If you haven’t heard of Mark Rober, your kid almost certainly has. Rober, a former NASA engineer, has more than 76 million followers on YouTube, where he’s famous for wildly creative science experiments. In one popular series, he tries to create a squirrel-proof bird feeder and eventually builds an obstacle course to challenge the agile creatures. In another, he invents a robot that can outkick the NFL’s best field-goal kicker. Probably Rober’s most famous experiment involved creating “glitter bombs” to catch porch-pirate package thieves. Rober left NASA in 2013 to go out on his own, creating things he thought were cool and making some of the most entertaining and educational science content on the Internet. Today, he never loses perspective on the privilege of his massive platform, which he calls a “responsibility.” Rober does cool science with Wish kids at Disneyland Rober grew up in Brea, California, about 10 minutes from Disneyland. As a kid, he could hear the nighttime fireworks from his neighborhood. Getting to go to the park at all felt like a big deal. Getting escorted to the front of a ride? Unthinkable. “That would have been my peak,” he told Upworthy, laughing. This week, Rober got the experience of a lifetime meeting with several kids from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, including Piper, a young girl with Marfan syndrome, and Brendan, a boy with aggressive leukemia who says Rober’s videos kept his spirits up during treatments. Alongside fellow creators like MrBeast and Dude Perfect, Rober led kids through an egg-drop challenge off the top of Avengers Tower and got to spend much of the day just hanging out and riding rides with his new friends. It’s all part of an event put together by YouTube, The Walt Disney Company, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation called “Wishes Assemble.” When asked if he ever could have imagined, when he was working at NASA or creating his first YouTube videos, that one day it would be a child’s greatest wish in the world to meet him, he said, “No way. Like, five years ago, I’d have been like, ‘no,’ two years ago, I’d have been like, ‘no way.’” It’s still hard for him to wrap his mind around the impact he has on the kids who watch his videos. Rober recalls he was told that among YouTube creators, he ranked just behind MrBeast last year in fulfilled wishes. “It’s crazy,” he said. “I want to remind everyone—I make science videos. Since when is science cool? Like, I shouldn’t be getting that many requests.” Rober has worked with Make-A-Wish many times before. He says it can be tough not to get overwhelmed with emotion when hearing the Wish kids’ stories, but overall, he just tries to bring his signature fun energy and enjoy his time with them as much as he can. “[The goal is] escapism,” he said. “These families and kids have been through some pretty tough stuff.” Mark Rober does cool science with Wish kids at Disneyland. Photo credit: Disneyland Resort/Sean Teegarden Not Rober’s first foray into philanthropy Rober’s philanthropy extends well beyond Make-A-Wish. He’s led Team Trees, Team Seas, and Team Water alongside fellow creators and helped raise tens of millions of dollars for environmental causes. Like Rober’s experiments and stunts, the projects have been rooted in real impact, not just dollar amounts: Team Trees has planted 24 million trees worldwide, and counting. Rober has also partnered with STEM education nonprofits and has raised millions of dollars for autism awareness and grants for autistic people, a cause close to his heart: Rober’s son has autism. He says there was no one crystallizing moment when he realized he had the platform to actually make a difference. It was more of a slow realization about what having a platform actually means. “You come to realize that you have a big megaphone and a spotlight, and it almost becomes a responsibility,” he said. “It’s almost immoral not to do something with that. To move the needle in the right direction.” Rethinking how America teaches science Next up for Rober and his team is something so massive it sounds impossible—which is exactly the kind of challenge he specializes in: completely reimagining the way kids learn science in school. He’s taking everything he’s learned about what kids love about science and engineering from his videos and applying it to a real curriculum. It’s taken a team of 50 people and $60 million, but the new curriculum, called Class CrunchLabs, will meet all the rigorous educational standards while still being fun—and it’ll be free for all educators. Rober will be publishing a TED Talk on the project on May 5. Mark Rober is rethinking how we teach science. Photo credit: newhcrossaint/Wikimedia Commons “Most of the curriculum out there—teachers have to pay for it, and those curriculum writers never had to earn a single view,” he said. Rober, for his part, has earned about 16 billion. “So they just make really boring content. Science should not be boring.” Rober pays his respects to the work of Bill Nye, but notes that a lot of (very) old Nye videos are still being used in education. He thinks we can do better by today’s kids and likens his engaging approach to “hiding the vegetables.” “You could have the best curriculum in the world. If the students don’t care, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “We know how to solve that motivation gap. And that’s like 90% of the issue.” It’s hard to believe this is the guy who got famous for inventing a Halloween costume that made it look like the wearer had a bloody hole in their torso. But seeing how seriously he now takes his responsibility—an audience of tens of millions of people, many of whom are children—it’s not hard to see why it would be a kid’s biggest wish to meet him, especially alongside other heroes like The Avengers. When Rober isn’t making kids’ dreams come true or reimagining the education system, he’s planning his next video. It may or may not involve him playing tug-of-war against a real lion. It sounds crazy, but we wouldn’t bet against him. The post Mark Rober says having 76 million followers is a ‘responsibility.’ He’s making the most of it. appeared first on Upworthy.