And she was like a stay at home mom. Like, she barely graduated high school, but she was just so encouraging of us and, like, trying to 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. I remember one time, you know, and we did chores like as 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. I was cutting the onions, and I was like crying because 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 ran upstairs, got the goggles, 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, 5 years old. 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 encouragement. 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? It's on film. And it just felt really good to be in this environment where, like, that kind of thinking was encouraged, that it 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.
- [05:49]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, that's special.
- [05:51]
Mark Rober
And I feel today, like, that same feeling of, like, creating content and sharing 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, because that means it was kind of obvious. And you took things, you know, things, especially if I do a build, if I could do a junk you have lying around your house, that's so much better than just like, all these technical solution, right?
- [06:13]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [06:14]
Mark Rober
And so that feeling of coming up with an idea, sharing with people, and getting feedback on it, it's just like. It's kind of addictive.
- [06:20]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. That's beautiful. And it's amazing when your parents encourage it. When. When was the last time you shared that story with your mom?
- [06:28]
Mark Rober
So interesting story on that, Jay, which is that, like. Like six months before I made my first YouTube video, she passed away from ALS, 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, 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, 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. Yeah, 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 people across the world. So it's really beautiful. Like, that's her version of living on and living forever. Regardless of what you think, what happens after we die.
- [08:06]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. No, thank you for sharing that, man. It's so beautiful to hear that as someone who's my mom, who's still with us, but the impact she had on me as well. 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 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, which is just an insane superpower. And then all that love that you were given just spills onto other people. And then I was 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 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, right? Like, now you. Like, there are so many kids and parents that turn to you for your content to inspire their children to think differently. How do you get a job at NASA? 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.
- [09:27]
Mark Rober
I mean, you get lucky. First of all, like, you know, my resume was just in a stack of resumes and. Yeah, the interview.
- [09:35]
Jay Shetty
What did you do at college?
- [09:36]
Mark Rober
So I studied mechanical engineering.
- [09:37]
Jay Shetty
Okay, so you had that.
- [09:38]
Mark Rober
Yeah, yeah. So for sure you gotta start with an engineering degree, I'll give you that. Yeah. And from a good school. From a good school. Yeah. I did undergrad at byu. Grad school at usc. Yes, 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 door. NASA, this guy's a legend. Invented like the rocker bogey system on the rover. And then you're 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.
- [10:16]
Jay Shetty
So, you know, tell me what the questions are. Like, like, what is that? How's that interview? Because I imagine it's so different from any interview.
- [10:23]
Mark Rober
Yeah, I mean, they're like technical questions, right? Like, 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 water level on the 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 is pretty obvious if you can do that. So it's kind of like questions like this, technical questions, but they're just like rapid fire, one after another.
- [10:55]
Jay Shetty
Right, right, right.
- [10:56]
Mark Rober
And so then. Yeah, so I worked at NASA for a decade, 10 of those or seven of those, 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.
- [11:09]
Jay Shetty
So you designed that?
- [11:10]
Mark Rober
I designed, built, tested, integrated.
- [11:13]
Jay Shetty
How many of you are working on something like that at the same time?
- [11:15]
Mark Rober
Yeah, like it's like probably 3,000 people, all told, like, have a hand in creating something like the Mars rover.
- [11:22]
Jay Shetty
Wow.
- [11:23]
Mark Rober
Yeah, but it's cool, like to, you know, just be in the backyard, you know, and you see that one.in the sky that has like the reddish tint, you know, so you know that one's Mars. And you're just like, 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.
- [11:42]
Jay Shetty
And where are you based? Are you.
- [11:43]
Mark Rober
This was in, this is a jet propulsion laboratory, so out in Pasadena here.
- [11:48]
Jay Shetty
Okay.
- [11:48]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [11:49]
Jay Shetty
And how many people work out of there?
- [11:51]
Mark Rober
Like about 5,000, give or take.
- [11:53]
Jay Shetty
Oh, it's huge.
- [11:54]
Mark Rober
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.
- [12:10]
Jay Shetty
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?
- [12:19]
Mark Rober
I think this concept of like, thinking like an engineer, what does that mean?
- [12:23]
Jay Shetty
Yes, I've heard that before. I've also heard like, think like a rocket scientist. I'm like, what does that mean?
- [12:29]
Mark Rober
So me, in fact, I have a toy company now, Crunch Labs, where, you know, basically it's like a really fun toy you get every month and, and the kids can put it together. And it teaches the engineering principles 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're resilient because you know that failure is 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, 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 going to 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 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.
- [13:44]
Jay Shetty
And what was the purpose of the rover?
- [13:46]
Mark Rober
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. 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, what's the soil like? Could you plant asparagus there? Turns out you can. Is there water there? 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 us learn the history of this planet 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, you know, how Earth even came about and formed, which helps us to know how do we protect it in the future.
- [14:41]
Jay Shetty
Wow. And so wait, when you started to get this information and data back that you can grow asparagus, 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.
- [14:56]
Mark Rober
I mean, with science, like, your objectives are always smaller than that of like, we just want to go there and answer whether or not there's water. You know, life is always the big one. Like, if you can find life on another planet, like, that's pretty wild. Because if life came to exist twice in our own solar system, you know, then like, there must. The universe must just be teeming with other forms of life. It's just like really fascinating question. Right?
- [15:25]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [15:26]
Mark Rober
Sometimes you don't. You just go there to gather the data 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. But I think us just getting closer to live there and studying if life did exist, there are always some. And is water there currently flowing? Those kinds of questions are really interesting with Mars.
- [15:46]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. The reason I'm mining it is for two reasons. 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. I'm like, this is so cool. 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 going to learn and we're going to grow and we're going to figure it out and we'll discover something is such a beautiful mindset for life. Like, I think about even with what you were talking about with Crunch Labs, 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 grunge slept.
- [16:32]
Mark Rober
Yeah, no, you're totally right.
- [16:33]
Jay Shetty
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 going to build a billion dollar company. They just built something that helped people and figured it out and pivoted and 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 product company, it has to sell 100 million the first year. If I sell apparel brand, I have to make a million dollars. Like, I feel like we put these goals and objectives and you're actually saying, well, when we're going to Mars, we're not thinking about those things.
- [17:11]
Mark Rober
I mean, I completely agree with you. Like, I don't love when people expect you to know what you want to be when you grow up, when you're like 16 years old. Like, nobody ask any adult. And if you ask them 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. 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 want to be and you're a teenager or something, is like, what do you love to do? Do you love to draw and then just dominate it? Just draw like crazy and get so good at it, right? Maybe you love to write or to tell stories. Just do that. And then when you do that, then more doors will be open to you. So this is kind of my philosophy with life, too. 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 had a moment in life, even quitting NASA to go to 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.
- [18:31]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Before we get to that, what did you want to be when you were a kid? And when people ask you that question that you.
- [18:37]
Mark Rober
I wanted. I want it to be. My first job I wanted to do was to design play places at McDonald's, you know, like the ball.
- [18:46]
Jay Shetty
I still love those.
- [18:47]
Mark Rober
Like an architect of those. I remember I'd have all these drawings. All right, we're going to start with a ball pit. We're going to go to the nets. And now Crunch Labs, 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 because we have, like, secret passageways. You know, a Coke machine opens up into a claw machine that you can, like, take a.
- [19:08]
Jay Shetty
The North Pole.
