How to make learning impossibly fun | Mark Rober

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Think back to your favorite teacher, the one that made you want to lean in. I think for a lot of us, teachers like that felt like an exception. Former NASA engineer turned YouTube creator Mark Rober has spent his career trying to make them the rule. And he says the secret to reaching anyone, student, a skeptic, a room full of strangers, isn't what you would expect. If you want to reach someone's brain, you have to enter through the heart. This is why if you're trying to convince someone out of being a conspiracy theorist or someone who believes the earth is flat, you can't go to them with a list of facts.

0:48You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. In this conversation with TED curator Whitney Pennington Rogers, Mark digs into how he has spent his career making science impossible to look away from. As a former NASA engineer, he spent years on the Mars Curiosity rover before becoming one of the most beloved science communicators on the planet. We shared his TED Talk back in May, where he announced a free science curriculum aimed at making science the class kids actually want to show up for. A talk that, by the way, has become one of our most watched of 2026 already.

1:25Mark calls his approach hiding the vegetables or sneaking real science into stuff that's just fun to watch. They don't care what you know until they know that you care. If you start them knowing that you care, even if it's just like in your level of effort and paying attention to them, you'll find it's easier to reach them. In today's conversation, Mark talks about his boldest project yet. He also explains why he thinks the most important skill in the age of AI is simply knowing how to ask a good question. and he shares the moment on the TED stage that brought him to tears. It's coming up right after a short break.

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4:37and now our TED conversation of the day hello TED members I am Whitney Pennington Rogers I'm a curator here at TED and I am so excited to be here with you today for this live member event all right now I want to think for a moment about your favorite teacher maybe some of you are students right now and you don't have to pull back into the far reaches of your memory like I do But I want you to think about this person and the things that made them so special, how excited they might have made you feel, how they made the subject they were teaching you come alive and made you want to lean in during their lessons and not zone out.

5:13I think for a lot of us, teachers like this maybe feel like the exception instead of the rule. And when it comes to science, maybe even more so. But what if that didn't have to be the case? What if science could be the class that kids cannot wait to get to because it makes them laugh and beg to try everything out there for themselves? Our guest today has spent a lot of time trying to make science lessons just like that. He's a former NASA engineer, a YouTube phenom with tens of millions of subscribers, and is undoubtedly one of the most beloved science communicators of our time. There's no question about this.

5:49Earlier this year, he took the TED stage at our flagship conference to share his boldest project yet, a$60 million bet on the next generation of problem solvers and a new STEM curriculum designed to make science the class kids actually want to be in. That talk has since become one of our most viewed talks of 2026 so far, and he's here today to share more with us about that project, the philosophy behind what he does, and break down how he sparks excitement about science again and again for kids of all ages all over the world. Please give a warm welcome to Mark Rober. Hello, how's everyone doing?

6:29Hey, Mark, how's it going? Good. Good. Thanks so much for being here with us today. the big reveal in your talk was the public announcement of your free STEM science curriculum for, for kids ages, I guess, grades three through eight class crunch labs. Um, and you talk a lot about that in the talk and that's a big, a big thing that you put forward. What, what led you to create it? I mean, and to be fair, like I don't talk about the talks, maybe like 14 minutes. I talk about it for like two minutes, but the whole point of the talk is to lead up to that in the sense that like peeling back the curtain on how we hide the vegetables and make learning science fun because if there's any subject in school that should be fun heaven forbid it should be science it's like so it's like we kind of peel back the car on how we do it and it's like okay now that you understand how the sausage is made this is the this is the kind of sausage we will be making for the next five years um and so and so like the impetus for this came actually when my one of my buddies his his kid came into the room and she was she she was like in probably eighth grade at the time like what are you learning in science i'm just curious right because i do this on my channel and she's like oh we just watched a bill nye video today she showed me a worksheet that had copied probably 10 000 times you know each time you copy there's like an artifact that comes along yeah and i was like and i love bill like he's a personal friend but it's also those videos were made in the 90s and this is a generation that has grown up on tick tock and youtube and there's like different tricks to you know reach their brains in engaging ways and i'm just like man we should we should do something like that for this generation because i know you know i've had to earn 18 billion views because on in youtube you could click on anything else right so it's like you kind of get trained by the algorithm on how to make things engaging and that was the start of it and i one of my superpowers i think is naive optimism where it's like it seems really easy when i have an idea i'm like oh yeah we could do that sure that shouldn't be a problem it's been so much harder but like I'm always continuously naively optimistic that's like ah I'll be fine so it's been a complete journey it's it's evolved to be way more than I was initially planning on doing but it's so clear that this is the right way to do it this is the right approach it needs to be done and we're the right people to do it so we're just going full steam ahead.

