Here's Where It Gets Interesting - How to Learn Science from a 15-Ton Jello Pool with Mark Rober

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Welcome to Here’s Where It Gets Interesting! To kick off our new show name, Sharon sits down with one of the most interesting people she knows: Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer who has since amassed over 22 million viewers on his YouTube channel. If there was ever an episode of Sharon Says So that will make your kids think you’re cool for listening, it’s this one. Learn about what motivates Mark to create, and how he hopes his platform will motivate others to both have fun while learning new concepts and care a little bit more about the world’s natural resources. (Pssst…Mark also dishes up some insider info on his good friend and Late Night host, Jimmy Kimmel!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. You are in the right place. If you have been a Sharon Says So subscriber, it's still me. We have changed the name of our podcast to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. And we're so excited that you're here. Today, I'm chatting with YouTube sensation, former NASA and Apple engineer, and just all around quality human, Mark Rober. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am extremely excited to be chatting with Mark Rober today. Thank you so much for being here.

Great to be here. I would love for you to give everybody who's listening just a super high level overview of how you got started. And also, how did you get, was it 22, 23 million YouTube subscribers? Who's counting, honestly? Who's counting at this point? Once you hit 20 million. Yeah, it's all the same. Who's counting, honestly? Who's counting at this point? Once you hit 20 million? Yeah, it's all the same. Who's counting? Give us an overview of your background so people can get

to know you a little. Sure. So yeah, I'm a mechanical engineer and I worked for like nine years at NASA. Seven of those working on the Curiosity rover that's roving on Mars might have heard of it. So I was like an engineer who helped on that. And then after that, I went and worked at Apple for five years in their special projects group. But most notably to the folks listening to this podcast, like about a decade ago, I had a Halloween costume where I had like an iPad in front and iPad in back. If you do a FaceTime video chat, it looks like you have a hole in your body because like the back camera shows what's on front and vice versa.

People at the party thought it was kind of cool, so I uploaded it to YouTube. And after a few days, it had like 2 million views. And I'm like, well, this is a cool feeling. And also, I have more ideas. So literally since then, I've just made like one video a month where I make some kind of build using my engineering skills and you know I tell a story around it and the channel's just grown bigger and bigger at this point my passion and the thing that really gets my heart pumping is getting people especially the young folk pumped about science and engineering and education and I do that through really just fun youtube

videos so instead of teaching about chemistry and just being like, this is a reaction, I build a 15-ton jello pool, the world's largest jello pool. And then I talk about how hard it was and the failures we had to overcome and the scientific method and the chemistry gets snuck in there.

And so before you know it, you've learned something and you've enjoyed the last 10 minutes of your life. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. something and you've enjoyed the last 10 minutes of your life. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. I would love to go back in time to fifth grade, Mark. I sometimes refer to my childhood. I refer back to myself as fifth grade Sharon. What was she like? I was always real annoyed with this boy named Jason in my class who got away with everything. Meanwhile, I was constantly in trouble for asking very legitimate questions in my mind. I remember once raising my hand with my fifth grade teacher,

and we were talking about, I don't know, Chernobyl or some terrible accident. And I asked him, how come radiation causes cancer, but we also use radiation to treat cancer. I mean, I think that's a legitimate question for a 10-year-old, right? No, no, I got in trouble for that. I got in trouble for asking that question. So anyway, I would love to know what was fifth grade Mark Rober like? Well, I think I might have been Jason, first of all. This is going to be a problem. Did you get away with everything? Did you get away with everything? Mark, yeah, I think I might have been Jason, first of all. This is going to be problematic. Did you get away with everything? Did you get away with everything? Marguerite, yeah, I think so.

I was definitely also inquisitive. So I think like a formative moment in my childhood. So my mom was, she had the biggest influence on my life by very comfortable margins. She took like raising kids pretty seriously. She's a stay-at-home mom. And I remember we had to help with dinner, and I was five years old, and she had me cutting onions. And I was like, ah, this is the worst, with crying.

So I remember I went upstairs, underneath our sink, in the bathroom, I got the goggles, and I came down, and I started cutting onions with goggles. Which, now that's a common life hack, but fifth grade Mark didn't have Google, right? That was the, I was original at least. Other people probably thought of it, but I was original in my thinking on that.

