Mark Rober's Odyssey: From NASA to YouTube Fame

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I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable. People, we're on a mission to make you remarkable. Today's remarkable guest is is Mark Rober. If you don't recognize the name, ask your kids. They will know who he is. Basically, Mark Rober makes science entertaining through his wondrous gadgets and viral experiments. After earning elite engineering degrees and a nine year NASA career working on the Mars Curiosity rover, Mark went to Apple and worked in its secretive special projects group, the. But that's not what most people know about Mark Rober. Mark Rober is the guy who started with a viral Halloween costume illusion that looked like you were looking through his flesh. Well, he's come a long way from that. And now if you watch YouTube's videos of squirrel Olympics or his glitter and fart bombs, that's Mark. Oh, my God. My kids love him. Mark has this build it yourself philosophy that embodies the spirit of innovation and intellectual curiosity. He has tens of millions of followers on YouTube. He also rallies the troops to support causes like treating autism and taking care of the ocean. He has unrelenting curiosity and humor. And this was a really special episode because it was recorded in person at his secret studio in Silicon Valley. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable, people. And now here is the one and only remarkable Mark Rober.

You're cutting onions at home in your kitchen.

Yeah.

You wearing goggles now or have you found something?

If you want the truth, we're just getting right to the truth. I doordash everything now. Okay. Yeah.

So much for that.

It's still a good story though. Yeah.

So the story we're talking about is that when he was a kid, he created these goggles.

I was raised in a household, like, everybody did chores and we all worked together, including preparing dinner and stuff. So I think I was like 6 years old and my mom asked me to make the salad and cut the onions. And I do remember this. And I was like, wait, I'm crying. I should protect My eyes. So I went upstairs under our sink and I got the swim goggles and I came down and put them on. Not trying to make a big deal out of it. And my mom saw that. And now this is like a common life hack. But this was before then, and I was a friggin six year old. And I just remember her making a big deal about that. And it made me feel good. Oh, like if I have an idea, it's rewarded to have a good idea and to pursue it. And so much so that she took a picture of it. And back then, pictures mattered. You know, you only had 24 on a roll, so you were pretty judicious. And so we still have that picture in the family of me cutting onions. I think if you Google Mark Rober cutting onions, it's like online somewhere. Yeah, we got to look for that picture.

Okay, speaking of your parents, what do you tell your parents you do now?

Yeah, it is funny because growing up, I worked at NASA for a decade and then Apple for five years as a mechanical engineer. So it's like I did do the serious route. At least I gave it a go. And now I feel like I'm taking the best parts of the serious route. And what I learned there, building the world's largest nerf gun or building a glitter bomb. There's a lot of principles there that are the same as putting a rover on Mars. You prototype, you test, there's a design phase, you iterate. So, like, a lot of the skills I learned in real life work for what I do today on YouTube. But yeah, likely YouTube is enough of a thing now that they have something to say. But it was funny growing up because my dad, three or four times I remember sitting down and just like, Mark. Because I did pranks a lot. Right. Which probably shouldn't come as a surprise to you as a kid. I just was not serious. He's like, mark, someday you're gonna have to get serious. You can't just skate through life. And now I'm like, what's up, dad? Look at me. I'm like, fart spraying glitter on YouTube. I'm building obstacle courses for squirrels in my backyard.

Dad, you're having wiffle ball drone.

Yeah, Wiffle ball drones. Yeah. Basically any sport, you know, automatic bullseye dart boards that anything humans aren't good at that they wish they were better at. I'm like, all right, what's the robot that could do that better?

That's why we brought the surfboard we have.

Okay, okay.

First major area is NASA and JPL so first of all, how does it feel to send a machine seven months away, 300 million miles away, and there's no mechanic?

Yeah, that's such a good question. Because when you look at space, a lot of times it's more expensive. And that's because it's different than making a car. Because with a car you have mechanics and it doesn't have to be so reliable out to the 12th decimal place because you could just bring it into the shop or have a recall or there's warranties for this purpose. But with space, none of those are options. It just has to work. So sometimes when a bolt has a length that's 1 inch, it's like 1.000 inches. Like it needs to be that length because so, you know, if an arm's coming by, it doesn't like the precision can matter because it has to work. And so therefore that bolt is a $45 bolt. So yeah, it's a little bit terrifying to send something to Mars and your job is done, right? There's literally nothing you can do from a hardware perspective. On top of that, the other thing that's scary about sending to Mars too is it takes 30 minutes to get a signal from Mars to Earth, and it takes only seven minutes to go from the upper atmosphere. The start of entry, descent, landing, 25,000 miles per hour down to 3 miles per hour on the ground. And so that means by the time we've even got a signal and we're trying to get to Mars, that we've hit the upper atmosphere. In reality, for 23 minutes, it's either been successfully cleaned and landed looking awesome on the surface and everything worked, or, or it's a smoldering heap and you, you just have to sit and wait. So it all has to be autonomous and think on its own, especially for that entry, descent and landing. So it's this weird situation where you, at the end of the day, it is a dice roll. But you just do everything you can as an engineer and scientists, stack the dice in your favor, which I think is a great metaphor for life.

So if there was ever an application for artificial intelligence, that's it, right? It's in the rover. And if you can't do anything for 23 minutes at least, if there's AI.

There, it's like a more simplified because it's more like a decision tree. If it feels this hot, then do this. If you know you're going too fast, then do this. I think currently for the introducecent landing, it's like a Very brute force version of AI in a sense.

What was the hardest mechanical system to make on the rover.