9:14I love that and you you said that it's uh you think it's the most important thing you'll ever do and I remember watching you give the talk and you got a little emotional as you were sharing this and if you can remember back to being on the stage what what were you thinking about in that moment when you got really choked up? Um I don't know like I I really do have such a soft spot in my heart for teachers like if i just think about teachers even like right now a little bit like i get a little emotional it's like like teach it's so tough especially today to be a teacher just because of a lot of factors and it's kind of the most important job in on the planet and so and they're not compensated as well as they like we should be ashamed i think i said that like we should be ashamed of like the support teachers actually get for the importance of what they do.

10:12And yeah, I don't know. I just, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the underdog and for the, especially an underdog who really, really, really, really deserves it. And so if I'm in a position to help them out, then it just feels like, you know, what is life, but working hard at work worth doing. And like, this feels like the most worthwhile work and like, you know, the most impact that I can, you know, have and affect change in like the most positive way. Because it's just no one's done anything like this. And then when we're ready to release it too, you know, a lot of times with ed tech and things, adoption is so hard.

10:52But like we're already teachers already show my videos and 40 percent of classrooms, but it's jello pools and squirrel obstacle courses and glitter bombs. It's not necessarily totally aligned with the curriculum. So, all right, let's take all those tricks, make something that is totally aligned, exceeds all the state science standards and and and then put it out there. And then I'll just tell, you know, I could tap a mic and get 50 million people to listen. And so I'll just say, hey, if, you know, tell your teacher, you want to watch this and you want to do this for your class curriculum. And I'll sell that directly to the teachers.

11:27And we'll have a map of the whole United States of every single school district. And we're going to have three teacher and three parent volunteers in every single district. So, like, we're going to roll this out in a way that, like, no one's ever been able to or done. And then we'll also go, you know, properly through the states for bottoms down, top up. we're just gonna get this out there and and not because it's like i'm skinning the game but like we're making sure it's five times better than anything else like we're independent folks are like running actual like curriculum studies and versus control in a classroom so i don't want to waste my time or my money or anyone else's money and time if this isn't way better like that's the hypothesis so we're just going to tweak it until it is way better and just get this goodness out in the world for free.

12:15I know a lot of folks, especially some of our younger members who are watching, are really interested to hear more about you and your journey. And so I'd love to talk a little bit about that. I think most people who follow you know that you have this background as an engineer at NASA and Apple. And that before you started doing the work that you do, when would you say that your love of science began? I mean, like from a, from an early age, I think I just had a, you know, I think if anyone here has more than one child, I know kids come pre-programmed and I just had an inclination towards kind of math and science and the physical world, you know, taking part in the remote control.

12:59Also just like coming up with cool ideas. like the first job I ever wanted to do was be a an architect but specifically designing McDonald's play places so I remember I like white sheet of paper and my pencil and my rule and I'm like okay you're gonna start here then the ball pit's gonna be here there's gonna be these tubes like all these cool designs which is kind of full circle moment because now we have crunch labs just like our headquarters which is like a Willy Wonka factory for engineering that has secret passageways and foam pits and you know pistons and pianos that play themselves and and staircases that's an infinite slinky staircase and a robot you can play rock paper scissors against that you can never beat so it's like i thought actually my first job i wanted i eventually got just in the very secure it's cutest route um so yeah and then and then i think specifically when I took high school physics, I was just like, oh, this feels very good that like I can predict the world around me with math and equations.