But my mom just thought it was so funny and delightful and clever that she like took a picture, which back then meant it was like a film camera. So that was like, you only had 24 things to take a picture of. So that meant something. And that stayed around in the family, and being encouraged by that,

to think outside the box and be creative, at the same time while she also instilled a lot of good morals and be a good human being in us, was just such a lovely combination to grow up in, and just being encouraged. She was our biggest cheerleader for anything that happened. So I would say I was kind of mischievous, always a bit of a prankster, but it was always pretty benign being curious about the world around me for sure. When did you set your sights on engineering? When did

you know like, this is what I'm going to do? I kind of always liked math and science, but I would say in like high school, high school physics i was like oh this scratches an itch in my brain because it's like you can understand the world around you and predict it using math and equations you know and if i if i drop a rock off a building i know exactly how many seconds until it hits the ground and by the way so does the guy on the other side of the world who we don't even speak the same language. You know, we're from a completely different cultural background, but we would come up with the same answer. There's just something so beautiful about that that I love so much.

In a world of uncertainty, it's like with math and science and equations, we can understand the current thing, and then the real power is predict the future about events and you know interactions and then with that before you know it you're building rocket ships to other planets i absolutely loved watching the curiosity launch what was that project like to work on for you yeah it's crazy with working on space stuff like that because it's like so binary like i worked on it for seven years. Half of that was working on like the jet pack that lowers it to the ground.

Half of that was some hardware I had on the rover itself. And you work so long, so many long hours for so many years. And it comes down to like basically seven minutes. You know, you enter the top of the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour. That's like five times faster than a bullet. It's like 75 football fields in a half a second. You know, imagine sitting on the 50 yard line of a football stadium and all of a sudden this thing comes by in a half a second. It does 75 football fields, right? So you have to go from that speed down to a comfortable like five miles an hour to come to a land, somehow

you have to get rid of all that energy in just seven minutes. And so there's this whole series of things that happens where it's like there's a heat shield that gets rid of some of the energy and then you have parachutes and then retro rockets. And you don't know if it's even worked. It takes seven minutes to do that. It takes 30 minutes to get a signal back to Earth. So by the time it's either landed in a smoldering heap or it's nice and safe by the time we even get the

signal it's entered the upper atmosphere whatever has happened has already happened it has to be all autonomous right but the point is this is like there is no real in between it's either safe and it can roll around and it's in one piece or it's just not and so being there with all those people In total like 3,000 people worked on this thing If you include contractors and we're all watching this with bated breath You know along with the world because this is like kind of represents in some ways like the future of humanity and the hope of like science and Understanding things and then just to get that first image back from the rover.

Like I'll never forget that. It's probably my favorite picture of all time. It's just like a very low resolution image from one of the hazard cams up front. And all you could see is just the shadow of the rover on Mars. And you could tell it's in one piece from the shadow. And it's like, even now it's like you get emotional just thinking about that.

Totally. I totally do. I absolutely cried watching that land on Mars. And I was like, human ingenuity. I just love it. Yeah, 100%. It's kind of like landing on the moon type of moment. Just the thing, like, when we all work together, this is what we can accomplish.

How cool is this you know i mean even 50 years ago there was questions like are there people even living on mars you know to go from that maybe maybe 100 years ago to go from that to actually like having remote you know robots there and then soon to have humans stepping foot which will will happen. You know, the first person to step foot on Mars is alive right now. It could be someone riding in their car with their parents listening to this podcast. Like it could be you, dear listener, who could be the first person on Mars, which is just so cool, right? As we're recording this, NASA just had to postpone the launch of Artemis, which, you know, like Artemis 1, which is an unmanned mission to the moon,

but a start of a new NASA venture, which will eventually, hopefully, lead to humans on Mars. If NASA called you up, would you be like, I'm on, I'm on board. I'm getting on that, I'm getting on that spacecraft. I mean, I will go eventually, not necessarily to Mars, but for sure in space. I mean, a lot of people listening to this will too.

