Talking Glitterbomb, Creative Engineering, and Storytelling with Mark Rober!
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All right, welcome back, people of the internet, to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. This week, I have a conversation with one of my favorite YouTube creators and a good friend now, Mark Rober. We talked about a whole bunch in this conversation. We talked about being a full-time YouTube creator and some of the quirks and features of that particular job, but also, he used to work at NASA, at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and at NASA.

Apple, which we talk a little bit about that too, and sort of the weird behind the scenes. I think he shares a story of a little bit of the behind the scenes of Apple's self-driving car project and their ambitions there. It's all very interesting. Obviously, you should listen to the whole thing, but if you should listen to anything in particular, it's how it always, for him, seems to tie back to learning.

He's always been a lifelong learner, and now he has a new product out called the BuildBox subscription from his new company called Crunch Labs. It helps kids understand like physics concepts through hands-on experimentation with videos that he made that walks people through everything. It's fascinating. It's what his videos are about. It's what his products are about. It's what he's about. And you'll hear it in this interview too. So without any further ado, let's get into it.

All right, Mark Rober, thank you for joining me on the waveform podcast. It's been a long time coming. I feel like we've, we've crossed paths a few times. We've worked together a few times, but I've always wanted to just sit down and have a chat. Uh, this is one question I think I ask every creator and I'm, I'm kind of excited to hear your answer. What do you tell people that you do? Like how do you, what's your two sentence, like compact version of what Mark Rober does? What is that?

I mean, it depends, first of all. Sometimes if it's a situation where it's like, where it's like, in certain situations, I just, I don't want to get into it. And I just like, oh, I just, I just make,

I make science videos and I just kind of leave it at that. And sometimes that just leaves it in the conversation, you know, that stops the conversation. But if I want to explain like what it is I do, it's like, I don't know. I think my...

I get, I'd say just like getting folks, especially the young folks, like stoked about science and education and engineering by trying to make videos that are like catchy and interesting. It's like I trick people into learning science by getting them excited to see a thing. And then when they least expect it, then I sneak some science in on them. That's kind of what I do.

I like that. I feel like I have my, a lot of my favorite channels on YouTube for whatever reason are very educational channels, whether they're about technology or maybe the science and like weird physics questions and things like that. I don't know why, but that's like, there's a whole section of YouTube that I'm constantly on that's all about that.

Um, and you of course have a history before you were making videos about tech, you were working in tech and engineering. You worked at JPL at NASA, you worked at Apple. I'm going to guess that you've always been into science and engineering in some capacity. Yeah, I think, um,

certainly math and science resonated more with me, even in junior high. When I went to high school and I took high school physics, I was like, oh, this feels good in my brain. I like being able to explain the world using math and equations. No matter what language we speak or where we live or what our political ideologies or our favorite sports teams, we can all agree that

uh, gravity is 9.8, you know, meters per second squared. And if I, if I dropped this rock off this bridge, like we, we would all come to the same answer of like how many seconds it would take for it to hit the ground. And there's just something so beautiful about one right answer to a thing and being able to,

you know, as humans, we like to predict a lot of times we, we, we're really good at creating narratives, going back through things that happened in our own lives or like on a, on a worldwide stage and, and kind of,

Creating a thread to create a story as to why it happened, you know, hindsight bias, you know, hindsight's 2020, all that stuff. So that I think ultimately we can then predict the future. And a lot of times we're making poor conclusions to why it happened and then we're poor at predicting the future. But that's the beauty of math and science and especially like physics and these things. It's like you make observations of the natural world so that you can make predictions

very meaningful and realistic and accurate predictions of what will then happen in the future. And that's a huge part of what's gotten us to where we are at this point in humanity.

Yeah, I feel like that was always why I gravitated towards math as my favorite subject because there's only one right answer and I know if I got it right because I did the process right. But it also is interesting what you're saying about being able to predict the future a little bit. I just had that memory of I think the person who predicted Halley's Comet would return at a certain year, made all the correct calculations but then didn't live to see when it came back. But when it came back, everyone was like, oh, this guy was on to something.

So there's, well, that's like, yeah. And like with Einstein too, it's like, I mean, he's like, people say, Oh, he's like the classic. Oh, he's a smart dude. But like,

Today, even still, there's so many things that he predicted that like we're just now being able to have the instruments to measure and be like, yeah, the dude was right again on like something else, right? I mean, that's pretty dope when it's like not only you make a prediction in a statement that's like you can test now, but like you don't even have the ability to test it to like –

10, 20, 100 years in the future. And then when you're still right, like that's pretty bomb. That's pretty, that's like A1 bragging rights of like, yeah, we won't know if I'm right, but trust me, you'll figure it out eventually. Trust me, eventually you'll find out I'm right. Yeah. So I, when I think about like,

engineering and science in school, I wonder, you basically are an educator now, and more so than ever, because we'll talk about Crunch Labs in a second, but are there things that you wish were different about your education maybe? Maybe there's different types of learnings that would have helped you more, or do you find that the normal school path got you to know you enjoy math and engineering? Because when I see Crunch Labs, I'm like, oh, learning at home,

physical learnings, like visual learnings, things in your own hands. That's what I would have wanted. That's way more down my alley, but I wonder how you look at it.