14:02And there's one right answer. And it doesn't matter where I grew up or what language I speak. You know, if I drop this rock off the building, like we will all come up with the same answer. And then not just that, you can literally predict the future. You can build something that you can send to Mars that having never gone there, it's like well we have the equations it should actually hit the planet if we launch at this point when it's you know 90 130 mile million miles away if we launch at this velocity at this trajectory like eventually those two should hit and then we could get from the upper atmosphere 25 000 miles an hour down to down to a comfortable six miles an hour to land in seven minutes like you could predict all of these things and that it's like a crystal ball that actually works And that was just very appealing to me.

14:52And a lot of folks who've shared some questions about your story or your journey are just curious about engineering specifically. Like, how did you know that that was the path when you think about all the things you could be in the STEM world, that this was where you wanted to go? Yeah, I think specifically mechanical engineering really appealed to me versus like electrical, because I like to be able to see and create and build something physical I can touch. Because there's a lot of different engineering. And I don't know, it's just one of those things, like the more I got into it, the more I was like, oh, I like this.

15:29And then straight out of school, I got a job. I just got really lucky to work at NASA. You know, my resume was just in a pile of resumes, right place at the right time. And I think that what's the saying, something like fortune is what happened when preparation meets luck or something and certainly i got a little lucky and yeah and then i was at nasa for a decade seven of those were working on the mars curiosity rover so my hardware's up there on mars i think currently it's 120 million miles away you can see it in the night sky the little red dot and i know that like i touched and designed and built and tested, integrated something that's on that specific dot in the sky is really cool.

16:16Actually, another really cool thing about Mars is really fun is there's not really a lot of oxygen. So things don't break down and like rust, basically. So long after us humans are gone and all of our structures and everything is crumbled away and nature is just taking over everything in a million years, aliens will come and they'll see these rovers on mars and just be like what the heck where did these come from like whatever i don't get it yeah you've like built these things that will out outlast and outlive you and and probably all of us on this call in some way all of us and everything we've built like you know what i mean like in a million years they'll still be there and every single structure on earth is crumbled away into dust so it's like pretty wild you know you you liken what you do to sort of like hiding the vegetables, right?

17:07Like you're essentially wrapping like important, hard to swallow things and glitter and things like that. And you do it using like humor and spectacle. And, you know, now you're offering the blueprint for people to do this themselves. And I'm sure there are a lot of teachers though, who watch and think, you know, well, but I'm, I'm not Mark Rober and I can't do it the way that you do it. so like what would you say to people who feel like they don't have the the personality I guess to pull some of this off yeah I would say I mean and this is like the point in the TED talk was like the trick to make a video go viral the trick to sort of like remembering is kind of like how I framed it is like you just have to feel something in your heart like if you want to reach someone's brain you have to enter through the heart you can't you can't start here this is why you know if you're trying to convince someone out of like uh being a conspiracy theorist or something someone who believes the earth is flat you can't go to them with a list of facts and like try and reach their brain of why it's not flat like you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into like the reason they got into that is they had a friend and like it was a community and they're feeling they're getting something here that feels really worthwhile.

18:28And so you got to start here. And for me, that is in the TED talk, pull up this trash can full of ping pong balls, right? Or it's someone sold a package from my house and everyone knows that feeling. So I, you know, engineered a glitter bomb with fart spray to get them back that records them on four phones and uploads it to the cloud. Like you have to evoke some kind of visceral reaction for people to remember it, for people to care, to affect change. And so I think that's step one. And even in the talk, I did this like in a meta, I don't know how many people even picked up on this, but at the end, when I was like talking about class crunch labs and, you know, I said like, so to all those teachers out there in the trenches, like, I want you to know reinforcements are on the way.

