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[Music] all right welcome back people of the internet to another episode of the waveform podcast this week i have a conversation with one of my favorite youtube creators and a good friend now
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mark rober we talked about a whole bunch in this conversation we talk about being a full-time youtube creator and some of
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the quirks and features of that particular job but also he used to work at nasa at the jet propulsion lab and at
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apple which we talk a little bit about that too and sort of the weird behind the scenes i think he he shares a story
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of um a little bit of the behind the scenes of apple's self-driving car project and their ambitions there it's
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all very interesting obviously you should listen to the whole thing but if you should listen to anything in particular it's how it always for him
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seems to tie back to learning he's always been a lifelong learner and now he has a new product out
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called the build box subscription from his new company called crunch labs it helps kids understand like physics
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concepts through hands-on experimentation with videos that he made that walks people through everything
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it's fascinating it's what his videos are about it's what his products are about it's what he's about and you'll
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hear it in this interview too so without any further ado let's get into it all right mark rover thank you for
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joining me on the waveform podcast it's been a long time coming i feel like we've we've crossed paths a few times
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we've worked together a few times but i've always wanted to just sit down and have a chat uh this is one question i
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think i ask every creator and i'm i'm kind of excited to hear your answer what do you
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tell people that you do like how do what's your two sentence like compact version of what marco robert does what is that uh
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i mean it depends first of all if it's sometimes if it's a situation where it's like
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where it's like in certain situations i just i don't want to get into it then i just like oh
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i just i just make uh i i make science videos uh and i just kind of leave it at that and sometimes that just leaves it in the comments you know that stops the
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conversation uh but if i want to explain like what it is i do it's like i don't know i think my
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i i get um i'd say just like getting folks especially the young folks like stoked about science and education and engineering by trying to make videos
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that are like catchy and interesting it's like i trick people into learning science by
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getting them excited to see a thing and then when they least expect it then i sneak some science in on them that's
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kind of what i do i like that i feel like i have my a lot of my favorite channels on youtube for
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whatever reason are very educational channels whether they're about technology or maybe science and and like
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weird physics questions and things like that i don't know why but that's like there's a whole section of youtube that
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i i'm constantly on that's all about that um and you of course have a history before you were making videos about tech you were working in tech and engineering you worked at jpl at nasa you worked at
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apple i'm gonna guess that you've always been into science and engineering in some capacity yeah i think um
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certainly like math and science resonated more with me even in like junior high we went to high school and i
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took high school physics i was like oh this feels like good in my brain like i like being able to explain the world using math and equations and like
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no matter what language we speak or where we live or what our you know favor our political ideologies or our favorite
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sports teams like we can all agree that uh gravity is 9.8 you know meters per second squared and if i if i drop this rock off this bridge like
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we we would all come to the same answer of like how many seconds it would take for it to hit the ground and there's
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just something so beautiful about one right answer to a thing and being able to you know as humans we like to predict uh a lot of times we we we're really good at
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creating narratives going back through things that happen in our own lives or like on a on a
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worldwide stage and kind of creating a thread to to create a story as to why it happened you know hindsight bias you know hindsight's 20 20 all that stuff so that i think ultimately we can
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then predict the future and a lot of times we're making poor conclusions to why it happened and then
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we're poor predicting the future but with that's the beauty of math and science and especially like physics and
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these things it's like you make observations of the natural world so that you can make
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very meaningful and and realistic and accurate predictions of what will then happen in the future
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that's a huge part of what's you know gotten us to this where we are at this point in humanity
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yeah i feel like that was always why i gravitated towards math as my favorite subject because
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there's only one right answer and i i know if i got it right because i did the process right
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uh but it also is interesting what you're saying about like being able to predict the future a little bit i i just
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had that memory of i think the person who predicted haley's comment would return at a certain year like made all
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the correct calculations but then didn't live to see when it came back but when it came back everyone was like oh this guy was onto something so there's well
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that's like yeah and like with einstein too it's like i mean he's like people say oh i'd
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say he's like the classic oh he's a smart dude but like today even still there's so many things
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that he predicted that like we're just now being able to have the instruments to measure and be like yeah the dude was
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right again unlike something else right i mean that's pretty dope when it's like
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not only you make a a prediction in a statement uh that's like you can test now but like you don't even have the
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ability to test it to like 10 20 100 years in the future and then when you're still right like that's pretty bomb
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that's pretty that's like a1 bragging rights of like yeah we won't know if i'm right but trust me
