Whitney Pennington Rogers: Hello, TED members. I am Whitney Pennington Rogers. I'm a curator here at TED and I am so excited to be here with you today for this live member event.

All right. Now, I want to think for a moment about your favorite teacher. Maybe some of you are students right now and you don't have to pull back into the far reaches of your memory like I do, but I want you to think about this person and the things that made them so special. How excited they might have made you feel, how they made the subject they were teaching you come alive and made you want to lean in during their lessons and not zone out. I think for a lot of us, teachers like this maybe feel like the exception instead of the rule. And when it comes to science, maybe even more so.

But what if that didn't have to be the case? What if science could be the class that kids cannot wait to get to because it makes them laugh and beg to try everything out there for themselves?

Our guest today has spent a lot of time trying to make science lessons just like that. He's a former NASA engineer, a YouTube phenom with tens of millions of subscribers and is undoubtedly one of the most beloved science communicators of our time. There is no question about this.

Earlier this year, he took the TED stage at our flagship conference to share his boldest project yet, a $60 million bet on the next generation of problem solvers and a new STEM curriculum designed to make science the class kids actually want to be in. That talk has since become one of our most viewed talks of 2026 so far. And he's here today to share more with us about that project, the philosophy behind what he does, and break down how he sparks excitement about science again and again for kids of all ages all over the world. Please give a warm welcome to Mark Rober.

Mark Rober: Hello. How's everyone doing?

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Hey Mark, how's it going?

Mark Rober: Good.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Good. Thanks so much for being here with us today. The big reveal in your talk was the public announcement of this $60 million plan to create a new STEM curriculum. You made this point that science class hasn't really changed that much in about 30 years—you had that picture of the TV on the cart getting rolled in with Bill Nye on the screen.

Can you say a little bit more about why this project and how it differs from what's currently out there?

Mark Rober: I mean and to be fair like I don't talk about the talk's maybe like 14 minutes. I talk about it for like the last two or three minutes, the 60 million. Before that, it's just making this point about how transformative making and building and solving problems can be. But we did raise $60 million to give this away for free to public schools in the United States.

And the TV cart thing was a joke. I love Bill, like he's a personal friend, but it's also those videos we've been showing for 30 years and these kids are digital natives consuming super high-production content. And then we walk into a classroom and pop in a VHS tape from decades ago.

So the idea is: what if we take the compelling, high-production storytelling from YouTube and combine it with actual hands-on building? Not just watching a screen, but every kid gets a kit on their desk with motors, gears, pulleys, and they follow along to build a real working mechanism and experience the physics firsthand.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Yeah. And I love Bill, like he's a personal friend, but it's also those videos we've been watching for a long time. And you also touched on the teacher side of things, right?

Mark Rober: Um I don't know. Like I I really do have such a soft spot in my heart for teachers just because of a lot of factors and it's kind of the most important job in our society, but often the toughest.

Teachers are just overloaded right now. Between grading, classroom management, administrative duties, they don't have the time or budget to source parts and build cutting-edge labs for every science lesson. Our goal is to empower teachers. We ship the entire turnkey curriculum with all physical materials directly to classrooms for free. The teacher hits play, and the lesson runs seamlessly, freeing them to walk around and mentor students individually.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: I know a lot of folks, especially some of our younger members who are watching, are super interested in your background. You spent nearly a decade at NASA working on the Curiosity Rover. Can you tell us a bit about how that experience shaped the way you approach things today?

Mark Rober: Yeah, it's pretty wild. Up there on Mars, I think currently it's 120 million miles away. You can see parts on it that I personally designed and helped build.

And because there's not really a lot of oxygen up there, things don't break down and rust, and there's no major weathering. Those hardware pieces will probably outlast everything we build here on Earth and remain on the surface for hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Yeah. You've built these things that will outlast and outlive you and all of us and almost everything we've built on Earth.

Mark Rober: All of us and everything we've built, you know what I mean? Like in a million years, those metal brackets on the rover will still be sitting there. So that engineering mindset really stuck with me: sweating every detail, understanding first principles of physics, and solving real physical problems by actually building things.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: You know, you liken what you do to sort of like hiding the vegetables, right? You use humor, spectacle, glitter bombs, giant squirrel obstacle courses, and things like that to wrap hardcore physics and engineering.

Can you break down that philosophy for us?

Mark Rober: Yeah, I would say I mean, and this is like the point in the TED talk.

Human brains aren't naturally wired to just sit there and memorize dry formulas or listen to lectures. If you try to force-feed a concept or lecture someone, their natural defense mechanisms kick in, they zone out, and they tune you out.

But if you create something hilarious or visually spectacular—like a squirrel obstacle course to protect bird seed, or a glitter bomb to catch package thieves—people are completely hooked on the narrative. They're laughing and leaning in.