19:14Like when I got to that punchline, like I was very adamant that Ted let me like play music, not just in the video, but in the auditorium, because it's like, this is me demonstrating my point of how you hide the vegetables of how you get people to remember of how you have impact is like, you have to feel something here and music helps with that. And so, you know, if, if, if you're a teacher out there and you feeling like you're not like reaching the kids like start here not here you're not it's not like if you just used a slight different word to explain it you know then it's gonna work like they don't they don't care what you know until they know that you care and that it kind of speaks to that and so I think if you if you start them knowing that you care even if it's just like in your level of effort and like paying attention to them, like you will, you will, I think you'll find it's easier to reach them here.

20:12And that this is like, this is the beauty of class crunch labs too. It's like, I do realize that, you know, people have different skill sets and abilities. Right. And for whatever reason, the way we teach science, we have solved a lot of that motivation gap, which is like 90 % of the challenge of teaching. And so it's like, let's team up. Like, I can't do this on my own. You can't just play a video in a class and expect it to actually teach them like but let's team up so that's the whole point of class crunch sizes i kick it off with the video and then the teacher takes it over and it's like asking engaging questions and like getting them going and then i come back with the video and i throw it back to the teacher so like that's the only way this could work and that's kind of the premise behind it so it will it will feel like sort of co-teaching with you in a way.

21:01A hundred percent. It'll feel like co-teaching. And honestly, the teacher still, the teacher is the hero to be very clear. And I'm kind of just like teeing it up for that, you know, and just like, Hey kids, I'm going to say this thing. Now your teacher's going to take it from here. And, you know, and they become the focal point and I just keep like teeing it up, you know, giving them an assist. I love that. You, you know, you mentioned at one point during in our conversation that this is a generation of kids who are consuming things differently. It's not, you know, it's not Bill Nye's science generation of consumers.

21:35And I guess when you think about where kids are today, do you think there's a bigger appetite for the kind of content you're creating now than there might have been a decade ago because of how people are looking at stuff online? Yeah, it's a good question. I would say like, I mean, human brains don't change that much from a single generation to a single generation. I mean, it takes hundreds, if not thousands of generations to like have us evolve. So I think the raw DNA was always there, but just like the ability. I think like, yeah, the ability, the fact that YouTube even exists that, you know, when I grew up, you'd have to wake up on Saturday.

22:19if you want to see a cartoon set your alarm and you get two hours of it on like abc on saturday morning now you can just like every cartoon that is ever invented every single episode is available in like a window so it's like you have all this content here um which is a which is a blessing and a curse it's like it's it makes it challenging you know i have to constantly up update sort of how I'm doing what I'm doing to stay, you know, the audience appetite can change and what used to be spectacle and interesting and make you have that visual reaction 10 years ago, like it takes more now. Right.

23:00So it is this almost like arms race of, of keeping the content interesting and relevant such that I can evoke that visceral reaction and then reach the brain with like the cool thing I want them to remember. But it's a challenge, but it's one I welcome. And I think it's really fun. And it keeps it fresh and interesting for me, you know? And of course, there's like a debate, you know, that's happening out there about screens and kids and attention. And of course, you're the most successful people on the planet at capturing people, especially kids' attentions on screens. So how do you think, I guess, when you factor the work you're doing into it, How do you think about the role you play in that conversation?