It will just become way, way, way more commonplace. I would say at the end of the day, I am an engineer and a bit risk averse. So I will definitely go. I don't really see the value. If you're not the first, and even then I don't see a ton of value being in the first, but I'll go. I don't really see the value. If you're not the first, and even then, I don't see a ton of value being in the first, but I'll go. I'll go once we're like, we've got all the data back,

that it's real safe. Once we've ironed out the kinks and I feel confident. Full of the kinks first, you know. Oh, I love it. There's just something about space that, you know, humans have wondered about it since the beginning of time and have had little to no answers about it. It's always been out of our reach. And watching the advancement of scientific discovery over the last few decades, obviously, began before my lifetime. But even watching it accelerate over the past few decades is so, there's just something about it where you know that you're, the people that came before you are looking up at the same sky and you have answers

that they never had access to. I just love it. I love it too. Well, and to be fair, they did have answers, right? But like everyone had a different explanation for what those were. True. I love how in your bios on places like Instagram and YouTube, you have something that you say, which is that you are a friend of science. And I would love to know what that means to you. Um, I just think that like science is beautiful and sometimes it can seem scary to people. The comment I get a lot, it's's like i was never good in school and as or with science and as a result they have like a fear of it or an aversion to it and like i said with the other thing you know with the jello pool or maybe it's the world's largest super soaker or

nerf gun like i kind of like try and trick people into learning science it i say it's kind of like the velociraptors how do you remember jurassic I say it's kind of like the velociraptors. Do you remember Jurassic Park where it's distracted by that one velociraptor in front? You know, he's about to get it. And then all of a sudden the velociraptor sneaks in from the side. He's like, clever girl, you know, and then he gets him, right? That's my approach to science. I get you in with like a cool, clever thumbnail that you're looking at.

Or a pool filled with Orbeez. Or like world's largest elephant toothpaste reaction. You're like, oh, my brain is like, that seems easy. That seems digestible. That seems fun. You click on it. And then before you know it, you've been clever girl with all the science

and chemistry and density. And you know, like you're learning scientific principles. And even if you don't remember the exact fact a year later, you remember how you felt. And then it's like even for a moment you had understanding. And your understanding of the world around you increased a little bit. And like just getting people like a little bit addicted to that feeling. Of not being complacent with just knowing what you know. And getting hungry for like just understanding more.

I love getting people just like hooked on that, right? Like I'm like the gateway drug for you. Yeah. Totally. I call them brain tingles. Yeah. Where it's like you were saying in your physics class, where just like itch something in your brain.

I call them brain tingles. There's just something where you're like, ooh, that feels really good to know. Yeah. I really like it. I like knowing knowing that and i want to do that i want to seek that out more you know what i mean so like totally i can't you know if you watch all my videos you're not going to have a degree in mechanical engineering but you will hopefully have the motivation to be like oh you know what this is kind of a career that might be interesting to me. And I get that comment a lot from parents.

It's like, my kid wants to be an engineer because of you, and the kid's like seven years old. I didn't even know what an engineer was probably until I was like 12. Because when we were growing up, it's like, you had Mr. Wizard's World and Bill Nye, but you didn't have any cool engineers. So to try and be the engineer to show like, look at all this. You know, if there's something that you want to exist in the world,

but it doesn't as an engineer, you just make it exist. Like you have that power. It's a superpower, right? I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs.

Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there.

Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. I loved watching you hosting Jimmy Kimmel. Tell us how that came to be. How did it came to be from a text message? I saw that. You want to host my show on July 14th? I'm like, um, sure. But before that, I don't know. Like Jimmy saw one of my videos like six years ago. This is back when my channel like 200,000 subscribers, like it was pretty small. And I came on his show and I just, I did his show a few

times and his his crew would be like jimmy really likes you i'm like whatever you say that to everyone but by like the fifth time i'm like i think he does like me yeah why would he invite you back yeah so then he's like dude we should do like a tv show together i think you're a star and like i feel like jim Jimmy and a few other people kind of saw in me something that even still, I almost don't even see in myself anyway. So it started a friendship and he's like a good dude. And people are like, Oh, ask what, what's someone like that? Like in real life, this is what I'll say about Jimmy. I haven't said this much. Actually, I don't even think I've ever said this publicly. I hope he's's okay with it but i have a son who's on the autism spectrum he's like 15 years old and him and jimmy text daily in fact a

lot of times like jimmy will text and like my son will like almost ghost him and not even get back to him for like a day you know leave him on red leave jimmy on red leave him on red it's just the kind of human that he is like no one until now sorry jimmy will ever know about that you know but he just that's just who he is so anyways he just asked me if i wanted to host a show so i did and it was kind of wild because i'm not a talk show host i'm a freaking youtuber right and i think there's an authenticity there it's like it was not the most polished thing but it wasn't also the worst thing and the feedback I got is kind of refreshing because it's like it's growth mindset like I wanted to do it strictly because I knew it would be such a learning