Yeah, for sure. Like, I think to the degree that you can learn without realize you're learning, like realizing you're learning is like, that's, I mean, if I think about all the things I'm the most passionate about, and I'm like the best at like, I mean, take, I still edit all my own videos, right? And it's like, I feel like I'm pretty good at editing and writing, you

and coming up with like a good story and like a way to communicate something at this point because I'm passionate about it and I love it. And it's like, I never, I never took a class for that. Right. Like no one's ever like officially taught me. It's just something I'm so passionate about and I enjoy. And therefore I know it better than I know almost anything else. And to the degree that you can just tap into that and like,

and just tickle that part of someone. Like I, my favorite thing in life is that like aha moment where it's like,

a new principle becomes, or you see something in a different way. Like I'm addicted to that feeling. I love like reading books that challenge the way I think and get me to like, just like learning. Like that excitement of learning something new is like such an addictive feeling. And I love giving that aha moment to like other people. Like I know when I'm going to drop a juicy nugget in a video that's like, ah, I'm going to say this. And a lot of people don't realize this is true.

Um, and, and so if you can make learning about that feeling and just like the excitement, I did a Ted talk about a TEDx talk about what I called the super Mario effect, which is basically like, you know, when, when you're playing a video game, you're not afraid of failure. If you fall into a pit, um,

on level one of Mario, you're not like, you don't throw the controller down and be like, oh, that's so embarrassing. I can't believe I died. Like, I never want to play this game again. You're like, no, like, okay, there's a pit there. Okay, next time I got to remember, I got to cut them out with more speed. I'm going to try jumping a little earlier.

It might take six or seven tries before you land that, right? Level 8-1, you had to make that big jump, and there was that tiny little block you had to land on and then do a quick jump. Got me every time, right? But that meant I wanted to figure it out that much more. And as kids, as a result, we got really good at that game really fast. And we never went to school the next day and were like,

you know, talked about all the different ways we died. The question was like, did you beat the game last night? And it's like, you know, I said in the talk, like the most meaningful high fives of my adolescence was when it's like, yeah, dude, I beat it. I beat it.

And so it's like I try and approach in my own life like challenges that way. And so as a result, you're just way less focused on the failure and being embarrassed and looking dumb. And if you gamify the object of the thing you're trying to learn, you will just learn it so much faster. And it's a totally pleasant experience. And you love it just like we love playing video games.

And so that's a long way to answer your question. Like, heck yeah. Like the more you can make learning exciting and something that the kid, the students see the passion in the teacher, uh,

because they're genuinely passionate about it. Like that's the secret sauce. And I had a couple teachers like that. You know, my AP statistics teacher, which could be a totally boring subject, was awesome. And that was probably my favorite class in high school and something to this day. Statistics is something I'm still fascinated about. Same. Yeah. No, AP stats was probably my favorite class actually.

But yeah, no, that's a really good point. So much of what we do now even is self-taught. That's like the way it's described. Like we didn't go to class for it. We didn't study it formally or whatever. But you do it so often and you enjoy it and you want to get better at it, so therefore you just work towards getting better at the thing. And you might not even think to yourself, oh, I am self-taught at this thing. But you are. It is kind of the best way of learning something new.

the most effectively. But also you said something in there. You said you still edit all your own videos.

Which is probably one of the more surprising things. I think a lot of people assume that a channel like yours is some massive production. Tell me about the video making process. What goes through your head when deciding to set up a squirrel maze in your backyard and have them go through and measure all the data and figure out which one's Gus and how's it all going? What on earth is your process from ideation to...

to making a whole video.

Yeah, I mean, you still, you and I are like rare cases. You edit a lot of your own videos too and stuff, right? This is like, I feel like you and I always have the same conversation with Mr. Beast that we talk with him. He's like, what are you doing? Every time. He's literally like, why haven't you hired an editor? What's happening? This is the first thing he always says. Yeah. It's hilarious. Yeah, so for me, I think I'm different.

I mean, from talking with other folks, I think I'm different. Like I'm never, I never ever, ever have the moment where like, oh crap, I don't have a video next month or even six months from now. I like most, my videos are basically planned a year out. Like I'm currently working on eight or nine different videos right now in different stages. Either it's like a research phase, you know, or I'm currently. Okay. So what are the phases? Cause that's,

A year is a long time, so what are the phases, I guess, of these projects? Yeah, so naturally we got Glitter Bomb 5.0 in the works, and I started working on Glitter Bomb 5.0 literally in January of this year. Part of what I do with those videos is part of the fun is just the engineering challenge of starting over again and going back to the drawing. How can I engineer this thing to be even better? Yeah.

And that's a basic MO for myself too. If I do a sequel of a thing, like I've done a few elephant toothpaste videos or the glitter bomb or even the squirrel stuff, it's like the only time I'll do a sequel is when I know there's a banger way to make it better. So like the glitter bombs or the elephant toothpaste or the squirrel videos. If I have a really cool twist, a way to really level it up,

Then it's like, I'll challenge myself and try and level it up. So with the glitter bomb, I don't want to give too much away, but this year it involves drones. And when you open the lid, there may be some drones. They're going to go like the mini drones that are like fly around people's houses and spraying glitter on top of just an absolutely uncharitable amount of fart spray this year. I mean, we're really love leveling that up as well. So yeah,

But anyway, so that's a video. Like that's a lot. There's a lot of engineering that goes into taking a lid off a box in someone's house that can be banged around that they're not going to treat delicately like a prototype.

that it, where it needs to work and you need to be able to get the footage from the cloud and you need to like be able to retrieve the bot. There's just a lot of engineering that goes into that. So part of the reason they take so long is especially for the builds is a lot of times it's just the engineering. There's a lot of research, you know, one way to make a viral video is, or the way to make a viral video is to just evoke some kind of visceral response in the person watching it. Like that's the only way to make it. It has to be,

