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Mark rober: how an ex-nasa engineer became youtube’s coolest science teacher—and is saving the ocean.

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Mark Rober & Mr.Beast

Mark Rober is the exception to nearly every rule when it comes to social media. 

While many creators upload videos daily, Rober amassed 20M subscribers by only posting videos once per month. While most creators get a few years in the limelight, Rober has been at it for ten years. Perhaps most impressive of all: he did it while juggling jobs at NASA and Apple to make videos like the World’s Largest Jello Pool and World's First Automatic Strike Bowling Ball .

This month, Rober teamed up with fellow YouTuber Mr.Beast on another audacious challenge: fundraise $30M to clean the oceans as part of their #TeamSeas campaign . It’s the sequel to their #TeamTrees campaign from 2019 which raised over $23 million dollars to plant 23 million trees across the world. So how does Rober do it?

How did he become a top YouTuber while having demanding jobs at blue chip companies? What are his tips to avoiding burnout? And how exactly is he planning to fundraise $30 million for #TeamSeas? I sat down with him at VidSummit to chat about these questions and here’s what I learned. 

Interviewing Mark Rober

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1) Embrace “The Super Mario Effect”

In 2018, Rober gave a TED talk after conducting a fascinating study on 50,000 of his followers. He split them up into two groups and had each complete a simple programming exercise. The first group was told they could try again if they failed. No repercussions. The second group, however, was told that they’d lost five points every time they failed the game. Of course, these points were completely meaningless. Or as a Rober put it: “no-value-in-the-real-world, no-one-will-ever-see-these, completely meaningless, fake internet points.”

Nonetheless, there was a shocking difference between the two groups. Namely, 16% more of the non-penalized group successfully completed the game – simply because there was no real “loss” associated with losing. Rober calls this “The Super Mario Effect.'' He explained that “We don’t let losing at video games, like Super Mario, discourage us from playing again. Rather, we take the loss as a way of learning so we get closer to completing the level.”

“You get a bad grade on a test. You don't get the promotion you wanted. And we immediately tell ourselves, ‘We're not good enough. We're losers.’ We internalize it. But you don't do that for a video game,” Rober continued. “So don't do that for your own life. Get back on your feet.”

This is how Rober views his career as a YouTuber. He told me, “I’'ll try to stack the dice in my favor, but at the end of the day, it doesn't mean I always hit the ball out of the park. When I don't, what can I learn from it? Boom. Okay. Let's do it again. Let's pivot. Let's move on. Let's figure it out.”

2) Create “Concreted Nuggets of Coolness” 

For Rober, less is more. During our interview, I was stunned to hear how long he spends scripting every second of his videos. 

“I will spend a half an hour getting five sentences down to like four and a quarter sentences. I try and state everything as succinctly and directly as possible,” Rober said. “TV is a lot more passive. You just watch. You're on your couch. But with YouTube, you're on your devices. Tons of options. I have to make it engaging the whole time.”

Rober has learned to do that to a tee. For his squirrel obstacle course video, he had to condense a year’s worth of footage down to 15 minutes. For his “liquid sand” hot tub video, Rober searched hundreds of patent drawings and made 25 prototypes to find a way to make the video. 

“I think there's something that comes from just laser-focusing on a thing,” Rober explained. “You don't spread yourself thin. [Am I better off] if I split an idea into four videos that each gets a million views, or if I just put that in one video, that gets 20 million views? I just have these concentrated nuggets of coolness that I try to put out every month.”

3) Slow Down Your Treadmill

Many people preach the old adage “life is a marathon, not a sprint” but few actually follow it. Again, Rober is the exception. For him, life is more like a treadmill.

“You could go at a sprinting pace – do the book, do the podcast, launch the merch line, go on tour,” he said. “But what inevitably happens is that dopamine hit wears off, and you're still sprinting on this treadmill.”

Rober doesn’t let himself burn out. He puts out a single video every month. But here’s the thing: slow doesn’t mean lazy. Rober works his rear end off making jaw-dropping, quality content. He spends months setting up his projects, going through iterations (for his elephant’s toothpaste video , he told me, “we scaled up from a desktop version to a 4-foot version to a 10-foot version so that we could do the 20-foot version. And each time we were learning more and more.” Mark Rober’s videos take a lot of work, but the end result pays off for it.

“I've been very protective of my treadmill speed and I've just kept it at a jogging pace,” Rober told me, completing his analogy. But slow doesn’t mean lazy. Rober says, “I just frickin’ laser-focus on my monthly videos, and I swing for the fences every month. And I just put all my effort into that.” Clearly, it pays off.

4) Create Characters To Tell More Powerful Stories

There are a lot of people who made videos about squirrels in their backyard before me,” Mark Rober told me. “But none of them named the squirrels like that.”

In one of his most popular videos, Rober created a “ squirrel obstacle course ” and presented the four squirrels who come to get the walnuts as “contenders.” It feels almost like a game-show. Rober gave each of the four squirrels a name and backstory so we can relate to them more: Rick, Marty, Frank, and Phat Gus. 

