How Mark Rober hides "science vegetables" in viral videos

Worklife with Adam Grant

TED

Management, Worklife Podcast, Worklife With Adam Grant, Work Life Balance, Ted Talks, Podcast About Work Life, Ted Adam Grant, Adam Grant Podcasts, Ted Podcasts, Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist, Business

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you don't know Mark Rober, your kids do. He's best known for his viral engineering feats — like creating an obstacle course for squirrels, designing glitter bombs to get revenge on package thieves and building the world's largest Nerf gun. Before launching YouTube's most followed science channel, he was a NASA engineer, and he now runs his own company, CrunchLabs, designing monthly STEM subscription boxes that teach kids how to think, build, play and solve like engineers. Mark joins Adam to share his secrets to online engagement, his storytelling techniques and how to apply the scientific method to everyday life. They also discuss the importance of feeling ownership of your work, the case for sending humans to Mars and how they're rethought their approaches to parenting.

Available transcripts for ReThinking can be found at go.ted.com/RWAGscripts

Transcript

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0:00.0	TED Audio Collective.
0:06.5	I love that aha moment where you learn something new.
0:10.7	And to me, that feels so good.
0:13.0	And I feel like I'm like a gateway drug dealer of that feeling, especially to kids.
0:20.5	Hey, everyone. it's Adam Grant.
0:22.6	Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast on the Science of What Makes Us Tick
0:26.4	with the TED Audio Collective.
0:28.1	I'm an organizational psychologist,
0:30.2	and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people
0:32.7	to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.
0:38.4	My guest today is Mark Rober.
0:40.8	After nearly a decade as a NASA engineer, working on the Mars rover Curiosity team,
0:45.6	Mark is now the most followed science YouTuber in the world.
0:48.7	He has over 58 million subscribers and 8 billion views.
0:53.1	Mark's projects have captured the imaginations of viewers around the world.
0:56.0	There's the time he set a record for building the world's largest Nerf gun.
1:00.0	Or when he created an obstacle course in his backyard to protect his bird feeder from squirrels.
1:05.0	Or how to deter porch pirates from stealing his packages,
1:09.0	he baited them with glitter bombs that explode when
1:11.4	packages are open and catch the thief red-handed on camera.
1:15.2	That's what's so cool about being engineers.
1:17.2	Like, if something doesn't exist, you can just freaking will it into existence.
	...

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