It's interesting because it's like when people ask me these questions about the rover, it's like nobody really knows what the rover is because I know my hardware that I built better than anyone else does because I was in the weeds with it for five years and so does the engineer next to me because that's how they divide up the rover into chunks. And everyone's responsible for a portion. But then the guy who has the overall view of everything, he or she knows all the parts of the rover, but they don't know it individually, right? So it's like this words this weird like emergence thing where it's. We're all little ants and the colony does this amazing thing, but no single ant knows all the things. From my perspective, what I do know about the high level, one of the things that makes Mars so challenging is the temperature fluctuations. It's not something we really have to deal with as extremely here on Earth because there's less of an atmosphere. And so when the sun's shining, it's really, really hot. When the sun's not, it's very, very cold. It's like being in a desert on Earth, but to a much more extreme.

Like Burning man without the rain.

Yeah, exactly. And metal grows. Everything grows and shrinks depending on the temperature. And when in the variations more it grows and shrinks more. So that creates a lot of problems. Not to mention, I know we had a lot of problem with the actuators. So the motors that move everything and there's a bunch of them with lubrication with those temperature environments. I think my answer to that would be like the actuators we really struggle with. And I think it was the act that actually pushed the original mission back two years because that's the other challenge of Mars. You can't just go to Mars whenever you want. You literally have to go when the planets are aligned and there's a specific window that you can go. And it's usually about every two years that it's okay, it's close enough that I have enough fuel to get there.

What does the fact that something that was spec to last 90 days lasted 14 years mean that guys like you did such a great job or.

No, it means NASA is a great PR department because you sandbag. There's two things there. One is you want to keep expectations low and exceed expectations. Right. So they intentionally like set. It would be a great W if this worked for 90 days. Right. And so then it works longer. But the other thing is like going back to like, you stack the dice in your favor. At the end of the day, it's a dice roll. You have all these things that could be failures sometimes. If any one of them goes wrong, the whole mission is over. You just design everything as robustly as possible. And if nothing fails and it lasts for longer, then the mission ends up lasting longer. It's kind of out of your hands.

Did your name get sent on perseverance?

Did I sign it somewhere or something?

Like in the inside of the Macintosh?

We signed it, yeah. No public comment on that.

Okay, that's a yes, everybody. Okay, one last question about Mars and, and NASA and stuff is when you read about Elon Musk saying we're going to put people there and they're going to live and all that, you say, oh, that's my hero. He's doing it. Are you saying, what the hell is he thinking? He has no clue.

No, I think Elon Musk is great for humanity. If he could just stay off Twitter and not be such an idiot. If you look at what he's done, Starlink would be someone's most crown jewel achievement that they've ever done. Getting Internet out there for people, people. Ukraine, Ukraine is an example. He did it just because he needed a little bit of cash to like run another business. It's like a. His side hustle is something that's a really good idea. So I think he has the ability to really. His crystal ball is clearer, I think in some ways than the average person for sure. And he has other aspects about him. Making humans a multi planetary species. Yes, of course. That is absolutely. A backup plan is always a good thing. And I think he's doing more as an individual to push us toward that than anyone else. I can't fault him for that.

He single handedly got us into electric cars.

Yeah, that's right. That's another side business. Yeah. And he really made it cool. And I think he really pushed that forward a lot faster than it would have happened otherwise.

Okay. Now sometimes history is rewritten. Is it accurate to say that you left NASA to make high tech Halloween costumes?

Yes, that actually is true.

That's accurate.

That is accurate. Which is funny. Which is another one. When I told my dad that at the time, he's like, it made sense. So what happened is my first YouTube video ever while working at NASA was like this Halloween costume where I had an iPad in front, iPad and back. If you do a FaceTime video chat it looks like you have a hole in your body because the front camera shows us in the back and vice versa. And that video went really viral. And I was like my first video ever. It felt really good. It was like going back to the onions in the. Cutting the onions in the kitchen so many years before, except this time instead of my mom taking a picture, it's like a bunch of strangers sharing this video. And I was like, well, I've got more ideas. And so since that time, I've done one video a month for over a decade now. And with that, the main comment on that Halloween costume was like, cool idea bro, but I don't have twelve hundred dollars for a Halloween costume. Which got me thinking, how can I make this cheaper? And then the thought was like, if you just have a normal T shirt with a cool print on it, a scary print with an eyeball, and then you make a free app with an eyeball that moves all around like it's looking around, you could cut a hole in the T shirt, you could duct tape your phone to the back of the T shirt and now you have like a super chill, really wild Halloween costume. So I worked nights and weekends that whole year to come up with this idea. 24 shirts, free app. And we launched it and it was a banger success. And so from that there's a company in the UK who wanted to buy it and bring me with it. And it was a great deal for me. It made sense and it was like a fun opportunity. So I did that for two years. I still lived in California, but I would go over to the UK every couple months and work with those guys. And then my boss's boss from NASA eventually called me. He had come up to work at Apple and he's like, hey, I think I would love to have you on my team. I think we really need you up here. And I was like, ah, this seems like a cool next opportunity. And that's what moved me up to the Bay Area.

And can you talk about what you did at Apple?

I can talk more about this than I do, but I can say there's a patent that I'm the lead author on, which is kind of nice because you could talk publicly about that. And I will say patently, Apple is like a website who covers Apple's patents. They called it the patent of the decade and it's all about using virtual reality and self driving cars. And what does that mean when you combine virtual reality with the fact that you have a self driving car? Because if you think about it when self driving cars come around, like 40% of people get motion sickness. And so 40% of the population will have all this free time, but they can't utilize it because they need to be like looking at the road. Are there ways to mitigate motivation sickness with virtual reality? Are there ways to create some really interesting entertainment opportunities? Because if you think about it, a car is like the world's greatest simulator, motion simulator, because you're actually moving. Whereas like on Star Tours or one of these things when you need to accelerate, the seat turns back 90 degrees. And that kind of does feel like you're accelerating forward, but then you're not feeling pressure on your butt. It just feels a little bit off. But in a car you'd actually feel one G down and you get the accelerations in different directions. What does that mean when you pair it with a zombie apocalypse experience? Right. If you close your eyes and go over a speed bump. From personal experience, I've thought about this. It feels a lot like running over a zombie. And by the way, the car knows where all the potholes are because it talks with other cars. So you could design a very interesting simulation that feels very real. And if you get to a red light in real life, it's just a red light. But in this zombie apocalypse game, you get there and it's like the car dies and you're like, come on, go, go, go, go. The light turns green right at the right time, you can pull off. And that's like a zombie game. But there's also if you're stuck in traffic on the freeway and you just want to motivate that the motions you're feeling, because that's what motion sickness is when weight doesn't match up with your internal gyro. So now instead of just being stuck in traffic on the freeway going home, maybe you're on a lazy river. And when the road turns right, the river turns right. And when you need to stop because there's a car in front of you and it's bunch of traffic, like a little log comes up and your canoe stops. So this is really interesting. And that's like just the tip of the iceberg. But it was a very extensive patent. So that's all I could say about my time at Apple, because that's public information. I'm just talking about publicly what's in that patent.