“When you can buy into the character,” Rober says, “It just resonates with people so much more. And they’re so much more likely to share the video.”

How Mark Named The "Characters" In His Squirrel Maze Video

5) Rally Your Community To Make An Even Bigger Impact 

In 2019, Mr. Beast and Rober attempted the impossible by trying to raise $20M and plant 20M trees for their #TeamTrees initiative.

Impossible? Not for these guys. “We got billionaires who got into like a pissing match,” Rober explained to me. “The CEO of Shopify did a million bucks. Elon Musk, I think, like a million dollars...We got 23 million trees. We raised $23 million – which is bonkers in two months! It's amazing, when everyone comes together, what can be done.”

But what’s remarkable is how many top YouTubers they got to help raise money and awareness for the cause. Everyone from The Try Guys to Destin Sandlin uploaded videos about #TeamTrees to reach their $20M goal. This month, Rober and Mr. Beast have taken it up a notch with #TeamSeas: an attempt to raise $30M to remove 30M pounds of trash from the ocean.

In 2019, Rober and Mr. Beast raised over $23M for #TeamTrees

“Some of the challenges we face won't be solved in our lifetime, but this is one that we can solve,” Rober said. “The Great Pacific garbage patch is big, but in 10 years, with the right funding, we can remove that out of the ocean. And this is something that, I think, everyone can agree on. We shouldn't have plastic in the ocean.”

But even with this higher fundraising goal, Rober hasn’t burnt out. He hasn’t resorted to sprinting on his “creator treadmill.” Instead, he’s gotten better at rallying the creator community to help make an even bigger impact.

The coordination, attention-to-detail, and execution of the #TeamSeas campaign has been really impressive to see. After interviewing Rober, I was contacted by Matt Fitzgerald, #TeamSeas Campaign Director, who shared an organized list of talking points, video ideas, and a full package assets for myself and many other creators to use in our social videos. The results speak for themselves: in about a week, they’ve raised over $14M and videos from top creators such as Ryan Trahan , Game Theory , and Dental Dentist have amassed millions of views.

It goes to show how Rober has scaled his impact by leaning on his community. He admits that he never would’ve envision this all happening when he first started on YouTube ten years ago. “If that me [from ten years ago] could see me today doing this interview, I'd be like, ‘You're crazy.’ But that's just incrementally keeping that treadmill on jog.”

Mark Rober is proof that slow and steady really does win the race, especially when you have a community supporting you.

To watch the full interview with Mark, see here . Subscribe to my YouTube channel for weekly interviews with top creators & celebrities.

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Mark Rober to deliver MIT’s 2023 Commencement address

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Mark Rober, a NASA engineer-turned-internet celebrity whose hugely popular videos celebrate problem-solving, determination, and having fun while learning, will deliver the address at the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony on Thursday, June 1.

Also an entrepreneur and educator, Rober is best-known for his successful YouTube channel , which hosts videos with title such as “Egg Drop From Space” and “Can You Swim in Jell-O?” While the topics are light-hearted, each video explores some aspect of science or engineering. The approach has found success; the channel has 23 million subscribers and more than 3 billion views.

Rober is the founder of CrunchLabs, which creates educational toy-making kits aimed at encouraging kids to think like engineers; he also teaches a variety of online classes on science and engineering topics. Recently, Rober teamed up with another YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson, also known as MrBeast, leveraging their popular platforms to combat climate change.

“The greatest teachers bring a subject to life in an irresistible way,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “For millions of young learners (and a few older ones, too), Mark Rober is making science and engineering inspiring, engaging, accessible, and most importantly, fun. His videos and build-box kits brim with creativity and energy — hands-on learning at its finest. We are delighted to welcome Mark to campus for this spring’s ceremony. And we are so grateful that he has at last settled a question that has troubled scientists and first graders for years: What would it look like to bellyflop on Jell-O?”

“My passion is getting people, especially young people, stoked about science, education, and engineering,” says Rober. “I’m also such a believer in hands-on, practical engineering solutions to real-world problems, and I can’t think of a school that has a better reputation for that than MIT. I’m excited to come out and meet the Class of 2023 and celebrate all the amazing, positive change they’re going to bring to the world.”

After studying mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University and the University of Southern California, Rober spent nine years as a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That included seven years on the Mars Curiosity rover team, working on the jet pack that lowered the rover to the surface and on other hardware used for collecting dirt samples.

Rober then moved to Silicon Valley and worked for five years on product design in Apple’s Special Projects group. In 2011, his iPad-based Halloween costume inadvertently helped launch his YouTube channel.

“Mark’s technical expertise, along with his extraordinary talent for communication, has enabled him to showcase the practical power of science and engineering,” says James Poterba, the Mitsui Professor of Economics and the chair of the Commencement Committee. “His capacity to make complex concepts not just relevant, but fun, has played an important part in advancing both public understanding of science and STEM education.”