For something to be remarkable, it has to be able to be remarked about. And so it needs to make them feel wonder or awe or amazement or sadly anger. That's like why a lot of like, I think, you know, things are so political, like just kind of fractured. And, you know, the bipartisan aspect is like the partisanship is just

If you make something that makes people angry, they're going to share it. And so by doing like the world's largest Nerf gun, the world's largest super soaker, by definition, if it's the world's largest, longest Hot Wheels track, it means that you've never seen that before. It's the most extreme version of anything. And so it's going to have that awe aspect to it. So by doing that, by trying to do something you've never seen before or have it totally rotate, it just takes time.

resources and time to get to that point. So I have a word, I have a document, like a notebook, basically that has a bunch of ideas in it. And I've been doing this for over a decade now, like you. And I was worried for the first two years that at some point I'm going to run out of ideas, but it's like,

That's for sure. I'll never run out of ideas. I always have a year's worth of ideas in there and things are coming. And so, yeah, that's basically it. So they're just in different stages and some of them are kind of half-baked. Some of them it's like, hey, I need to find someone who does this thing. Like I have this one idea that I've had a while that's like has to do, I don't want to give too much away, but it has to do with like a primitive form of hunting that

And I think there's people on earth still who do it very well, like blow your mind amazingly well. And I want to kind of make a machine and go find these people and like challenge them. But it's like, that's one part of it is like making the thing myself, but part of it is like finding the right person and then traveling to that part of the world to meet with them. So like different ideas have different lead times for different reasons. Yeah.

But yeah, yeah Good I feel like when I when I watch a good video like part of my brain anytime I'm watching a movie sees like the plot and the movie and watches that part and the other half of my brain is like wondering how they shot it and like Appreciating the cinematography of certain pieces. So when I see a good YouTube video that I can tell took a lot of time and effort to create and

then I appreciate it even more. Like that's where my brain goes. So I feel like every time I watch one of your videos and you do hit that moment of like learning or like that engineering twist or like, dang, he really built that punter robot to kick the football that far. Like all of that coming together in the video, that's like my favorite part of enjoying the video, obviously. But just knowing that they're planned so far in advance is like...

I don't know, my brain couldn't handle that. Like when I'm making a video and I get like 98% done with the edit and it's like midnight, I cannot and I will not leave until it's done and uploaded or I'll come in the next day sick of it. Like I can't stand it. So I appreciate that you put in all of that effort. The trick though is making it look like, I think there's an, making it look like it didn't require all that effort. You know what I mean? Like,

I'd say at this point, this is a little nugget for you on your podcast because it's tech, but I'd say maybe like 20% of my shots at this point are just from my iPhone. Like it's not about, and Casey Neistat would say this all the time, but it's like it's not about your gear. It's about the story. It's about what you're doing. Like it's the story and what you've done that matters, right?

And so I almost try not to, like, I don't want a red camera. I mean, for what you do, it makes sense and it's cool. And I would say it actually is a little bit about the gear and making it look really, really beautiful. No, it is.

but for me it's like it's not and there's sort of an authenticity that comes with it not making it feel like it's an overproduced TV show thing and if it just feels like I built this cool thing and I'm just a dude and I'm just going to kind of film it and tell the story in a fun way but it's not going to be super overproduced there's

I think it just feels comfortable and I think the medicine goes down smoother when I get into the science stuff because you feel like I'm just a dude in my backyard who's passionate about this stuff, which is true. Like that is what the situation is. But I think there's an element if you get too focused on gear and the beautiful shots and too cinematic or just making it feel like a standard overproduced TV show thing that you just lose that and it sucks the soul out of it, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. There is there is an element of like reducing all of it to just the core of the idea, which is just like, hey, yeah, I'm a guy in my backyard. I got some squirrels. Let's see what happens. And I like I kind of enjoy like the moment when I'm watching the video, when I realize what's going on.

oh, this was shot on an iPhone. I wasn't even thinking about that before. Usually as soon as I open the video, I'm like, oh, what was this shot on? Oh, it looks like the shot with like three angles here and this camera. So I like that. I like that it gets me so immersed that I don't even notice. That's the mark of a good video.

So then, so then you get into the editing stage. How long does it take you to edit a whole video? I'm assuming you just have hundreds of gigs of footage of things being engineered and working. I think, yeah, I mean, for like the squirrel videos we have probably like, uh, I think it's like, what would it be? I'm trying to think it's maybe like a thousand hours of footage or more that we got to break down. I got to, I got to cut it down to,

15 minutes, you know? And I, to be fair, I do have an editor I work with who like is a, who goes through all the raw footage and organize it for me. So it's like, I'm totally editing by myself, but it's still personally a hundred hours of me personally editing a single video. Like that's my time not to include the other editors. So, um, yeah, yeah. I tend to not actually even like football kicking robot as an example, like,

A lot of times I don't know what the story is going to be. And, you know, my stuff is very story driven. That's like a misconception where people are like, oh, you're a really good builder. And I say this a lot, but it's like, I'm an okay builder. But it's like, I'm a pretty good storyteller. I'll give myself credit for that. And so I kind of don't have the video pre-planned out. Like I'll go out and film the thing and just get a lot of footage. And then once I'm done filming it, it's like, okay,

what happened here and what's the narrative here and what's the best way to teach the science here based on the results. And so a lot of times like the intro and not even a lot of times, every time the intro where it's like, so we're going to go out here and see blah, blah, blah. I filmed after the fact.