Have you considered talking to Joby? Because Joby has the same sort of needs, right? Virtual reality flying is an even yeah.

And the answer is no, because Apple isn't that bad. Now I want to stay clear of their lawyers.

Yeah, okay, listen, I have a rich history.

Yeah, I know you do. I know you do.

And the thought of Apple making a car. They're gonna spec special electricity and there's gonna be a dongle, but the dongle will be 10 grand.

Yeah.

And the car will be really great, but only go 75 miles or four hours.

Yeah, that's right. Somehow they'll convince you that it's like the best thing, and you'll believe it. Apple's good at that. You have an iPhone? Yeah.

This is a 13.

Okay. Okay.

I will buy the 15. This morning I placed an order for.

A GoPro 12 too.

So you guys use GoPros so we don't anymore. And you want to know what we use instead of reds? IPhones. Really? I'm serious. We have like 20 iPhones that we film with.

You don't use reds or so many alphas or anything.

No, I mean, so we do have. Our primary cameras are like, like Panasonic GH5s or whatever, but like 30% of the shots in all my YouTube videos are on an iPhone.

Really?

Yeah, they're great. They have great dynamic range. And on YouTube, if a TV show puts, you know, Discovery Channel puts something on YouTube, it never does well, because it's too polished. There's a little bit of. On YouTube, you want to be authentic. And who I am right now talking to you, this is who I am. It's who I am in my videos. And I think people could sniff that out. And so by having a lot of the shots on an iPhone, it's whatever. This is more just about capturing what's actually happening versus this super polished thing with everything just perfect. I think it works better and they're just way easier to use and they don't overheat. Frickin GoPros. Sorry, GoPro.

I surf and I use a GoPro, and I swear, 20% of the time it crashes in the middle of it and there's nothing you can do except pull out the battery and put it back in. Except that's very risky in the water. Yeah. And then I don't know why, but the date and time is always off.

That's funny.

And then it saves it to the wrong folder and like, you know, GoPro, this is version freaking 12. Can we just get it reliable?

Or how they even name their files? Like when you record, if you have a clip that's longer, it's like gh. It's not even sequential, which I don't understand. And you think they would have fixed that by now? Yeah, I don't know. Not to bash GoPro, but I'm happy to hear someone in a completely different street also have issues with them. I can't tell you how many times we have not got an amazing shot that I really wanted because it just stopped recording or it overheated or whatever. So I was just like, we're done.

We interviewed Garrett McNamara.

Yeah.

And the 100 foot wave guy.

Yeah.

And he uses GoPros. He has the same issues.

Oh, really?

Yeah. And it's one thing for you to do another take with a squirrel jumping over.

Yeah. 100 foot wave, but not always. You know, we have this elephant toothpaste experiment that was like 100 and some odd thousand dollars just for all the chemicals. We're doing some big old world record. It's this foam that creates this chemical reaction in the sky. And we had like three GoPros inside. Like the money shots, they all overheated. Didn't get the shot. So I would argue, no, it's not always just a squirrel guy.

Okay, so now we're going from Apple to YouTube.

Yeah.

A more general question, like, how did you make these transitions? How did you go from rocket scientist to costume maker to virtual reality to YouTuber.

Yeah. So it's interesting. I'm a very conservative person. I want to say that right now I don't feel like I make.

You mean you think Trump won.

Yeah. Not politically. Not talking politically. I am very conservative in nature as an engineer, and so I agree on paper, when you look at some of the decisions I made and some of the bets I've made, that they seem big. But then at the time, and I think this is. Maybe it's a blessing and a curse, but it feels like their next move is very obvious. And I think that's always been the case for me, where it's like, it feels very clear. I don't have a crystal ball that works five, 10 years in the future, but my one year crystal ball, I feel, is pretty good. And I don't swing at a lot of pitches, but the pitches I swing at are the juicy ones that I feel like, Yep, this is 100%.

I beg to differ. I saw the Wiffle ball video.

True. Yeah. I think as an example, when I finally left Apple at that point, to be fair, I had 10 million subscribers when I finally left Apple. And most people will use.

Wait, wait, wait, you had 10 million?

Yeah. Yeah. When I left Apple five years ago.

And Apple PR Nazis, they weren't Shutting you down, saying you can't be this public.