- [19:09]
Mark Rober
Yeah. We have, like, fire, like pistons that you slide down basically center. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Like, I'm like, Willy Wonka. Free engineering. Like, it has that vibe, right. It's like 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 something doesn't exist and you want it to exist, you could just will it into an existence. And what a superpower.
- [19:43]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. There's this amazing. I mean, this is. I'm going totally the opposite way, but you're reminding me of something beautiful. There's this beautiful verse in Eastern spirituality that says, the mind moves faster than the gods. 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. So he builds flying palaces and flying cities and. But he visualizes it all in his head before it becomes manifest.
- [20:19]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [20:19]
Jay Shetty
And it's that same idea of just like, we. But 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. Right? So, like, you have this dream of, I want to design McDonald's playhouses or whatever. And then family, friends, expectations, school, everyone goes, yeah, but get a real job. Like, I remember I was a kid who loved Graphic design and I love art direction and I loved juxtaposition and imagery. Like, that was always my. I love that. It's always been a passion of mine and my family encouraged it was good hobby was like, get a real job, though.
- [20:56]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [20:57]
Jay Shetty
I mean, engineering is such a great skill and such a great job. But how do you encourage young people and how do you think about the. When you're making content to encourage people to live their passion but be pragmatic and what does that look like? Because, yeah, you've kind of pursued so many things.
- [21:10]
Mark Rober
I mean, I think it's a yes and situation. Right. For example, for me, like, I worked at NASA for a decade, then I worked at Apple for 5 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. 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 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 pursuit as much as you possibly can while also having the real job. Right. 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 of me wants to say, well, there's survivorship bias. So you only hear the stories of the ones that worked. And for the one that does, there's a thousand that don't. So, you know, I think when parents say that, they generally have their best interests 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 their passion is. So I think it's a very healthy. A very healthy, like, you know, yin and yang there. I don't fault parents for saying that. I think there's a lot of times you could still pursue the thing. You could pursue both.
- [22:32]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, I'd agree with you. So my life's the same story. And I'm. That, to me, is the. To me, that is the best and most likely path for most people, which is you're going to have a steady job, you're going to figure out something on the side, and you're going to wait for the thing on the side to outpace the thing you're doing right now and then. And it. And it actually proves to you as an individual whether you really love it. Yeah, you're doing your evenings, you're doing 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 when I was inconvenient, then when it's my full time thing, I'm the luckiest person in the world, 100%.
- [23:05]
Mark Rober
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.
- [23:19]
Jay Shetty
What was the pivot from NASA to Apple? Why did that come about? Why leave NASA?
- [23:25]
Mark Rober
Well, actually, for two years, I was at a Halloween costume company, Jay, before then going to Apple. So that's like Halloween costume. Yes.
- [23:36]
Jay Shetty
Wait, how do you get from NASA to a Halloween?
- [23:38]
Mark Rober
Okay, that's the better question. 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 and you do a FaceTime call, it looks like a hole in your body. So you wait, you wave your hand in the front, and the camera in the back shows it.
- [23:58]
Jay Shetty
And that's cool.
- [23:59]
Mark Rober
Again, it felt like being 5 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 my life goal was to be on the Gizmodo, which is like an old tech blog.
- [24:14]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, I remember it.
- [24:15]
Mark Rober
And so I made it on the COVID of Gizmodo and then quickly realized I need more life goals. 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.
- [24:35]
Jay Shetty
How did you get that outfit on the COVID of Gizmoda?
- [24:38]
Mark Rober
Well, so the YouTube video went up and it went viral. So it was on the front page of cnn. Like, it was like on all these. All these outlets covered, including Gizmodo. Got it from there. The one complaint was that, cool idea, bro, but I don't have $1,200 for Halloween costume. Two iPads.
- [24:53]
Jay Shetty
Right.
- [24:54]
Mark Rober
And so I was like, all right. So I came up with an idea for next year where there's like a design printed on the shirt, like 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. Then you had a really cool Halloween costume for, like, the price of a T shirt called Digital Does. So I've launched that company nights and weekends, working all week while making YouTube videos and while working at NASA. And 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 two years.
- [25:36]
Jay Shetty
Wow.
- [25:36]
Mark Rober
And it's like, it's such a. Right. This is my example. I mean, 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, we made our money back in eight hours. And then. Yeah. So very meandering.
- [26:05]
Jay Shetty
Want to make a real difference this giving season. This December, on purpose is part of Pods Fight Poverty Podcasts, teaming up to lift three villages in Rwanda out of extreme poverty. We're doing it through GiveDirectly, which sends cash straight to families so they can choose what they need Most. Donate@givedirectly.org onpurpose. First time gifts are matched, doubling your impact. Our goal is $1 million by year's end. Enough to lift 700 families out of poverty. Join us@givedirectly.org onpurpose.
- [26:46]
Commercial Announcer
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- [26:48]
Mark Rober
To provide an even better clean in cold water.
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Commercial Announcer
Tide is specifically designed to fight any.
- [26:53]
Mark Rober
Stain you throw at it. Even in cold butter.
- [26:57]
Commercial Announcer
Yep. Chocolate ice cream.
- [26:59]
Mark Rober
Sure thing.
- [27:00]
Commercial Announcer
Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered.
- [27:03]
Mark Rober
You don't need to use warm water.
- [27:05]
Commercial Announcer
Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology.
- [27:11]
Mark Rober
Just remember, if it's gotta be clean.
- [27:13]
Commercial Announcer
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- [28:17]
Mark Rober
Hey everyone. Ed Helms here.
- [28:20]
Kalpen (Kal Penn)
And hi, I'm Cal Penn, and we're the hosts of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [28:27]
Mark Rober
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?
- [28:48]
Commercial Announcer
You know what?
- [28:49]
Mark Rober
I can see you as Mr. Darcy.
- [28:51]
Commercial Announcer
You got a little Colin Firth.
- [28:53]
Mark Rober
Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad? I'm not Mr. Bennett. Here. Listen to Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:22]
Jay Shetty
Did you always have the ability, 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 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?
- [29:44]
Mark Rober
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. I can totally do this. If I knew the amount of work it actually would end up being, I'd be very discouraged. But I'm just like, an idiot who's like, oh, yeah, I could do this. I think this makes sense. I see the end goal, and so then any pitfall that comes along the way, I'm so focused on this end Goal. And that matters, right? The attitude you have and whether or not you believe in, you think you can do it. So then 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 going to dominate that step, and then, you know, just kind of step through it. It's literally the engineering design process, but for ideas and businesses.
- [30:33]
Jay Shetty
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.
- [30:38]
Mark Rober
But I think the idea, it's just like you have an end goal, an objective, and break it down into the steps and know what you don't know and test what you don't know is kind of like, give your best shot at it in the engineering. Let's say if I'm designing a piece for the Mars Rover, I think, okay, I think it needs. Maybe it's the wheel for the Mars Rover. I think it needs to probably look like this. I'm going to design it in cad. I'm going to 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 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, we call that a failure in others outside of engineering, but we embrace that. And it's like, great, now we know. Now let's tweak it. And we're going to. We're going to. Now, now, we could 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. 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. 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 a good way to do it. If you frame your challenges like a video game, no one picks up a controller to play a video game and falls in a pit, say, Super Mario Brothers or something, and thinks I'm a failure. How Embarrassing. I'm terrible at video games. No. You're immediately like, oh, shoot. What did I just learn from that? I'm going to jump a little faster. I'm going to 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 want to get up and try it again. So if it's like. And you ask me, oh, when you have ideas, I'm thinking of it like a video game where it's like, I want to 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 going to jump a little faster.