“I love taking science and engineering to make it interesting enough so that kids want to click on it and it becomes aspirational,” Rober said in a recent interview with CNBC . “I try to hide the vegetables with getting the science and engineering message out there.” He does this, in part, through making compelling engineering builds, such as the world’s largest Nerf gun or an obstacle course in his backyard to protect his bird feeder from squirrels.

In 2019, Rober and Donaldson launched Team Trees, an initiative with the goal of planting 20 million trees. They followed this with Team Seas, which aims to remove 30 million pounds of plastics from oceans, rivers, and beaches. Both efforts quickly achieved their goals, with participation from numerous volunteers, demonstrating the power of social media to engage people in environmental causes.

“I am so excited to have Mark Rober speak at commencement. As an ex-NASA rocket scientist turned YouTuber, he inspires our youth to engage with science through objectively delightful videos and introduces a world of magic that one can understand through science and technology,” says Anna Sun, president of MIT’s Class of 2023. “Accurately described as the ‘Willy Wonka of engineering,’ Rober has an acumen for innovation and serves as an inspiration for redefining how we students can use our knowledge to impact those around us. I can’t wait to learn more from his experiences.”

“Bringing individuals from all walks of life into an educational environment is a feature of MIT, and Mark Rober captures this MIT quality through outreach videos that spark imagination and innovation in the minds of learners across the globe,” says David Spicer, president of the Undergraduate Association. “Science and engineering are not static. Education is not stagnant. Rober is a fresh example of the importance of bringing the new generation of learners into STEM education through pioneering methods.”

“Mark Rober is a great exemplar of the quirky, creative energy for engineering we so highly and uniquely value at MIT, and I can’t wait to hear him speak at Commencement,” says AJ Miller, president of the Graduate Student Council. “I love how he makes building and communicating science fun and accessible to everyone and inspires so many young people to pursue education and careers in technology.”

Rober joins notable recent MIT Commencement speakers including Director-General of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (2022); lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson (2021); retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral William McRaven (2020); three-term New York City mayor and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg (2019); Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (2018); Apple CEO Tim Cook (2017); and actor and filmmaker Matt Damon (2016).

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Engineer, Educator, YouTuber

Mark Rober is an American YouTuber , engineer, inventor, and educator. He is known for his YouTube videos on popular science and do-it-yourself gadgets. Before he became a YouTuber, Rober was an engineer with NASA for nine years, where he spent seven years working on the Curiosity rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later worked for four years at Apple Inc. as a product designer in their Special Projects Group, where he authored patents involving virtual reality in self-driving cars. In 2022 he created CrunchLabs, delivering monthly toys that teach children to think like engineers. Mark Rober was the 2023 Commencement Speaker at MIT.

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Engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober sent MIT graduates out into the world with an inspiring message—and a flying mortarboard.

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To conclude his 2023 commencement address, Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer known for his YouTube science videos, sent his mortarboard soaring over Killian Court and up to the Great Dome with the help of a drone. His remarks and grand finale drew a standing ovation from the crowd.

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‘You totally got this,’ YouTube star and former NASA engineer Mark Rober tells MIT graduates

C AMBRIDGE — On a summer-like afternoon, thousands of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cheered and smiled Thursday during their commencement ceremony that brought a NASA-engineer-turned-YouTube star to campus.

In his commencement address, Mark Rober urged the graduates to embrace their accomplishments and boldly face any challenge that may come across as they embark on their careers.

“The degree you’re getting today means so much to you precisely because of all the struggle and setbacks that you’ve had to endure,” Rober told the 3,275 graduates, dressed in heavy dark gowns and caps, who sat shoulder-to-shoulder on Killian Court. “If you want to cross the river of life, you’re gonna get wet, you’re gonna have to backtrack, and that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

Rober is a former engineer at NASA and Apple who now creates YouTube videos about science, technology, and engineering experiments. He teaches a variety of online classes on science and engineering topics, and is also the founder of CrunchLabs, a company which creates educational toy-making kits that teach kids about STEM-related concepts.

Rober combines science with entertainment to create light-hearted experiments such as “ Egg Drop From Space ” and “ Can You Swim in Jell-O ?” and have garnered 23 million subscribers to his YouTube channel and more than three billion views, according to MIT.

Throughout his speech, Rober told students that while the future may hold uncertainties, he encouraged them to have faith in themselves and embrace their inexperience, all while poking fun at his own quirky career path.

“I know to some of you it sounds like I just said I quit the NBA to work at Foot Locker, or I traded a Picasso for an NFT of a stoned monkey, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Rober said. “Just move forward knowing there’s more than one trail that meets at the top of Mount Fuji.”

Sol Rodriguez, who graduated with a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science, said she thought it was great that Rober kept his address lighthearted, as it made the commencement ceremony all the more exciting and nostalgic.

“When else are you going to graduate again?” Rodriguez said.

Bader Almulhim, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, said Rober’s advice of taking the future “step by step” was encouraging. It was especially meaningful since the COVID-19 pandemic upended their time at one of the world’s most prestigious universities.

