My Favorite Blog

If I had to choose a single blog to follow and ditch all the rest, it would be WaitButWhy by Tim Urban and Andrew Finn.

Tim takes complex topics, researches the hell out of them, and then teaches his readers on WaitButWhy what he learned.

Here’s how he explains his approach to learning:

I’ve heard people compare knowledge of a topic to a tree. If you don’t fully get it, it’s like a tree in your head with no trunk—and without a trunk, when you learn something new about the topic—a new branch or leaf of the tree—there’s nothing for it to hang onto, so it just falls away. By clearing out fog all the way to the bottom, I build a tree trunk in my head, and from then on, all new information can hold on, which makes that topic forever more interesting and productive to learn about. And what I usually find is that so many of the topics I’ve pegged as “boring” in my head are actually just foggy to me—like watching episode 17 of a great show, which would be boring if you didn’t have the tree trunk of the back story and characters in place.

The posts tend to be long but don’t let that disuade you; they’re entertaining and packed with knowledge that will reshape the way you see the world. My favorites include his posts about the Fermi Paradox, AI, and Elon Musk and his companies:

Also, whether you’re a long time reader or just discovering WaitButWhy, consider donating via their Patreon page so that Tim and Andrew can continue publishing WaitButWhy for many years to come.