So it's like I will do the thing, I'll see what happens, I'll figure out what the best story is, and then I'll weave the narrative in from there. It's all film post, you know. And obviously I do VO, and that kind of helps with that as well. Yeah, that is fascinating. So like every genre of YouTube video has a different version of this where it's like product reviews are –

are mainly, and maybe this has room to change, but it's all shot after the fact and explaining what happened. So there isn't really the current events learning part of it. And so this reminds me of another conversation we had with Jimmy, which is like, he would tell you to never make a video unless you already have the title and thumbnail planned out in advance.

But if you're in the midst of an experiment and you don't know how it will go and you don't know if it will fail or not or if you have to change course, are you not able to make like the final packaging of the video until the end? Do you start with a title in mind and then it changes? How does that work?

No, I definitely agree with Jimmy in that sense where it's like, you know, if I made a 15 ton jello pool, I'm pretty dang sure know what the title of that will be and what the thumbnail would be regardless of what happens. Uh, so very rarely is it like, uh, I generally think that's decent advice as well. And I do the same thing if I can't find, or if there's something, uh,

There is one idea I've had for like six years that my team, my friends and my team would laugh because it's like, I know this is going to sink my channel. I'm probably going to do it in the next three months. That it's like, I don't, generally I don't make a video that's like very, very, very niche. Like part of me, you know, because I'm reaching such a broad audience now, it needs to be broadly applicable. So that advice of what's the title, what's the thumbnail, I have a pretty good sense. And I think a lot of the bigger creators, yourself included, are,

who are good at this have that same thing that's just like a sense of what's going to resonate with people. It starts with the title of Thumbnail, but there's tons of decisions throughout the video that you're making that if you have a good sense of what generally will resonate with others, you're going to pull views on YouTube eventually. So, yeah, I always...

in general, will do that as well. And, you know, if you know the general title and thumbnail and if it's going to resonate, how the story pans out is almost less important. You know, in the end, no matter what, I've made this crazy football kicking robot. Whether I beat the longest kicker or not, or he beats me, or how we get there, that's all stuff that I don't know. But I know I've got this thing and that's going to be my title and my thumbnail. You know what I mean? We're going to take a quick break for some ads. Then we'll be right back with Mark Rober.

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So now we're making both of us YouTube videos that are typically 10, 15 plus minutes long, sometimes longer than that. And there's a little piece in the back of my brain that's like, yeah, but TikTok, you see what TikTok's doing, right? You see what shorts are doing, right? You see those like 45 second videos that are blowing up. Are you thinking about shorts at all? Because I know I started making some and

It's a challenge. My first few shorts were like 59.9 seconds. I barely finished what I wanted to say by the time it was over. But in the spirit of educating and being fun and tricking people into learning, have you thought about doing short form stuff? I have. In fact, I have a list. I really put my brain on it for like...

a day or two. And now I have a notes doc on my phone that has like 70 ideas that I think are pretty banger ideas. And it's kind of cool because you could do stuff in short form that,

there's certain things that I would want to do in a video, but it's just not big enough for a video. Um, like I've got this fountain in my backyard the other day and the flow is too strong. So one thing I tried was I jammed some like steel wool into the pipe to like slow the flow down. And it turns out if you jam steel wool into a pipe, it gives you laminar flow. And I was like, that's amazing. And that's like a cool short I could do. Uh, yeah, that, um,

uh, and talk about that. That wouldn't, that's certainly not a full YouTube video. So it's like, I do have those stuff. It's just like, it's a matter of time. And, and maybe I'm like the old man who's going to miss the boat, but it's like, I think when I'm ready to do that, I will jump into it and do it for now. Admittedly, there's not as much revenue in, in shorts. Um,

And so and for me, like mobile was down 10% last year. So that's an argument that people are like starting to watch more short form content. But TV was up like 70%, like a lot of people and I've seen this with my friends and their kids like they it's now a thing more most TVs are smart TVs where people will watch TV.

YouTube on their TV. So I'm not, you know, I'm not jumping on this. Oh, everyone's got to make short form content. In some ways I'm doubling down on long form content because it works really well on the TV. And I think that's a growing market. So I have thought about shorts for now. I feel like I'm, I'm, I, I have, there's only,

you know, 24 hours in a day type of thing. And I'm continuing to put my resources into the long form stuff. However, at some point, I'm sure I will do short form and I'm kind of excited for it as a challenge as a new way to do things. It's kind of exciting for me to like think about that. But right now I'm not super concerned with it. It is. I will warn you, it is a challenge.

It is very much like a new way of structuring and making. I think when you start making short stuff, you'll be surprised at how short a short really is and trying to structure the information in a way that can actually fit in that amount of time. That's what I feel. It's taking, I feel like, the authenticity to... I do consume some short-form content. It's like...

It's very naked and bare bones and there's no – a lot of times there's no like background music and edits. It's like a one-take thing a lot of times works well, right? Exactly. Yeah, just shut on the phone. But that's like a different way to train, yeah, our brains to do stuff like that. I did see an article in Variety or something or – no. Yeah.

