Tim Urban

Tim Urban studied at Harvard University, where he earned an A.B. degree and graduated cum laude; after college he co-founded ArborBridge, an online tutoring and standardized-test preparation company, before focusing on long-form writing and illustration. In 2013 Tim launched Wait But Why, a blog featuring illustrated, long-form essays that blend humor, deep research, and stick-figure diagrams; the site grew to millions of monthly readers and hundreds of thousands of subscribers, with posts republished or excerpted in outlets such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and TIME. Urban’s 2016 TED main-stage talk on procrastination became one of the most-watched TED talks and was the first TED talk to reach 10 million views in its first year, which greatly raised his public profile and led to frequent speaking invitations at companies and universities worldwide. Beyond procrastination, Urban’s influential Wait But Why series includes multi-part deep dives on artificial intelligence, Neuralink, and Elon Musk’s ventures; these series garnered attention from technology leaders and led to collaborations and access (for reporting and illustrations) with organizations such as SpaceX and Neuralink. In February 2023 Urban published What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies, a work that extended his interest in societal issues and “high-rung” thinking developed over several years of essays and research.