“It’s been a rough journey, and the four years have felt so long,” Almulhim. “[Because of the pandemic and Zoom] it felt much longer, but we’re finally here, and I’m happy to have made it this far.”

Elisa Becker-Foss, who graduated with a master’s degree in finance, said she left the commencement ceremony with a sense of responsibility to help others. as she goes out into the world.

“It is very cool to be here, and after all the hard work to finally find one day to come together and celebrate,” Elisa Becker-Foss said. “There is a legacy you feel and carry from the day itself, the speeches, and the ceremony.”

In the end of his address, Rober urged students that although they should always strive to learn and challenge themselves, they should also remember to enjoy life and “engage in occasional playful anarchy.”

Congratulating the graduating class of 2023, Rober sent off his cap, which was attached to a drone, soaring into the sky.

“All that’s left to do is to go out and change the world for the better,” Rober said to the cheering graduates. “You totally got this.”

Congratulations, graduates! Today’s OneMIT Commencement Ceremony WILL take place in Killian Court. We’ll see you there!

• Commencement Archive

Engineer, Educator, and Founder of CrunchLabs

Rober encouraged graduates to positively impact the world while practicing “optimism combined with dedication” and fostering their relationships with others.

‘You totally got this,’ YouTube star and former NASA engineer Mark Rober tells MIT graduates

CAMBRIDGE — On a summer-like afternoon, thousands of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cheered and smiled Thursday during their commencement ceremony that brought a NASA-engineer-turned-YouTube star to campus.

In his commencement address, Mark Rober urged the graduates to embrace their accomplishments and boldly face any challenge that may come across as they embark on their careers.

“The degree you’re getting today means so much to you precisely because of all the struggle and setbacks that you’ve had to endure,” Rober told the 3,275 graduates, dressed in heavy dark gowns and caps, who sat shoulder-to-shoulder on Killian Court. “If you want to cross the river of life, you’re gonna get wet, you’re gonna have to backtrack, and that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

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Rober is a former engineer at NASA and Apple who now creates YouTube videos about science, technology, and engineering experiments. He teaches a variety of online classes on science and engineering topics, and is also the founder of CrunchLabs, a company which creates educational toy-making kits that teach kids about STEM-related concepts.

Rober combines science with entertainment to create light-hearted experiments such as “ Egg Drop From Space ” and “ Can You Swim in Jell-O ?” and have garnered 23 million subscribers to his YouTube channel and more than three billion views, according to MIT.

Throughout his speech, Rober told students that while the future may hold uncertainties, he encouraged them to have faith in themselves and embrace their inexperience, all while poking fun at his own quirky career path.

“I know to some of you it sounds like I just said I quit the NBA to work at Foot Locker, or I traded a Picasso for an NFT of a stoned monkey, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Rober said. “Just move forward knowing there’s more than one trail that meets at the top of Mount Fuji.”

Sol Rodriguez, who graduated with a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science, said she thought it was great that Rober kept his address lighthearted, as it made the commencement ceremony all the more exciting and nostalgic.

“When else are you going to graduate again?” Rodriguez said.

Bader Almulhim, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, said Rober’s advice of taking the future “step by step” was encouraging. It was especially meaningful since the COVID-19 pandemic upended their time at one of the world’s most prestigious universities.

“It’s been a rough journey, and the four years have felt so long,” Almulhim. “[Because of the pandemic and Zoom] it felt much longer, but we’re finally here, and I’m happy to have made it this far.”

Elisa Becker-Foss, who graduated with a master’s degree in finance, said she left the commencement ceremony with a sense of responsibility to help others. as she goes out into the world.

“It is very cool to be here, and after all the hard work to finally find one day to come together and celebrate,” Elisa Becker-Foss said. “There is a legacy you feel and carry from the day itself, the speeches, and the ceremony.”

In the end of his address, Rober urged students that although they should always strive to learn and challenge themselves, they should also remember to enjoy life and “engage in occasional playful anarchy.”

Congratulating the graduating class of 2023, Rober sent off his cap, which was attached to a drone, soaring into the sky.

“All that’s left to do is to go out and change the world for the better,” Rober said to the cheering graduates. “You totally got this.”

Ashley Soebroto can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @ashsoebroto .

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As an engineer, Mark spent nine years working with NASA, with seven of those years spent working on the Curiosity rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory which is now on Mars. Rober left NASA in June 2013 when he left to pursue "Digital Dudz", a range of Halloween costumes that integrate mobile apps with clothing, which then he sold to Morphsuits, for two years. As of recently, he was presented with an opportunity to return to his Engineering roots to do some ideation type of work for a tech company near San Francisco.

Rober is also the host of a popular science TV show on the Science Channel called The Quick And The Curious .

• 1 Personal life
• 2 Early Career
• 3.1 Subscriber Milestones
• 3.2 Video View Milestones
• 5 References

Personal life [ ]

Rober grew up in Orange County, California. He earned a Mechanical Engineering degree from Brigham Young University and a Master's degree from the University of Southern California. Rober currently lives in the city of Sunnyvale, in Santa Clara County, with his wife and son. Numerous Sunnyvale locations are featured in his videos, including Las Palmas park and Trader Joe's Sunnyvale.

