554: Tim Urban - Becoming a High-Rung Thinker, Being The Boss of The Ideas In Your Own Head, Writing Wait But Why, & The Best Advice He's Ever Received
Descripción del Episodio
Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
- How can I become a high-rung thinker?
- High-rung thinking is independent thinking, leaving you free to revise your ideas or even discard them altogether. On the low rungs, it means you're working to dutifully serve your ideas, not the other way around.
- How can I be the boss of the ideas in my own head?
- When you're the boss of the ideas in your head, you're always willing to revise them. When there's no amount of evidence that will change your mind about something, it means that idea is your boss. Humility is the awareness that no idea is worthy of being your boss.
- Best advice Tim has ever received:
- "I met Chris Anderson, the head of TED, in 2015. He had read a few WBW posts and offered me the opportunity to give a TED Talk at the 2016 conference (which was six months away). Immediately full of both gratitude/excitement and dread/anxiety, I asked him if it might be better to wait a couple years until I had some more speaking experience. He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds before saying, "There's no time like the present." I took his advice. Since then, his voice saying those words has popped into my head again and again during hard decisions, and I'm yet to regret following them."
- Great advice is sometimes great because it's totally original or framed in an original way. But, as in my story, a well-known platitude, at the perfect moment, can also make a huge impact. What makes Chris's advice so valuable to me wasn't that it was something new—it was that the lesson I learned from taking the advice in that particular moment turned a cliché into a mantra.
- "I met Chris Anderson, the head of TED, in 2015. He had read a few WBW posts and offered me the opportunity to give a TED Talk at the 2016 conference (which was six months away). Immediately full of both gratitude/excitement and dread/anxiety, I asked him if it might be better to wait a couple years until I had some more speaking experience. He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds before saying, "There's no time like the present." I took his advice. Since then, his voice saying those words has popped into my head again and again during hard decisions, and I'm yet to regret following them."
- No one "builds a house." They lay one brick again and again and again and the end result is a house. A remarkable, glorious achievement is just what a long series of unremarkable, unglorious tasks looks like from far away.
- "If I aired a highlight reel of your most selfish life moments and most shameful thoughts, you'd seem like an awful person. If I aired a reel of your best, kindest moments, you'd seem like a saint. But people aren't highlight reels, and the unedited cut is always a messy mix!"
- Kids Asking WHY? When kids repeatedly ask "why?" they're trying to see the underlying reasoning behind what they're told by authorities. "Because I said so" rejects that instinct and says "stop reasoning and obey." We then become adults who only know how to trust authorities other than ourselves.
- High Rung Thinking:
- Rung 1 - Thinking like a Scientist. When you're thinking like a scientist, you start at point A and follow evidence wherever it takes you.
- Rung 2 - Thinking like a sports fan. They want the game played fairly, but they really want the process to yield a certain outcome.
- Rung 3 - Thinking like an attorney. When you think like an attorney, you start from point B. The client is not guilty. Now let's figure out why. They cherry-pick evidence and piece it together to make an argument that leads where you want it to.
- Rung 4 - Thinking like a zealot. Their ideas aren't rugged experiments to be kicked around, they're fragile, precious babies to be adored and protected. The zealot doesn't have to go from A to B to know their viewpoints are correct– they just know they are. With 100% conviction.
- Life/Career advice: "I'd give the same advice to someone who's trying to find someone to marry. Go on lots of dates. Experiment. Do stuff. Get out in the world. You can only connect the dots looking backward."
Episodios Recientes
Más podcasts de Sociedad y Cultura
Ver toda la categoría →
El que pueda que empate
By shows
El Mundial de fútbol 2026 con Axel Torres, Bruno Alemany y Antonio Romero. Lunes, miércoles y viernes escucha a este tridente que ya quisieran empatar con ellos Messi, Lamine y Mbappé.
To Catch a Thief: North Korea On Our Payroll
By shows
American companies are being infiltrated—not by hackers breaking in, but by workers. Thousands of North Korean operatives are applying to jobs across the U.S.—and getting them. They are embedding themselves at Fortune 500 companies. Government agencies. Critical infrastructure. Even the firms tasked with stopping this threat. To Catch a Thief: North Korea On Our Payroll is a first-of-its-kind audio documentary exposing this global labor pipeline—one that is quietly funneling hundreds of millions of dollars a year back to the regime, and its nuclear weapons program. Host Nicole Perlroth, bestselling author and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, takes listeners inside this hidden network—from a rare, inside look at a North Korean IT worker on the job, to interviews with defectors who escaped it, to knocking on the doors of Americans hosting “laptop farms” on North Korea's behalf. Along the way, the series reveals how this playbook is creating a hiring freeze for American workers, in a challenging job market. And how it has metastasized—adopted by cybercriminal groups and fraud networks around the world—blurring the line between nation-state espionage and organized crime. To Catch a Thief is co-produced by Nicole Perlroth and Rubrik in partnership with Pod People. To Catch a Thief was written and produced by Nicole Perlroth, along with Khrista Rypl, TJ Raphaël, Rebecca Chaisson and Sam Gebauer. Additional thanks to Allie Pinel, Fendall Fulton, Krissy Clark, Cai Lee, Eunice Park and Aimee Machado. Editing and Sound Design by Erica Huang. Art direction and design by Ben Long, Gareth Strange and Sarah Burley at the John & Jane Agency, and support from John Leestma.
