YouTube personality and kinetic artist Joseph Herscher is an expert at building Rube Goldberg machines, chain reactions and other completely useless contraptions. A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that does a simple task in an overly complicated way. His absurdist contraptions use familiar objects in unfamiliar ways: books become dominoes, smashing a vase to scare a dog which pulls a leash – all to achieve a simple task, such as turning the page of a newspaper.

Joseph has over 5 million followers, over a billion video views, and his inventions have appeared on numerous television shows, from Jimmy Kimmel to Sesame Street. Joseph runs workshops with kids around the world, using humor, physics and undirected play to help foster the next generation of creative thinkers.