You're like, no. They tried and you quit. No. No. When? So when I first went to work there, they told me I couldn't make YouTube videos. And I only had 180,000 subscribers then. And I was like, well, forget you guys. You asked me to work for you. And I told them no. And they're like, fine. At least when you come here, you have to wait three months to release a video. I was like, guys, you don't have to worry about it. It's not like my videos get that many views anyways. The first video, I waited three months. The first video I did was this, like, how to skin a watermelon video. It's this dumb video of. It just has a really good thumbnail. It got like 40 million views in a week. It still, to this day is my most viewed video. It just has this really wacky thumbnail of this watermelon shell that's peeled open and you see, like, a shaved watermelon inside. Anyways, so that was my start with them. And then. But I just said I would never say I worked for Apple. I would keep it quiet, right? And then I had an opportunity to go on Jimmy Kimmel. They reached out to me and I asked Apple. I was like, hey, can I do this? It went all the way up to a senior vp. I won't say his name, but you know who he is. And he's like, look, we should be focused on making great products. That was the answer. So it wasn't like a no, but I was like. At first I was like, oh, crap, I can't do this. Then I was like, hold on. They can't tell me I can't play badminton on the weekend? Like, as long as I don't say I work for Apple. His response of not being no basically tipped me off that legally he couldn't say no type of thing. And so I was like, okay, forget this. I'm doing it. And I did it. And to this day, I ended up going on Jimmy's show, like, eight times. I hosted his show. We're really good friends. I spend the night at his house anytime I'm in la. So it was like. It was a really good move for me to not take that advice of not going on a show.

The evangelist and marketer in me would say, holy shit, this is a gift from God that I got this person who's rank and file employee who has 30 million followers and gets 40 million views. Like, I'll let them Introduce the next Apple Watch.

No, no. Because in their mind, and to be honest, I think they're right. There's just no upside. Apple doesn't need someone saying, hey, do you know about Apple? So it's all just downside when I have some controversy, like, obviously that's not gonna happen, or knock on wood, let's get that. Like, I'm pretty conservative, even my personal life and stuff, so I don't think I'm gonna get canceled. But if I did, if there was some event, it only can say, oh, this guy also works for Apple. And so they just don't want any of that. They want to be fully in control of their destiny.

On the other hand, they gotta spend so much effort sucking up to Marques and Ijustine. In fact, they own a Marques or Ijustine, right?

Yeah. But, like, they always have that layer of separation where they're just an independent journalist. That's just different than them being an Apple employee. Yeah. So anyways, all that's to say, I quit my job at Apple when I had 10 million subscribers. And I loved my team. The people I worked with were awesome. They wanted me to stay and I loved the job I did there, but it was just getting too big, the YouTube thing. So I ended up going full time, obviously, to do this. And then recently we launched Crunch Labs, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit. And that was another example where it's like, this just is clearly the right thing to do. And, yeah, it's gone well.

And when this clearly the right thing to do feeling happens, is it an epiphany or is it like a little acorn that grows over the course of.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Finally, it's a tree.

I'd say it's more. It's a combination, it's like an acorn. But I would say a lot of the growth happens very quickly. And by very quickly, I mean, like in a matter of hours, you get the gestation idea. And I feel like 70% of building out the meat on the bones happens. Like, I just get really excited and I just start writing things down. Of course, this. This seems so obvious, right? And then. And then the rest grows, like, maturely over time because the devil's in the details. Execution is what really matters. But that first vision of just getting stoked about what something could be, like that Apple patent, as an example. Most of the ideas in that really, really long patent came in a matter of an hour and a half. Right when I First had that idea and I was like shaking. I was like, oh, my gosh, there's so much here. Yeah.

How often do you get those? Hour and a half.

Not, it's for the big ones, it's for the big ideas. And it happens. I make monthly videos too. So sometimes if I have a video idea and I'm like, oh, this is great. And I could do this and it could be this. That's a familiar feeling to me, just from the monthly video cadence. But like the big ideas, for example, the toy company, Crunch Labs. Yeah. Once it made sense. And the story is actually Kimmel was the one. I was spending that at his house because we had just done a fundraiser for my son who's on the autism spectrum. We did a big fundraiser on my channel. And it was that night after we'd done it, like a four hour live stream. He's like, you really need to make a product for kids. He's like, I don't think you realize what you have and what you mean to people, but people trust you. And my standard response is no. Like, whenever someone tells me I need to do something, like write a book, go on tour, do a podcast, for example, Guy, I'm always like, why? And when you keep asking why and get to the root of it, it's so I can make more money. And it's like, I have enough money. I don't spend that much money. I'd rather focus on the things I really love and focus on those and make those excellent and amazing and not just inundate myself and spread myself super thin. So when Kimmel told me this, I was like, my answer is no, I don't need to, Jimmy. I enjoy making these monthly videos. But then just the more I thought about it, it'. Yeah, you can only learn so much passively watching a video. But if you actually had a toy that was really, really fun. Taught a physics principle. There's a video for me explaining the physics principle. And you got that every month. And then. And the concept is teach you to think like an engineer. It's literally on the box. Then it's like you can reach kids at a deeper level. And he was definitely right that there's the right move to do because it's gone fairly well. So now it helps make the YouTube videos even better. So it's like there's a virtuous cycle of just reaching more. Really everyone, but especially the young folk, to get them stoked about science and engineering. It's really helped me level up.

So how do you define Yourself, Are you an evangelist for stem? Basically. You're not just trying to get a bunch of views so you can monetize your.

Yeah, that's right. 100%. That's right. @ the end of the day, I think we can all agree my definition of success is do you have a net positive impact on the world? There's a lot of people who I think by the world's success or by world's definition of success, maybe they've made a lot of money, but they're just kind of shitty people. It's like a net negative effect on the world. And I think by that definition of success, I just want to have a net positive impact on the world. And I think the way I can do that most is I've done something with these videos. I realize that I can hide the vegetables. Well, basically, if you want someone to learn something and you say, hey, you need to learn something, they're going to shut down. But if you have a picture of the world's largest jello pool and you're in the jello and it says 15 ton jello pool and that's the clickbait and you click on it because you want to see that. And sure enough, I'm building the world's largest jello pool. What I'm also doing is teaching about the scientific method and how you actually make Jello and how all the failures we encountered to get to this thing and you're learning about chemistry. So it's like hiding the vegetables of the real meat with this covering of this really interesting thing to suck you in. And so I think that carrot versus the stick approach to education and getting stoked about science is something that I've realized I can do well. And so this just helps me amplify it because there's a lot of big problems in the world and we're in like an all brains on deck situation. So the more kids that I can play some small role in inspiring to enter the steam and, you know, STEM fields, then that feels pretty good to.

