How to make learning impossibly fun | Mark Rober

You're listening to Ted Talk's Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. 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. When 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, someone who believes that Earth is flat, you can't go to them with a list of facts. You 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. Mark 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. Hello TED members, I am Whitney Pennington Rodgers, 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. I 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 phenomenon with tens of millions of subscribers and is undoubtedly one of the most beloved science communicators of our time. No question about this. Earlier 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 breakdown 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? Hey 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 kids ages, I guess, grades three through eight class crunch labs and you talk a lot about that in the talk and that's a big thing that you put forward. What led you to create it? I mean, and to be fair, like I don't talk about the talks maybe like 40 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. So it's like, we kind of peel back the current how we do it and it's like, okay, now that you understand how the sausage is made, this is the kind of sausage we will be making for the next five years and so like the impetus for this came actually when my, one of my buddies, his kid came into the room and she was, 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 and I video today. She showed me a worksheet that'd be copied probably 10,000 times. You know each time you copy, there's like an artifact that comes along and I was like, and I love Bill, like he's a personal friend, but it's also those videos were made in the 1990s and this is a generation that has grown up on TikTok and YouTube and there's like different tricks to, you know, reach their brains and engage in 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 can 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 can do that, sure, that shouldn't be a problem. It's been so much harder, but like I'm always continuously, not only optimistic, that's like, ah, I don't 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. I love that and you, you said that it's, you think it's the most important thing you'll ever do and I remember watching, you give the talking, 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 teagum 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, um, for the importance of what they do and, um, 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 we're 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, but like we're already teachers already show my videos and 40% of classrooms, but it's jello tools and squirrel obstacle courses and glitter bonds. 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, um, 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. 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 and we'll have a map of the whole United States and every single school district and we're going to have three teacher and three parent volunteers, 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, um, we're just going to 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 in 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. I 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 early age, I think I just had a, you know, 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 physical world, you know, taking apart the remote control, also just like coming up with cool ideas. Like the first job I ever wanted to do was be an architect, but specifically designing McDonald's playplaces. So I remember I went like white sheet of paper and like pencil and I was like, okay, you're going to start here and the ball pit's going to be here, there's going to be these tubes, like at 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 staircases, it's an infinite slinky staircase and a robot you can play rock paper scissors against that you can never beat. So it's like, actually my first job I wanted, I eventually got just in the very secure that secures route. So yeah, 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 and 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, 19, 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, you know, to a comfortable six miles an hour to land in seven minutes. Like you can predict all of these things and that it's like a crystal ball that actually works and that is very appealing to me. And a lot of folks who have 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 it's 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. And 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 plays 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 I 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 is up there on Mars, I think currently it's 120 million miles away. You can see 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. And actually 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 taken 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 outlast and outlive you 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 those still be there and every single structure on earth is crumbled away into dust. So it's like pretty wild. You know, you like in what you do to sort of like hiding the vegetables, right? Like 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 not Mark Rover and I can't do it the way that you do it. So what would you say to people who feel like they don't have 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 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 and 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. And 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's full of package from my house and everyone knows that feeling. So I, you know, engineered a glitter bomb with fart spray to get them back, 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 do you even picked up on this. But at the end, when I was like talking about class crunch labs, you know, I said like, so all those teachers out there in the trenches, like I want you to know the reinforcements are on the way. Like 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 you're a teacher out there and you're 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 going to 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 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, I think you'll find it's easier to reach them here. And 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 labs is I kick it off with the video and then the teacher takes it over and it's like asking you to give you 