- [32:55]
Jay Shetty
Right.
- [32:55]
Mark Rober
And that is a life hack. Like, truly, this happens to me all the time on just whenever we want to do a big video. We just filmed a video where 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. Right? It took us, like, a year to build. So we track the ball, and in the first 6 milliseconds, when the ball has gone from, like, here to here, I just moved it, like, maybe an eighth of an inch. We know exactly where the goalie needs to be to stop that ball. So it's hilarious to see, you know, he tries to do it, and of course he misses. No, he's. There's no way he can score. It's way too fast. From the penalty kick area. He kicks at 80 miles an hour, and the robot is like. Just goes. And it's.
- [33:40]
Jay Shetty
Oh, my gosh.
- [33:42]
Mark Rober
So the point is, though, with that video, I mean, there was tons of sliding green shells and setbacks. And, you know, and that doesn't mean it doesn't sting, by the way. Failure still can sting. This isn't some fake Paulien 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?
- [34:01]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [34:02]
Mark Rober
And I think that can help you accomplish so much more in life and just have, honestly, better relationships even. Right? 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.
- [34:15]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Well said. Really well said. And I love the video game analogy because you're so right. You die. And even though it says game over, you don't Feel that way. No. You're like, next. You know, you want to get another life. You want to play again. Like, you never, ever. And it's so crazy because I'm like, It actually says game over, and you don't care. And whereas if someone says game over in real life, or 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, I think it's.
- [34:46]
Mark Rober
More like you, internal, you think that makes you.
- [34:49]
Jay Shetty
Yes.
- [34:49]
Mark Rober
Unemployable.
- [34:50]
Jay Shetty
Yes.
- [34:51]
Mark Rober
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. And I think the same is true in life. Like, anyone who's got to somewhere in life, they started out sucky at that. Yeah. Right. And then they just learned and iterated and overcame. It's the same thing you said with companies. Like, no Fortune 100 company today. Started out doing what they do. Now they've pivoted 15 times. Right.
- [35:16]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [35:16]
Mark Rober
And I. So I think it's this ability to just like, not internalize what it says about you and just almost flip it. Like, I'm a person who. Who embraces failure and celebrates. It lets it sting just like in a video game. It sucks to miss that key jump on Level 81 on Super Mario Brothers, the little platform. But it's like, dang it, we're going back. Because you're focused on the end goal. You're focused on what that would feel like. Not the pits and the mistakes.
- [35:43]
Jay Shetty
What's a failure that you ever experienced in life that you did internalize? Did that ever happen?
- [35:49]
Mark Rober
I got married pretty young, and then it's very amicable, but, like, five years ago, I split with. With my wife for. You know, I'm pretty private with my private life for, like, reasons and stuff, but. And I was, like, really cautious to get out and, like, date again. It just. It took me a year to even, like, start, 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. And so, like, I never. 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. 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 going to do this. I'm going to 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. And so taking a beat after that was like. I think it was hard. That was, like, a really, really difficult period for me. 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 got to put in the reps. I got to, like, put the work in. And so I did that, and then again, failed. I did, like. I was like, I'm gonna. In 30 days, I'm gonna, like, try and 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. And just, like, 20 minutes just to get a feel. Because, you know, in the first three minutes, if there's a connection or not. Right. And I did that, and it was again, Jay. And these were, 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 going to do one more. And then I did one more. And that's my partner, and she's my life partner. It's like, it. And it was a matter of, like. It was like, half hour in. It's 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, yeah. And it's just like, no reservations. And like, we're both the same way. And she had the same experience.
- [38:46]
Jay Shetty
She's wonderful, man.
- [38:47]
Mark Rober
Yeah. And you met her, and she's had the same experience where she just never felt like she'd found it and immediately was just like, this is it.
- [38:54]
Jay Shetty
Cool.
- [38:54]
Mark Rober
Done. Close the spreadsheet. Delete it.
- [38:58]
Jay Shetty
So you did engineer your way to.
- [39:00]
Mark Rober
Love, which it doesn't.
- [39:02]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [39:02]
Mark Rober
Because she's the opposite. She's more like you, Jay. She just puts it out to the universe. So she's the. She's the dreamer, and I'm the thinker. Yeah. And we each try and take credit for us getting together. Like, look, I put it out to the years. I'm like, no, I put in the work.
- [39:16]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, you. Yeah. I love that. I mean, to me, I mean, I'm. I'm actually. People know less about. I'm a bit of both as well. There's an engineer in me. Not in the way you are, but in that practical, pragmatic approach to what it really takes and getting the reps in. And I like 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 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. 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 want to invest that time. I don't want to commit to a retreat. Who knows? But I could do it for a whole weekend.
- [40:23]
Mark Rober
Genius.
- [40:24]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it works. It works wonders for me.
- [40:25]
Mark Rober
And that goes back to kind of what I was saying before, too. Just like, whatever's the step in front, dominate it. Dominate 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 want to do more versus.
- [40:38]
Jay Shetty
Like, just dabbling in dabbling. Yeah.
- [40:39]
Mark Rober
What's an example? I'm going to turn the tables on you. What's the last thing you did? Like that, like an immersion weekend.
- [40:45]
Jay Shetty
The immersion weekend?
- [40:45]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [40:46]
Jay Shetty
Like, I. I'll be honest, I just did it this weekend. It was acting. So I've been getting all these opportunities to, like, audition for, like, TV and film, and I've just been kind of going back and forth. I've spent a lot of time on movie sets with actors that I coach. Not in acting, in my work. And I've spent a lot of time on movie sets, but I've never been the person doing it. 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, I'm not interested in the result or is it cool? I'm like, do I actually love doing the thing? And so this whole weekend I had an acting coach. I was with them for three hours a day. 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. Yeah. And I was like, worst case, I'm going to hate the process and learn some skills. Best case, I'm going to love it and it's going to open up new opportunities. I loved it. I had a great time.
- [41:40]
Mark Rober
Really?
- [41:41]
Jay Shetty
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 actors objectives were and what their tactic is and what their motive is. It was fascinating.
- [41:57]
Mark Rober
Really?
- [41:58]
Jay Shetty
Yes.
- [41:58]
Mark Rober
I love it. So you're going to do more then it was a. I'm going to do.
- [42:01]
Jay Shetty
More coaching, I'm going to take more classes because it was just so. 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.
- [42:13]
Mark Rober
I feel like you would be great. It's like you have to. Yeah. Putting yourself in the shoes of the person. Like, I don't even know what to do with like my face. It's like if I'm supposed to be sad that I really want to just like, yeah, pout my lip. And it's like, apparently that's not what you're supposed to do.
- [42:31]
Jay Shetty
But that's what was so. That was what was 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. And there's all these, there's, there's systems of why the best the best. Like they're not, they're not just the best because they have it. They've studied systems and they've worked at it. And so to me it was just like there's this method where it's called to act as if. So you can't relate to what the character is going through. But you have something that happened in your life that makes you feel that way. That the character's 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. But that was my most recent.
- [43:18]
Mark Rober
I love that. My thing right now, again, like, I'm kind of with you. I love mastery, like finding mine's public speaking. I hate public speaking. 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 because 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. Basically teach science. You don't even know what's happening, right?