Me. We interviewed a woman named Wanda Harding who also worked for NASA. And she was the person who could have said rover doesn't go, Curiosity doesn't go. She was the manager. She had. She made the.

Call.

Okay. And after her very successful career at NASA, she went to national noaa, National Ocean Atmospheric or.

Whatever.

Right? Yeah, yeah, successful.

There. And now she's teaching students in Georgia math and physics.

Right? Oh, what grade do you know?

Yeah. So she went from NASA.

To. So this is my dream job. I want to be a high school physics.

Teacher.

Really? Yeah. I swear I started getting my credentials five years ago, and then things just really picked up and got crazy. But I want to teach in a class. Obviously, I'd be, like a volunteer high school physics teacher, but that's, like, where it really clicked for me that I love this stuff and you can explain the world around you. In math and equations was my high school physics class. And in this time that we are talking here, I'll just tell you, I'm gonna pull out my phone and look at my YouTube analytics. In the time that we are having this conversation, guy, I want to tell you how many other households I'm also in, which is. Let's see here. Give me one sec. I will be in. And I haven't released a video in two and a half months, so it's not like the channel is necessarily popping right now. But in the time the listeners are listening to this podcast, I'll be in 400,000 other homes on just, like, a random day. Right? At 400,000, that's five really big football stadiums of people, which is, like, kind of terrifying to think about for me. So it's like, I can reach a lot of people, but I don't get that selfishly, that moment of, like, seeing that aha. Which I crave. I love those aha moments for myself when something clicks and it's, oh, I get that. That's such a good feeling, that if I'm teaching high school physics, like, I get to see that selfish.

Feeling. But there's 20 kids.

There. But this is why, admittedly, it's a little bit of a selfish pursuit, because I get to see that. I get to get that feedback right. And arguably, if you say a YouTube video is one level, Making these boxes every month is another level. Being in being someone's teacher for a year is another level of deeply impacting their lives. And what are they going to go on and do? So this is what I love about teachers, is they're the ultimate sort of investors in human capital. Because it's like, you know, I am the product of some amazing teachers who are they themselves product of teachers before them. And with the teachers, you don't really ever get to see the full impact of your work, but it's like you are investing in people who will then go off and do, hopefully, amazing things and inspire other folks. It's because Unbroken chain back thousands of.

Generations. You would love Wanda.

Harding. Yeah, I love her already because she let the rover go. I guess she was the one.

Who made the call and when I knew I was going to interview you. Scene has all you guys are rocket scientists. I sent an email to her saying, I'm interviewing Mark. What should I ask.

Him?

Okay. She's the one who said, how does it feel to send a machine like rover on a seven month, 300 mile, 300 mile trip to Mars without a.

Mechanic? I was wondering. I did feel like I got good knowledge, Guy. Good.

Knowledge. You didn't think I was that smart. But the key is when you realize you're not smart, you ask somebody like Wanda to help you. That's.

Smart. That's the real genius in the room. I completely agree with you because you just made yourself way more smarter by basically creating a net. I mean, you know so many people and by extension that you are incredibly intelligent because you could find out anything. I don't.

Know. You were telling me about all these trade offs at any given moment and you said, so why are you doing this podcast? Because you're not going to reach.

400,000 people in my podcast. Yeah, yeah, I think I generally. It was the socks. Yeah. I generally don't do podcasts, Guy, but I know about you. I respect your work. And so that's the answer. But to answer your question, I kind of say no to everything. This is very rare for me to say yes. In fact, part of it was the sock connection on the plane too. It's just such a funny story of how we met. Yeah. Because I normally don't ever really talk to people on the plane. Yeah. And then I was talking next to someone who had a great story. She was an entrepreneur. She knew you had such nice things to say about you. So up next on Remarkable People. Because I have all the footage in front of me, I watch it through and then I'm like, oh, okay, this is a good moment. In the end, we landed here with this thing. So now I need to pick the clips that support this landing of this thing being, or let's say something fails in the end when we film it. I want to make sure at the beginning of the video to say, look, we're not sure if this part's gonna work, but we're gonna give it our best.

Shot. Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It's found on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite.

Shows. Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy.

Kawasaki. Do you know what the word ikigai.

Means? Yeah, I think.

So. So what's your.

Ikigai? Maybe I'm wrong, but is the Ikigai, the thing that's like, what your passion is, what you're good at. It's like the middle of all those things, why you live. Can you remember. Can you remind me what those four buckets are? Because I think this is such a beautiful concept. It's like, what.

You'Re. It. It's not necessarily a Venn diagram of what you're good at, what you like, what you can get paid for. It's really. It's obviously a Japanese term. They always show the video of this guy who's been making samurai swords for 30 years, and it takes six months to make one sword, and it's his iki guy. My iki guy is.

Podcasting. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's your reason for getting up in the morning. It's your reason for.

Living.

Yeah. It's not so much about the intersection of money, talent, and.

Interest. Got.

It. So what's your key.

Guy? For me, it's getting people, but especially young people, stoked about science and engineering education. And I. I also love making these videos and telling stories, and I just can't believe it, honestly, once a week, I'm looking at one of my people I work with here, and I'm just like, I cannot believe we get paid for this. This is.

Bonkers. Is that what you.