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. >> 100% will 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 them, you know, and you're like, hey, kids, I'm going to say this thing, now your teacher is going to take it from here. And they become the focal point and I just keep like teeing it up, you know, giving them an assist. >> One of that, you know, you mentioned at one point during 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. And 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 question. I would say like, I mean, human brains don't change that much from a single generation to a single generation. Enemy 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. If you want to see a cartoon, site 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, which is a blessing and a curse. It's like, it makes it challenging, you know, I have to constantly 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 personal reaction 10 years ago, like, it takes more now, right? So it is this almost like arms race of keeping the content interesting and relevant such that I can evoke that visual 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 and. - Yeah, 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 the talk is we have the videos, we have the teacher leading them, there's like these hands-on activities where you're actually like, say for example, for kinetic energy, actually for potential energy, this is a really fun one. You build 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 phenomena. So you're like, ooh, 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 that you hook. But then in your classroom, you get like a ziplock bag, you make your own blob, and you make your own little tower. And then you have a little guy that goes flying. And we don't tell you the equation for potential energy, which is, I'll say, ear, shh. (laughing) Mass times gravity times height, MGH. You just start dropping different things. And what you start to notice is there are 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 an effect and sends your guy. So you're kind of like, Scooby doing 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 is 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 $10, it can't cost $5, it has to cost $0. Literally has to be made from just stuff teachers to have a line around the classroom where you'd find in the trash can. And so for kinetic energy, we'd be able to do these little cards, which are a note card and two binder clips. And then like the tops of like a soda bottle, are the wheels that you poke a hole through. And like, so these hands-on activities that the kids are doing for each, you know, engineering or each principally science control are really where a lot of the learning is coming. Again, we're tacking it here. When your science, when your blog bag goes flying and 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 high. Please memorize this, right? You start the other way around, you start with a wow. And then, and then we give you the how. But you gotta start with the part that engages your heart first. So 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 IT up the problem. The anchoring phenomenon for that unit and potential energy is like, wait, why? Wait a second, look, go back, play that back. Why did the kid go this high one time? But then the next time way higher, tech's going on there, right? And then the kids Scooby Doo their way to the answer. I mean, we're never speed 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 like open sciad. It's a great example of a, they kind of pioneered this is like 2019. Like, so they've done a great job of like, just showing how much better you could teach science. How much more can be remembered? How much more exciting it could 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, you're. - Yeah, person on screen. The thing is it's very engaging and it's very like, but also like almost half of the downloads so far, the pilot has been homeschooled 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. It'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. - Yeah, and 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, you know, raises all boat situation. We want this to work for homeschool, charter school, private school, title one school, like everything. This 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 in theirs and charge for it, fine. You know, maybe they have to pay a license fee to donate to our nonprofit, which is crunchlabs.org. But like everyone is as open source. Like anyone can use this, you know what I mean? Like we don't have, our only goal is just reach an impact. There's no world where we make any money off this. - Don'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. - We have a question from Shandhi Esso 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 US at some point. And, you know, 100%. - 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 Doc. So you could take that and you could copy and paste it. You could change it and make it whatever you want. And you could exactly what you want. And eventually we will, you know, once we nail it in the US and like how that figured out, then yeah, it is a matter of scaling that worldwide. And, you know, I think there are science standards in the US. I think there are another number of countries who are starting to adopt our science standards. And that makes it easier, but, you know, you gotta 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, we 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 crunchlabs, but for science education in general, especially online. You know, everyone, of course, like so many conversations about real roads lead to artificial intelligence and how that factors in and what, like, for you, when you think about the work you do, if you're thinking, you know, 20 years ahead, when we have, I mean, even today, we have AI tutors and VR classrooms, all of that. Like, 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, as you get, I mean, I have this piece of glass of 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 and that reach here become more important than ever And 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 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 or two inches of crunch loves it everyone loves where her or I It's like all right design your catapult, you know for this potential and your 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 really 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 is 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 I 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 at it? I don't think it's the right answer to be like issue everything AI I'd 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? That maximizes the impact and I think there's going to be some great ideas there Yeah, I think there's really power. 