TIM URBAN

The article was widely shared, even catching the eye of Elon Musk, who shared the article twice on Twitter, commenting “Excellent and funny intro article about Artificial Superintelligence! Highly recommend reading.” Urban has since turned his exploration of AI into a gripping talk—one that the head of Sweden’s Øredev conference tweeted was “the best keynote in years.” After watching the talk at Social Media Week in New York, conference founder Toby Daniels wrote that Urban “was brilliant, inspiring and terrifying at the same time, and left most of us speechless, breathless and in a mixed emotional state of wonder and awe at what the future holds.”

This keynote has enchanted over 65 millions of viewers as the third most-viewed (and ranked as one of the funniest) Ted Talk ever. Urban shares three key reasons we procrastinate, identifying them as “players” that vye for our attention, focus, and time. After establishing a “why,” he shares valuable tools that audiences can use to tackle procrastination in their own lives. The tools range from the Eisenhower Matrix to Urban’s set of six strategies for overcoming short- and long-term procrastination.

This keynote is uniquely applicable to individuals and teams and catalyzes change and growth. Audiences walk away with side stitches from laughter and an inspired understanding of the greatest barrier to success.

In this mindset-shifting talk, Tim explores how individuals think, how groups think together, and how those two things are connected. Using his trademark drawings, Tim explains the Thinking Ladder and its four types of thinking: “The Scientist” and “The Sports Fan,” who keep their thinking on the high rungs of the ladder; and “The Attorney” and “The Zealot,” who occupy the lower rungs, susceptible to dogma and stuck in outdated ideas. He explains why “high-rung thinking” is better suited to innovation and teamwork. 

He also applies the Thinking Ladder to groups and introduces audiences to two broad kinds of intellectual and workplace culture: The Idea Lab, a “high-rung” culture where disagreement is encouraged, where people are always respected, but ideas are not; and The Echo Chamber, a “low-rung” culture that penalizes departure from the prevailing narratives at the company and incentivizes independent minds to remain silent. While Idea Lab culture unleashes the full intellectual power of a group of minds and gives the company a superbrain, Echo Chamber culture leaves that potential untapped—the company brain is simply the brain of the CEO, widely repeated.

This keynote will immediately impact how you perceive, respond to, and strategize about just about everything. Tim’s inspiring guidance helps people stay on the highest rungs of their own ladder and rethink the way that they think—with transformational results. His frameworks for thinking and collaboration are catchy and memorable, and audiences will be using them years after hearing the talk.

Some of the biggest innovations and new technologies feel ethereal, though, making it difficult to understand their importance, to perceive their impact on our future, and to harness the product of innovation to our success.

In this enlightening, informative, and often reassuring talk, Tim Urban deploys his talent as one of the world’s best (and most entertaining) science and tech explainers. He makes the ethereal real, explaining the major advances happening right now that promise to shake our world in the near future – with the complexity they deserve and the simpleness that anyone can understand. This talk will excite audiences, leaving them with a comfortable understanding of the exponential advancement of technology and inspiring wonder in the future ahead. 

In this talk, Tim zooms out on the American landscape, explaining how rapid changes in technology, geography, government, and media have had unforeseen consequences. Tim believes that our political thinking and conversations are constrained by the lens we use: the “horizontal” left-center-right political axis. He introduces the audience to a new way to visualize politics, using the core tool in his bestselling book: a vertical axis that can add a critical element of nuance into the picture. Tim trades the polarizing political “left” and “right” for two new, incredibly useful terms: “high-rung politics” and “low-rung politics.” As we move from high to low, nuanced spectrums simplify to rigid binaries; rich discussion gives way to conformity and groupthink; common-humanity activism becomes common-enemy activism. In short, our problem is that low-rung politics is spreading and high-rung politics is fading. 

The solution: We need to be more aware of the vertical story—the high rungs and the low rungs—and we need to be more courageous about speaking out for what we value and what we believe. The audience can use this lens to sharpen their own thinking, have better conversations, and ultimately, help set society on a better trajectory.

Yes, you read that right. Brain implants. In this mind-spinning talk, Tim Urban puts on his futurist hat to look at the potential of this technology as only he can. 

Drawing on research gained while reporting on the cutting-edge Silicon Valley company, Neuralink, Tim shares the tantalizing possibilities as new frontiers of communication, collaboration, and creativity are opened up through BCI. He also examines the future vulnerabilities on this slow march toward cyborgdom, such as the implications of “thinking together” and the  possibility of having our memories accessed by hackers. With thought-provoking wit, voluminous knowledge, and plenty of his trademark drawings, Tim explains how BCI and intelligence amplification works and the future world that’s coming. It’s an inspiring and entertaining talk about the future that will put you ahead of the knowledge curve today – leaving you amazed and informed about what’s next.