Say? Yeah, that's right. Like, I can't believe it when we're just doing something ridiculous or blowing something up or building something crazy. My next video is the world's smallest nerf gun, because I hold the record for the world's largest. And we. It's so small, we kind of go down in stages. The final one, we literally folded DNA to make a nerf gun. Working with the Salk Institute, you could fit. I think it's 2000 if you laid them end to end across the width of a human hair. And it's like learning about what they do at Salk and just the process of that whole video on top of these explosions, we got so much stuff going on right now. We're at Crunch Labs. There's so many cool things I could show you around here, future videos and ideas we've got that it's. Honestly, once a week, I'm just like, this is bonkers. So that is my ikigai. If you can max out on one attribute to have in your life, I think it's gratitude and contentment. And I think people like you who are very successful or, you know, an Elon Musk type, where you have a very dopaminergic brain, which Means, like, you're really focused on what's next. Very ambitious, basically, never satisfied. It's kind of a curse to have a brain like that. You get a lot done, you accomplish a lot in your lifetime, but you never feel like you ever accomplished very much because you're always focusing on the next thing. That's the role of dopamine in our brain. And so I think contrast that with someone, let's say maybe they just have a very simple life and existence. And by the world standards, they don't do much. Maybe they never even have kids. They just, hey, I have my show. I like to watch. I work in this factory. So there's something in between those. There's a happy medium. Like everything in life, there's a middle ground. And I do struggle with thinking of the next big thing and just getting stoked about the next thing and sometimes forgetting to live in the moment. But it's something I really consciously try and make an effort of being just really content and grateful for what I have. And one life hack for that for me is like to go back 10 years, and if 10 years ago I knew I'd be in this position, I would literally die on the spot. Like, my brain would explode. Like, the people I get to work with now and the things we get to do. If I knew about this when I was like 15 years old, it's just.

Bonkers. I think when 40 million people watch a video, there's gonna be Quite a few 15 year olds who see that and look back and say, that was a turning point in my life. I saw that video. I saw the jello, I saw the Wiffle ball, I saw the Squirrel Olympics, and I thought, I can do that. I love science. Let's do.

It. Yeah. And it's pretty cool. More and more I'm hearing more of those stories right as time goes on. Like, I just did the MIT commencement speech and they told me the reason they did that is they asked the students who they want to speak and they. They said overwhelmingly, my name came.

Up. Yeah. How much greater praise can there be? That freaking.

Mit. I know. And these kids have grown up watching my videos. And these are like next generation's best and brightest engineers. So, I mean, that's an example. Yeah, it's hard to really process what that means, but I'm just going to put my head down, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. And I think 20 years from now, it will bear out to be the right decision. I'm glad I did this versus Pursuing a career in Hollywood or something. Not that anyone in Hollywood would ever want me. I'm a terrible.

Actor. You have to be on strike right.

Now. Yeah, that's true.

Too. Have you decoded the DNA of making a video go.

Viral?

Yeah. You.

Have? Yeah. It's pretty. Honestly, I have a good answer to this. That's absolutely correct. That's pretty.

Simple. Probably the first person to ask it is.

Yeah. And the answer is, this is true. You just have to evoke a visceral response in the viewer. Whether it makes them laugh, makes them feel amazed, makes them feel wonder, it makes them feel angry. You just have to make them feel something. No one's gonna share a video that they don't finish watching. And unfortunately, today in our culture, like, anger is one of the easier ones to stoke and to get views on even someone on Twitter, it's like they'll realize, oh, the hot take I had that was really polarizing is the one that got the most views and likes. I'm gonna have more hot takes and more angry things to say, because it feels good that people see my thing and I get attention. So that's the answer. As humans, if we feel something, then we will act on it. For example, sharing the video. Now, the hard part is, how do you get them to feel something? And like I said, anger is a cheap way to do it. One way, as an example is, like I said, world's largest Nerf gun, or world's smallest Nerf gun, or world's largest super soaker or world's largest jello pool by just being world's largest. It's something that's never been seen before. And so inherently, you stack the dice that they feel like they're gonna see something that's gonna make them feel amazed. Because this is the first time I'm seeing this. It's bigger than anything I've ever seen. So it's like that aspect of it. And then also, if you could tell stories. A lot of people had made videos about squirrels in their backyard before I made mine, but they didn't really, like, name the squirrels Fat Gus and give them backstories and really create a story around it quite like I did. And I think that's something people think, oh, you're a good engineer and you make these videos. But if I had to pick one thing, I think there's tons of engineers that are way better than me, truthfully. That's not faint humility. I'm an okay engineer, but I'm a pretty good storyteller guy. When it comes down and packaging that, specifically a storyteller in the form of video. And so for a lot of these kids, they're seeing these videos, and for the first time, they're having these visceral responses to a media, someone they don't know. And so I think it creates a very interesting link in their brains where, like, they're feeling emotions. Like, this feels cool. I want to do that. I want to be that. So it's this hack into their brains that I'm planting these seeds and putting it in the right soil. Absolutely. And I'm stoked to be doing.

It. When you do these videos and your storytelling is off the charts. I agree. But is it carefully scripted and planned, or are you out there in the field and you say, okay, let's name the squirrels now, and let's get a wiffle ball that we cut in half. We put a brass slug in.

It.

Yeah. How much is. How much is scripted in advance and how much is marked real.

Time? I never write the videos. I write the videos. Is always the very last step. Like, we've been working on this world's smallest nerf gun for over a year now. The video will release in a week and a half. I am just now looking at all the footage and writing what the script is. That's my process. It's scripted in the sense that. So for the squirrels example, we had 10,000 hours of squirrels filming that. And that's what people don't realize when you're filming on iPhones. And it's like, oh, it's just this dude in this backyard. I had so much footage that we combed through. And so at that point, people are like, oh, those squirrels are like actors. How did you get them to do everything just so perfectly? It's like, with 10,000 hours of footage, I could tell whatever story I want. Right. So it's a combination of, you know, or we're going to do the world's largest elephant toothpaste video. Or I went to Rwanda and covered this company called Zipline that are delivering drones or blood through the sky, like, on drones, and they've reduced maternal mortality rate by, like, 88%. I went to Rwanda. I just knew I wanted to cover them. I just filmed a bunch, and then I come home with the footage, and then I piece together how to tell the.

Story. And getting down to brass tacks, tell me, are you using.

