Former NASA engineer Mark Rober regularly attracts over 30 million viewers to his YouTube videos, which feature large-scale science experiments, elaborately engineered pranks and environmental campaigns. On Friday evening, Rober spoke to a full crowd in Memorial Auditorium on “our superpower as humans” to tell stories, emphasizing the need for better science communication. 

The event, which consisted of a talk and a moderated Q&A, was hosted by the Stanford Speakers Bureau (SSB), the same student organization that hosted media personality JoJo Siwa and Saturday Night Live comedian Mikey Day earlier this year.

Attendees energetically received Rober as he entered alongside a montage of clips from his many viral productions. One clip featured a rapid-fire snowball machine fashioned from a leaf blower that pelted snow. Another highlighted drones that planted 20 million trees. 

For seven years of his career, Rober worked at NASA building Curiosity, a rover designed to collect rocks and gather evidence of previously habitable environments on Mars. Rober’s presentation on Curiosity featured clips that formed a cinematic retelling of the rover’s landing and outlined the work of thousands of NASA engineers across several years. The presentation culminated in a seven-minute landing sequence interwoven with commentary from Rober, his family and his colleagues.

In his talk, Rober repeatedly returned to the argument that creative demonstrations, rather than scientific facts alone, make for the most effective ways to instill critical thinking skills and inspire new ideas. “We evolved to tell stories,” Rober said.

Rober compared his video clips with a slide of Curiosity’s “specs,” or specifications, which detailed data like rover width, mission length and predicted landing region. “One year from now, I promise you’ll remember the video that I showed you way more than you remember this slide,” Rober said. 

“It was a really good point that he brought that you can’t just do the project,” attendee Benny Pan ’26 said. “An equally or maybe even more important part is how you tell the story around it.”

Rober also shared insights about his journey being a science content creator. In 2011, Rober posted his first Youtube video, where he created the illusion of a hole through the body using two iPads for a Halloween costume. The video gained millions of views in the span of days. Rober’s channel now has over 68 million subscribers. 

Rober shared his three keys of “How To Be an Influencer,” the title of his talk. While the term “influencer” is mostly used in social media settings, he said the skills of influencing have applications in a variety of areas, from writing research grants to engaging in the workplace. 

Rober’s first key focused on influencing others through evoking a visceral reaction. For Rober, making a lasting impression on a person goes beyond delivering every statistic and detail. “Focus on the feeling,” he said. 

The second key calls for communication to be “packed with value.” Rober gave the example of his viral “squirrel maze” videos, in which he condensed 500 hours of footage into 15 minutes of educational content. 

Rober’s third key presented the final piece of effective storytelling: “You just have to be authentic. Full stop.” 

“My goal is to make it matter to the people watching this video, to make them care,” Rober said. In the past, he has created a glitter bomb to stop spam callers from committing fraud and advocated for the use of affordable powder treatment to help provide clean drinking water to developing nations.

For Rober, engaging his audience in science and engineering means disguising scientific concepts — such as physics principles or photosynthesis in trees — with fun and engaging demonstrations. 

“I’ve learned how to ‘hide the vegetables’ and these tricks [on YouTube],” Rober said. “How do I take all those tricks that I’ve learned and then package that in something… to try to teach science?”

Rober announced that he is currently developing Class Crunch Labs, a program designed to teach third through eighth grade science, with videos, teacher resources and full student guides. To reach the broadest audience, Rober plans on offering the service for free.

“This is the most important thing I will ever do… We’re so stoked about doing this,” Rober said. The science educator defined his “North Star” as using his influence “to create more critical thinkers and scientifically minded global citizens.”

“What is your North Star?” he asked the crowd. “Being able to tell a story is what people will remember and cause them to take action.”

Attendee Yasmine Alonso ’25, who described herself as passionate about education, said Rober’s dedication to “making science education more enjoyable and accessible for people” resonated with her. 

Nick Parlante, a senior computer science lecturer who often teaches Stanford’s introductory course CS106A, moderated the Q&A section of the event. He questioned Rober about the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) could have on students, expressing concerns that the ease of using AI could cause them to miss out on practicing essential skills. 

Rober compared the introduction of AI to the development of calculators and digital tools to handle certain tasks — most people, he said, no longer need to have the skills of tracking animals or reading detailed maps. 

“I can empathize that it’s a very difficult thing, but the tool exists,” Rober said. “So, you might as well get really good at using it.”

Parlante and Rober agreed that they held optimistic views about the potential for artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. “Optimists are good at building stuff because at least they try,” Parlante said. 

“We’re naive enough to think we can,” Rober added. “And sometimes, we actually do.”