23:44Yeah, I think an important part about it actually is that, and one of the early feedbacks we've got from these studies that they're doing, a big part that I just briefly touched on in the talk is we have the videos, we have the teacher leading them, but there's these hands-on activities where you're actually like, say, for example, for kinetic energy, actually for potential energy, that's a really fun one. you build a little a little tower and then you know those water blobs that like you see sometimes at lake where someone jumps on and then someone goes flying well for potential energy you know the higher you well we actually don't say this but we started out with this lesson that's the anchoring phenomenon so you're like oh that is interesting we're showing people flying show a car go down and like a crash test dummy go flying like all these visual things to get you hook but then in your classroom you get a um you get like a ziploc bag you make your own blob and you make your own little tower and and then you have a little guy that goes flying and and we don't tell you the equation for potential energy which is i'll say it here mass times gravity times height mgh you just start dropping different things and what you start to notice is that only two things affect how your guy goes flying the higher you raise the thing that you're dropping that somehow seems to have an effect and also if it's same height but heavier also seems to have effect and sends your guy so you're kind of like scooby-dooing your way to this equation without even giving you so you get like an intuition for it which is much more valuable than just memorizing an equation but what's really fun is like the guy that goes flying it's this little crash test dummy and these can be really expensive that like force sensors to measure how much g-force and so the constraint i've given the toy engineers you know these product designers the engineering degrees is like it can't for a classroom it can't cost ten dollars can't cost five dollars it has to cost zero dollars literally has to be made from just stuff teachers have lying around the classroom where you'd find in the trash can and so for kinetic energy we build these little cards which a note card and and two you know binder clips and then like the tops of a um of like a soda bottle are the wheels that you poke a hole through um and and like so these hands-on activities that the kids are doing for each for each you know engineering or each principal each science control are really where a lot of the learning is coming again we're talking it here when your science when your blob guy goes flying like oh my gosh did you see mine look how high mine went suddenly they're stoked they're engaging they're showing each other versus like sitting in a classroom and a teacher just sage on the stage being like potential energy is mass times gravity times height please memorize this right you start the other way around you start with the wow and then and then we give you the how but you got to start with the part that engages your heart first.

26:53So that's the point is it's not just like sit back and listen to me tell you potential energy is MGH. It's more like I tee up the problem. The anchoring phenomenon for that unit in potential energy is like, wait, why? Wait a second. Look, go back, play that back. Why did, why did he go that the kid go this high one time, but then the next time he went way higher. The heck's going on there. Right. And then the kids scooby-doo their way to the answer. I mean, we're never spoon feeding each lesson. They get a little bit closer to that answer. It's kind of turning science education on its head. And we didn't even invent that.

27:32Like OpenSciEd is a great example of a, they kind of pioneered this in like 2019. So they've done a great job of just showing how much better you can teach science, how much more it can be remembered, how much more exciting it can be if you do it this way versus just, like I said, sage on a stage. here's the right answer memorize it or even just person on screen who's telling you you're person on screen the thing is it's very engaging and it's very like but also like uh almost half of the downloads so far the pilot has been homeschool um folks who do homeschooling to make it engaging so but even then they are seeing it on the screen but then they are taking it and they're doing stuff in real time.

28:20It's not just engaging on a screen. I think you can't ignore that. And I'm really good friends with Sal Khan, you know, who does Khan Academy, obviously very connected to Ted. And yeah, and he's, he's mentioned this, like, you know, we'll probably partner up in some way. We are a yes and situation too. Like, that's why we're telling everyone they can use our curriculum. If other people are doing curriculum, they should come to Crunch Labs. We'll show them what we're doing. We'll share notes. This is a rising tide raises all boats situation. We want this to work for homeschool, charter school, private school, title one school, like everything.

28:57This is a shotgun approach. And that's why we're making it free is because as soon as you charge a dollar creates this friction. So we just want to create this goodness. And if people even there's people who charge for curriculum, you know, And if they want to use our curriculum and theirs and charge for it, fine. You know, maybe they have to pay a license fee to donate to our nonprofit, which is crunchslubs.org. But like everyone is this open source. Like anyone can use this. You know what I mean? Like we don't have our only goal is just reach and impact. There's no world where we make any money off this.