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you'll figure it out actually trust me eventually you'll find out i'm right yeah
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so i when i think about like engineering and science in school i i wonder like you you basically are an
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educator now and more more so than ever because we'll talk about crunch labs in a second but are there things that you
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like wish were different about your education maybe how you maybe there's different types of learnings that would
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have helped you more or do you find that you know the normal school path got you
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to know you enjoy math and engineering because i when i see crunch labs i'm like oh learning at home
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physical learnings like visual learning things in your own hands that's what i would have wanted that's way more down
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my alley but i wonder how you look at it yeah for sure like i think to the degree that you can learn without realizing you're learning like realizing you're learning is like
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that's i mean if i think about all the things i'm the most passionate about and i'm like the best at like i mean take
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i still edit all my own videos right and it's like i i feel like i'm pretty good at editing and writing
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coming up with like a good story uh and like a way to communicate something at this point because i'm
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passionate about it and i love it and it's like i never i never took a class for that right like
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no one's ever like officially taught me it's just something i'm so passionate about and i enjoy
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and therefore i know it better than i know almost anything else and to the degree that you can just tap
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into that and and just tickle that part of someone like my favorite thing in life is that
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like aha moment where it's like you a a new principle becomes or you see something in a different way like i'm addicted to that feeling i love like reading books to challenge the way i think and get me to like
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just just just like learning like that that excitement of learning something new is like such an addictive feeling
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and i love giving that aha moment to like other people like i know and i'm gonna drop a juicy nugget in a video
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that's like i'm gonna say this and a lot of people don't realize this is true um
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and and so if you can make learning about that feeling and just like the excitement i did a ted talk about
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a tedx talk about what i call the super mario effect which is basically like you know when when you're playing a video game you're not afraid of failure if you fall
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into a pit on level one of of mario you're not like you don't throw the controller down and
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be like oh that's so embarrassing i can't believe i died like i never want to play this game again you're like no
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like okay there's a pit there okay next time i gotta remember i gotta cut him out with more speed i'm trying to jump
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in a little earlier might take six or seven tries before you land that right level eight one that little you'd make
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that big jump and there's that tiny little block you had to land on and then do a quick jump like yeah got me every
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time right uh but i was that meant i wanted to figure it out that much more and like as
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as kids as a result we got really good at that game really fast and we never went to school the next day and we're like
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you know talked about all the different ways we died the question was like did you beat the game last night and it's like you know i said in the talk like
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the most meaningful high fives of my adolescence was when it's like yeah dude i beat it i beat it
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and so it's like i try and approach in my own life like challenges that way and so as a result you're just way less focused on the failure and being embarrassed and
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and looking dumb and if you gamify the object of the thing you're trying to learn and you will just learn it so much faster and it's a totally pleasant experience and you love it just like we
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love playing video games and so that's a long way to answer your question like heck yeah like the more you can make learning exciting and something that the kid the the students see the passion in
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the teacher uh because they're genuinely passionate about it like that's the secret sauce
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and i had a couple teachers like that you know my ap statistics teacher which could be a totally boring subject was
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awesome and that was probably my favorite class in high school and something to this day statistics is something i'm still
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fascinated about same yeah no ap stats was probably my favorite class actually um but yeah no
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they that's a that's a really good point like the so much of what we do now even is
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self-taught that's like the way it's described like we didn't go to class four you didn't study it formally or whatever but you do it so often and you
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enjoy it and you want to get better at it so therefore you just work towards getting better at the thing and you
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might not even think to yourself oh i am self-taught at this thing but you are it is it is kind of the best way of
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learning something uh the most effectively but also you said something in there you said you
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still edit all your own videos which is like probably one of the more surprising things i think a lot of
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people assume that a channel like yours is some massive production uh tell me about the video making process what is what goes through your head when deciding to set up a squirrel maze in
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your backyard and like have them go through and measure all the data and and figure out which one's gus and how is it
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what is your what on earth is your process from like ideation to making a whole video
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yeah i mean you still you you and i are like rare cases you edit a lot of your own
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videos too and stuff right this is like i feel like you and i always have the same conversation with mr b so we talked with him but he's like
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what are you doing every time he's literally like why haven't you hired an editor what what's
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happening why this is the first thing he always says yeah it's hilarious um yeah i think so for me i think i'm different i mean from talking with other folks i
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think i'm different like i'm never i never ever ever have the moment where like oh crap i don't have a video next