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 wrong ingredients So 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-climpsons 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 gonna speak just to what you need But you got to start with something good Need the input has to be good to get a quality output And so I think I see that that's another really great use case where AI would be awesome with this It's it's more yes, and it seems like just how can you yes? Yeah, yeah Well, Mark, we have some fun questions from from kids Who are either members or somehow became Ted members themselves before before they became adults Um, and so I'm going to share some of those with you Um, usually people don't put their age when they hear a question, but we have a lot of that. So Winston Kay Who's a Asked if you plan to visit space one day and how common will do you think space travel will be by 2040? Winston what a great by when? 2040 What to suit it soon. Yeah 2040 I will definitely be on Mars Um, I was just I don't know if I'm lost how much I will have to say, but I will say three days ago. I was at SpaceX Um talking about Something potentially in the next year or two Um, if everything goes right so space is definitely in my near future Um Also, there's some not 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 Uh, and and and for everyone else space travel. I mean you can get to Australia from Los Angeles in like 45 minutes If you travel the space So I mean it will become much more common. I think I think For everyone. I mean Winston it was rinsed in eight years old, right? Mm-hmm Winston for sure you will go to space. I'll say that much It's exciting They're I feel like there's a lot state keep watching mark rober for more information about like where it was There's some cool Opportunities coming up that kind of revolve around Getting people excited about science education by me going to film some pretty wild places All right all right We'll take it um 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? Hmm. How do you mean what the next? I mean favorite thing I've ever made Oh, that's hard. We just did a robot bully that that Ronaldo couldn't score on like a soccer goal They moved back and forth at 40 miles an hour and then we tracked the shot really that was really fun um the uh 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 on what to sit down today for an hour and I will brainstorm ideas Never like I came over the squirrel optional course when squirrels were stealing my bird seed and Most people would just be like gosh darned the steals are you know squirrels are stealing all my bird seed But I 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 The birds could come and go as they please the only way for a squirrel to do that is if you like solve all my things And I'm gonna name them and you know, I'm gonna make it a thing so it's like 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 Because 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 oh what would my solution be so if you could 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 power light bulb and to take the robot and turn it into like a You know a beam sensor when their kid their sister in through the room. I 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 starters like how do you turn off the light in your room while you're in bed? You know Maybe it's a string on a thing that comes through maybe it's like a A weighted thing maybe it's like a target that you shoot your dark gun at that hits it You know that I can be a very usually 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 oh that was cool. I learned this and now I'm gonna 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 so full whose 11 luke who seven they all want to know what is the hardest or most interesting part of engineering Um, I think the hardest part is also the most fun part which is like it's 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 there To be there to be the first version to be their last the final and nothing that exists in the world You know these scissors right here with through so many prototypes to get to this final form did not start looking like this And so Same with these these headphones same with this 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 is 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 I do another version solve a few more problems Um, so so that's the great opportunity and the great challenge is it's a it's a it's work And it's iterative but that that's the fun part. It's a journey Um Marcus we're winding down the conversation um, 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 uh, you know 80 or an old man and you're looking back at all that you've done How how do you think you'll know that cross plot less because you class crunch labs work Tell will you know that what you've done was successful? Uh, I'll never get to that point and I'm okay with that. I love mountains to climb. You know, 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 figure out if it's been successful or not. Like that's, I mean, 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 in like, oh, let me look back and be like, wow. Look, oh, 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 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, making 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 happier, 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. But like I don't ever want anything named after me, like a building, I don't believe in generational wealth. I don't like all that stuff. And so 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 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 can we do? How is with the improvements? Yeah, it's for the process. You just constantly put in the process. And then if you do that, there are things, I think do tend to work well. If you incrementally, every year you're improving by 5%, that's like compounding your results. Yeah. Well, those feelings words to live by and maybe a good place to end. Thank you so much Mark for everything you've shared. I'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. Well, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate the time. That was Mark Rober at a Ted Membership event in 2026. If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit Ted.com/curationguidelines. 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 Tonsica Saint-Learniva. Additional support from Daniela Ballerizo, Christopher Faisy-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Laney Lot. Learn more at podcast.ted.com. I am Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]