29:37Don't go away. when we come back, more of Mark's conversation with Whitney, including questions from some of Ted's youngest members right after a short break.

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31:19We have a question from Shendi S. about, you know, how far this reach goes. You know, wondering if there's interest and opportunity in making this accessible to people who are outside of the U.S. at some point. And, you know, 100 percent. That is the ultimate goal. We're very good at walking, you know, crawling before we walk, walking before we run. A lot of our downloads, it's free. You can go to Cross CrunchLabs.org and you can download all the curriculum. They're editable. So like even the curriculum, it's not like a PDF. We put it in Google Docs. So you could take that and you could copy and paste it.

31:55You could change it and make it whatever you want to make it exactly what you want. and eventually we will you know once we nail it in the U.S. and like have it figured out then yeah it is a it's a matter of of scaling that worldwide and you know I think there are science standards in the U.S. I think there are another a number of countries who are starting to adopt our science standards and that makes it easier but you know you got to start somewhere because currently different countries do have like slightly different standards instead of trying to make something for everything. We'll make it for ours.

32:30We know we've signed standards and we know 95 % of that will be pretty applicable to others. But then, you know, country by country, we can slightly tweak it as needed. Well, I think thinking about just sort of the future and where things head, not just for Crunch Labs, but for science education in general, especially online, you know, everyone, of course, like so many conversations, all roads lead to artificial intelligence and how that factors in And for you, when you think about the work you do, if you're thinking, you know, 20 years ahead, when we have, and even today, we have AI tutors and VR classrooms, all of that.

33:06Like, what is, how does that change what a human like you or a teacher looks like in that equation? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think as you get, I mean, I have this piece of glass and metal here that I can use my thumbs to touch in a very specific way and get an answer, a very good answer to any question on earth. Any question I could potentially ask, even if it's very personal to me and my inputs in my world, like I can get a very good answer. And so the real skill becomes asking the question, the right question, or even asking a question, period. In other words, curiosity. And I think as AI becomes more and more, like things that inspire curiosity and that reach here become more important than ever.

34:03And I see it, I think AI could be a great tool. I mean, there's one example, which I really love. I was thinking about the other day where it's like, even in a classroom, if they have, you know, some classrooms do have computers there, there could be a situation where there's like an AI Mark Rober or AI Bam, who's also one of our 20 years of crunch slabs that everyone loves, where her or I, it's like, all right, design your catapult, you know, for this potential, like design it and then show it to AI Mark Rober, you know, and then I look at it and it's an AI version of me it's like oh that's really good but what where's your energy source you might want to read look at that and then they go back and then they show it to me again i'm like i love that that's so good raise your hand tell your teacher you're ready so it's like i'm actually kind of like tutoring each each you know me or bam or someone's like working with them and then there's the teacher but i think you i think you'll always need a human element there even if it's like that and it's like a simulated human element, just like a robot coming in and teaching you something.

35:11I think you're fighting against a couple million years of evolution there that like, that's never really going to do it. So it's like, how do you combine, how do you make the best out of it? I don't think it's the right answer to be like, eschew everything AI and be like, absolutely not. No, I don't think it's the right answer to just a robot should be doing all of these things. So it's like, what's the best of both worlds? How do you combine those in a way that's like, um, that maximizes the impact. And I think there's going to be some great ideas there. Yeah. I think there's really powerful, you know, another good example is like what we're making with class crunch lives is the fresh ingredients, you know, but you can, you can make different meals with those fresh raw ingredients.

35:56So a teacher could be like, look i have 17 students you know half of them have this learning disability um we've already covered this topic and this topic they struggled with this they nailed this take the cross-clutch size ingredient this next unit and customize it for me right and it would be really good at moving all the ingredients okay this is this is going to speak just to what you need but you got to start with something good, the input has to be good to get a quality output. And so I see that that's another really great use case where AI would be awesome with this. It's more, yes, and it seems like just how can you do both?