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month or even six months from now i like most my videos are basically planned a year out like i'm currently working on
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eight or nine different videos right now in different stages either it's like a research phase
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you know or i'm currently waiting okay so what are the phases because that's that's all that a year is a long time so what are the phases i guess of these projects
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yeah so like you know naturally i'm we got glitter bomb 5.0 in the works and i started working on glitter bomb 5.0 literally in january of this year because there's part of what i do with
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those videos is like part of the fun is just like the engineering challenge of of starting over again and like going
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back to the try like what are the different like how can i engineer this thing to be even better like you know cons and that
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that's a basic mo for myself too like if i do like a sequel of a thing like i've
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done a few elephant toothpaste videos or the glitter bomb or you know even the squirrel stuff it's like the only time i'll do a sequel is when i know there's a banger way to make it better
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so like you know the glitter bombs or the elephant toothpaste or you know the squirrel videos like if i have a really
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cool twist a way to really level it up then it's like i'll challenge myself and try and level it up so with the glitter
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bomb i don't want to give too much away but this year it involves drones and when you open the lid
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there may be some drones there to go like the mini drones that are like fly around people's houses
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spraying glitter on top of just an absolutely uncharitable amount of fart spray this year i mean we really love
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leveling that up as well so but anyway so that's a video like that's a lot there's a lot of engineering that
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goes into taking a lid off a box in someone's house that can be banged around that
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they're not going to treat delicately like a prototype that it where it needs to work and you
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need to be able to get the footage from the cloud and you need to like be able to retrieve the box there's just a lot
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of engineering that goes into that so part of the reason they take so long is especially for the builds is a lot of
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times it's just the engineering there's a lot of research you know one way to make a viral video
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is or the way to make a viral video is to just evoke some kind of visceral response in
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the person watching it like that's the only way to make it it has to be for something to be remarkable it has to
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be able to be remarked about and so it needs to make them feel wonder or awe or amazement or sadly anger that's like why a lot of like i think
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you know things are so political are like um just kind of fractured and you know
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the bipartisan aspect is like the partisanship is just if you if you make something that makes people angry they're going to share it
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um and so by doing like the world's largest nerf gun the world's largest super soaker by definition if it's the
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world's largest longest hot wheels track it means that you've never seen that before it's the
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most extreme version of anything and so it's going to have that ah aspect to it so by doing that by trying to do something you've never seen before or have it
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totally overtake it just takes resources and time to get to that point so i have a word i have a document like a
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notebook basically that has a bunch of ideas in it and i've been doing this for over a decade now like you
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and i was worried for the first two years that at some point i'm gonna run out of ideas but it's like
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that that's for sure i'll never run out of ideas i always have a year's worth of ideas in there and things are coming
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uh and so yeah that's basically it so they're just in different stages and some of them are
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kind of half fake some of it's like hey i need to find someone who does this thing uh like i have this one idea that i've
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had a while that's like has to do i don't want to give too much away but it has to do with like
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a a primitive form of hunting and i think there's people on earth still who do it very well like blow your mind amazingly well
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and i want to kind of make a machine and go find these people and like challenge them but it's like that's one part of it is like making the thing myself but part of it is like finding
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the right person and then traveling to that part of the world to meet with them so like different ideas have different
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lead times for different reasons um but yeah yeah good i feel like when i when i watch a
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good video like part of my brain anytime i'm watching a movie sees like the plot
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in the movie and watches that part and the other half of my brain is like wondering how they shot it and like
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appreciating the cinematography of certain pieces so when i see a good youtube video
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that i can tell took a lot of time and effort to create then i appreciate it even more like that's that's where my brain goes so i
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feel like every time i watch one of your videos and you do hit that moment of like learning or like that engineering twist
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or like dang he really built that punter robot to kick the football that far like all that coming together in the video
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that's like my favorite part of enjoying the video obviously um but just knowing that they're planned so far in advance is like i don't know my brain couldn't handle
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that like when i'm when i'm making a video and i and i get like 98 done with the
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edit and it's like midnight i cannot and i will not leave until it's done uploaded or i'll come in the next day sick of it like i can't stand it so i i
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appreciate that you that you you put in all that effort the trick though is making it look like
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i think there's an making it look like it didn't require all that you know what i mean like
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i'd say at this point this is a little nugget for you on this uh on your on your podcast because it's tech but i'd
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say maybe like 20 of my shots at this point are just from my iphone like it's not about casey neistat would say this all the time but it's like it's not about your gear