experience for me I've been on the show as the big guy I've been on the couch I'd never been the host though and so being the host is just like a whole different ballgame and I learned a ton and it was really fun and that's the thing I love about YouTube specifically is this idea of growth mindset and you know you go back and watch any youtuber go back and just literally click back and watch their first video and compare that with what they do now and it's adorable to see in the pub in the eye of the public for everyone to see that like the growth that occurs a lot of times like a movie star someone like that by the time you see them they're pretty polished they've got their

craft down right but with youtube it's really cool to see that growth and i'm so that's so important to me i think that's so important for kids and just people in general to realize just like it's cool to not know a thing and to dive in and get better at it. And it's okay. And there's no shame in failing. I gave a Ted talk about this. Um, and so to, to, to, for me to personally step up and do that myself, which is like, I love it. It's a great chance to show people by example, how to do something like that. Do you feel like there's more hosting in your future? Not necessarily, you know, not necessarily of Jimmy's show, but just like of a TV show in general. I don't know. So I did do a show that will air on Discovery here in about a month where we prank people who violate social norms.

So if you don't pick up your dog's poop, we build, you know, a catapult, launch it back at your house. Or like we build an autonomous robot dog to like shoot it back at you. Or don't put your grocery cart back. We make a robot army of garbage carts that will chase you around the parking lot so that is like a delve into the tv world but i don't know man the future is youtube it's a pretty good gig like it's hard to do tv these other things because it's like i mean i more people see my stuff on youtube i have full creative control and candidly it's like you get compensated a lot better when it's, I don't have a lot of mouths to feed,

you know what I mean? So it's like, it's hard to do something other than YouTube, right? It's like a hard, it took five or six phone calls for Jimmy to convince me to even make this show with Discovery, and for him to be like, no, this would be a good thing for you. And I think in the end, he's right,

but it's definitely not like, all right, now I've done it. I no longer am a YouTuber. I'm a TV. I'm like, uh-uh. It's like the other way. And by the way, most of the TV personalities kind of wish they had more of a YouTube presence because it's like a direct connection with your fans. And when I want to do something like, you know, I just recently launched

a company to like help kids get more stoked about science education. I could do that and I could tap a microphone and reach, you know, 20 million people. And unless you're if you're a movie star, it's like the only way you get to tap that microphone is if they put you on a TV show and then you can talk about it on the talk show. Right. But I can just do that whenever I want. about it on the talk show, right? But I can just do that whenever I want. I absolutely love what you've done for ocean cleanup and for planting trees. First of all, I mean, nobody's out there saying like, I hate the ocean and I hate trees, but I truly do. Like, I love whales so much. I love dolphins and whales. I live in northern Minnesota where there's a lot of trees here. Tell us about your tree planting endeavors and your ocean cleanup endeavors.

Yeah, ultimately, there's another YouTuber who's a buddy of mine, Mr. Beast. And we just said we should do something for Mother Earth. Why not? We're also fans ourselves. And so we have this platform and it's like at some point it almost becomes irresponsible not to like i don't know do something so we said team trees let's raise 20 million dollars one dollar equals one new tree in the ground work with a professional organization like the rda foundation who does this they agreed they they're they're on board if we raise the 20 million dollars they would plant 20 brand new million brand new trees and the key was then we went out to our other YouTube friends we made videos on

ours and we just really got everyone talking about this and stoked about this and in less than two months we were able to do it but the coolest part about it is like the median donations like four dollars4, which is like, that's tooth fairy money. That's bake sale money. This does not solve climate change. And we're very clear about this. That's not the goal here.

The goal is like getting young folks who look up to us to be like, yeah, like I'm on team trees, right? Or eventually we did team C's where it's just like, I don't, if I see litter on the ground, I pick it up. It's a shift in them to be like, you know, I donated my tooth fairy money to that. And therefore, like, this is a cause that is now important to me. I'm going to leave the lights off when I leave the house because I want to conserve energy and we got to take care of the earth, right? Like that was like the real goal. Because eventually, you know, to make real changes, you need policy, right? This

has to happen at a policy level to make actual lasting changes that can benefit everyone. But if nobody cares about it, and there's not that shift in the heart that this is important, policy doesn't follow. So it's like, I'll stay in my swim lane. I'm not a politician. But what I can do is I can affect the hearts and minds, especially the young generations of caring about something like this and then the policy will come after that right but we're very clear that this doesn't solve it on its own it's the first and necessary step so after like as after team c's then we did two years later we did team c's which was 30 million dollars we arbitrarily just picked a different number which was 10 million dollars bigger which was made it very difficult on ourselves but we were able to pull it off.