- [43:47]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [43:48]
Mark Rober
So we're taking all the learnings we've taken from that. Like, because kids can watch or people can just watch whatever they want to on YouTube, but they choose to watch this. And they were making a full science curriculum.
- [43:57]
Jay Shetty
That's amazing.
- [43:57]
Mark Rober
Third to eighth grade. It involves, you know, has my fellow YouTube friends. You know, I just got Cristiano Ronaldo and we were 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 us about. It's gonna cost us about like $55 million to make. They would make it free forever for all.
- [44:21]
Jay Shetty
Where will it go online? So you don't have it won't be in your school?
- [44:24]
Mark Rober
No, 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 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, but the hammer just flies out of my hand, destroys this watermelon. And now, Jay, I've got your attention. And now I could say, you know, there's invisible magnetic fields all around us that exist. Yeah, right.
- [45:00]
Jay Shetty
And so teachers can use these in school. They could play that video.
- [45:04]
Mark Rober
And it has, you know, the whole lesson, what they say back to the kids. It will replace their science curriculum. Right. Wow. And it's going to cost it's gonna take us like, three years.
- [45:12]
Jay Shetty
Why is it going to cost you $55 million?
- [45:15]
Mark Rober
It's. It's a huge undertaking. There's like 46 different units. Like. Like, it's science. It's. It's all six through eighth grade science and then also third grade through. Through fifth grade, so.
- [45:26]
Jay Shetty
And you were funding it.
- [45:27]
Mark Rober
Yeah. And I mean, yes, and there are already some generous people who are coming out and helping it. Fun. But, like, regardless, I was. We started funding it myselves anyways with the profits we had from Crunch Labs. So we're gonna announce that at the TED Talk and, like, that I really want to nail that presentation.
- [45:44]
Jay Shetty
So I'm happy to help, man.
- [45:46]
Mark Rober
Okay.
- [45:47]
Jay Shetty
I was lucky. My parents forced me to go to public speaking in drama school when I was 11.
- [45:50]
Mark Rober
Oh, really?
- [45:52]
Jay Shetty
So all my state speaking skills from having studied it for seven years, eight years. And so.
- [45:58]
Mark Rober
Yeah, you're a master.
- [45:59]
Jay Shetty
One of my favorite. Okay.
- [45:59]
Mark Rober
Yeah, I'll. I'll record the rehearsal and I'll send it to you.
- [46:02]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah. Happy. I mean, they have pros there, obviously. Ted have such a great script.
- [46:06]
Mark Rober
Yeah, they do.
- [46:06]
Jay Shetty
And a great pro speaking team.
- [46:08]
Mark Rober
They're not. Jay Shetty.
- [46:09]
Jay Shetty
That's gonna be. No, that's gonna be amazing. I'm excited to see you.
- [46:12]
Mark Rober
I'm pretty stoked. I, like, I feel like it's the most important thing I'll do my whole life.
- [46:15]
Jay Shetty
But I love that you're doing things that scare you. Like, even at this point, having had so much success and having, you know, being, you know, the spokesperson for science across the world, it's incredible to see you say, I'm still scared of this and I'm gonna do it.
- [46:29]
Mark Rober
No, Like, I crave it, Jay. Like, I also, like, 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? I think a lot of. 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? A lot of studies have showed if you get a huge raise and then your Salary's flat for 10 years versus incrementally go up to that 10 year, 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 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.
- [47:28]
Jay Shetty
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, but then the business is all about play, curiosity, fun, crazy experiments. Right. 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?
- [48:03]
Mark Rober
Yeah, I think it's good. There's been studies that look at like successful mid range companies or companies worth say 50 to 500 million dollars or something, or even 10 to 500 million dollars. 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 anal brain and I said, hey, I'm thinking about starting this company, crunch labs, 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.
- [48:51]
Jay Shetty
Wow.
- [48:51]
Mark Rober
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 warehouse that ships out the stuff. Like I don't just find a good one and he'll geek out over it and he has them, you know what I mean? And I'm thinking about like, oh, this is, we could do this, you know, but 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.
- [49:16]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [49:17]
Mark Rober
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.
- [49:24]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [49:24]
Mark Rober
So just find someone to help you.
- [49:26]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's great advice.
- [49:27]
Mark Rober
Yeah. At some point, if you're small. If you're doing something small, like Halloween T shirt company, like, you can be both, but at some point, it'll just get way too hard.
- [49:34]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, no, I fully agree with you. We did the same. And I remember when I bought 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, 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 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 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.
- [50:13]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [50:13]
Jay Shetty
But I don't want to run any of the other stuff.
- [50:15]
Mark Rober
And so I think knowing that and owning that, like, is a key to staying happy and honestly, fighting burnout.
- [50:21]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [50:21]
Mark Rober
I think a lot of times 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.
- [50:32]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [50:32]
Mark Rober
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.
- [50:37]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [50:38]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [50:38]
Jay Shetty
What did you learn? What did you learn at Apple that you didn't learn at NASA?
- [50:43]
Mark Rober
Apple, I would say, like, NASA, I feel like, had a lot of smart people at Apple. You had to be pretty smart, but a very good communicator. I just keyed in on this, and communication and sharing ideas and telling stories matters a lot. People think I'm a good engineer. You know, I could build cool stuff. But it's like, I'm an okay engineer, Jay. I'm a pretty damn good storyteller. Like, and in the videos, you're telling stories, right? Like this video with Cristiano Ronaldo where he said, 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 landed Donovan takes me out, and he's like a coach. He's like, dude, you suck. You know? And so it's like, okay, well, if I can't do with my athletic prowess, I'M going to do with my brain. So now I'm going to make this goal. Right. Do you like, you case the whole thing in a story. Right. And I think at Apple, I learned that there are some very, very good engineers who are also incredible communicators of like, explaining ideas. And, you know, that's what really makes us special as a species. Ability to cooperate on large scale. And we do that through telling stories. Right. That's, we've, we've evolved to tell stories.
- [51:59]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [52:00]
Mark Rober
Long before you could write stuff down, we communicated through telling stories and making somebody feel something.
- [52:05]
Jay Shetty
Yes.
- [52:05]
Mark Rober
That's the exact. That's how you make a viral video. You just, you have to evoke a visceral response.
- [52:10]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [52:10]
Mark Rober
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 or your, your child or friend will accept your apology. Right. Like, like 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. Whereas, you know, NASA was like, well, you know, Our Rover is 20% faster on the gigahertz and it's like, nobody cares. Right. Apple, I feel like, is a very good example of this. Right. Like AirPods is an example like the. Com. The advertising for AirPods there is technically there's better than any other headphones, you know.
- [52:58]
Jay Shetty
Yes.
- [52:59]
Mark Rober
There any like ear in your product out there. But the commercials are like the dance. It focuses on the feeling. Right. Like, what does it feel like to have these things? Not like, here's the tech spec of why it's better.
- [53:11]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [53:11]
Mark Rober
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 just.
- [53:18]
Jay Shetty
For the airport, just for the air.
- [53:19]
Mark Rober
It's like $50 billion market cap, just for the airport.
- [53:24]
Jay Shetty
Crazy. It's crazy.
- [53:34]
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- [54:06]
Kalpen (Kal Penn)
Hey audiobook lovers. This week on the podcast I'm sitting down with musician, producer and walking encyclopedia Questlove. We're talking about Mark Ronson's memoir Night how to be a DJ in 90s New York City. All right, like we talked about before, Mark Ronson found sanctuary in the DJ booth. What's a tool or piece of equipment in the studio or on stage that gives you the most control?