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it's about the story it's about what you're do like it's it's the story and and what
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you've done that matters and so i almost try not to like i don't want a red camera i mean for what you do it makes sense and it's cool and it i i would say it actually is a little bit
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about the gear and making it look really really beautiful yeah but for me it's like it's not and
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and there's sort of an authenticity that comes with it not making it feel like it's an overproduced tv show thing and
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if it just feels like i built this cool thing and i'm just a dude and i'm just gonna kind of film it and tell the story
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in a fun way but it's not gonna be super overproduced there's i think it just feels comfortable and i think the
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medicine goes down smoother when i when i get into the science stuff because you just you feel like i'm just a dude in my
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backyard he's passionate about this stuff which is true like that is what the situation is but i think there's an
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element if you get too focused on gear and the beautiful shots and too cinematic or just making it feel like a
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standard overproduced tv show thing that you just lose that and it sucks the soul out of it you know
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yeah yeah there is there is an element of like reducing all of the to just the core of the idea which is just like hey
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yeah i'm a guy in my backyard i got some squirrels let's see what happens and i like i kind of enjoy like the moment
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when i'm watching the video when i realize oh this was shot on an iphone i didn't i wasn't even thinking about that
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before usually as soon as i open the video i'm like oh what was this shot on what oh it looks like this shot with
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like three angles here in this camera so i like that i like that it gets me so immersed that i don't even notice that's
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that's the mark of a good video so then so then you get into the editing stage how long does it take you to edit a a
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whole video once i'm assuming you just have hundreds of gigs of footage of things
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yeah working i think yeah i mean for like the squirrel videos we have probably like uh i think it's like what would it be i'm trying to think
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it's maybe like a thousand hours of footage or more that we gotta break down i gotta i gotta cut it down to
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15 minutes you know and i to be fair i do have an editor i work with who like is a who goes through all the raw footage and organized it for me so it's like i'm totally editing by myself but
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it's still personally a hundred hours of me personally editing a single video like that's my time not to include the other editors so
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um yeah yeah i tend to not actually even like football kicking robot as an example like a lot of times i don't know what the story is gonna be and you know my stuff is very story driven that's like a
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misconception where people are like oh you're a really good builder and i say this a lot but it's like i'm an okay
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builder but it's like i'm a i'm a pretty good storyteller i'll give myself credit for
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that and so i i kind of don't have the video pre-planned out like i'll go out and film the thing and just get a lot of footage and then once i'm done filming it it's
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like okay what happened here and what's the narrative here and what's the best way to teach the science here based on the
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results um and so a lot of times like the intro and not even a lot of times every time the intro where it's like so
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we're gonna go out here and see blah blah blah i filmed after the fact so it's like i will do the thing i'll see
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what happens i'll figure out what the best story is and then i'll weave the narrative in from there it's all film
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post you know and obviously i do vo and that kind of helps with that as well yeah that is a fascinating so like there
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are every type of every genre of youtube video has a different version of this where it's like product reviews
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are are mainly and maybe it's maybe this has room to change but it's it's all shot after the
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fact and explaining what happened so there isn't really the like current events learning part of it and
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so this this reminds me of another conversation we had with jimmy which is like he would tell you to never make a
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video unless you already have the title and thumbnail planned out in advance but if you're if you're in the midst of an
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experiment and you don't know how it will go and you don't know if it'll fail or not or if you have to change course are are you not able to make
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like the final packaging of the video until the end are you are you you have do you start with a title in mind and
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then it changes how does that work no i definitely agree with jimmy in that sense where it's like you know if i made
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a 15-ton jello pool i'm pretty dang sure know what the title of that will be and
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what the thumbnail would be regardless of what happens uh so very rarely is it like
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uh i generally think that's decent advice as well and i do the same thing if i can't find or if there's something uh there's one idea i've had for like
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six years that my team my my friends and my team would laugh because it's like i know this is gonna sync my channel i'm probably gonna do it
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the next three months that it's like i don't generally i don't make a video that's like very very very
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niche like part of me you know because i i'm reaching such a broad audience now it needs to be broadly applicable so that
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advice of what's the title what's the thumbnail i have a pretty good sense and i think a lot of the bigger creators
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yourself included who are good at this have that same thing that's just like a sense of what's
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going to resonate with people um it starts with the title and thumbnail but it there's tons of decisions throughout the video that
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you're making that if you have a good sense of what like generally will resonate with others you're you're gonna pull views on
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youtube you know eventually um so yeah i always in general will do that as well and you know if you know the general title and thumbnail and if it's going to resonate
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how the story pans out is almost less important you know in the end i no matter what i've made this crazy football kicking robot whether i beat the longest kicker or not