Uh, Benedict Evans, do you know who he is? He has a really good newsletter. I love his stuff where he's like predicting, he talks about industry, especially tech. It's amazing. And he put a link to you, that article that you did recently that said that you're doing, you're doing short form or looking into it. Someone wrote an article about you with regards to that or something, right? Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm just, I'm just dipping my feet in the shallow end of the pool. I see the deep end and I see, I see all the fun stuff on the horizon, but I am, I'm kind of like you, like there is limited bandwidth and I am pretty doubled down on the videos that we're making. So yeah.

you know, we're playing with it. We're playing with it. It could be, it could be a situation where short form eats long form eventually. But even if that were to happen from what I'm looking at, that could be like, that's two years away, three years away. So that's like, you could make a lot of content in two and three years. And at,

At that point, if I pivot, I mean, I have put some stuff. I think I have like 3 million followers on TikTok and I haven't started uploading YouTube shorts yet because I'm still kind of waiting. I'm still not clear how that looks on a channel and whether I do it on my main channel or second. So I could be wrong on that, but I don't know. I think there will always be a place for long form content, right?

Movies are still a thing regardless of YouTube existing. - Fully agreed. So what did you work on at Apple?

Is that a question I can ask? It's definitely a question you can ask. And they are very clear when you leave about the large stack of things you signed that says you're not going to talk about this. Here's what I can say. I did product design in their special projects group. And there was like a leak. So it's kind of a funny story. I don't know that I've ever told this publicly. But they...

First of all, they approached me and wanted me to work for them. And then they told me when I came there, I can't make YouTube videos. And I'm like, and granted at that time I had like 250,000 subs. So I was pretty small, but I'm like, forget you guys. Like you came to me. Like I didn't like, then I'm not going to work with you. And I don't feel like you can even tell me I can't make videos anyways. Like, is that even legal? So eventually they backed off of that and they just said, fine, but wait at least three months.

till you make a video so you kind of get the culture here and you can't say in your videos you work for Apple. I'm like, fine. I'm like, I don't even have, part of me convincing them was like, I don't even have that big of a channel anyways. It's not going to get that many views. So I come there and the very first video I upload after three months is How to Skin a Watermelon, which to this day is my most popular video ever with like 140 million views. It just had a really banger thumbnail.

At a time when thumbnails were like really important to the algorithm, it was just like weird timing. So I'm like, guys, don't worry. I don't need that many views anyways. I upload this and in like a week it has like 25 million views. It just like totally popped.

Yeah. So anyways, so I'm making videos. And then eventually, maybe a year later, Jimmy Kimmel asked me, you know, his folks said, hey, do you want to come on the Kimmel show? And I was like, well, so I asked. I asked Apple that. And it gets bumped all the way up to Dan Riccio, who is like one below Tim Cook.

And Dan Riccio's response was like, we should be focused on making great products. And so that comes down to, he didn't exactly say no, but it was like, and I, and then I honestly realized from that, like, oh, they can't actually tell me no. If I'm not saying I work for Apple, like if I want to canoe after hours, you know, they can't tell me like, I can't canoe because we should be focused on making great products.

So I did Kimmel anyways, and that turned out to be, you know, a really good career decisions. Cause him and I are like good friends. Now I'm staying at his house next. I'm hosting his show next week and staying at his house and going on vacation with him. Uh, you know, the month after that, uh,

So it's like, I'm glad I didn't listen to Dan Riccio there. That's for days. So I kind of kept it secret, you know, that I worked for Apple and then my channel got bigger and bigger and they're concerned like to their point is like,

there's nothing beneficial that there's no upside to them by having me be an Apple employee and having a large following. It's only downside. Cause if I now have a platform to talk about them, like they don't need me to get their story out. Right. So eventually there was, I get a call one day after working for Apple for four years and it's a reporter from variety, I think, or something. And it's like, can you comment on your work you do for Apple? And I'm like,

Uh, what are you talking about? And as I'm talking to him, I get a call from Apple HR, like pinging in on this. And, uh, so I go over and they're like, Hey, look, someone's going to leak this story that you work for us. Just be, you know, uh,

Don't say anything. Just keep it very surface level. Anyways, I did. It ended up being this big story that leaked and all my coworkers gave me a hard time about it or teasing me. After that, it was not a big deal. I still worked for them for another year. They loved me working for them and I loved working for them. The reason it leaked, though, getting to everything, and this is the answer to your question, what did I do at Apple? I was lead author on a patent for

and I can say this because it's like public domain, about using virtual reality and self-driving cars. And like, what are all the implications of that? You know, and the main one being, again, because this is listed in the patent, like 40% of people suffer from motion sickness. And wouldn't it be interesting if...

you could use virtual reality to solve that because motion sickness is when like basically your, your internal gyro doesn't match up with what your eye is seeing. So that's why if you're like in the backseat and you can't see forward, you get motion sick because you don't know what's happening. And so if you could really know exactly what the car is going to do and where it's going to turn and how it's turning and show that to you in virtual reality,

then you could potentially not get motion sickness. Because when autonomous cars eventually come, well, I have all this free time, but if you get motion sick, there's nothing you can do with it. So the idea that you could strap on a virtual reality, and by the way, imagine virtual reality is like sunglasses, not these big bulky things now. But it's like a very lightweight thing you put on your head in the future. Yeah.