And when they're desperately asking, "How did that device spin and throw glitter?" or "Why did that lever fling the squirrel?", they are actively craving the physical explanation. That's when you introduce angular momentum, potential energy conversion, or circuit logic. It doesn't feel like a chore; they gobble up the "vegetables" because it tastes like dessert.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: It feels like co-exploring with you rather than being talked down to.

Mark Rober: 100%. It feels like their own discovery. Once that spark of curiosity is lit, learning becomes completely self-driven.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: I love that you mentioned at one point that even watching your incredibly well-produced YouTube videos—just watching a screen versus actually physically building something with your hands—has a completely different effect on the brain.

There's a massive debate out there about kids and screen time. As one of the most successful people on the planet at capturing attention, especially kids' attention, how do you think about screens versus hands-on building?

Mark Rober: Yeah, it's a great question. Human brains evolved over millions of years to understand reality through 3D physical interaction.

No matter how engaging or high-quality a video on a screen is, it remains a 2D, passive experience. When you watch a ball roll down a ramp on a screen and someone says "that's potential energy turning into kinetic energy," your brain registers it superficially.

In our CrunchLabs curriculum, we don't start by writing the equation $E_p = mgh$ on a chalkboard. We have kids physically pull back a spring or build a weighted gear mechanism to launch a projectile. When their fingers feel the mechanical resistance, when they physically shift a pivot point and see the trajectory change across the room, they develop an intuitive, visceral understanding of physics.

The screen is the hook and the scaffold—it gives the humor, the story, and the visual guide. But the actual deep neural connection happens the moment they look away from the screen and snap two gears together with their own hands.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: We have a question from member Shendy S about how far the gap is between following step-by-step instructions to build a kit and actually applying those principles to invent something original. How do you bridge that?

Mark Rober: 100%. That is the ultimate goal. We walk before we run.

First, you build the core kit following super clear, engaging instructions. That step is crucial because it builds baseline confidence, removes intimidation, and delivers that instant dopamine hit of "I just made a working machine!"

Then comes the second, most important phase: open-ended customization and challenges. Once they finish the basic catapult, for example, the prompt is: "Now, using extra rubber bands, cardboard, and paper clips, can you modify this to hit a target 10 feet away or shoot over a wall?"

Now there's no single instruction manual. Kids have to apply the mechanical intuition they just gained. They test different arm lengths, add counterweights, and adjust release angles. They enter the real engineering cycle: design, build, test, fail, iterate, succeed. That bridges the gap naturally.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: We have some fun questions from kids and members. First up, young Winston asks: "When will humans actually get to Mars, and will I get to go to space when I grow up?"

Mark Rober: Winston, what a great question! By when? I'd say around 2040.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: 2040, which is soon! It's very soon.

Mark Rober: Yeah, 2040. I think we'll definitely be on Mars. Looking at the pace of private aerospace and reusable rocketry right now, the trajectory is insane.

And Winston, for sure you will go to space. I'll say that much! Commercial spaceflight is accelerating rapidly, and by the time you're an adult, opportunities will be everywhere. Keep watching, because there are some very cool opportunities coming up revolving around space exploration.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Awesome. Rory asks: "What is your favorite thing you've ever made, and how do you decide what to make next? What do you do when you get stuck?"

Mark Rober: Picking a favorite is tough because each project takes months of intense effort. But the Glitter Bomb series and the Squirrel Obstacle Courses have a special place in my heart because of the pure joy and global conversation they sparked.

As for what to make next and getting stuck: the hardest part is also the most fun part. You start with this blank slate and an ambitious, slightly crazy idea.

My biggest advice is: just start somewhere. Start with cardboard and hot glue. Don't just sit around overthinking it in your head. Grab some basic materials, scissors, tape, or Lego bricks, and build the ugliest, roughest prototype in an afternoon. The moment you have a physical object in front of you, the abstract problems become concrete, and your brain naturally figures out the next iteration.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Mark, as we're winding down our conversation, looking at your journey from NASA to YouTube to now transforming science education in schools—do you feel like you'll ever reach a point where you feel "I've made it, I'm done"?

Mark Rober: I'll never get to that point, and I'm totally okay with that.

I love having mountains to climb. It's not about crossing some arbitrary finish line; it's genuinely about loving the process itself—wrestling with difficult engineering challenges and seeing the sheer look of wonder on a kid's face when their circuit lights up for the first time.

If you fall in love with the process and keep showing up to solve problems every day, the outcomes take care of themselves.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Those feel like words to live by and a wonderful place to end. Thank you so much, Mark Rober, for sharing your insights, and thank you to all our TED members for tuning in and asking fantastic questions!