- [54:29]
Mark Rober
So I have two microphones on stage. We have the microphone that you hear as the audience. Then we have a second microphone in which we communicate with each other. I feel like that second microphone kind of saved all of our friendships. No band likes each other other after 20 years or 25 years. Like the Beatles broke up in seven and a half years and we're going on 35.
- [54:54]
Kalpen (Kal Penn)
Listen to earsay the Audible and iheart audiobook club on the iheartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:07]
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- [55:43]
Jay Shetty
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 7000 pieces of viral content and the output was the 7000 piece of viral content they made people feel. Five things. One of five things. The first was adventure, which your content does all the time.
- [56:09]
Mark Rober
Humor.
- [56:10]
Jay Shetty
Your content does that too. Or comedy, obviously. The third feeling was negativity. The news. Anger, rage. Yours does not do that. The fourth was inspiration, so you felt inspired after watching it. And the fifth was surprise. And so those were the five emotions and they were all feelings. 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. 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, 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 going to teach you engineering now, I'm not. I'm feeling bored. Yeah. And that's not on the top five list. 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. It's like, what was the journey from zero to a thousand subscribers? What does that look like for someone? If someone's trying to do that as stage one?
- [57:13]
Mark Rober
There's a lot of really good reasons to start a YouTube channel or to be a creative. There's only two bad ones. Tell us to get rich and to get famous. 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, you didn't realize that was it. Right. Our passion was like, we love this. Right.
- [57:37]
Jay Shetty
I thought it was gonna be. I thought I was gonna. Because I was a consultant at the time.
- [57:40]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [57:41]
Jay Shetty
So I was at Accenture. Oh, really? Yeah. I thought I was gonna be a consultant by day and just upload videos by night and weekends. Because I was like, this is a fun hobby. It was just a creative outlet for me. 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 my local college, 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.
- [58:15]
Mark Rober
Yeah. But ultimately 20s. I mean, like, to your point, like, it takes forever to get a thousand subscribers. And so I think the trick is just to make content. Just to do it. Don't overthink it. You know, the temptation is you want to make the perfect thing. And again, going back to an engineer, you build prototypes. Like, the biggest mistake when you want to make something is like, I want to 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. Iterated. And so it's the same thing with, like, creating content or making things or trying anything. Set a low bar. I like to say, make your goal to fail 10 times. Flip it. Make the goal. I want to make 10 videos and my goal is that they don't get more than a hundred views. In a sense of don't make your metric. But I'm not rich yet and I'm not famous yet. Therefore I'm a failure. Destigmatize the failure and just go for it and make that. So make the goal. You know, maybe a better way to say is make the goal to just upload 10 videos in 10 weeks. That's my goal. I don't care about metrics, 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 going to lean into that. Right. So it's like just gamify it in that sense and it will be great. Don't do it to be a merchant famous.
- [59:47]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's great advice. I remember I got my first thousand subscribers in a month on YouTube and I was over the moon. Like, I was so excited. I couldn't believe it. Like, I was like, this is. I'd never stood in front of a. I'd maybe done one Talk, which was a work event which had a thousand people in the audience, but I'd never done my own event with a thousand 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 to a thousand subscribers. This is insane. 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 to them, not to me. Yeah, because they were just like, oh, it's a thousand. Like, I guess it's going to, you know, now here. And it was just so interesting for me to see, like, oh, it was good. I didn't feel that way because I would have stopped.
- [60:32]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [60:32]
Jay Shetty
But a thousand to me was a huge win. What's the difference between getting from a thousand to 100,000? Like, what is changing in skill set, mindset, ability?
- [60:42]
Mark Rober
You start to get like a process down. You start to be able to 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, 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.
- [61:13]
Jay Shetty
You've only ever. You said you've only ever made one video a month.
- [61:15]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [61:16]
Jay Shetty
How did you not get sucked in to the landscape when it was like people were making a video a day, people making three videos a week, people 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?
- [61:31]
Mark Rober
Partly that. And just like, again, 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 is how you got all the views. 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. 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. So. And even today, you know, good at saying no.
- [62:08]
Jay Shetty
What was the hardest thing you ever said no to?
- [62:11]
Mark Rober
You know, early on, there were some opportunities to do some, like, Discovery Channel shows that I would have 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, because 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 don't often, like, pick something that I'm just, like, 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 on it, where it's just like, I will not fail. Like, 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 I can just exclude everything else. So I don't have this temptation of, like, I'm not trying this. I don't want to try this. I'm going to try this, and I'll try this. And now you're just diluted across the board. Right. Because that applies not even for business, but in your relationships. Right. 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. Yeah, right.
- [63:24]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, It's. Yeah. There's almost like. There's the experimenting phase where you're trying lots of things out.
- [63:30]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [63:31]
Jay Shetty
But then when you know who you are and you know your voice and you know what you're building, you got to stick to that. And. And it. And it does make all the difference. And you got to know when to let something go. Like 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.
- [63:50]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [63:51]
Jay Shetty
And they would have 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.
- [64:09]
Mark Rober
That's right.
- [64:10]
Jay Shetty
And it doesn't. That gets really dry. It gets really tiring, I think. And crazy. Get burnt out chasing the algorithm, which I think we've both seen probably a lot of.
- [64:19]
Mark Rober
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. 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.
- [64:45]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [64:46]
Mark Rober
And being okay with saying no and not feeling guilty about it.
- [64:48]
Jay Shetty
What was the. 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?
- [65:01]
Mark Rober
I lost 10 pounds making that video. I'm not kidding. Because. Because we were making. I get. When I get stressed, I don't eat it. 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 ever made an actual jello pool. Because jello, as you know, you have to get it really cold. You got to, first of all, boil it, and then it's got to put it in the refrigerator, right? So we had, like, six, you know, 55 gallon drums that we boiled jello in, Basically drained it in this pool that 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. And we'd have to tweak 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. And it felt really good. That's, like. Actually, it turns out it's a very technically difficult problem. Again, my naive optimism was like, I got this. I can do this, right?
- [66:07]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [66:08]
Mark Rober
And it was very, very tricky, but we pulled it off.
- [66:11]
Jay Shetty
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?
- [66:20]
Mark Rober
Yeah, there again, that video had so many failures in it, Jay. Like, we tried originally to put a. Basically a model rocket on a hot air balloon or on a weather balloon and then guide it over a mattress and 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 called up one of my buddies at NASA. He's the lead when we try and land something 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. So we're like, oh, we shouldn't try and guide this rocket down then. Well, let's go 100,000ft 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.
- [67:19]
Jay Shetty
I love how you were bugging a NASA friend.
- [67:22]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [67:23]
Jay Shetty
Who's dealing with, like, solving, like, discovery.
- [67:25]
Mark Rober
And it's literally the man who, like, invented how you land on Mars.
- [67:29]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [67:29]
Mark Rober
And it's like, my phone of humans friend.
- [67:30]
Jay Shetty
You're like, can you teach me how to drop an egg?
- [67:33]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [67:33]
Jay Shetty
On a. On a mattress.
- [67:35]
Mark Rober
And he was like, yeah, no, that's called a missile.
- [67:38]
Jay Shetty
That's amazing. 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 met through this crazy journey that you've been on that has kind of left a mark on you or someone that you always looked forward to getting to know and you've got to meet.