In order to raise awareness about autism, Rober tweeted out his support for those with Autism, referencing his son who has the condition. His subsequent fundraiser for NEXT For Autism has been widely criticised by autistic people, due to issues with the charity. [1]

Early Career [ ]

Mark Rober joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 2004. There, he worked for nine years, seven of which were spent working on the Mars Curiosity rover, which is now currently on Mars and is entering its 9th year of being on the surface of Mars. [2] He designed and delivered hardware on several JPL missions, including AMT, GRAIL, SMAP, and Mars Science Laboratory. While at NASA, Mark was one of the primary architects for "JPL Wired", which was a comprehensive knowledge capture wiki. He published a case study about applying wiki technology in a high-tech organization to develop an "Intrapedia" for the capture of corporate knowledge. [3]

Mark Rober even secretly worked for Apple in their Product Design sector as a Mechanical Engineer, he worked there for four years from 2015 to 2019. [4]

Channel Milestones [ ]

Note: The following dates are according to Social Blade . Dates may vary by one or two days due to differences in time zones.

Subscriber Milestones [ ]

• 100,000 subscribers : August 30, 2014
• 200,000 subscribers : June 18, 2015
• 300,000 subscribers : September 8, 2015
• 400,000 subscribers : September 23, 2015
• 500,000 subscribers : November 14, 2015
• 600,000 subscribers : January 10, 2016
• 700,000 subscribers : March 26, 2016
• 800,000 subscribers : April 10, 2016
• 900,000 subscribers : April 12, 2016
• 1 million subscribers : April 25, 2016
• 2 million subscribers : July 12, 2017
• 3 million subscribers : February 26, 2018
• 4 million subscribers : November 28, 2018
• 5 million subscribers : December 19, 2018
• 6 million subscribers : February 15, 2019
• 7 million subscribers : May 22, 2019
• 8 million subscribers : August 7, 2019
• 9 million subscribers : November 14, 2019
• 10 million subscribers : December 22, 2019
• 11 million subscribers : March 21, 2020
• 12 million subscribers : May 29, 2020
• 13 million subscribers : August 9, 2020
• 14 million subscribers : September 22, 2020
• 15 million subscribers : November 29, 2020
• 16 million subscribers : January 8, 2021
• 17 million subscribers : March 6, 2021
• 18 million subscribers : April 17, 2021
• 19 million subscribers : June 12, 2021
• 20 million subscribers : October 29, 2021
• 21 million subscribers : December 30, 2021
• 22 million subscribers : June 1, 2022
• 23 million subscribers : November 28, 2022
• 24 million subscribers : May 18, 2023
• 25 million subscribers : August 30, 2023
• 26 million subscribers : October 7, 2023
• 27 million subscribers : October 25, 2023
• 28 million subscribers : November 25, 2023
• 29 million subscribers : December 18, 2023
• 30 million subscribers : February 13, 2024
• 31 million subscribers : February 18, 2024
• 32 million subscribers : February 19, 2024
• 33 million subscribers : February 21, 2024
• 34 million subscribers : February 22, 2024
• 35 million subscribers : February 23, 2024
• 36 million subscribers : February 24, 2024
• 37 million subscribers : February 26, 2024
• 38 million subscribers : March 1, 2024
• 39 million subscribers : March 3, 2024
• 40 million subscribers : March 6, 2024
• 41 million subscribers : March 9, 2024
• 42 million subscribers : March 14, 2024
• 43 million subscribers : March 17, 2024
• 44 million subscribers : March 21, 2024
• 45 million subscribers : March 23, 2024
• 46 million subscribers : March 25, 2024
• 47 million subscribers : March 28, 2024
• 48 million subscribers : April 3, 2024
• 49 million subscribers : April 14, 2024
• 50 million subscribers : April 25, 2024
• 51 million subscribers : May 4, 2024
• 52 million subscribers : May 16, 2024

Video View Milestones [ ]

• 1 billion views : December 2, 2019
• 2 billion views : March 22, 2021
• 3 billion views : September 21, 2022
• 4 billion views : October 16, 2023
• 5 billion views : February 24, 2024
• 6 billion views : May 16, 2024
• He gave a TEDx speech entitled How To Come Up With Good Idea and another entitled "The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain into Learning More."
• He has also made numerous appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live .
• Mark Rober was nominated for the 2020 tenth annual Streamy Awards in the Learning & Education and Not Profit categories. He won in the Learning and Education category.
• He has previously tested positive for COVID-19 , which he explained in his video filming sharks in the Bahamas. He had recovered since then.
• His favorite band is AJR , whom he has done 2 videos with them on his CrunchLabs channel.
• Fellow YouTubers Lucas and Curtis Nicotra (Sticks) made a movie trailer featuring Mark's life.
• He earned a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [5]

References [ ]

• ↑ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9500145/Stars-including-Jimmy-Kimmel-slammed-doing-fundraiser-autism-hate-groups.html
• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKogFDM3Zg
• ↑ https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings-article/hicss/2011/05718879/12OmNxA3YTD
• ↑ https://twitter.com/markrober/status/1134926115523350528
• ↑ https://www.mormonwiki.com/Mark_Rober

• 2 Daniel Larson
• 3 Matan Even

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Mark Rober Address to MIT Class of 2023

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[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

MARK ROBER: All right.

