Best of Tim Urban

Introduction

Tim Urban is a curious mind who writes on his site Wait but Why. 

This is my summary of the best of Tim Urban's content. Any posts mentioned here are great in my opinion, and I hope you visit Wait but Why and find you have hours of interesting reading ahead of you. There is also some content from his old blog, timurban.blogspot.com which was active from (2007-2013). There is a list of podcasts and talks at the bottom.

Support WBW so they can continue

p.s. Tim has a new app (Apple, Google Play) out with the Youtube channel Kurzgesagt visualizing "The Big and the Small" based on this post

Contents hide
1 Introduction
2 Full Posts
3 Posts from the dinner table
4 Posts from the shed
5 Underneath the Turban
6 Podcasts/ Video Talks

If you want to chat about any of the posts, drop me a line: matthewdougherty0@gmail.com

Full Posts

Quotes or commentary don’t do these posts justice, you should really just read them top to bottom.

Other fun ones: Your Family: Past, Present and Future, American Presidents --Washington to Lincoln, Odd Things in Odd Places- Travel Series, The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown 

Posts from the dinner table

Thought provoking and fun. Some of the comments are good too. (Sort them by “Best”)

“Here’s how it works. You wake up and find yourself alone in a room. The only things in the room are a table, a chair, a calculator, and a note. The note says: You have exactly 10 minutes to choose how many years you want to live and type the number into the calculator. At the end of the 10 minutes, you’ll be escorted out of the room, and your decision is permanent and unable to ever be changed. You’ll live for exactly that many years and then you’ll die. Oh also…every other human on Earth is currently in a room just like this making the same exact decision and you won’t know what they chose until you leave the room. If you enter no number into the calculator, your life will go on exactly as it had before, unaffected—you’ll die a natural death whenever you would have if this had never happened.”

“If you want to be a sick fuck about it, you could take someone who deserves the worst of the worst and kill someone they really love—but that’s super shitty for the victim, so you’d have to consider whether you really want to be a full sick fuck about it.”

Posts from the shed
Underneath the Turban

Old Blog - timurban.blogspot.com

Funny Quotes

“-I've been having weird dreams. Two nights ago I dreamt that I had gone to the grocery store, and returned with, among other things, a six-foot-tall jar of peanut butter. In the dream, I was really upset with myself for purchasing the jar and was trying to figure out what the hell I had been thinking when I bought it. I made a vow to stop going to the grocery store hungry. Then last night I dreamt that I was in charge of babysitting Sasha Obama. It was very stressful because I didn't want to botch something, but in the end she turned out to be a very pleasant young lady and we had some good fun, including watching the Oscars. I told you-- weird ass dreams.” (Some Sunday Things)

“Twitter. Everyone keeps saying the word Twitter and talking about “Twittering” things, and I don’t get it. I went to the site one day and then they asked me to sign up and I exed out the window. Then again, I just discovered Hulu so maybe I’m in the minority here.” (19 Things I Don’t Understand, Volume 3 - 2/19/2009)

“-I go to bed late and I wake up kind of late. And people judge me for this. What the hell is that? If I work from 9-6 I'm normal. But if I start work at 11am or 12 I'm living a lazy life of lavish luxury (all those L's were not intended). And if I work till 9 or 10pm I'm "crazy" and I "work too hard." So not only do people judge me as a degenerate for waking up late, they then judge me as a workaholic for staying at work late. Well you should probably spend less time judging me and more time throwing down your sixth beer at happy hour and making small talk with your shitty coworker who is talking to you only because the other two people there with you are in their own conversation and this coworker ended up stuck listening to your stupid theories on the election and horse-racing and they're one third listening to you and two thirds eavesdropping on the other conversation because it's much more interesting and they keep thinking of things they want to add into the other conversation and finally they say "screw it" and interrupt you to jump into the other conversation and say their opinion and then you feel excluded so you quickly file through your head for something you can add and you finally think of it and say it and they're all like, "shit we have to include this person in the conversation now." (Sunday Thoughts - 08/2009)

“I was bored in the airport recently, and to entertain myself, I decided to imagine that the little kids around me weren't actually kids, but rather miniature retarded adults.  I highly recommend trying it.” (Some Thoughts on Tuesday)

“-- The running mate is an oddly important part of presidential elections. They even get their own debate. Why? Vice presidents are irrelevant. Meanwhile, the key cabinet members, who are ridiculously relevant, aren't even selected during the campaign. How does that make sense? How much more useful would it be for candidates to choose their Secretaries of Defense and State during the campaign so we could watch them debate each other?” (Politics)

“That night we went out on the town, and I wrote "BIRTHDAY BOY" on the front of Andrew's shirt, since he was, in fact, the birthday boy. After getting a ridiculous amount of attention from girls all night, Andrew decided he might wear the shirt year round. Our theory is that girls want to come up and talk to guys in a bar just as much as guys want to approach girls, but that they don't as much because they don't want to be perceived as slutty or desperate. Since the birthday provides a reason to approach someone in itself, a girl can be more outgoing without worrying as much about what her friendliness might imply.” (Driving Part 2 -2007)

“I started wandering around aimlessly, looking for Kazakhstan. You know, the usual.” (China and Stans)

“- By the time I hit Pennsylvania, it was pitch black, I was delirious from 12 hours of driving, and maybe it was the weird state I was in, but the Erie, PA area really gave me the willies. I would have bet hundreds of dollars that there were both werewolves and ghosts in the area. Plus, it was really foggy, and I kept seeing the dreaded deer signs on the side of the road. Really scary times. I was pretty resigned to getting murdered in my hotel room that night.” (On Road)

This ^ one was funny for me to come across as I live in Erie (Fairview) 

“--The news about Pluto is devastating. Absolutely world-shaking. And frankly, I refuse to accept it. There are 7 days in a week, 50 states in the US, and 9 fucking planets in the solar system.” (Big Return Post)

“I finally learned what Twitter was. And I started “tweeting” (I feel like a d-bag saying "tweeting"). I enjoy it, because I’m weird and I like typing random things and posting them on the Internet and because I love finding new ways to procrastinate. But I must say—I’m not really sure why everyone else likes it. It’s like, you go on and read the last few tweets by other people and you’re like, “Uh huh.” Then you write your own and post it and you’re like, “I guess that’s it,” and you shrug and go do something else. Again, I like it because I’m weird, but I can’t quite figure out why it has caught on.” (Nine Items From the Sky -06/2009)

Podcasts/ Video Talks

Youtube playlist here (newest at top). 

Wait but Why Youtube Channel

Soundcloud: Featuring SpaceX post audio series, and Tim and Andrew discussing that post.