And that's raised $30 million to remove 30 million pounds of trash and plastic from the beaches, oceans, and rivers. And we did that also in two months. And that was, yeah, that was pretty cool. How does one do that? How does one remove that much plastic from the oceans? Again, working with very qualified nonprofits. So they're already out there,

but sometimes they just need, you know, more funding. And so we worked with the Ocean Conservancy and the Ocean Cleanup. There are two different ones. The Ocean Cleanup focuses on like rivers. They have the trash eating monster that like as trash comes down the river, it like eats it up and keeps it from going to the ocean. And the Ocean Conservancy, they do like beach cleanups, as well as they remove like a bunch of fishing gear and stuff ghost nets from the ocean that's specifically because it's adverse to like large marine wildlife like your whales your favorite the whales whales are the largest organism animal i mean if you don't count like tree like aspen trees or something like to have ever lived on the planet, like how lucky are we in the lifespan of the whole planet to be

here with like the biggest organism that's ever existed. I love it. There's something so cool about whales. There's, there's also so gentle. I could talk about them all day, but they're, they are such cool animals. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

They are such cool animals. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I have to tell you that my kids got one of your Crunch Lab boxes. And they were, of course, very excited to get it. Like ripped it open. Didn't cut it open nicely. It's like they destroyed the box.

And they immediately built, they immediately engineered the project that was inside. But I didn't know what it was. I did not know what the project was. And I was sitting there working at my computer and my daughter came in holding this thing that was like, oh, you know, I don't know what this is. You know, just kind of like, hehehe. Pretty soon she's pelting me in the forehead with her tiny frisbee launcher. Excellent. That she pelts.

Mission accomplished. Fool your parents into thinking you're doing some homework or some such thing. And in reality, you're building a frisbee launcher. The best. Yeah. How did you come up with the idea to launch this subscription box yeah so it's like we just launched it like you said like a couple months ago but like parents would ask me like look my kid wants to be an engineer but they're eight years old right what's the first step like

what should i do and i just never had a great answer to that because there are like arduino kits which is like little things you can like but that's just there's not a lot of explanation with those i genuinely didn't have a great answer that so eventually i was like all right i should make something because kids also watch my videos they're like that's so cool i would love to make something but it's like they don't they also don't know the first step so the idea with these is like i send you it's a monthly box you get it and for example the first one's like the idea with these is like I send you, it's a monthly box, you get it. For example, the first one's like a frisbee launcher and you build this thing next to me while I build it on screen and I teach you all about the science behind, you know, each one has

a different engineering lesson. So on the frisbee launcher, it's flywheels. We learn about flywheels, but we also learn about like what makes frisbees even fly. They're amazing contraptions. The science behind that is so fascinating. So with each box that you get, you get a dedicated 20 minute Mark Rober video where I show you how to put it together, but I also teach you the cool science behind it. And that's kind of the gist of it.

And we launched it along with, I made this Willy Wonka factory for engineering i called the crunch labs it's it's where we build all our stuff now and it's where we come up with the box ideas but it has like a tennis ball cannon from american gladiators it's got like you know go-kart tracks cool inventions to like get from one floor to the other secret passageways so part of the box is like each month one person gets a platinum ticket. And if you get that platinum ticket in your box, you get to come out and visit the crunch labs with me and build with my team for a day, whatever you want. That's so exciting. So yeah, we launched it.

And then in less than a week, we, we completely sold out of what we hoped was like six months to a year's worth of product. So the good news is, though, we will have more in time for the holidays. So they'll be back in like early November. And so far, the feedback, this isn't, and granted, I'm a little biased, but the feedback has been incredibly positive from parents. And if you know someone who has it, just ask them what they think of it. And in general, we've just heard amazing stuff and as a result like our wait list is like bonkers off the charts but people should get on the wait list so that they have a chance of getting one of these for the holidays this is right if you get on the wait list you are guaranteed to get it for the holidays so you'll totally save your place so

if this does sound cool to you if you have a kid who enjoys my videos or may want to be an engineer and by the way even if they don't plan on being an engineer this is i say that it's like the promise of the box is like that you help you think like an engineer and what that means is you can break complex problems down into to bite-sized pieces or you know it makes you a better piano practicer or soccer player or math doer because you know failure is okay and it's part of the process like that's something i literally drill in every month with these boxes like this is just a prototype start with this and what are you going to do to build on it to make it cooler and it it's okay if it doesn't work at first that's the point and so it's like getting that into people kids minds that it's like hey mark rober says it's okay if it doesn't work at first. That's the point. And so it's like getting that into people, kids' minds that it's like, hey, Mark Rober says it's cool to fail.