Good afternoon, esteemed faculty, distinguished guests,

relieved parents, bored siblings, confused pets,

and, of course, the 2023 graduating class of MIT.

It is indeed a warm welcome.

It’s hot.

And you know what I love to do on a beautiful, sunny,

95-degree summer day?

Where a big black blanket.

At least I’m up here in the shade.

You’d think the best engineering school on the planet

could design a bigger awning for everyone.

It’s for next year.

Standing here before you is weird.

I feel this pressure to give some timeless

advice that will endure, despite our world changing

at an unprecedented pace.

The world is so different, even from four years ago.

For example, for the undergrads, you

are the first graduating class to have persevered

through a global pandemic, just as this

is the first commencement speech written entirely by ChatGPT.

The tech is still very new.

So if I make any grammatical errors

or threaten to end all human life, that did not come for me.

That’s the robot.

At this point, I should probably tell your parents who I am.

I’m Mark Rober, a former Apple and NASA mechanical

engineer who became a YouTuber.

And, yes, I know, to some of you,

it sounds like I just said I quit

the NBA to work at Foot Locker.

Or I traded a Picasso for an NFT of a stoned monkey.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I sort of feel at home here, because Buzz Aldrin

went to MIT.

And just like me, Buzz was a NASA engineer.

Only Buzz stuck with it and became one of the first humans

to set foot on the moon.

Whereas I quit to become the first human to

sprinkle porch pirates with glitter and fart spray.

It’s on YouTube.

Your kids will explain it at dinner.

But whether it’s seeking karmic justice for package thieves,

or building an obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard,

I plan my monthly YouTube videos really far out in advance.

In fact, I’ve already decided what my June 2053

video will be.

And it’s going to be a collab with all of you.

It’s going to be a retrospective look at all the amazing things

this MIT graduating class of 2023 has accomplished.

In fact, this right now is the video intro.

So if you’ve ever wanted to be in one of my videos,

this is your chance.

Now, will YouTube still be around in 30 years?

Hopefully, unless Elon buys it.

But here’s the thing.

The degree to which you positively impact the world

is the degree to which you’ll be featured in the video.

So in order to increase your chances of making the cut,

I want to give you three pieces of advice based off

my life experience.

The first bit of advice–

is to moisturize when giving a commencement speech–

is to embrace naive optimism.

What do I mean by naive optimism?

Actually, before I go any further,

usually in my YouTube videos, when I get to the juicy part,

I’m not really used to this public speaking thing,

so the music kicks in.

So if you’ll just give me a moment and hit this button.

Trust me, this is going to be better for both of us.

Here we go.

Right here.

Let’s see.

There we go.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

That’s better.

Naive optimism means it’s easier to be

optimistic about your future when you’re

sort of naive about what lies ahead,

when you don’t know what you don’t know.

As an example, think back on the first week at MIT,

how naive you were about the number of all-nighters and cans

of Red Bull that would be required to be sitting where

you are right now.

In fact, you guys drank so much caffeine I’m surprised

you’re even sitting at all.

If you truly understood what would be required,

that discouragement might have prevented you

from even starting.

Sometimes it’s an advantage not to be the expert with all

the experience.

There’s no reputational risk.

So it’s easier to try new things and approach them

from a fresh first principles approach.

Naive optimism can also help when

faced with a big life decision, when you feel like you want

to know the results before you decide,

but the true outcome is simply unknowable.

Naive optimism means you have irrational– naive optimism

means you have the irrational confidence of a child learning

to walk or a mom learning to TikTok.

And you pick what you think is the best path and just move

forward, knowing there’s more than one trail that

leads to the top of Mount Fuji.

It’s OK that you don’t know exactly what you

want to be doing 20 years from now

or what you want to have accomplished.

And by the way, even if you do know,

it doesn’t matter, because you’re wrong.

Anyone who tells you they knew where they’d be,

where they’re at, 20 years ago is

either lying, or delusional, or a time-traveler, or Pat Sajak.

Life is like trying to cross a big flowing

river with lots of rocks and boulders strewn about.

If you want to cross the river, you have to start on the bank

and look at the first several rocks in front of you.

You can wiggle them with your toe

and scan a few boulders out.

But at some point, you’ve just got to pick one and jump,

because the river is dynamic and always changing.

If the first rock in this metaphor is a hobby,

let curiosity and passion guide your initial step.

If the first rock represents your professional career,

take curiosity and passion into account,

but you should also weigh what you’re good at

and what the world needs, even if the world might not

know they need it yet.