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or he beats me or how we get there that's all stuff that i don't know but i know i've got this thing and that's
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going to be my title and my thumbnail you know what i mean we're going to take a quick break for some ads then we'll be
00:24:41
right back with mark roger [Music] so now we're making both of us youtube videos that are typically 10 15 plus
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minutes long sometimes longer than that and there's a little piece in the back of my brain
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that's like yeah but tick-tock you see what tic-tock's doing right you see what shorts are doing right you see those like 45-second videos that are blowing
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up are you thinking about shorts at all because i know i started making some and it's a
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challenge uh my first few shorts were like 59.9 seconds like i barely finished what i wanted to say by the time it was over um but in the spirit of like educating and
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being fun and tricking people into learning have you thought about doing short form stuff i have um
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in fact i have a list i like really put my brain on it for like a day or two and now i have a notes doc on my phone that has like 70 ideas
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that i think are pretty banger ideas and it it it's kind of cool because you could do stuff in short form that
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there's certain things that i would want to do in a video but it's just not big enough for a video um
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like i've got this fountain in my backyard the other day and the flow is too strong so one thing i tried was i
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jammed some like steel wool into the pipe to like slow the flow down and it turns out if you jam steel wool into a
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pipe it gives you laminar flow and i was like that's amazing and that's like a cool short i could do
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uh yeah yeah that uh and talk about that that wouldn't that's certainly not a full youtube video so it's like i do have those stuff it's just like it's a matter of time and and
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maybe i'm like the old man who's gonna miss the boat but it's like i think when i'm ready to do that i will jump into it and do it for now
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admittedly there's not as much revenue in in shorts um uh and so and for me like mobile was down 10 last year so
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that's an argument that people are like starting to watch more short form content but tv was up like 70
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like a lot of people and i've seen this with my friends and their kids like they it's now a thing more most tvs are
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smart tvs where people will watch youtube on their tv so i'm not you know i'm not jumping on this oh everyone's got to make short form content in some ways i'm doubling down
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on long content because it works really well on the tv and i think that's a growing market
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um so i have thought about shorts for now i'm i feel like i'm i'm i i there's only you know 24 hours in a day type of thing
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and i'm continuing to put my resources into the long form stuff however at some point i'm sure i will do short form and
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i'm kind of excited for it as a challenge as a new way to do things it's kind of exciting for me to like
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think about that but right now i'm not super concerned with it it is i will warn you it is a challenge it is very much like a a new
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way of like structuring and like and making i think when you start making short stuff you'll be surprised at how
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short a short really is uh and trying to like structure the information in a way that
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can actually fit in that amount of time that's my that's what i and it's like it's taking i feel like the authenticity
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to you know i do consume some short form content it's like it's very naked and bare bones and there's no you know a lot of times there's no like background music and edits it's like a one take
00:28:24
thing a lot of times works well right exactly um yeah so but that's like a different way to train yeah our brains
00:28:31
to do stuff like that i did see an article in variety or something or uh no um uh benedict evans do you know who he is he has a really good newsletter i love his stuff where
00:28:43
he's like predicting he talks about industry especially tech he's amazing and he put a link to
00:28:51
you that article that you did recently that said that you're doing you're doing short form or looking into
00:28:56
it someone wrote an article about you with regards to that or something right got it yeah yeah yeah
00:29:02
yeah yeah you know i'm just i'm just dipping my feet in the shallow end of the pool i see the deep end and i see
00:29:08
i see all the fun stuff on the horizon but i am i'm kind of like you like there's limited bandwidth and i am
00:29:14
pretty double down on the videos that we're making so you know we're playing with it we're
00:29:19
playing with it it could be it could be a situation where short form eats long form
00:29:25
eventually but even if that were to happen from what i'm looking at that could be like that's two years away three years
00:29:32
away so that's like you could make to make a lot of content in two and three years and at that point if i pivot i mean i have
00:29:39
put some stuff i think i have like three million followers on tick tock and i haven't started uploading youtube
00:29:44
shorts yet um because i'm still kind of waiting i'm still not clear how that looks on a channel and whether i do it
00:29:50
on my main channel or second um so i could be wrong on that but i don't know i think there will always be a
00:29:57
place for long-form content right you know movies are still a thing regardless of youtube existing and so fully agreed so what did you work on at apple
00:30:11
is that is that a question i can ask it's definitely a question you could ask and like they are very clear when you leave
00:30:18
like the large stack of things you sign that says you're not going to tell about this talk about this here's what i can
00:30:24
say i did product design in their special projects group and uh there was like a leak so it's kind of a funny story i don't know that i've ever told this publicly
00:30:35
but um they um first of all they approached me and wanted me to work for them and then they told me when i came there i can't make youtube videos and i'm like
00:30:46
for and granted at that time i'd like 250 000 subs so it's pretty small but i'm like forget you guys like you came to me like
00:30:53
i didn't like then i'm not going to work with you and i don't feel like you can even tell me i can't make videos anyways
00:30:58
like is that even legal so eventually they backed off in that and they just said fine but wait at least three months
00:31:04
till you make a video so you kind of get the culture here and you can't say in your videos you work for apple i'm like fine
00:31:11
i'm like i don't even have like part of me convincing them was like i don't even have that big of a channel anyways it's not gonna get that many views so i come
00:31:17
there and the very first video i upload after three months is house skin a watermelon
00:31:23
which to this day is my most popular video ever with like 140 million views it just had a really banger thumbnail at a time when thumbnails were like really
00:31:35
important to the algorithm it was just like weird timing so i'm like guys don't worry i don't even have any views
00:31:40
anyways i upload this and in like a week it is like 25 million views it just like totally popped
00:31:46
um yeah so anyways so i'm making videos and then eventually maybe a year later um jimmy kimmel asked me you know his