- [67:55]
Mark Rober
Yeah. I would say, I don't know, weirdly, like, 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 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. And so now he's like, it was his idea even to start Crunch Labs, the company, because people will 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, because, again, I'm good at saying no, it always came back to, like, oh, so you can make more money. 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 that's the idea with Crunch Labs. 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 them 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.
- [69:08]
Jay Shetty
There we go.
- [69:09]
Mark Rober
Great Christmas present.
- [69:10]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. I was about to say it's. No, it sounds like the perfect gift. I mean, I think I'll have to. I'm going to get some for My niece and nephew.
- [69:16]
Mark Rober
Okay.
- [69:17]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. I think they'll love it because I can see my nephew's like 10 years old and his brain's like that. Like, he wants to build stuff, he wants to break stuff, he wants to figure things out. My niece is more into like Gabby's dollhouse and stuff.
- [69:31]
Mark Rober
Well, the good news, Jay, it's funny you mentioned that we just.
- [69:34]
Jay Shetty
No. Have you got a Gabby's dollhouse phone?
- [69:36]
Mark Rober
More or less. It's called Creative Kit. So what I do is creative engineering. The engineering part we've got covered. Build boxes, the toys. I was saying. And then we have like a robotics one. But like the creative part, we'd never. So we studied what creativity is, and now there's a version called Creative Kit that 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 get a whirl 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 him a piece of paper and say, come up, you know, draw something, they're like. But if you say, like, 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. Then you name, it's a little animal's friend that comes with it. And then we're getting there within guidelines to think really creatively. And what this research shows you could watch these alpha brainwaves in your in is the more time you spend in this space, the 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.
- [70:44]
Jay Shetty
Did you always want your work and your products to help kids? Was that the goal for the YouTube channel from day one? Was it like, I want to help young people figure out, young kids figure out?
- [70:54]
Mark Rober
I don't think so, to be completely honest. I think it was more just like, I love sharing ideas. I love the aha moment when you learn something new. 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 ever laying underneath a tree 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, if you've never done this, you should do it. And it's remarkable. And it's immediately just like a teachable moment that shows like, oh, 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 and just 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 so that they could see three dimensional. But if, generally speaking, if you're a prey, a zebra or 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. Yeah, there's like, idea, like when you just learn something cool like that. 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 found, I especially love to give that to the young folks.
- [72:34]
Jay Shetty
What are you doing 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 everywhere?
- [72:52]
Mark Rober
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 bill, a pipe come out there on a building. And it'll drive me crazy, to be honest. And I have to figure it out. But the step one, with the scientific method two is just observation, 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 Want to hear is like, that's interesting. Like, hold on a second. Right. Like, that wasn't expected. Let me double click on that and see what's going on there.
- [73:37]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [73:37]
Mark Rober
So I think part of learning a bunch is just having a curiosity mind just asking the question.
- [73:43]
Jay Shetty
Yes, yes.
- [73:43]
Mark Rober
Right. And I think that's what I try and do is like, I am a fire starter. My videos are not going to teach you everything you need to know about the natural world. But like, what I can do is I can. Like, I can. I'm a fire starter. I'll start that fire in their brain and then they get addicted to this feeling. Right. I'm like the gateway drug dealer to this aha feeling. And then they want to go out and learn more. Right. And like that. That's beautiful. And that's a gift that you can give someone that will last their whole life long.
- [74:12]
Jay Shetty
How do you. How do you come up with creative ideas? Having made a video a month for 10 years.
- [74:18]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [74:18]
Jay Shetty
How are you coming up with new ideas? How. What's your creative process? Do you sit down in a room, lock away? Are you on your laptop? Are you talking to people? Are you with a team? What's your process?
- [74:28]
Mark Rober
Can I tell you one? That you bleep out on this. But you could play it. But then I want your reaction on camera.
- [74:39]
Jay Shetty
That's so good. That's so good.
- [74:41]
Mark Rober
That's so good.
- [74:42]
Jay Shetty
I love that.
- [74:43]
Mark Rober
That not so good.
- [74:44]
Jay Shetty
Why do I have to believe that? I love that.
- [74:46]
Mark Rober
No, because I don't want someone to steal it.
- [74:48]
Jay Shetty
Oh, right. Oh, yes.
- [74:49]
Mark Rober
It's such a simple thing I could tell you. You're like, bang.
- [74:52]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, I love it.
- [74:53]
Mark Rober
I want to know what that is. Right?
- [74:54]
Jay Shetty
That is amazing.
- [74:55]
Mark Rober
It's so good.
- [74:56]
Jay Shetty
That's so good.
- [74:57]
Mark Rober
So it's just like when. When I can get that reaction.
- [75:00]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah.
- [75:01]
Mark Rober
Like I. The ideas list is long. I always thought you'd run out of ideas, but it's like, it has to.
- [75:07]
Jay Shetty
Be a hell yes.
- [75:08]
Mark Rober
It has to be a hell yes. 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.
- [75:17]
Jay Shetty
So you're never trying to react to what's happening in the world or you're not. Yours is evergreen content.
- [75:22]
Mark Rober
Evergreen?
- [75:22]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [75:23]
Mark Rober
Never. I want it to be evergreen. Yeah.
- [75:24]
Jay Shetty
You're not trying to react to like, everyone loves AI right now, so we're going to do AI. Everyone loves robotics, so we're doing Right.
- [75:30]
Mark Rober
We can't. I mean, all the videos now cost. We don't do a video that costs less than half a million dollars.
- [75:36]
Jay Shetty
Wow.
- [75:36]
Mark Rober
Right?
- [75:37]
Jay Shetty
Every video is 500.
- [75:38]
Mark Rober
Yeah. Because we just like, you know, we're doing stuff that's never been done before. So there's like a lot of R and D that goes into making a soccer robot that moves at 80 miles an hour.
- [75:45]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. That's. That's probably the best goalkeeper that Ronaldo's ever faced.
- [75:49]
Mark Rober
For sure. It is. Yeah.
- [75:50]
Jay Shetty
That's crazy. I can't wait to see that video.
- [75:52]
Mark Rober
It's funny. He's very competitive.
- [75:54]
Jay Shetty
Of course. I have obsessed over Ronaldo since I was 15 years old because I was a United fan. So when he came to United when he was 17.
- [76:02]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [76:02]
Jay Shetty
I've been a big fan for like 23 years. So watching. I know how competitive he is and I'm like, watching him fail is going to be an interesting.
- [76:10]
Mark Rober
His team warned us. They're like, he doesn't. In the end, like, there was a way that we kind of had a built in weakness he could exploit.
- [76:17]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [76:18]
Mark Rober
And he did a pretty good job finding it. But between you and me, Jay, we might have like, we made sure there was a weakness.
- [76:25]
Jay Shetty
You should just. You just. Now all you have to do is create robots that look like humans, that are designed like your a mile per hour goalkeeper and sell them to these. That's the next thing. Can you pull off selling an AI computer to Barcelona or Real Madrid or.
- [76:40]
Mark Rober
That's a banger.
- [76:41]
Jay Shetty
That would be amazing.
- [76:51]
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- [77:53]
Kalpen (Kal Penn)
Hey, audiobook lovers. This week on the podcast I'm sitting down with musician, producer and walking encyclopedia Questlove. We're talking about Mark Ronson's memoir, Night how to be a DJ in 90s New York City. All right, like we talked about before, Mark Ronson found sanctuary in the DJ booth. What's a tool or piece of equipment in the studio or on stage that gives you the most control?