Premiere? Premiere Pro? Yeah, yeah. Premiere Pro. Yeah. Most editors do Final Cut. People are starting to go back to that. Apple just stopped supporting it for A really long.

Time. You got burned if you were on Final.

Cut. Yeah, they've come back around, are now trying to support it again, but they've lost so much market share. So I'd say by and large, Moses, most YouTubers use Premiere and then in industry it's like Avid and other more.

Professional. And are you sitting on a Super Duper 3 monitor Mac Pro, just $25,000 Macintosh, or you're not doing it on your iPhone.

Right? No. The funny story about this is I bought, you know, Apple has, what's it called, the Mac, that one Desktop tower. Yeah, I maxed it out and I'm embarrassed to say how much I paid for that, but it's like tens of thousands. Yeah, it's more than a car because I was like, I don't spend my money on other stuff, I should spend it on this. So it's really fast. And for whatever reason, the way Apple does their graphics cards and the way Premiere does, it's literally no faster than my freaking laptop, which I'm like. So if anyone's listening, don't spend money on the big fancy Apple thing. Just a laptop is fine. But we do things like in the workflow making proxies so versions of the video that are lightweight so you can scrub through easy. And when we do that, honestly, you can edit from a laptop. It's.

Fun. If you end up with a 25 minute video, how many man hours or person hours went into.

That? So are you talking editing or just.

Everything?

Everything. So this is, it's a great question because this is the thing people are most shocked by when they come and actually film with me for a day or just are around me. They're amazed at the amount of work that goes into a video. Most of these videos take like a year to make and build. I have my next 12 videos planned out and we're working on them in different stages. How many man hours if you add everyone up? Because I still edit the videos, I write the video. I mean I have people who help me edit, but I spend 80 hours just myself editing and writing every single video. But I. Thousands, thousands of man.

Hours. Thousands, yeah. Get one hour to get one.

Hour? No, no, to get friggin 15 minutes, guy. Yeah. So that's the thing when you watch my videos, it's very punchy. We're going from one thing to the next. I just pack a ton in there because I just want it to be a very engaging experience, you know. Mr. Beast, my buddy takes that to a next level. His are just like, really? But I do the equivalent of science. Not quite as insane, but I really just try and keep him moving. And so that's also a thing. When we go and film with someone and we interview them, we're with them for three days, we always have to tell them. We got a ton of footage here. We talked to so many people. Please understand, most of you won't be in the video. And those who are, it's gonna be like three sentences. You know what I.

Mean? So you know that doctor from the Bedbugs.

Episode?

Yeah. You have, like, hours and hours of him, and he comes down to 30.

Seconds. Yeah, that's right. Just doing the.

Thing. Putting it on your.

Arm. Yeah. But what's great about that, though, is you just get to pick the best parts, Right? The funniest parts. And also the other promise I make to everyone in my videos is, like, everyone comes out looking amazing. Like, I always want to tell our podcast, damn it. I assumed we had this agreement. How great would that be? You, like, cut this for. I'm saying, like, all these terrible things. Don't cancel the.

Guy. First stop is Apple General.

College. Amazing. Yeah. So by doing that and just cherry picking, I can really just make sure everyone sounds as smart as they really are. And sometimes people get nervous. Yeah, that's how I like to make the.

Video. It sounds like push comes to shove. The secret to this is the editing. It's not.

The. Yeah, it's a combination. But yes, it's the writing. And I'd say more editing. I feel like writing is a better way to phrase it than editing, because editing feels like, oh, you use the right sound effect or the right transition. But yes, the editing and the writing, I think has a way more profound effect on the channel success than people.

Realize. But what do you mean by writing? Because most people within court would think writing is the writing the script in.

Advance. That's not what. No, writing the script after the.

Fact. Which is what? How do you write the script after.

You. Because I have all the footage in front of me. I watch it through, and then I'm like, okay, this is a good moment. In the end, we landed here with this thing. So now I need to pick the clips that support this landing of this thing being. Or let's say something fails in the end when we film it, I want to make sure at the beginning of the video to say, look, we're not sure if this part's gonna work, but we're gonna give it our best shot. So you frame it so that when that does fail. People have the right context for understanding why it failed.

Right. You know, Madison and I are co authoring a book called Think Remarkable as opposed to Think different. And step one, we had about 200 interviews in the can, averaging 20 pages each of.

Transcript.

Wow. So that's 200 times 20 is 4,000 pages. So we read 4,000.

Pages.

Yeah. To write the book after we.

Read.

Yeah. So in a sense, yeah. That was our raw.

Footage. Yeah, that's right. And exactly that afterwards. And you start picking out themes. Some people start saying the same things. Then it starts crystallizing your mind what the story is. Right. I feel like, to me, it's like, how in the world do you write something before? Like, that boggles my mind when we have brought an editor on. This happened literally just yesterday. They're just like, I don't understand. Where's the script? I have this footage, but what am I cutting to? And my chief creative, Adi, was like, I know it's weird. It's just how we do it around here. Just trust me. Just do this thing. Because then I look at all the footage and then it's okay, this is the story, this is the script. I write the full script out, and then it goes back to the editors and me to then pick the shots as I'm doing it too. I'm like, use this shot. I write this. Use this shot. So I'm like picking the shots as I write.

It. But what if you write something that you did not.

Record? I just don't write that. You think of it backwards. Like, I only write what's recorded. So if I don't have a shot and something to support a statement, or I go out and shoot it, I VO all my videos a bunch. So I have the ability in voiceover to say something. And then I could create motion graphics to make that point. So I do that a lot where I really want to explain how carbon nanotubes are made, because that's how we made this tiny Nerf gun. So I'm going to just explain in voiceover and use motion graphics to do this. But like the intro to my video where it's like, today we're going to go out and blah, blah, blah. That is absolutely the very last thing I write and film on every video. The part where I'm introducing what's going to happen is the very last thing I write. Because I know at that point what happened. And I could set it up appropriately because I just. I want this to this spoonful of sugar to go down as Smoothly as possible. And the more the story has a nice arc and it's cohesive and real life and chemistry and physics and science can be messy, and you don't know where it will land. So I do the cool experiment and make the cool thing, film it all, see where the pieces landed, and then figure out a way to weave a tapestry that goes through each of.