El Rincón De Los Errores
By shows
<p>Sean todos bienvenidos a este nuevo espacio donde vamos a aprender de los errores.</p><br><p>Conoceremos ese rincón de aquellos personajes que estamos acostumbrados a ver en los medios de comunicación, pero que al igual que cualquier otra persona, han cruzado sus propios desiertos, sacando lo mejor de lo vivido.</p><br><p>Es por medio de nuestros fallos que hemos crecido y nos hemos convertido en personas más sensibles, empáticas y con menos apariencias, por eso <a href="https://www.instagram.com/marimarvega/?hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Marimar Vega </a>y <a href="https://www.instagram.com/efrenmartinezo/?hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Efrén Martinez</a> han creado este lugar, en el cual podemos aprender después de habernos equivocado.</p><br><p>Bienvenidos, al Rincón de los Errores.</p><br><p>🎙️El Rincón de los Errores hace parte de la network de Dudas Media.</p><p>Para alianzas y colaboraciones, escríbenos a <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>[email protected]</strong></a></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat
By shows
Some questions don't have answers. Yet.Dr. Harini Bhat is a clinical pharmacist and science storyteller obsessed with questions that don't have answers. Every week she unravels real events from history that still can't be fully explained. Mass hysterias. Medical oddities. Vanished civilizations. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating, centuries apart, as if history is trying to tell us something.Hidden History doesn't dismiss ancient events as myth or superstition. It treats them as incomplete case files, shaped by the limits of knowledge, technology, and record-keeping. Because the unknown isn't a failure of explanation. It's a constant in human experience, one that evolves, repeats, and sometimes deepens the more we learn.Hidden History is a Rewind Original, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube @hiddenhistorypod. For more, follow @RewindStudios on Instagram.
Expedientes del más allá
By shows
Expedientes del más allá, es un viaje a través de seis historias llenas de tragedia, de misterio y de oscuridad. Dos periodistas recorren algunos de los lugares más encantados de nuestro país, viviendo los sucesos extraños que allí se producen y hablando con los protagonistas de unos fenómenos que marcaron sus vidas para siempre. Porque si el más allá existe, a veces se manifiesta de manera poco amable...
Skin in the Game
By shows
El podcast de inversiones donde los hosts tienen capital real en juego en lo que dicen. Javier Morodo, Miguel Olea, Allan Cassis y Jorge Combe revelan cada semana qué están haciendo con su dinero, en respuesta a los temas más relevantes de la coyuntura global. Inversiones reales, capital privado, venture, deuda, real estate, tecnología de frontera y geopolítica. Desde la perspectiva de quienes operan, no de quienes analizan. 📌 Nuevo episodio cada jueves a las 6am CDMX. Las opiniones son gratis. El portafolio no miente.
Dr. Death
By shows
<p>Dr. John Schneider rode into town like a character out of a Western: an outsider on a Harley-Davidson, in trademark cowboy boots. He promised relief to patients suffering in Wyoming and Montana. He seemed like the hero they needed. But when surgeries go wrong and a strange letter exposes a bitter feud, medical professionals and government officials search for the truth about this cowboy doctor. They discover claims of broken bodies, bullying, fraud, and lawsuits.</p><p>From Audible, the fifth season of the hit series <em>Dr. Death</em> returns with <em>The Cowboy</em>: the story of a surgeon who took advantage of a broken system and the fight to bring him to justice.</p><p>Listen to the whole series now ad-free on Audible. Episodes are available weekly everywhere you listen to podcasts.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Season 4: </strong>When a charismatic young doctor announces revolutionary treatments for cancer and HIV, patients from around the world turn to him for their last chance. As medical experts praise Serhat Gumrukcu’s genius, the company he co-founded rockets in value to over half a billion dollars. But when a team of researchers makes a startling discovery, they begin to suspect the brilliant doctor is hiding a secret.</p><p><strong>Season 3:</strong> Paolo is a smart and handsome surgeon, renowned for his ability to perform surgeries that transform his patients’ lives. When television producer Benita covers him for a story, he’ll transform her life too, but not in the ways she expects. As Benita crosses professional lines to be with him, she learns how far Paolo will go to protect his secrets. And halfway around the world, four doctors at a prestigious medical institute make shocking discoveries of their own that call everything into question.</p><p><strong>Season 2:</strong> If someone you love is diagnosed with cancer you want them to get the best treatment from the best doctors. In 2013, patients in Michigan thought Farid Fata was that doctor. Between his prestigious education, years of experience and pleasant bedside manner, Fata was everything you could want in a doctor. But he was not who he appeared to be. This is the story of hundreds of patients in Michigan, a doctor, and a poisonous secret.</p><p><strong>Season 1: </strong>We’re at our most vulnerable when we go to our doctors. We trust the person at the other end of that scalpel. We trust the hospital. We trust the system. Christopher Duntsch was a neurosurgeon who radiated confidence. He claimed he was the best in Dallas. If you had back pain, and had tried everything else, Dr. Duntsch could give you the spine surgery that would take your pain away. But soon his patients started to experience complications, and the system failed to protect them. Which begs the question: who - or what - is that system meant to protect? Dr. Death is a story about a charming surgeon, 33 patients and a spineless system.</p><p><br></p><p>Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of <strong>Dr. Death</strong> ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.</p><p><br></p>