- [78:16]
Mark Rober
So I have two microphones on stage. We have the microphone that you hear as the audience. Then we have a second microphone in which we communicate with each other. I feel like that second microphone kind of saved all of our friendships. No band likes each other after 20 years or 25 years. The Beatles broke up in seven and a half years and we're going on 35.
- [78:40]
Kalpen (Kal Penn)
Listen to earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [78:54]
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- [79:30]
Jay Shetty
So what's the creative process then? Now you planned out that far ahead? I love the idea you just gave me that will bleep out. But what, how, how does that. Obviously that one makes sense. And you're like, the, the thing about good ideas is when you hear them, you go, of course.
- [79:44]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [79:45]
Jay Shetty
But coming up with it is not that easy.
- [79:47]
Mark Rober
Yeah, I would say. And I, I don't have a good answer for this, except no, but. Except to say because I get asked this a lot, right? It's like, I think it goes back to just like my brain is always on, right? The inspiration for ideas can come, you know, and it just from a conversation I'm having with someone or I just read something on Reddit or I'm driving down the freeway and I'm like, hold on. Or I did this, you know, I'll give you two examples. One, I did this obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard that's kind of popular on the channel right around Covid. And I was, 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 going to make him earn it. So I made an eight part ninja warrior obstacle course and put the bird seed at the end. And sure enough, they solved it. It was very entertaining, but the idea for that came from me just laying in bed and hearing them on the roof and knowing they're still my birthday. I was like, hold on. I should do man versus Animal, Engineer versus Animal or another one. I made this glitter bomb series where 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 could do something about these porch pirate punks, it's like, I'll 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?
- [81:04]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [81:04]
Mark Rober
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. If you just follow the natural steps, it just happens.
- [81:27]
Jay Shetty
Was there a video that you did because 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.
- [81:34]
Mark Rober
Yeah, I did a video on bedbugs because I just thought they're fascinating. Like what is up with bed bugs? They like suck human blood. And if you, 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 going to kill the channel. No one's going to 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.
- [82:09]
Jay Shetty
Wow, that's him.
- [82:09]
Mark Rober
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 footage, it's like, all right, what's the story here? And I think if you have the right attitude, there's always a really cool story to find.
- [82:28]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. 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?
- [82:40]
Mark Rober
I don't know. There's kind of unanswerable questions, like, where is all the life in the universe? Like, if life exists here, especially if. So NASA's. There's a moon called Enceladus in our solar system that has a molten lava core and the outside is ice, right? Water. Water. Frozen water. So somewhere between the molten lava core and that surface, there's a 70 degree ocean. It's warm, it's water. That's where life formed. We know that's where life formed on this planet. So NASA's building a probe to go there. Essentially, we're going to drill through the ice, we're going to put a submarine down there and basically see what eats it, right? And if something is there for life to exist twice in our own solar system, kind of independently, then it's like, 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 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.
- [83:57]
Jay Shetty
That is completely unfathomable.
- [83:58]
Mark Rober
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 fat. If you want a fascinating rabbit hole, look up Fermi's paradox.
- [84:13]
Jay Shetty
What have you learned so far? Is it that life form looks different? We can't see it? Is it.
- [84:18]
Mark Rober
Well, we don't know. But like some of the hypothesis, some of the hypotheses on why we don't know is like, it could be there's like super predator civilization. There's super predator 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. Because it could be a threat, it could be another one is like intelligences get to 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 a lot of organisms fight each other. And that could be a pretty darn good thing for us to be looking at as a civilization ourselves, right?
- [85:09]
Jay Shetty
Sure.
- [85:10]
Mark Rober
Where you just get too hard and then it collapses in on itself is another hypothesis. One is they know about us, but we're kind of like an endangered species, like an uncontested tribe in the Amazon. So they're like, just like, leave them alone. We're like, so basically in a zoo over here. Right. So there's all these like really fun hypotheses on what could be the explanation as to why.
- [85:30]
Jay Shetty
So that's good. Yeah, that's what keeps you up at night.
- [85:32]
Mark Rober
Yeah, I think it's a fun. Those kind of things are like, fun to think about.
- [85:36]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [85:37]
Mark Rober
But next time you are near sand, truly think of me, Jay, take a scoop of that sand and just look at how many grains of sand 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, but it's such a beautiful thought of the potential of life.
- [85:56]
Jay Shetty
You've not been to space yet, right?
- [85:57]
Mark Rober
Not yet.
- [85:58]
Jay Shetty
Not yet. Okay.
- [85:59]
Mark Rober
Not yet. There's some plans on the horizon. You'll go to space too. I think it's going to come pretty commonplace. You can get to Australia in, I think, 90 minutes through space. There's a financial incentive to travel quickly.
- [86:14]
Jay Shetty
To Travel quickly. Absolutely. 90 minutes to Australia from LA.
- [86:18]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [86:19]
Jay Shetty
Wow.
- [86:19]
Mark Rober
You basically just go up.
- [86:20]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [86:21]
Mark Rober
Go over fast. And the Earth also moves a little bit and you come back down.
- [86:24]
Jay Shetty
That's crazy. That's crazy. 90 minutes.
- [86:27]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [86:28]
Jay Shetty
Has someone done that?
- [86:28]
Mark Rober
Yeah. No, but like that. That's the math. Right. I mean, we don't have the ability. We southwest for space hasn't been invented, but like essentially that. Right. Wherever there's like a lot of financial incentive to do a thing like innovation will be placed towards that.
- [86:44]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. So what do you get excited about with what's happening with technology, with AI, with disc? 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?
- [86:57]
Mark Rober
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? So we're all clear. Then they're like, hey, we're going to raise this owl, we're going to put, raise them in our nest and it's going to love us. And then we can use the owl to like, go hunt for us. We're going to use the owl to do, you know, all these things that would be really useful. And, you know, of course, if you just carry that, if that actually happens, the owl is born thanks to the sparrows for incubating it, but it doesn't end well for sparrow. 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 a scarcity thing. So 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. So, I mean, nobody really knows. Jay, Like, I don't know. I'm curious where you, where you land on this.
- [88:18]
Jay Shetty
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. It started, we didn't really care about how it was going to 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. So scaremongering doesn't work because AI is here to stay. It's not disappearing tomorrow. So trying to scare everyone from it is not going to help because it's going to be here. So I don't love the fear factor piece because it doesn't solve the problem, 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 20 20. If we could go back to 2004 when Facebook was created and YouTube in 2010 or 2009.
- [89:49]
Mark Rober
Yeah. I think they acquired it in 2008 or something.
- [89:52]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Google. Yeah, 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. 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 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 kind of set ourselves up for failure every time.
- [90:24]
Mark Rober
Yeah. I mean, it's just so hard without the evidence. Right. To convince someone at Facebook where money's to be made. Right. Like, I mean, I completely agree with you.
- [90:32]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [90:33]
Mark Rober
But like, there's just so many unknowns. Unknowns. Yeah.
- [90:38]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. It's like, how do you not. How. 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.
- [90:51]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [90:51]
Jay Shetty
You know, like cigarettes or alcohol or, you know, whatever it is. We agree, we all agreed that until this point, your brain is not developed yet.
- [91:00]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [91:00]
Jay Shetty
What should we allow and not allow?
- [91:02]
Mark Rober
Yeah.