And now you can work on your laptop because essentially the screen is like way over on the horizon. It would show you a fake horizon and the screen would be like in the sky basically. And so no one gets motion sickness looking way over at the horizon. So now all of a sudden you can look down and see a virtual keyboard and you're typing or you can watch a movie. But then there's also tons of other implications that are listed in the patent of like

what does that mean for entertainment? Because like a car in some ways is the best version of a motion simulator because, you know, if you go on Star Tours or motion simulator, they have to simulate gravity by tilting your seat back. And then your brain's like,

I'm not feeling like pressure on my butt as much. So something just feels off when you're supposedly accelerating. But in a car, you're you're you still keep your G's pointing down and you actually can accelerate and brake and turn and impart these G's to you in a way that could be pretty entertaining or relaxing or engaging, depending on what kind of version you feed into the or thrilling version.

into the VR. So, um, yeah, there's a lot there. I will say again, because this is public record, Apple has continued to make,

updates to that patent. And it's, it feels like from my perspective there, it's an interesting one for them. So I don't know. It was really exciting to be. And that came about because Apple's like one of my managers at Apple was like, Hey dude, you're coming up with all these banger ideas on YouTube. Like come up with a banger idea for us. And so I started like thinking about it and then like I was in a meeting and I was just like, I started shaking cause I'm like, Oh my gosh, this would be so crazy. And so then like,

I started coming up with all these versions of it. And to their credit, management is very supportive there when you have ideas. They let you run with stuff and they have the funds to invest in it. So they were very supportive of letting me just go crazy with this idea. And yeah, it's a really fun, cool experience to be able to do that. Because it's like, you know, there's one idea of, there's one thing of like, you know, we come up with ideas on our own.

which is cool. You own the full idea and you can really, you could technically own it and run it cradle to grave. But it's like working at the largest tech company in the world, you know, the most valuable company in the world with like so many resources. If you come up with an idea there, it's like,

You're going to really affect the world in what would be hopefully a very positive way. So that was kind of an exciting thing about working with Apple. It's just like if you do have an idea, the leverage that could come from that idea is so much more than if you just had it on your own.

Yeah, that sounds like the most fascinating conundrum of being in a meeting. Like, oh, I have an idea, but is this better for Apple or for a video later? Which one? Which do I do? I didn't give him the glitter bomb. I kept the glitter bomb to myself. Good call. I didn't give him all the glitter.

that would be bad I cannot imagine I ask for Apple all the time to get into various things like yeah you guys should make a camera that would be sick there's you guys should make a printer printers suck right now I don't know glitter bomb

Yeah, that's a YouTube video for sure. I don't like the idea of that being real. No, that's also like a lot of people ask me when I was in school, did your classmates find out about your videos? And I didn't tell anybody about the videos. It was just something I was doing at home. It was a different part of my brain. But I feel like the channel as a creative outlet is...

is important to your brain. You know what I mean? It's like you're, you have work mode and you're on for work and then you're done with work and you get that creative version of your brain that has all these other crazy ideas and come out. So it's a, it's a little bit of yin yang. A hundred percent. Totally agree. Let's take one more quick break. We'll be back with Mark.

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So, okay. I have to ask because now that you're essentially educating, I mean, Crunch Labs, the product, maybe you can give a two, three minute explainer of it, but it is basically, uh, in my opinion, better version of education because it's helping kids to understand these concepts because they have the real hands-on experience. Um, and,

And then I want to ask you if you think you could teach me enough to work at like JPL if I got good enough someday. I mean, yes, to the second question. I'm sure JPL would love to have you. There's a lot you can do for them. So the first part, yeah, it's this idea of like,

you know, going back to what we said before, like, um, anything where you're stoked about it and it's hands on is the more immersive something. And the more visceral experiences, the more it's going to like leave an imprint in your brain and the more you're going to remember it. Right. Um, so I started this company called crunch labs and really it's a, it's a location too, which you have been to amazingly. Yep. Uh,

for the good listeners at home, Marquez just happened to be in town. I live in the Silicon Valley. He was here for the Apple WWDC. Right. And I was like, dude, I'm filming my next video and I would love to get out of a cameo in it. So basically it's like this Willy Wonka factory for engineering. Uh, and so we've got all these cool inventions in there, a foam pit, the actual cannon from American gladiators that can like shoot a tennis ball through a wall. Uh, uh,

And that's also where I make my YouTube videos. It's kind of a shop as well. I've got all my old builds there. But it's also where I started this company that I've been working on. Again, going back to having secret projects I'm working on. I've been working on building that location, this engineering Iron Man, Willy Wonka lair, as well as launching this building project.

products for this company for over a year where basically we make month it's like monthly builds you can do at home where where you build alongside me I build it with you but then I teach you all the juicy science that goes along with it and I I think part of the reason I'm like

I still like mentally can check into that space of being a kid. I remember what it felt like to be a kid so well, I feel like. And you know, so the first one is like this cool six shooter disc launcher that,

launches these mini frisbees like in just like a perfect form like it's super accurate and they glide and i know i would love that as a kid and as an adult i still freaking love it and so we build that together and then we talk about flywheels because the main mechanism that makes it work is like a flywheel so the promise of the box and the and the thing is like i will teach you to think you know to play to build to create but most importantly to think like an engineer

And that means to think critically and to step through things and to, you know, a real big part of it is the being okay with failure. Going back to what we talked about earlier, like not being embarrassed when you fail, but understanding that's part of the learning process. That's why we call it crunch labs is because we crunch things there and so much stuff doesn't work. And that's the process by learning one more way not to do it until you've got the final version that just sings and

Every single one of my builds have so many failures along the way. And just owning that and being proud of that. And that's great because that makes you a better soccer player and piano practicer and math homework doer. Because it's okay that it's like you're struggling with it and you're failing and you're finding ways not to do it. That's part of the fun of nailing it. If you made a video game that was so easy to do,

That's a boring video game. It wouldn't sell anything. It's the triumph over the challenging bits that makes it actually worth. That which we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly is like a great saying that I love. And so it's like that's the beauty of the engineering process. And so teaching kids that that's okay and then teaching them the cool science is

Behind frisbees and how they fly. Because there's so much juicy science. In fact, I'll tell you this. Because this is for all your listeners. This is so exciting. On a frisbee, what makes a frisbee fly? And Marquez, Mr. Professional Frisbee Player, do you know this? Do you know why frisbees fly? I know.

