Tim Urban - Idea Labs and High-Rung Thinking

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Before we transition to the episode, I want to highlight the Founders Podcast, which is part of our Colossus Network. David Senra, who hosts Founders has devoted his life to learning from history's greatest entrepreneurs and every week he distills the lessons of a different founder. If you want an entry point, I highly recommend starting with episode 136 on Estee Lauder or episode 288 on Ralph Lauren.
I hosted David on Invest Like the Best last summer and it's hard not to walk away insanely energized after listening to any episode with him. You can find a link to Founders and those episodes in the show notes of this conversation. You can also search all past transcripts on our website, joincolossus.com.
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:08)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO and founding partner of Positive Sum and the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of Positive Sum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:40)
I'm excited to share this conversation with Tim Urban. Tim is in my opinion, one of the best and most engaging writers of our era. He's tackled many of the most interesting topics in the world from AI to procrastination. I interviewed him in 2017 in an episode that we called Grand Theft Life. And it remains one of my favorite episodes ever.
In the six years since that episode, he hasn't published almost anything. That's because he's been writing the book we discuss in this episode. The book is called What's Our Problem, in which Tim investigates the big issues facing society. The reason I love Tim's writing so much is its density of ideas and ridiculously clear explanations.
A rare combo that makes reading a joy. I hope you enjoyed this great round two with Tim Urban and go buy and enjoy his great new book.
It's so weird that the last time we did this was pretty soon into what became a seven year exploration for you of a topic we'll talk a lot about today. And we're gonna bounce all over the place. But first tell me what it's been like to spend seven years thinking about a single problem. Last time we talked, we talked about 25 different things and it was like a tasting menu of ideas. And then you've devoted, God knows how much time, energy, attention to it. Effectively a single topic for seven years ever since. And that original episode we did is one of our all time most popular ones. What's that been like? I have to start there.

**Tim Urban** (4:03)
Well, it hasn't been pleasant because I'm a procrastinating writer and I didn't know this until I learned the lesson the hard way over the last six, seven years was that when I'm writing like a short post, the fact that it's coming out in a few days, there's this adrenaline that I have.
It feels high stakes. There's the smart part of your mind and then the dumb part of your mind. Think about when you do VR, you don't want to step off a cliff, even though you know you're just down in a rug in a room somewhere. The smart part of your brain knows that it's not a cliff but the dumb part thinks it's a cliff. What I realized is that the smart part of my brain is always aware that if I'm writing a book, the stakes are just as high.