How Mark Rober Hides “Science Vegetables” in Viral Videos | ReThinking with Adam Grant

Published

2 years ago

December 10, 2024

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

Check out the transcript for this episode at and listen to more episodes of “ReThinking with Adam Grant” at

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13 Comments

@takielddine9901

December 10, 2024 at 7:08 am

Free Free Palestine ????

Reply
- @alhassanboulasri766
  
  December 10, 2024 at 7:35 am
  
  Free
  
  Reply
- @rhaegartargaryen9315
  
  December 10, 2024 at 8:41 am
  
  From H ammas.
  
  Reply
@sooma-ai

December 10, 2024 at 7:11 am

Mark Rober discusses his approach to creating viral science videos, his time at NASA, the importance of critical thinking, and his views on space exploration. He shares insights on storytelling, engineering mindsets, and balancing parenting with his work.

Reply
@ShilpaNM-p9w

December 10, 2024 at 8:17 am

0:23 ????

Reply
@STEAMerBear

December 10, 2024 at 8:38 am

The “laws” of physics are merely those principles which have transitioned from hypothesis to very well established theories. Newton’s laws were both extended and superseded by Einstein’s work. Science is not immutable. Pure logic MIGHT be, but I can’t even look backwards from the end of time to claim that. Science, math and engineering are a constantly expanding foam comprised of bubbles of our best understanding. Some bubbles burst, leaving voids. Other bubbles merge. Tiny new ones are constantly forming. They become elastic or rigid and closed or open celled based on many factors including the personalities that gave rise to, nurtured, stabilized and perhaps fossilized them. This makes some areas of science much more tolerant to change than others. Mathematics embraces new bubbles—party time—but generally HATES those who dare attack ANY solidified—espexially useful—ones.

I anticipate AI will upend this model, creating a seemingly uniform, quantum foam of concepts in which every idea is constantly evaluated against every other one. From our perspective it will become “never wrong,” but we should work to understand it must never fall prey to the human proclivity for all-or-nothing thinking lest it stop error checking. I might always personally believe that a+b always equals b+a, but a single counterexample is a bubble factory and knowing the details is a far richer realm than the my certainty of a fallacy. Perhaps we are all Dunning-Kruger monsters, piously averting our attention from inconvenient data and labeling confusing results as unrigorous, poorly designed, etc..

Reply
@richardschnoor6995

December 10, 2024 at 8:41 am

i would buy a box for a struggling engineer-to-be
how?

Reply
- @riuphane
  
  December 10, 2024 at 10:05 am
  
  If you’re referring to either of Mark’s boxes, check literally any of his videos and he has ads for it. My daughter actually loves the Crunch Labs boxes and I’m considering the Hack Pack boxes.
  
  Reply
@felixccaa

December 10, 2024 at 11:06 am

u lost me completely with Your irational judgment of astrology since u proved u have completely no idea what astrology is about – I thought Mark had some interesting points – but I’m not interested any longer to finish watching, so I stop here

Reply
@thegeoffree

December 10, 2024 at 11:32 am

Adam i love your work going back about 8 years now

But you do believe things withiut evidence to support them. Your take on the belief in astrology and beliefs on the moon landing, 9/11, and vaccines shows how you believe things without evidence

You should look a little closer at these 3 points and maybe “re think” it all

What we definitely know to be 100% true is a short list

Reply
@FMFvideos

December 10, 2024 at 8:38 pm

Hi Ted, you are very shiny.

Reply
@KarenAndersonSmart

December 11, 2024 at 1:29 am

Great content, as always! Could you help me with something unrelated: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?

Reply
@user-cl5bv9mv9w

December 11, 2024 at 5:33 am

Honestly don’t know how I got here… but happy I watched????

Reply

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