00:31:57
folks say hey you want to come on the kimmel show and i was like well so i asked i asked apple that and it gets bumped
00:32:04
all the way up to dan riccio who is like one below tim cook and dan riccio's response was like we should be focused on making great products
00:32:14
and so that comes down so he didn't exactly say no but it was like and i and then i honestly realized from that like oh they can't actually tell me no if i'm not
00:32:26
saying i work for apple like if i want to canoe after hours you know they can't tell me like i can't canoe because we
00:32:33
should be focused on making great products so i did kimmel anyways and that turned out to be you know a really good career
00:32:40
decisions because him and i are like good friends now i'm staying at his house next i'm hosting his show next
00:32:47
week and staying at his house and going on vacation with him you know the month after that
00:32:53
um so it's like i'm glad i didn't listen to dan riccio there that's for dave so i kind of kept it secret you know that i worked for apple and then my channel got bigger and bigger and
00:33:05
they're concerned like to their point is like there's nothing beneficial that there's no upside to them by having me be an
00:33:11
apple employee and having a large following it's only downside because if i now have a platform to talk about them
00:33:17
like they don't need me to get their story out right so eventually there was i get a call one day after working for
00:33:23
apple for four years and it's a reporter from variety i think or something and it's like can you comment on your work you do for apple and i'm like uh
00:33:34
what are you talking about and as i'm talking to him i get a call from apple hr like pinging in on this
00:33:41
and uh so i go over and they're like hey look someone's gonna leak this story that you work for us just be you know
00:33:49
don't say anything you know just keep it very surface level so anyways i did it ended up being this big story that leaked and all my co-workers like gave me a hard time about it or teasing me
00:34:01
but after that it was like not a big deal and i still worked for them for like another year and
00:34:07
we they loved me working for them and i loved working for them the reason it leaked though getting to the everything
00:34:12
and this is the answer to your question what did i do at apple uh i was lead author on a patent
00:34:18
and i could say this because it's like public domain about um using virtual reality and self-driving
00:34:24
cars and like what are all the implications of that you know and the main one being
00:34:30
again because this is listed at the patent like percent of people folk suffer from motion sickness
00:34:36
and wouldn't it be interesting if you could use virtual reality to solve that because motion sickness is when like basically your your internal gyro doesn't match up with what your eye is
00:34:49
seeing so that's why if you're like in the back seat you can't see forward you get motion sticks you don't know what's happening and so if you could really
00:34:56
know exactly what the car is going to do and where it's going to turn and how it's turning and
00:35:01
show that to you in virtual reality uh then you could potentially not get motion sickness because well when autonomous cars eventually come we'll have all this free time but if you get
00:35:12
motion sick there's nothing you can do with it so the idea that you could strap on a virtual reality and and by the way
00:35:18
imagine virtual reality is like sunglasses not these big bulky things now but it's like a very lightweight
00:35:23
thing you put on your head in the future um and then and now you can work on your laptop because essentially
00:35:30
the screen is like way over on the horizon it would show you a fake horizon and the screen would be like in the sky
00:35:37
basically and so if you know no one gets motion sickness looking way over the horizon so now all of a sudden you can
00:35:42
look down and see a virtual keyboard and you're typing or you can watch a movie um but then there's also tons of other
00:35:49
implications that are listed in the patent of like what does that mean for um entertainment
00:35:56
because like a car in some ways is the best version of a motion simulator because you know if you go on star tours
00:36:03
or motion simulator they have to stimulate gravity by tilting your seat back and then your brain's like
00:36:08
i'm not feeling like pressure on my butt as much so something just feels off when
00:36:13
you're supposedly accelerating but in a car you're you're you still keep your g's pointing down
00:36:19
and you actually can accelerate and break and turn and impart these g's to you in a way that could be pretty
00:36:26
entertaining or relaxing or engaging depending on what kind of version you feed into the v or thrilling into the vr so um
00:36:36
yeah there's a lot there and i will say again because this is public record apple has continued to make
00:36:43
updates to that patent and it's it feels like from my perspective there it's an interesting one for them so i don't know it's really exciting to be and that came about because apple's
00:36:53
like one of my managers at apple was like hey dude you're coming up with all these banger ideas on youtube like come up
00:36:59
with a banger idea for us and so i started like thinking about it and then like i was in a meeting and i was just
00:37:05
like i started shaking because i'm like oh my gosh this would be so crazy and so then
00:37:10
like i started coming up with all these versions of it and to their credit management is very supportive there when
00:37:16
you have ideas they let they let you run with stuff and they have the funds to invest in it so they were very
00:37:23
supportive of letting me just go crazy with this idea and um yeah it's really fun cool experience to be able to do
00:37:29
that because it's like you know there's one idea of there's one thing of like you know we come up with ideas on our
00:37:35
own which is cool you own the full idea and you can really you could technically own it and
00:37:40
run it cradled great but it's like working at the largest tech company in the world you know the most valuable
00:37:46
company in the world with like so many resources if you come up with an idea there it's like
00:37:53
you're going to really affect the world in you know what would be you know hopefully a very positive way so that
00:37:59
was kind of an exciting thing about working with apple it's just like if you do have an idea like the leverage that
00:38:04
could come from that idea is so much more than if you just had it on your own yeah that sounds like the most
00:38:10
fascinating like conundrum of like being in a meeting like i have an idea but is this better for apple or for a video
00:38:16
later huh which one what do i do because i didn't give him the bomb i kept the glitter bomb to myself that would be bad i cannot imagine i i
00:38:30
ask for apple all the time to get into various things like yeah you actually make a camera that would be sick there's
00:38:35
you guys should make a printer printers suck right now i don't know glitter bomb yeah that's a youtube video for sure i
00:38:41
don't like the idea of that being real um no that's that's also like a lot of people asked me when i was in school uh did your classmates find out about your videos and like i didn't tell anybody
00:38:52
about the videos it was just something i was doing at home it was a different part of my brain um but i feel like the the channel as a
00:39:00
as a creative outlet like is important to your brain you know what i mean it's like you're you have work mode and you're on for work and then you're done with work and you get that creative
00:39:12
version of your brain that has all these other crazy ideas and come out so it's a it's a little bit of yin yang
00:39:18
100 totally agree let's take one more quick break we'll be back with mark [Music]
00:39:32
all right we're back let's get back to mark ruber so okay i have to ask because now that you're essentially educating i mean crunch labs the product maybe you can give a two three-minute explainer of
00:39:45
it but it is basically uh in my opinion better version of education because it's helping kids to understand these concepts because they have the real hands-on experience
00:39:56
um and and then i want to ask you if you think you could teach me enough to work at like gpl if i got
00:40:04
great i'm sorry i mean yes to the second question i'm sure jpl would love to have you there's
00:40:11