36:37Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mark, we have some fun questions from kids who are either members or somehow became TED members themselves before they became adults. And so I'm to share some of those with you. Usually people don't put their age when they share a question, but we have a lot of that. So Winston K., who's eight, asked if you plan to visit space one day and how common do you think space travel will be by 2040? Winston, what a great, by when? 2040. Which is soon. Yeah, 2040, I think we'll definitely be on Mars. I was just, I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, but I will say three days ago I was at SpaceX talking about something potentially in the next year or two.

37:31If everything goes right. So space is definitely in my near future. Also, there's some, man, there's so much cool stuff to say. In the next year or two, I'm going to be going to some very, very interesting places. and for everyone else, space travel, I mean, you can get to Australia from Los Angeles in like 45 minutes if you travel to space. So I think it will become much more common. I think for everyone, I mean, Winston, it was Winston's eight years old, right? Winston, for sure, you will go to space. I'll say that much. It's exciting. I feel like there's a lot, Keep watching Mark Rober for more information about what's going on.

38:21There's some cool opportunities coming up that kind of revolve around getting people excited about science education by me going from some pretty wild places. All right. We'll take it. So Rory, who didn't share their age but said that they are a kid, asked, what is your favorite thing that you've ever made and how do you think of what to make next? How do you think one to next? I mean, favorite thing I've ever made. That's hard. We just did a robot goalie that Ronaldo couldn't score on, like a soccer goal that moved back and forth at 40 miles an hour. And then we tracked the shot, really. That was really fun.

39:05The, you know, as far as what to make next, I think that's the beauty of being engineers. Like, it's not like, oh, ideas come. I mean, almost never, certainly when I was doing it on my own. Now we'll do it just because it's kind of fun with the team. But like they almost never come from like, I'm going to sit down today for an hour and I will brainstorm ideas. Never. Like I came up with a squirrel obstacle course when squirrels were stealing my bird seed. And most people would just be like, gosh darn it, the squirrels are stealing all my bird seed. but I saw an opportunity and I was like, wait, what if I really made them earn it with an eight part Ninja Warrior obstacle course?

39:47The birds could come and go as they please. The only way for a squirrel to do that is if he like solved all my things and I'm going to name them and, you know, I'm going to make it a thing. So it's like, uh, or someone literally stole a package from my porch and I was very sad and I was sad for about a week. And then I was like, wait a second. what if I devised a way to get back at these guys? I put her over on Mars. So I should be able to come up with something that would be fun and exciting to get some revenge. So, so much, so many of the ideas just come from conversations, everyday life. The key is you just always have to have that part of your brain engaged of like, Ooh, what would my solution be?

40:30So if you can start thinking like that, I think you'd be surprised how many opportunities are right in front of you at all times, you just got to get your head in that mind space. And I think that is some, I do get that feedback sometimes from parents where it's like, my kid watched one Mark Rober video and suddenly they're inventing ways to, you know, capture the rainwater on the roof and, and, and power a light bulb and to take the remote and turn it into like a, you know, a beam sensor when their kid, their sister enters the room. I love that. You know, I love being the catalyst for everyone thinking in their own domain how they can you know come up with their own clever ideas they don't have to be that complicated right but like literally if you're watching this right now and in your kid or if you're an adult like you know a good thought starter is like how do you turn off the light in your room while you're in bed you know oh that could look like a lot of them maybe it's a string on a thing that comes through maybe it's like a a weighted thing.

41:30Maybe it's like a target that you shoot your dart gun at that hits it. You know, that can be a very, using a lot of just duct tape and ingenuity and junk around your house. Like, what does that look like for you? And then once you do that, you'll realize like, ooh, that was cool. I learned this. And now I'm going to figure out this new thing. How do I make my door so it automatically closes? You know, you can just, it's a really fun way of seeing the world. Well, ton of folks, Paul, who is 13, Sofal, who's 11, Luca, who's seven, they all want to know what is the hardest or most interesting part of engineering?