Those bits with your glitter bombs. Did anybody ever try to retaliate? They knew where they got the package. Why don't they go back to your.

House? Oh, so, yeah, the first year, we had them on my porch. After that, I never put them on my actual porch. We find people across the country who are willing to put them on their.

Porch. Oh, I thought you used.

Yours. Yeah, I mean, year one, I did, but after that, I realized. And even for year one, I partially did, a package actually got stolen from my porch, which was the impetus for doing this. But, yeah, no, after that, we're all across the country and locally here, around this area, when we see a spot, a house that we think is good, we'll knock on the door and be like, this is a great visibility from the street. Are you cool if we leave this package on your porch? And almost 100% of the time, they're like, hell.

Yes. And then when you show the video of the thief and you don't blur out his or her.

Face. Yeah. You want to know, why did.

They have to sign a release? And they said, I'm a dumbass. I will sign a release of me committing a.

Crime. Yes, guy. I don't. And I don't, by the way. I don't say like, and if you sign this, I won't press charges because that's against the law. That's like me threatening them or something. That's not it at all. Some people just want to be Internet famous, guy. And they just don't care about their reputation. Like you think they.

Would. This is like Candid Camera, except yours are.

Criminal. I know. And they love it. I wouldn't say they love it, but, like, I mean, arguably, we just say it's for, like, oh, this is just a YouTube video. And sometimes it's like you incentivize them with something like a Starbucks gift card. Like, not much. That was a trick Kimmel taught me because it's like, sometimes they need to get people to sign releases, and his producers are like, oh, yeah, it doesn't take much. But generally, yes. That's the hard and fast rule. If the face is blurred, I didn't get permission or we weren't able to track them down. If the face is not blurred, I absolutely have a signed release somewhere where they say, that's okay because I'm not in the business of ruining someone's life over one stupid decision. Maybe this is the only time they did it. I'm not here to make that judgment. That's not my call. But if they give consent and say no, this is totally cool, then it's great. I'm gonna use.

It. Last question. Has to do with the.

Surfboard. Oh.

Yeah. Okay. This is a short word.

Obviously. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's not for nose.

Riding.

Yeah. Or cross.

Step.

Yeah. Okay. But I was watching the Wiffle.

Ball.

Yeah.

Episode.

Yeah. And what's the.

Called?

The. I want to.

Say. Yeah.

Yeah. And basically you're saying that when.

Fluid goes over a convex.

Edge. Yeah. Follows. Yeah, that's right.

Yep. So I think many people who surf, they think that what's happening, that they can get to the nose is because the weight of the water on the back of the board is holding the board.

Down.

Yeah. But you're saying that it's the physics of the effect of the fluid sticking to the.

Side. Right? Yeah. Let's see. I think if you're nose riding on, like, a longboard. Is your.

Point.

Yes. Let me just think of this through. I think, though, that's the opposite effect, guy, because the Kiwanda effect specifically. So like a Frisbee. Let's take a frisbee as an example, because this is a good way to visualize it. Frisbees kind of seem to, like, float in the air. Right. Which is kind of why, like, how do they hover like that? And it's the Coand effect, where air is passing over the top and then it curves over the back. So it's basically taking this air, throwing a bunch of air downwards, like a jet pack, which then conservation of momentum. Equal opposite reaction. It pushes the frisbee up into the air. It keeps the frisbee into the air by curving air down. So I think this wouldn't be the quant effect, because if what you're saying is true, water comes up and goes down, it would have the opposite effect of, like, pushing the board.

Up.

Ah. And the thing is, is, like, it's all a matter of the reason. You see that on Wiffle balls and Frisbees, they're super lightweight. That's why it has an outsize effect of keeping them in the air. They're so lightweight that the equal opposite reaction, you know, pushing air down does force the Frisbee up. Even if it was water going down and the quand effect is happening, it's curving over the edge. The surfboard weighs so much, that effect is negligible. So I don't think it's the Coand effect that's keeping the board in or out of the water in this case. I imagine there's also some element of surface tension. Yeah, it's an interesting. We need to, like, look at a video. I don't want to go outside of my domain here. There's probably someone out there who knows exactly. But the quant effect absolutely is happening here. Guy. It definitely is curving over the surface, just like you said. You put a spoon in a flow of water and it curves. That's absolutely happening here. I'm not sure if that explains why you can go to the front of it. We'd have to, like, look at some video. But here's what I love, Guy. Here's what I love about this. You watch that video, you learned something, and you took it into your own life and started thinking about it, right? Like, that's the highest compliment anyone could give me right there. Like, you just made my day. Right? You just made my.

Day. So that's Mark Rober, Mr. Fart Bombs, glitter bombs, Squirrel Olympics, bedbugs, you name it. Check him out on YouTube. I guarantee that you will learn something and you will be entertained. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable people. We are on a mission to make you remarkable. And one way we're doing that is Madison and I have written a book. It's called Think Remarkable. That's a pun on think different, in case you're too young to know. So check that book out. It will help you make a difference and be remarkable. My thanks to the staff of the Remarkable People team. Jeff C. Shannon Hernandez, sound engineers, Supreme. And then there's the Knysmer sisters. They're like the Poynter sisters, only of podcasting. Tessa, who prepares me and checks all the transcripts. Believe me, it's a lot of work. And Madison, producer and co author, not to mention the Drop in Queen of Santa Cruz. And then there's Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura, and Fallon Yates. This is the Remarkable People team, and we are on a mission to make make you remarkable. Until next time, mahalo and aloha. This is remarkable people.