This is how he makes all of his videos. And I just be that over their heads. Like this is the process. And I really think that inspires kids to not just give up immediately. It's a very visceral way to engage all their senses, to build something cool you can shoot mom with. But at the same time, I'm sneaking that science. I'm sneaking in those life lessons and they're not even realizing it. I love that. And I will say that my 10-year-old who was working on building this, my 15-year-old

is very mechanically inclined on her own. And so she could easily see what needed to happen, where it was like, just put it together. You know what I mean? Like, it was easy for her, but my 10-year-old is working on it on her own because she wanted to do it on her own, like without assistance. And she really did persist in completing it. And she's not normally one of those kids who's like, I must figure out this really, really complex problem, but she really did want to build this thing. Love to hear it. It was really cool. Yeah. And I love that those are transferable skills, that it's not about like make your child a NASA engineer. It's about learn how to think because there's not enough

thinking people in the world, Mark. That's right enough we need more thinkers more people who are able to look at a problem from multiple angles from multiple directions and not just this is i would imagine a fatal flaw of engineering is assuming you know the answer immediately yeah and i think that's something that so many people no matter the topic topic, whether it's politics, engineering, whatever it is, they assume they know the answer immediately. When they tackle a problem from multiple angles, they might find that, in fact, their first assumption was not correct. That's exactly right. Yeah. And if I can mow your grass for a little bit and say, you know, when it comes to politics with me personally, that's like my rule of thumb. If I ever find myself being

outraged about a thing or if I have friends and I have lots of friends literally on both sides of the aisle and I have certain friends on both sides of the aisle who are just outraged about everything, I'm always like, that's a sign for me to check myself and am I a product of the algorithms that are

being fed to me? Am I just being fed one thing like if your assumption on something that happens is like well the other side is just evil terrible people you know and that's why they do this then you need to check that and if you can't answer the question what would a reasonable person who who thinks the other side of this issue what would their argument? What would they say in a reasonable manner that's convincing? What's their most convincing argument? If you don't have an answer for that, you need to go check more sources.

And that's true for politics and that's true for engineering, right? Totally. I always say, if you can't explain somebody else's position back to them in a way that they say, that's right, that is what I think, then you don't

understand it well enough. You're operating on your own assumptions and not on what somebody else really thinks. So I always appreciate that you are helping kids learn how to think, even if they're not somebody who is going to engineer something at Apple. It's a highly, highly needed transferable skill. And I love the way that you present it in a way that it's not just like facts on a whiteboard. Right, yeah, exactly. It kind of reminds me of those like old Apple TV commercials where it's like, I'm a Mac and I'm a PC, you know,

like I do science communication sometimes. And even by the way, like political communication as well. Like you are the Mac in that ad where it's like, oh yeah, it's cool. It's like understandable. Like I get it versus like before it's like, here are the facts. Yeah. Well, we could keep doing this all day. This is great fun. But tell everybody where they can sign up to get on the wait list for one of your Crunch Labs boxes because people really should consider getting it for their kids for Christmas or whatever holiday they celebrate. Sure, that's right.

It's just crunchlabs.com. And then once you're on the website, you can see like I've made a couple little videos that kind of explain what it is But honestly if you know someone who is who got into the first, you know We sold tens of thousands of subscriptions out of you know We launched it if you know anyone like that would be my favorite thing just ask them what they think of it Barring that go on the website and check it out and I would not make anything that I didn't 100 like I'm very Careful about anything. I put my name on.

And like, this is all me. And I feel so strongly that this is like a good thing to have out in the world. So, and people can find you on YouTube and be one of your 20, 20 plus million. Who's counting subscribers. That's right. Oh, I love your work. I really appreciate you. I always appreciate knowing that when my kids are watching your content,

that they are being both entertained and they're learning something. And I just appreciate what you're putting out to the world. And I'm really grateful for your time today. Yeah. Likewise, that everything you just said, I'm rubber, you're glue. So thanks for sharing. Okay. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review or sharing a link to it on your social media? All of those things help podcasters out so much. Here's Where It Gets Interesting is written and researched by executive producer Heather Jackson. Our audio engineer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. See you again soon.