- [91:02]
Jay Shetty
You know, like, kids are watching you having the best time ever. Like, it's amazing. I wish more people watching you. Yeah. And. But how do you regulate the things that are not doing what you're doing?
- [91:10]
Mark Rober
I would say, though, like, I think for people listening, I think it could feel very doomsday. You hear really scary things 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.
- [91:23]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, of course.
- [91:24]
Mark Rober
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, so it's like, it's a little bit out of my hands in that sense. But it's like, well, I think you.
- [91:41]
Jay Shetty
I mean, I was going to bring this up anyway, and it connects to what you're saying right now. I mean, I know you and Jimmy have partnered multiple times to do incredible things for our planet, which. Thank you for being just such, you know, whenever people are like, we made the right people famous, I'm like, yeah, we did. Like, you know, it's. It's amazing to see you guys using your platform to do the thing that inspiring all these kids and families and parents and young. 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 the space and all the biggest creators and celebrities jumping in. And, you know, I think this year you raised what, 40 million.
- [92:17]
Mark Rober
40 million, yeah. So the first year we did this is Mr. Beast and I, right? 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.
- [92:29]
Jay Shetty
That was cleaning up the beaches.
- [92:30]
Mark Rober
30 million pounds of trash from the oceans. And then this year, we the audacious goal of $40 million to give 2 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.
- [92:44]
Jay Shetty
That's amazing.
- [92:45]
Mark Rober
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 picks up trash now because they see it, because they're on Team Seas, right? They don't litter. They take care of the environment because they're on Team Trees. That kind of impact. This is why I love working with young people. It's the same thing with going to another planet. The trajectory you have. In fact, there's motors we have on these spacecraft, we call them mouse fart motors. Or it's like, it's the tiniest little poof. Because that difference in trajectory 90 million miles away is the difference of hitting a planet and missing by a hundred million miles. Right. So it's like the same, I feel like, is sort of with life. And this is why I love young folks. Like, 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. So you leave the tribe, like, that's 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.
- [94:16]
Jay Shetty
I love that, man. 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 amazing. And, yeah, it's saying 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.
- [94:37]
Mark Rober
Yeah, that's it. Galvanize a bunch of other creators. I mean, at the end of the day, it only works because so many.
- [94:41]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, but. I mean, but you guys spearheading it.
- [94:44]
Mark Rober
Sure. Yeah.
- [94:45]
Jay Shetty
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. And it's been. I feel like I've. I've laughed, I've nearly cried. I've. I've definitely. 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, and you totally have an infectious energy about the world and curiosity and science and, like, you got me excited. Like, I'm like, I need to be. I need to be reading more of what you're doing. And that's the best feeling for me, where I'm like, oh, no, you live, you. You breathe it, you sleep it. It's who you are. And then when someone's around you, it's like, I'm inspired by everything you're fascinated by. And it's, you know, let us spark. As you were saying, like lighting a fire.
- [95:36]
Mark Rober
I love to hear it done that. For me, that's my favorite thing. I love that feeling. I love giving that feeling to others. So thank you for the time.
- [95:41]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Mark, I. I end every episode of On Purpose with the final five. We ask these to every guest. Their 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 heard or received?
- [95:56]
Mark Rober
This, too, shall pass. Like. Which is, like, it will get easier, but also, you're not as good as. If things are awesome, it will come back down as well. So the regression to the mean. I have to answer in, like, a sentence.
- [96:10]
Jay Shetty
That's fine. That's fine. Yeah. Sentence. Question number two. What's the worst advice you ever heard or received?
- [96:20]
Mark Rober
Like, don't go to bed angry. Like, you're just the idea.
- [96:24]
Jay Shetty
Like, go to bed.
- [96:25]
Mark Rober
Just go to bed. You're an emotional mind frame. Like, let it pass with anything, not even with the partner. Just, like, let it pass and hit it when you're not thinking with your lizard brain.
- [96:34]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah. It's true, actually. Yeah. It's like. And also, sleep is good for you, so if you're gonna stay up angry, it's, like, probably not gonna help. Question number three. What's something you learned recently that blew your mind?
- [96:47]
Mark Rober
That spider's legs are hydraulic, which is why.
- [96:50]
Jay Shetty
I didn't know that.
- [96:51]
Mark Rober
Yeah. This is why when they die, they're curled up. 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.
- [97:04]
Jay Shetty
Oh, wow. Wow.
- [97:06]
Mark Rober
The more you know, Jay.
- [97:07]
Jay Shetty
I know, I know. What's something you've recently learned about yourself? Question number four.
- [97:14]
Mark Rober
That, like, if I'm having a thought that's not productive, like, rumination or like, perseverating on a thing, I want to 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'll pass and you don't have to think about it. Right. That's hard to do. But, like, I mean, you know this with meditation. Like, you know this better than anyone as an engineer. I had to learn this, you know, on my own.
- [97:43]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, no, it's. It's a beautiful thing to remember, though, that don't believe everything you think, and your thoughts are not true. And. Absolutely. You're the sky, not the clouds. And. Yeah, yeah, no. Beautiful. Fifth and final question. We asked 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? Apart from buy Crunch labs for Christmas.
- [98:07]
Mark Rober
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.
- [98:18]
Jay Shetty
Oh, that's good.
- [98:19]
Mark Rober
And if you can do that and put that into the prompt, then you're allowed to hit share.
- [98:24]
Jay Shetty
That's good.
- [98:25]
Mark Rober
I think that would solve, like, 99% of the world's problems.
- [98:28]
Jay Shetty
I love that. I was giving a presentation recently. Kerry Washington invited me to speak at her Day of Unreasonable Conversations, which is all about sparking 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, it dropped shares by up to 70% because people don't read what they share. So you're going even one step further to comprehend and to actually understand a different perspective. But even read before retweet, 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 because, yeah, it would. It would change so much. Mark, it has been amazing talking to you today. For the two people who have never seen a Mark Robert video, make sure you go subscribe to Mark's channels. I am definitely getting some of the gifts for my crunch labs. Yeah, Crunch labs. I'm. I am definitely getting some of the crunch labs for my niece and nephew this Christmas. I think they're gonna love it. I can't wait. And, Mark, thank you for so much for how you show up, your creativity, coming on the show today and sharing so openly and vulnerably. And I look forward to getting to know you better, man. Thank you so much.
- [99:46]
Mark Rober
This is awesome.
- [99:47]
Jay Shetty
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.
- [100:10]
Mark Rober
Just because I like it, that doesn't.
- [100:12]
Jay Shetty
Give it any value. Like, as an artist, if you like.
- [100:15]
Mark Rober
It, that's all of the value. That's the. The success comes when you say, I like this enough for other people to see it.
- [100:22]
Kalpen (Kal Penn)
Hey, audiobook lovers, I'm Kalpin, I'm Ed Helms. Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Irsay The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [100:34]
Mark Rober
Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from Audible.
- [100:43]
Kalpen (Kal Penn)
Listen to ear, say, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.
- [100:52]
Commercial Announcer
Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line, but first. There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
- [101:22]
Mark Rober
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. The holiday season can be exhausting with all the parties and the end of year celebrations, but don't forget to take care of yourself by stocking up on your favorite nutritional products. Now through December 30th. Shop in store and online and save on items like Cliff Snack Bars, Luna Bars, Boost Nutritional Energy Drinks, Premier Protein Shakes, Z Bar Variety Packs, Open Nature Powder and Body Fortress Protein powder offers end December 30th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details. This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.