42:07I think the hardest part is also the most fun part, which is like, it's never been done before. You're willing something into existence that's never existed. So that's the opportunity. The challenge is like, it doesn't exist because it might be really hard to make it exist. And so It's just this constant feedback loop. The number one mistake people make when they're trying to build something is they want their final version to be their first version to be their last, the final. Nothing that exists in the world, these scissors right here, went through so many prototypes to get to this final form.

42:44It did not start looking like this. Same with these headphones. Same with literally this cap. Like the amount of revisions that this has gone through to get here is in the hundreds. And so that is the challenge. It's like, just start somewhere. Start with cardboard and duct tape as your first prototype and then get better and better and refine it until it is like something that works really well. And each time you solve a few more problems and do another version, solve a few more problems. So that's the great opportunity and the great challenge is it's work and it's iterative. But that's the fun part.

43:22It's a journey. Mark, as we're winding down the conversation, you know, we've talked so much about what you're creating with Class Crunch Labs and just what you've been doing just in general with creating science content for all these years. When you're, you know, 80 or an old man and you're looking back at all that you've done, how do you think you'll know that Class Crunch Labs worked? How will you know that what you've done was successful? uh i'll never get to that point and and i'm okay with that like i love mountains to climb you know i i don't tend to look back very often it's more just like oh but what else can we do so it's like someone else can can figure out if it's been successful or not like that's i mean i will i will i will always be analyzing it and figure out what more we could do to tweak it to make it better but like I don't engage a lot and like oh let me look back and be like wow look at all we've accomplished because there's so much more cool stuff to do like there's always more mountains and fun things and like that is the joy you know it's the it's the happiness of the pursuit not the pursuit of happiness and so I get the most joy and happiness when it's like I take something exactly what I just said the iteration and like making a little bit better make it a little bit better and so if someone else wants to look at it when i'm 80 and be like oh it's good and therefore you know mission accomplished great but i won't i'll be like yeah but we you know we haven't got it nailed in korea yet so let's do that and that's not to say like i'm not happy or satisfied like i do take great satisfaction but i take satisfaction like the leveling up and then hey sure enough what you find i think at some point is you have this body of work behind you that speaks for itself that hopefully has impact.

45:19But like, I will, I don't ever want anything named after me, like a building. I don't, I don't believe in generational wealth. I don't like all that stuff is so like, even the concept of legacy to me doesn't even make a ton of sense. I don't personally, I just don't get it. That's not what I'm working for. And so I, I appreciate the question. I think it's the right question to ask. And it's an opportunity to say, like it almost is confusing to me because that's just not how my brain works it's like what else do we do how else could we improve this yeah it's the process you're just constantly in there the process and if you do that there are things i think do tend to work well if you incrementally every year you're improving by five percent that's like compounding results you know well that those feel like words to live by and and maybe a good place to end thank you so much, Mark, for everything you've shared.

46:13I've learned a lot. I know everyone in the comments have been saying how much they've learned. So thank you for sharing all this with us and taking some time today. Love it. Thank you guys so much. Really appreciate the time.

46:28That was Mark Rober at a TED membership event in 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sunglarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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48:30We get so used to being in pain as girls that we forget it doesn't have to be this way. Your clothes should not hurt. I got to the point where I stopped wearing bras altogether. And now my life has changed, you guys. The only bras I have in my dresser right now are Aerie, and I'm not kidding. Aerie's on a mission to make you feel good, and that starts with your bra. Your bra should hold you in, not back. Visit Aerie.com to find the right bra for you. On the TED Radio Hour, two generations take on the creator economy. As a Gen Xer, part of me is like, dude, you're totally selling out. I'm extremely aware of the dissonance, I guess, that is required to be a creator.

49:05What does monetizing creativity do to our ideas? The creator economy. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.