Whichever one you’d pick, the real secret is to dominate it.

Obsessively study it from every angle.

Now, from your position of more secure footing,

you can reevaluate the river.

And you’ll find you’ve got a few more rocks available that you

couldn’t even see from where you started,

so you could continue on your journey.

Instead of putting the pressure on myself

to create some master life plan, this attitude of naive optimism

combined with dedication, enthusiasm,

and the willingness to jump from my current safe rock

to the next is what I feel has led me

from college, to NASA, to YouTube, to eventually

landing on this rock of giving the commencement speech at MI

frickin’ T.

There’s no way I could have predicted that path when

I was exactly in your shoes 20 years ago.

So cross your river one rock at a time,

but do it with a naive optimism that it’s all

going to work out.

Let that be your North Star.

If you actually knew how cold the river can get,

or how long it takes to recover from a sprained ankle

if you slipped, your knowledge might get in the way.

So have faith in yourself.

You’re about to get a degree from MIT.

So you’ve obviously made some pretty great decisions so far.

Embrace your inexperience, and keep taking leaps forward.

And apologies to all the civil engineering

majors who have been grumbling sitting there saying, if he

wants to cross this river so bad,

why doesn’t he just build a suspension bridge?

Because it’s my metaphor, all right?

And now, for some real talk.

You’re going to take that leap of faith,

land on a rock, and only then realize

it’s not as stable as your foot wiggle have predicted,

and you’re going to fall into the river sometimes.

That leads to my second of three pieces of advice

to maximize your chance of positively impacting the world

and making the video cut, which is to frame your failures.

You can tell, it’s the juicy part, because the music’s back.

To illustrate what I mean by this,

I asked 50,000 of my YouTube followers

that subscribe to my channel to play a simple computer

programming puzzle that I made.

But what they didn’t know is that I

had served up two slightly different versions

of the puzzle.

In one, if you failed the puzzle,

you didn’t lose any of your starting 200 points,

and you were prompted to try again.

Whereas in the other, if you didn’t succeed,

you were also prompted to try again, but I said

I was taking away five of those starting 200 points.

That was the only difference.

And even though they were no value in the real world,

no one will ever see these completely fake

meaningless internet points, those

who didn’t lose those points attempted

to solve the puzzle two and 1/2 times more

and saw success 16% more of the time.

And because 50,000 people took the test,

those results are super statistically significant.

Basically, those who didn’t frame

losing in a negative light stuck with it for longer,

saw more success, and learned more.

And I think a great example of this in real life

is video games.

When Super Mario Brothers first came out,

my friends and I became obsessed with making it to the castle

and rescuing Princess Peach from the evil Bowser.

Water break.

We’d get to school and ask each other,

dude, what level did you make it to?

Did you pass the game?

We never asked each other for details

on all the different ways we might have died.

This was before Call of Duty.

When it comes to video games like, this no one ever picks up

the controller for the first time,

falls in the pit right away, and thinks, I’m so ashamed.

That was such a failure.

I’m never doing this again.

How am I going to break it to Luigi?

I murdered his brother.

What really happens is you think, OK, I got to remember,

there’s a pit there.

Next time, I’m going to come at it with a bit more speed.

The focus and obsession is about beating the game, not how dumb

you might look if you get hit by a sliding green shell.

And as a direct result of that attitude,

of learning from but not being focused on the failures,

we got really good and learned a ton

in a very short amount of time.

And in my personal and work life,

I’ve dealt with my share of sliding green shells.

I still feel like every video we make each month there’s

a moment where it seems everything that can go wrong

has gone wrong.

And those failures can be gut-wrenching.

And they can sting real bad.

But they sting like missing that one key Mario long-jump

right at the end of level 8-1.

And then, right after that, really quickly it

turns in, OK, what did we just learn from that?

What should we try differently for next time?

And this concept of life imitation

is more than just have a positive attitude

or never give up.

Because those imply you have to fight against your true desire

And I feel like when you frame a challenge or a learning

process in this way, you actually want to do it.

It feels natural to ignore the failure and try again.

In the same way a toddler will want

to keep trying to stand up, or in the same way

you want to keep playing Super Mario Brothers,

or in the same way half the people who

attempted my coding puzzle had a desire to stick with it two

and 1/2 times longer.

The framing of their failures made it

so they wanted to keep trying and learning.

And that’s exactly why the most meaningful high-fives

of my adolescence were when I said,

dude, I finally beat Bowser last night.

It probably goes without saying, but girls didn’t talk to me

till I was much older.

And in case you’re like, yeah, but my real life

would just be so much better if my top five challenges

I’d like to point out that if Super Mario Brothers was just

jumping over one pit, and then you rescued Princess Peach,

no one would play it.

Where’s the risk and the reward?

Where’s the challenge?

There’s no ultimate feeling of satisfaction.

The degree you’re getting today means so much to you

precisely because of all the struggle and setbacks

that you’ve had to endure.

