Tim Urban
Writer and illustrator behind Wait But Why, a long-form blog of stick-figure-illustrated explainers on science, technology and society, and author of the book What's Our Problem?
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Tim Urban did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsToddler parenthood is a reality distortion zone that makes it hard to remember that most people find your toddler breathtakingly uninteresting.
↗Tales from Toddlerhoodwaitbutwhy.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Young children learn a new language through immersion far more effectively than adults do.
Their wordsIf I took my daughter to China for a year, and we just lived there with no language instruction, I'd come back knowing approximately six Mandarin words and she'd be fluent.
↗Tales from Toddlerhoodwaitbutwhy.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsToddler parents can take solace in the fact that parenting probably matters less than we think it does.
↗Tales from Toddlerhoodwaitbutwhy.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 20 months earlier
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Their wordsAnd it's a general reminder that AR and VR2 being separate categories is a thing of the past.
↗All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision Prowaitbutwhy.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsIt's the next step in a centuries-long human mission to conquer long-distance.
↗All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision Prowaitbutwhy.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsIf you zoom out on a story of technology, you usually see a big exponential curve. But if you look at the curve up close, you see that it's wavy, made of S-curves.
↗All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision Prowaitbutwhy.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 9 months earlier
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Their wordsThe problem is, when humans went bipedal, our pelvises got smaller, and as humans got smarter, our heads got bigger. So evolution had to get creative. Its solution: all human babies would be premies, born when they were still small enough to pass through a human pelvis.
↗10 Thoughts from the Fourth Trimesterwaitbutwhy.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Expecting parents should be required to take a mandatory course before caring for a newborn.
Their wordsThere should obviously be like a mandatory four-hour course every expecting parent has to take before they're actually in charge of a newborn.
↗10 Thoughts from the Fourth Trimesterwaitbutwhy.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsthis is the most personal of personal decisions and no one should ever try to pressure anyone else to have kids-it's way too big a thing to be anyone else's business.
↗10 Thoughts from the Fourth Trimesterwaitbutwhy.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Their wordsThere were a bunch of bad trends: Tribalism was flaring up everywhere, mass shaming campaigns were roaring back into fashion, politicians were increasingly clown-like, public discourse had become a battle of one-dimensional narratives.
↗A Short History of My Last Six Yearswaitbutwhy.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThis book is my best crack at explaining what I think is an existential risk to liberal societies and what I think we need to do to get to that awesome future I used to be so excited about.
↗A Short History of My Last Six Yearswaitbutwhy.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 22 months earlier
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Their wordsMany films are the most fun the first time because a part of our brains loses itself in the plot and actually experiences what the characters are experiencing, to an extent.
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Their wordsClearly something other than the current type of healthcare advances will be needed to crack through the natural human lifespan ceiling-it'll take some deeper recoding of the human genome.
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Their wordsI think in most cases, we should feel fine loving the art we love, regardless of who the artist is, what they did, or what they believed.