a lot you can do for them uh so the first part yeah is this idea of like you know going back to what we said before like um anything where you're stoked about it
00:40:22
and it's hands-on it's the more immersive something and the more visceral it experiences the more it's
00:40:28
gonna like leave an imprint in your brain and the more you're gonna remember it right um so i started this company called
00:40:35
crunch labs and really it's a it's a location too which you have been to amazingly yeah uh
00:40:42
for the good listeners at home marquez just happened to be in town i live in the silicon valley he was here for the
00:40:48
apple wwdc right and i was like dude i'm filming my next video and i would love to have a cameo in it so basically it's
00:40:55
like this willy wonka factory for engineering uh and so we've got all these cool
00:41:00
inventions in there a foam pit the actual cannon from american gladiators that can like shoot a tennis ball
00:41:06
through a wall uh um and and that's also where i make my youtube videos it's kind of a shop as
00:41:13
well um i've got all my old builds there but it's also where i started this company
00:41:18
that i've been working on again going back to having secret projects i'm working on i've been working on building
00:41:23
that location this engineering you know iron man willy wonka lair as well as launching this
00:41:29
building products for this company for over a year where basically we make money it's like monthly builds you can do at home uh where where you build alongside me i
00:41:42
build it with you but then i teach you all the juicy science that goes along with it and i i think part of the reason
00:41:48
i'm like i still like mentally could check into that space of being a kid i remember
00:41:53
what it felt like to be a kid so well i feel like and you know so the first one is like this cool six-shooter disc
00:42:00
launcher that launches these mini frisbees like it's just like a perfect torment like it's super accurate and
00:42:07
they glide and i know i would love that as a kid and as an adult i still freaking love it and so we build that
00:42:14
together and then we talk about flywheels because the main mechanism that makes it work is like a flywheel so
00:42:20
the promise of the box and the and the thing is like i will teach you to think you know to play to
00:42:26
build to create but most importantly to think like an engineer and that means to
00:42:31
think critically and to step through things and to you know a real big part of it is the being
00:42:37
okay with failure going back to what we talked about earlier like not being embarrassed if you fail but understanding that's part of the
00:42:44
learning process that's why we call it crunch labs it's because we crunch things there and so much stuff doesn't
00:42:49
work and that's the process by learning one more way not to do it until you've got the final version that just sings
00:42:56
every single one of my builds have so many failures along the way um and just owning that and being proud
00:43:01
of that and and that's great because that makes you a better soccer player and piano practicer and and math homework doer because it's okay that
00:43:13
it's like you're struggling with it and you're failing and you're finding ways not to do it
00:43:18
that's part of the fun of nailing it you know if you made a video game that was so easy to do
00:43:25
there that's a boring video game it wouldn't sell anything it's the triumph over the challenging bits that makes it
00:43:31
actually worth you know that which we obtained too cheaply we esteemed too lightly is like a great saying that i
00:43:37
love and so it's like that's the beauty of the engineering process and so teaching
00:43:43
kids that that's okay and then teaching them the cool science behind frisbees and how they fly because there's so much
00:43:50
juicy science in fact i'll tell you this because this is for all your listeners this is
00:43:55
so exciting on a frisbee what makes a frisbee fly and marquez mr professional frisbee player do you know this do you know why frisbee is why
00:44:07
i know that number one it has the it it's like an airplane wing kind of in that there's like a low pressure above high pressure below situation happening as it flies through the air yeah
00:44:19
i have a more better way to phrase that but yes that's one that's right that's you're exactly right
00:44:25
so that's right so there's two things basically one is the angle of attack which i mean because it's it's a little
00:44:30
bit up it's basically bumping into all these stationary air molecules like air is a fluid we don't think of it because
00:44:37
it's not thick like water but there's air molecules and that's air resistance right so you're bumping into all these
00:44:43
air molecules and it's conservation momentum that deflects you up you deflect the air down a little bit and
00:44:48
equal opposite reaction it bumps you up a little bit so the fact that it's not flying's perfectly flat but it's a
00:44:54
little bit angle that that makes it stay in the air but the other is this thing called the kawanda effect
00:45:00
which is um you know how if you put a spoon in running water how it like curves and
00:45:05
follows the spoon like if there's running water and you put a curved spoon in the water will kind of curve and
00:45:11
stick to the edge of the spoon and it'll change direction right well air does the same thing again being a fluid
00:45:18
so as the as the frisbee passes through the air uh the air will go over the top of the
00:45:25
frisbee and then that importantly the edges of a frisbee are curved like a curved spoon of water so the air will go
00:45:32
like go over the top and then curve down right curve downwards and because you're
00:45:38
now curving air downwards all around the frisbee it creates a freaking jet pack like if you had a jet pack on your bag and you turned it on it's like and you point air down and then and then
00:45:50
you and the jet pack go up like that's essentially what's happening with the frisbee it's curved because as it goes
00:45:55
through the air it's like jet packing itself to stay in the air as it curves this air downwards right
00:46:02
how juicy is that what a juicy nugget that i'm able to that's incredible and when they can and when they can hold the frisbee themselves and see it and fling it and see that like jet packing action
00:46:15
they will never forget that fact and every time they pick up a frisbee and throw it they're like i'm going to
00:46:22
basically make a jet pack out of this thing and how dope is that and so the idea of just like having kids build alongside me and have these
00:46:33
engineering lessons just more seared into their brain i can't think of something more lovely than that and i
00:46:39
feel like everything i've done up to this point in my life has basically led to this moment of
00:46:44
creating this company because this is like the most impact you know you reach a lot of you
00:46:50
know i think i've got three billion views on the channel at this point and that's a lot of people who've seen a video but
00:46:56
but now to reach a whole new level of brains in a in a way that's a little bit deeper is like and getting into the like how do we educate better
00:47:07
you know because there's a potential here like you know i'm a big fan of like you don't really know you can't predict 20 years in the future and people like oh what do you want to be when you grow up when you're eight
00:47:18
years old it's like nobody knows and even someone starting their career 20 has no idea where they'll be when
00:47:24
they're 40. and people who say they knew their path are totally lying and that's again going back to hindsight bias
00:47:30
bringing it back to what we talked about before where you're creating this narrative so my my philosophy is like
00:47:35
you just take it one step at a time and it's like a train on a track you know you got a flashlight in front of you
00:47:40
pick the best passes that's in front of you and just dominate that path and just like i'm gonna do the best i can of this
00:47:46
thing and once you get to there you'll learn these new skills and now these other opportunities to find the next
00:47:51
path and i think there's something to be said for education and learning to educate people better
00:47:57
in in the this country and in the world like how do we make the learning process
00:48:03
just improve that as opposed to what it is in schools a lot of times just like worksheets and grades on tests
00:48:10
and to me doing this company and like these key learnings is i don't know maybe i'm i
00:48:16
think it will teach me something and i will unlock something and i will learn something that will kind of maybe help