If you want to cross the river of life,

you’re going to get wet.

You’re going to have to backtrack.

And that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.

Frame those failures and slips like a video game.

And not only will you learn more and do it faster,

but it will make all the successful jumps

along the way that much sweeter.

All right, now, I’ve got some good news,

which is that you’re not crossing the river alone.

For my third and final bit of advice

is to foster your relationships.

A sad truth about getting older is life gets busier and busier.

And it gets harder and harder to make really close friends

like you did here at school.

And this isn’t great, because we evolved

to be social cooperative creatures.

50,000 years ago, conditions were much harsher.

So those who were more inclined to cooperate

with their fellow humans were also

much more likely to succeed and pass

on those cooperation genes.

So we’ve inherited these brains designed

for social interaction.

And we are hardwired to cooperate with other people.

And, look, I don’t blame you if you want to cast aside advice

from a guy who makes a living trying to outwit squirrels.

But I wouldn’t recommend doing that

to six million years of evolutionary programming.

Because in today’s society, it’s really convenient

just to isolate yourself.

You can attend the board meeting from your kitchen table.

You can order food in the shower.

You can bank on the toilet.

You can even look for a new apartment

without leaving your apartment.

It’s easier to stay anonymous in our big cities

versus the small tribes of our ancestors

where everyone knew each other.

Which means we’ve got to actively work at fostering

meaningful relationships.

And because I know this can be harder

for some more than others, here’s

a life fact I’ve found that really helps.

Confirmation bias is when your brain ignores evidence that

doesn’t support your beliefs.

And then it cherry-picks the evidence that does.

And, generally, when people hear this term,

they think it’s a broken unscientific way for our brains

to approach the world.

And this is true.

But you could judo-flip it to your advantage.

The trick is to positively apply confirmation bias

to your relationships.

If you assume good intentions on the part of your friends

and family, and you tell yourself

you’re lucky to have them, your brain

will naturally work to find evidence to support that.

That’s just how our brains work.

If you tell yourself that your fellow humans are

inherently good, your brain will find examples of it everywhere.

And that will reinforce your outlook.

The opposite, unfortunately, is also true.

Basically, whether you think the world and everyone in it

is out to hurt you or help you, you’re right.

Studies have shown that the best predictor of divorce

is if the couple assumes bad intentions in their partner’s

actions, or if you marry Kanye.

But if you get it in your head that your partner is selfish,

or inconsiderate, or willfully refusing to take out

the garbage, that creates a negative feedback loop

of confirmation bias, seeking to find further evidence

that your spouse is a jerk, even when good faith efforts are

being made.

And this hack works not just for spouses, friends, and family,

but even total strangers who might infuriate you.

And, look, I agree with you, they’re wrong.

But don’t forget, as George Carlin pointed out,

anyone who’s driving slower than you is an idiot,

and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.

Fostering your relationship closes out

my list of three bits of advice, because that may be where

your impact is the greatest.

Due to a challenging upbringing, my mom

barely graduated high school.

But she took being a mom and instilling

values in her children really seriously.

As such, she’s the single biggest influence on my life

She passed away over a decade ago

from ALS, six months before I ever released my first YouTube

But I love the idea that the ripples from her influence

are still being felt as strongly as they ever

have through the work that I try and do today.

If there’s anything I’ve said today has resonated

with you in my mind, it’s a direct result of her commitment

to this third piece of advice.

So leverage concrete means to confirmation bias

to enhance your relationships as you

cooperate to cross the river.

Train your brain to assume good intentions.

And try to remember if someone cuts you off on the freeway,

maybe they’re not out to get you.

Maybe they just have diarrhea.

[MUSIC - RICHARD STRAUSS, “ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA”]

Now, for piece of advice number four,

engage in occasional playful anarchy.

But, Mark, you told us were only going to give us

three pieces of advice.

Here’s a fourth, because, why not?

I am playing music in a commencement

speech because why not?

Is not ending your speech with pump up music

just objectively better?

Or like how these graduation robes and hats

are just objectively silly?

Why shouldn’t I take my own fourth piece of advice

right now and engage in some playful anarchy?

Anybody can toss their hat in the air.

We see it at every graduation.

But few have dared to make it actually fly.

I bet Buzz Aldrin never tried this.

You know what?

This is actually a great opportunity

to review everything we just talked about.

To my first point, I will embrace my naive optimism

that my hat will actually get airborne.

But if not, to my second point, if it goes

haywire, and I accidentally blow up E-53,

I can reframe the failure as an opportunity

to renovate a very old and sketchy building.

Maybe this time we’ll even add a few windows.

And then, to my third point, when I get sued by the faculty,

I will foster the relationship I have with my defense lawyers.

Because settling with MIT over damages

will bring us all closer together.

And so, now, after turning on my hat–

–I’ve done my part and filmed a banger of an intro

to our upcoming collab 30 years from now.

Which means all that’s left to do

is your part, to go out and change

the world for the better.

Congratulations, MIT class of 2023.

You totally got this.