Chapter 22: Tim Urban on shivering in shorts and shifting from sheep to chef

We live in interesting times. 

 

And they're getting interestinger!

 

I keep my eyes open for big thinkers to help guide and inform me as I keep trying to make sense of the world.

My friend Tim Urban (@waitbutwhy) is one of those people:

 

Tim has a giant mind willing to engage with our fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. The big questions!

 

Tim's blog Wait Buy Why still scores millions of readers per month with big-name fans like Jonathan Haidt, Bari Weiss, Sam Harris, Bryan Johnson, and (yes) Elon Musk. Why? Because Tim has an incredible way of smallifying complex topics like artificial intelligence, time we have for loved ones, or why we haven't seen aliens into simple language. 

 

More recently Tim has self-published an incredible book called 'What's Our Problem: A Self-Help Book For Societies' (which I review here!). He’s a teacher and a philosopher. His Richard Feynman-like distillation abilities are on display in his TED Talk on procrastination which has 75 million views!

 

Tim’s intellectual curiosity is huge and we are very lucky to get a glimpse into how his brain works in this classic chapter of 3 Books. Fly down to New York City with me and let's sit in the corner of a crowded coffee shop in SoHo with Tim as we discuss breaking convention, retaining curiosity, the Stitches vs Band-aids test, why you should let your children wear shorts in the winter, the difference between cooks and chefs, and much, much more....

 

Let's flip the page back to Chapter 22 now...