I know that, number one, it has the, it's like an airplane wing, kind of, in that there's like a low pressure above, high pressure below situation happening as it flies through the air. Yeah. I have a more better way to phrase that. But yes, that's one. Okay.

That's right. You're exactly right. So that's right. So there's two things, basically. One is the angle of attack, which means because it's a little bit up, it's basically bumping into all these stationary air molecules. Like air is a fluid. We don't think of it because it's not thick like water, but there's air molecules and that's air resistance, right? So you're bumping into all these air molecules and it's conservation momentum. That deflects you up. You deflect the air down a little bit and equal opposite reaction, it bumps you up a little bit.

bit. So the fact that it's not flying perfectly flat, but it's a little bit angle that, that makes it stay in the air. But the other is this thing called the Kowanda effect, which is, um, you know how, if you put a spoon in running water, how it like curves and follows the spoon. Like if there's running water and you put a curved spoon in the water will kind of curve and stick, uh,

to the edge of the spoon and it'll change direction, right? Well, air does the same thing again, being a fluid. So as the, as the Frisbee passes through the air, uh, the air will go over the top of the Frisbee. And then the, the, it importantly, the edges of a Frisbee are curved, like a curved spoon of water. So the air will go like, go over the top and then curve down, right?

right? Curve downwards. And because you're now curving air downwards all around the Frisbee, it creates a freaking jet pack. Like if you had a jet pack on your bag and you turn it on, it's like,

and you point air down and then, and then you and the jet pack go up. Like that's essentially what's happening with a Frisbee. It's curved. Cause as it goes through the air, it's like jet packing itself to stay in the air as it curves this air downwards. Right. How juicy is that? What a juicy nugget. Now,

That's incredible. And when they can hold the frisbee themselves and see it and fling it and see that jetpacking action, they will never forget that fact. And every time they pick up a frisbee and throw it, they're like, I'm going to basically make a jetpack out of this thing. And how dope is that?

And so the idea of just like having kids build alongside me and have these engineering lessons just more seared into their brain, I can't think of something more lovely than that. And I feel like everything I've done up to this point in my life has basically led to this moment of creating this company. Because this is like the most...

impact you know you reach a lot of you know i think i've got three billion views on the channel at this point and that's a lot of people who've seen a video but but now to reach a whole new level of brains in a in a way that's a little bit deeper is like and getting into the like how do we educate better you know because there's a potential here like you know i'm a big fan of like

you don't really know, you can't predict 20 years in the future. And people like, Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up? When you're eight years old? It's like, nobody knows. And you,

even someone starting their career at 20 has no idea where they'll be when they're 40. And people who say they knew their path are totally lying. And that's, again, going back to hindsight bias, bringing it back to what we talked about before, where you're creating this narrative. So my, my philosophy is like, you just take it one step at a time and it's like a train on a track, you know, or you got a flashlight in front of you, pick the best path that's in front of you and just dominate that path. And just like, I'm going to do the best I can at this thing. And once you get to there, you'll learn these new skills. And now these other opportunities are,

to find the next best path. And I think there's something to be said for education and learning to educate people better in this country and in the world. Like, how do we make the learning process just improve that as opposed to what it is in schools a lot of times, just like worksheets and grades on tests.

And to me, doing this company and like these key learnings is, I don't know, maybe I'm, I think it will teach me something and I will unlock something and I will learn something that will kind of maybe help for the next step, which is like, eventually, how do we, how do we do this better in schools and reach an even larger audience? Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm pretty stoked about it. And it's gone really well. We, I think publicly we're saying we, we made in the tens of thousands of boxes and in less than a week we sold them all out. So, um, and this is subscriptions to boxes. So this is, it's a subscription. So you get 12 boxes in a year. Each, you unlock a video from me.

And so we're making a butt ton more for the holidays. So if you want a good present for your kid and you're listing this or your nephew or something, might I suggest French Labs? I will second that suggestion. And I like it, man. I think this is like one of those all-time like putting the brain to work like YouTube videos.

like business ideas in that it like really speaks to the mission of like what you've been doing. And I think it is something I wish I had when I was younger, which is like a like the true the hands on demo type stuff. I just learned something about a Frisbee. I'll never forget. And I've been playing for 20 years or something ridiculous. So I think it's I think it's incredible and I'm happy you're doing it.

And I could think of no one better to be doing it. But I want to end this with a lightning round. I got a bunch of quick questions for you. Okay. But they got to be quick. No thinking allowed. You just got to blurt out your answer. All right, that's helpful. And it's like one word answer or it's like one sentence answer? You'll go one sentence. One sentence answer. Tops. Okay. Yeah, okay. Actually, first one's true or false. Talking to a camera is a learned skill.

True. True, true, true, true, true. Okay, true. Which job was harder, GPL or Apple? Equal. Equally easily and hard. Yeah, equal, similar. Fair. Favorite YouTube creator you're watching right now? Can't say me. Yeah, I was going to say, that's cheating. Favorite YouTube creator right now? Probably Chris Gazette.

