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Tim Urban

Co-Founder & Writer, Wait But Why · 1 appearance on the record.

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authorfounderentertainer@waitbutwhy ↗LinkedIn ↗waitbutwhy.com ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗

Tim Urban is the creator of the explainer blog Wait But Why and authored the 2023 book What's Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies. He also delivered the widely viewed TED talk, "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator."

8statements → 1claims → 0claims resolved → 3.62/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → 16said about them ↓

1 not checkable as stated how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 2 opinions · 5 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

Everything Tim Urban said on the Startup Ideas Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Urban: Psychedelics are cognitive tools to view internal thoughts objectively
“Psychedelics allows you to kind of like step outside and look at the sphere, and like maybe look at it from other angles, and like walk around it, look under it, and like, and that is incredible. Like it's an incredible tool.”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 10:38 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)
Insight
Urban: Twitter reveals how ideological bubbles perceive and argue about news
“Twitter doesn't just teach, doesn't just show you what the news is, it shows you what the perception of the news is, and it shows you what the arguments about the news is, and the different you know, a viewpoints and the different you can, and if you follow th…”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 1:34 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)
Insight
Urban: Top investors and founders excel at macro and micro analysis
“And I do think the secret of some of the most You know, people who seem super prescient, like they can just, you know, read the future amazing at investing in stocks, or they're incredible entrepreneurs, they just can see opportunities or whatever it is. I eve…”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 17:45 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)
Insight
Urban: Write about topics when they are buzzy but widely misunderstood
“A good time is when it's buzzy, but people don't quite understand it yet. It's a good time for a topic like that. You don't want to do it when everyone's like read a bunch of stuff and they already have a sense of it and it's become like now there's camps, pol…”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 41:28 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)
Insight
Urban: Musk pursues critical goals even with ten percent success probabilities
“He'll talk about, even if he thinks something has a 10% chance of succeeding, but it's really important, it's worth trying.”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 51:36 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Urban: Humanity will likely solve the Fermi Paradox within fifty years
“It seems like it's something I suspect that we're going to get an answer to in the next, like, 50 years. Like, I think we're at the end of our, I think this is the, this is one of the last, not last, it's one of like the, it's the, it's one of the big question…”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 53:49 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)
Opinion
Urban: Twitter is flawed but excels at making high-quality connections
“Twitter sucks in a hundred ways, but like the, it's like really like fantastically great for like three or four really important things.”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 0:57 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)
Insight
Urban: Low stakes and zero perfectionism unlock productive creative output
“I was doing a creative pursuit that I wasn't being perfectionist about, because I didn't pride myself on being good at it, and I didn't, I wasn't trying to do anything big with it, and so that's often how you end up in a really kind of loose, carefree creative…”
Tim Urban May 12, 2022 ▶ 31:55 Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban)

The other half of the tape: Tim Urban's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 16 times in 7 episodes on the Startup Ideas Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sahil Bloom 7Greg Isenberg 4Zach Pogrob 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0083156202220232024episodesmentions
036202220232024episodes it came up in
001.332.56202220232024episodesmentions per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 15 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Are We Alone In The Universe? (with Tim Urban) May 12, 2022 45m
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