Mark Rober: Feeling Stuck in a Rut? Use THIS Simple 3- Step Method Engineers Use to FINALLY Turn Your Ideas Into Reality!
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 28.5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What idea have you been sitting on lately?
What’s been holding you back from starting?
Today, Jay sits down with engineer, innovator, and YouTube creator Mark Rober to explore the unexpected life experiences that shaped one of the internet’s most beloved minds. Mark shares the childhood moments that ignited his passion for building, breaking, and understanding how the world works, moments nurtured by a mother whose love, imagination, and encouragement helped lay the foundation for his life’s mission. He reflects on how her influence continues to ripple outward, inspiring millions of young people who learn, explore, and dream through his work today.
Jay and Mark explore the mindset that carried Mark from NASA engineer to innovative educator, unpacking what it really means to “think like an engineer:” experiment boldly, embrace failure, and treat every setback as an opportunity to learn. They follow Mark’s unusual pivots, from designing Mars rover hardware to crafting Halloween costumes, to ultimately shaping a career that blends curiosity, storytelling, science, and play. Together they reveal the deeper lessons behind Mark’s most viral experiments: why creativity thrives when we stay childlike, how passion reveals itself through repetition, and why the most meaningful work grows from genuine excitement rather than algorithms or expectations.
In this interview, you'll learn:
How to Think Like an Engineer
How to Stay Curious as an Adult
How to Follow Your Passion Practically
How to Build Ideas That Actually Work
How to Find Creativity in Everyday Life
How to Recognize Your Real Calling
How to Inspire Others Through Your Work
Keep following the questions that excite you, keep trying the things that scare you, and keep believing that you’re capable of far more than you realize. Your next breakthrough might be just one experiment, or one brave attempt away.
With Love and Gratitude,
Jay Shetty
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What We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
01:16 Were You Always Creative?
04:02 Understanding the Real Impact of Your Life
06:55 What It Really Takes to Work at NASA
09:49 Learning to Think Like an Engineer
11:22 How Rovers Are Tested for Mars
12:20 Searching for Life Beyond Earth
13:24 Follow What You Truly Love Doing
16:11 If You Can Imagine It, You Can Build It
17:22 Practical Wisdom from a Lifelong Tinkerer
20:57 The Pivot from NASA to Apple
23:34 Turning Ideas into Actionable Success
24:45 What is the Engineering Design Process?
28:28 Why Embracing Failure Matters
29:57 Relearning Trust and Finding Love Again
34:56 The Power of Immersion Weekends
36:45 Making Learning Engaging Through Creativity
40:29 Why Mastery Is Worth Pursuing
41:40 Balancing Business with True Creativity
44:51 How Communication Shapes Great Storytelling
47:40 Two Common Mistakes Creators Make
52:30 Staying True to Your Creative Style
54:04 The Importance of Focusing on One Passion
56:44 The Hidden Failures Behind Viral Success
59:35 Giving Kids Room to Be Creative
01:04:30 Curiosity as the Root of Creativity
01:06:07 Inside a Real Creative Process
01:08:45 Where Do You Get Your Big Ideas?
01:11:46 The Mind-Bending Question of Life in the Universe
01:16:02 The Promise and Peril of Rapid AI Growth
01:19:56 Focusing on What You Can Truly Influence
01:24:57 Mark on Final Five
Episode Resources:
Mark Rober | X
Mark Rober | Instagram
Mark Rober | Facebook
Mark Rober | LinkedIn
Mark Rober | TikTok
Mark Rober | YouTube
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.1 | If you're not breaking stuff, it means like you're not really testing the limits. |
| 0:07.9 | And then when you fail, you don't internalize it like, oh, I'm a failure. |
| 0:11.3 | It's like, oh, great. |
| 0:12.7 | We just learned one more way not to do a thing. |
| 0:16.4 | Hey, everyone. |
| 0:17.3 | Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become a happier, healthier, and more healed. My guest today is Mark Roba, engineer, YouTuber, and one of the most |
| 0:27.2 | creative minds online whose experiments and inventions have inspired millions to fall in love |
| 0:33.2 | with science and curiosity again. In this episode, we explore how to stay creative, turn failure into |
| 0:39.4 | fuel, and reconnect with the sense of wonder we often lose as adults. Please welcome to on-purpose, |
| 0:46.4 | Mark Rober. Mark, it is great to have you here. Congratulations on your incredible success. |
| 0:52.1 | Thank you. And I'm excited to dive into your mind. So good to be here. Let's do it. Are you going to make me cry, Jay? Are you a crier? I can't get emotional. I'm the crier in my relationship. Are you the crier in your relationship? I am. Well, we both kind of cry. How long have you been together now? Yeah, over a year. Over a year. Yeah, but that feels like relationship-wise, it happened fast. I mean, as an adult, you know what you want, right? And so it feels like seven years and dog years relationships. It's been seven years for the one. I love it, I love it. Well, if you're allowed to cry here, definitely, but no, no pressure. |
| 1:27.9 | No, we don't want any acting tears. |
| 1:30.1 | I'm a terrible actor, so you're in luck. |
| 1:32.5 | I love it. I want to start off just by like, the first question I have for you is, what's |
| 1:36.9 | the earliest childhood memory you have that you feel defines who you are today? Is there a moment, |
| 1:43.0 | a friend, an experience from school growing up that |
| 1:46.3 | you're like, that is why I am the way I am? I think it's a defining moment, one that sticks out, |
| 1:56.0 | I feel like. So my mom was out of the gate. You're kidding me talking about my mom. |
| 2:04.5 | My mom was like had the biggest influence on my life by a very comfortable margin. And she was |
| 2:10.1 | like a stay at home mom. Like she barely graduated high school. But she was just so encouraging of us and like trying to turn us into like good |
... |
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