My boy Philip. Nice, nice. I like his videos. Is there a story behind the hat? No, I actually have decent hair. The story is it's way easier not to do your hair in the morning. So why wouldn't you wear a hat? Totally fair. Favorite person you met at the Met Gala? Derek Bladsberg, the guy who took us around, the frickin' mayor of New York City.

Yep, that was also my answer. What is harder about working at a large company, managing the tech or managing people? People. Politics is lame. Oh, I fully agree. What's your go-to snack when you have five minutes? The hot, flaming hot Cheetos are kind of, I like with the lime. Okay. Lime oil. Okay.

How fast can you type the alphabet A to Z? Like words per minute or like seconds? Like how many seconds? Do you want to pull out a clock? You want to type me? Actually, this is perfect. So what I'll do is I'll send you a link in the chat to a site which has a measuring tool where you just start typing and

And all I need you to do, if you have a screen, do you have a screen recorder by any chance? Because that's all we got. That's the last question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do, I do. Hold on. Let me pull up QuickTime. I mean, that's what I just use, QuickTime. I was hoping to BS you, but now you're going to hold me on it. Okay, no.

Lucky for you, we have a whole leaderboard. Not to put any pressure on it, but every guest that's on Waveform, we have them type the alphabet and see how it goes. It's amazing. By the way, in high school, I figured I had a typing class. And I figured out if you could – they would judge you on how many errors you had, but then how many keys. And if you made a mistake on a word, it only counted as one error. But it would count all those words at your speed.

So I would wait till the last one to just mash the keyboard. I don't know if that's like a known trick. And then it's like, I'd have this massively high words per minute and only one air. But I bet I can't get away with that here.

Yeah, this one, you got to get all, W, X, Y, Z, the whole, everything's got to be on point for this one. If it's wrong, what happens? It stops you? So this, yeah, the second, so if let's say you type A, B, C, E, it won't keep going until you hit the D. So you have to hit every letter. Okay. Yeah. All right. We'll see. So we'll give you, I'll do, we've given everybody three letters.

Oh, love it. Okay, great. Okay, I got it. I'm going to guess you'll be... No, I won't even put that pressure on you. I'll just see what happens. Yeah, don't put the pressure. I mean, I'm not that... To set expectations, I'm not an amazingly fast type or anything. I'm not the worst, but... Have you had any people who are just like legendarily bad or legendarily amazing? Okay, I'll...

Once you get your three attempts in, I'll let you know where you rank among our leaderboard. How about that? Okay. Oh, man. All right. Okay. Okay. I'm going to start. Let's see. Screen recording. Let me just do a fresh one. Okay. Here we go. Are you ready? Here we go. I'm ready. Oh, damn. Oh, shoot. I hit...

I hit enter at the end and then it started it again. So I didn't actually see what I got. But on this recording, I'll play it back and we'll be able to see. But I don't know what my time actually was. 1.39 seconds is the best time. That's like that would be like the best time ever made by anyone. I see. I see. OK. Yeah. That's a bot. OK. Here we go. Here we go. OK. Here we go.

7.8 seconds. Okay, 7.8. You want to give it another one? Yeah, yeah, I do. Assuming we find the time, do you think the first one was faster or slower? I genuinely don't know. It was probably close to that. All right. Okay, okay. Let me go. I'll do one more, and then I'll kind of tell us. All right, hold on.

6.6 seconds. I got better. Very nice. Yeah, I think we've seen a little bit of a trend. We give people a couple attempts. They usually have their best one on the last one. So that's good. That's good. Where do I rank? Did you think it would be around 6 seconds? That always seems crazy fast to me. But...

No, that is faster than I would have thought, I think. It's also something I've never actually done. There is an advantage if it's in your muscle memory of typing the alphabet, you know? Like, you would just get faster and faster with it. I think as evidenced by even, I just went from eight seconds to six or whatever. But give it to me easy, Marques. Where do I rank? No, you're good. So your 6.6 seconds is right...

Behind Colin and Samir and right ahead of Hank Green, you would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12th.

On the leaderboard. Right around the middle. That's pretty good. Okay, right around the middle. As long as I beat Hank Green. Hank Green's a smart guy. Yeah, it's always surprising who bangs out the fastest times. Our last guest, Tom Scott, dropped a 3.55. Wow. I don't know why. Why? He's number one on the leaderboard. Just banged out a 3.5.

He is number one. He is number one of the 3.5. That is the fastest. I'm going to practice this now. I am a competitive human being, so I'm going to 3.55. I can beat that. I'm going to get it in the muscle memory. If you beat it, definitely tweet it as a response so we all see the improvement over time and we'll verify it.

I will, I will. Either way, Mark, it's been, I've taken enough of your time. I appreciate it. I'll let you get back to glitter bombing. Thank you so much for the time and for joining us on Waveform. Yeah, it was great to be here, Mark. It's always great to talk to you, man. All right, that is it. Thanks again to Mark Rober for joining us and shout out to the respectable scorer on the leaderboard. It's probably better than he was expecting.

If you haven't already checked out Crunch Labs and the box that they're building and shipping and helping kids learn with, definitely check it out. And also I'm in the launch video. So if you didn't already watch the launch video, check that out too. But we'll be back next week with your regularly scheduled programming. Until the next one, people of the internet, see you soon. The Wayform Podcast is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music is made by Vane Sill. ♪

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