The Power of Nonconformity in Comedy and Thinking

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Comedians have a knack for saying what everyone is thinking but scared to say. It's not offensive, but society thinks it is. The audience loves it because they are scared to express themselves. Nonconformity is a skill, but sometimes nonconformists need to turn it off. Independent thinking involves being open-minded to consensus. There are two types of contrarians: true independent thinkers and those whose identity is tied to being contrarian. The latter is like being in your own prison. Some people start as the first type and get hooked on the feeling of being right when everyone else is wrong.

Ryan speaks with Tim Urban about his new book What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies, why everyone who wants to improve at something should aim to do it slowly, what it really means to “trust the process,” why they like writing so much, and more.

Tim Urban is a writer, illustrator, blogger, and entrepreneur. He earned his A.B. from Harvard University, graduating cum laude with a major in Government. Since starting his long-form, stick figure-illustrated blog Wait But Why in 2013, he has become one of the most popular writers and thinkers on the internet. His articles have been regularly republished on sites like Quartz, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Business Insider and Gizmodo, and his 2016 TED Talk: Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator has been viewed over 50 million times on YouTube alone. Wait But Why regularly receives over 1.5 million unique visitors per month on average, and his blog is read by over 300,000 email subscribers. His work, which covers a wide range of topics, including technology, human behavior, self-improvement, and more, can be found at waitbutwhy.com and on Twitter @waitbutwhy and Instagram @timurban.

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