00:48:21
for the next step which is like eventually how do we how do we do this better in schools and reach an even
00:48:27
larger audience um so yeah i'm pretty stoked about it and it's gone really well we
00:48:33
i think publicly we're saying we we made in the tens of thousands of boxes and in less than a week we sold them all out
00:48:40
so um and this is subscriptions to boxes so this is it's a subscription so you get 12 boxes in a year each will you unlock a video for me um and so we're making a butt ton more
00:48:53
for the holidays so if you want a good present for your kid and you're listing this or your nephew or something
00:48:59
might i suggest i will i will second that suggestion and i like it man i think this is this is like one of those all-time like like putting the brain to work like
00:49:12
youtube business ideas in that it like really speaks to the mission of like what you've been doing and and i think it it i this is something i wish i had when i was
00:49:23
younger which is like a like the true the hands-on demo type stuff i just learned something about it frisbee i'll
00:49:29
never forget and i've been playing for 20 years or something ridiculous so uh i think it's i think it's incredible
00:49:36
and i'm i'm happy you're doing it and i i could think of no one better to be doing it but i want to end this uh
00:49:41
with a lightning round i got a bunch of quick questions for you okay but they they got to be quick no thinking
00:49:47
allowed you just got to borrow your ass that's helpful and it's like one word answer or it's like one sentence answer
00:49:53
uh once you'll go one sentence okay yeah yeah okay uh actually first one's true or false talking to a camera is a learned skill
00:50:05
true true true truth okay true uh which job was harder jpl or apple um equal equally easily
00:50:19
yeah equal similar fair uh favorite youtube creator you're watching right now uh you can't say me yeah i have to say that's cheating uh here you go now uh probably chris
00:50:33
my boy phillip nice nice i like his videos is there a story behind the hat no i actually have like decent hair it's just the story is it's way easier
00:50:44
not to do your hair in the morning so like why don't why wouldn't you wear a hat totally fair um favorite person you met
00:50:51
at the met gala uh derek blasberg the guy who took us around the freaking mayor of new york
00:50:58
city yep that was also my answer what is harder about working at a large company managing the tech or managing people
00:51:11
uh people apologizing oh i fully agree uh what's your go-to snack when you have five minutes um
00:51:22
i i freaking uh the hot flamin hot cheetos are kind of i like with the lime yeah okay okay um how fast can you type the alphabet a
00:51:34
to z like words per minute or like seconds like how many seconds do you want to pull out a uh a clock you want to type me actually
00:51:46
this is perfect so what i'll do is i'll send you a link in the chat to a site which has a measuring tool where you
00:51:53
just start typing and all i need you to do if you have a screen do you have a screen recorder by any chance because that's all we got
00:51:59
that's all the last question yeah yeah yeah i do i do hold on let me pull up quick time i mean that's what i
00:52:05
just said quick time but now you got it you're gonna hold me on it okay lucky for you we have a we
00:52:13
have a whole leader board no not to put any pressure on it but we uh we every guest that's on waveform we we have them
00:52:19
type the off bit and see how it goes this is amazing by the way in high school i figured i had a typing class
00:52:24
and i figured out if you could they would judge you on how many heirs you had but then how many
00:52:29
how many keys and if you just if you made a mistake on a word it only counted as one error but it would count all
00:52:36
those words at your speed so i would wait till the last one just mash the keyboard i don't know if that's like a known trick and then it's like i'd have
00:52:43
this massively high words per minute and and only one error but i bet i can't get away with that
00:52:49
here yeah this one you gotta you gotta get all x w x y z the whole everything's gotta be on point for this one if it's wrong what happens it it stops you so this yeah the second so if let's
00:53:01
say you type a b c e it won't keep going until you hit the d so you have to hit every letter okay
00:53:09
yeah all right we'll see well so we'll give you i'll do we've given everybody three
00:53:15
attempts i love it that's great okay i got it i'm gonna guess i'm gonna guess you'll be no i won't even put that pressure on you i'll just do it yeah don't move the pressure i mean i'm not that i'm
00:53:28
to set expectations i'm not like an amazingly fast type or anything i'm not the worst but
00:53:34
have you had any people who are just like legendarily bad or legendary amazing once you get your three attempts in i'll let you know where you rank among our
00:53:45
leaderboard how about that oh man all right okay uh okay i'ma start let's see screen recording let me just do a fresh one okay here we go are you ready
00:54:00
here we go i'm ready oh damn oh shoot i hit uh i hit enter at the end and then it
00:54:15
started it again so i didn't actually see what i got yeah yeah yeah but on this recording i'll play it back and
00:54:20
we'll be able to see but i don't know what my time actually was 1.39 seconds is the best time that's
00:54:27
like that would be like the best time ever made by anyone i see i say okay yeah yeah yeah that's a bomb
00:54:32
okay here we go okay here we go okay here we go um 7.8 seconds okay 7.8 you want to give it another one that's yeah yeah that's
00:54:52
assuming we find the time do you think the first one is faster or slower i genuinely don't know uh it probably
00:54:58
was it was probably close to this all right okay let me go i'll do one more and then i'll kind of tell us
00:55:03
all right hold on 6.6 seconds i got better very nice yeah i think we've seen a little bit of a trend we give people a couple attempts
00:55:19
they usually have their best one on the last one so that's good that's good where do i think it would be around six seconds that's that always seems crazy
00:55:26
fast to me but no that is faster than i would have thought i think this it's also something
00:55:32
i've never actually done i there's a there is an advantage if it's in your muscle memory of typing the alphabet you
00:55:37
know like you would just get faster and faster with it um i think as evidenced by even i just went from eight seconds
00:55:43
to six or whatever um but uh give it to me easy marquez where do i rank no you're good so your 6.6 seconds is right behind colin and samir and right ahead
00:55:55
of hank green you would be one two three four five six seven eight nine ten twelfth
00:56:01
on the leaderboard right how many that's pretty good okay right around the as long as i'm not green hank reed's a
00:56:08
smart guy so yeah it's always surprising who who bangs out the fastest times our last
00:56:14
guest tom scott dropped a 3.55 wow wow she's number one 3.5 he is number one he is number one with a 3.5 that is i'm gonna fast i'm gonna practice this now i am a competitive
00:56:33
human being so i'm gonna 3.55 i can't eat that i could get the muscle memory if you if you beat it definitely tweet it as a response so we all see the improvements
00:56:47
either way mark it's been i've taken enough of your time i appreciate it i'll let you get back to glitter bombing
00:56:53
thank you so much for uh for the time and for joining us on waveform yeah it's great to be here mark it's always great
00:56:58
to talk to you man all right that is it thanks again to mark rover for joining us and shout out to the respectable scorer on the leaderboard it's probably
00:57:05
better than he was expecting uh if you haven't already checked out crunch labs and the box that they're building and
00:57:10
shipping and helping kids learn with definitely check it out and also i'm in the launch video so if you didn't already watch the launch video check
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that out too uh but we'll be back next week with your regularly scheduled programming until
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the next one people of the internet see you soon the waveform podcast is produced by
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adam molina and ellis rovin we're part of the vox media podcast network and our intro outro music is made by vayne sill
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[Music] you