Wait But Why
A popular long-form, stick-figure-illustrated blog about almost everything.
- Posts
- 222 from 8 Jul 2013 to 9 Mar 2026
- Posting
- now and then (2 in the last year)
- Kind
- personal blog
- Feed
- https://waitbutwhy.com/feed
2026 1
2025 2
2024 5
2023 30
- The Ant-Honey Problem
- 10 Thoughts from the Fourth Trimester
- Idea Labs Opt-Out
- Notes & Bibliography
- Acknowledgments, etc.
- Cast of Characters
- Changing Course
- Chapter 7: How to Conquer a Society (Part 4)
- Chapter 7: How to Conquer a Society (Part 3)
- Chapter 7: How to Conquer a Society (Part 2)
- Chapter 7: How to Conquer a Society (Part 1)
- Interlude: The Digital Cudgel
- Chapter 6: How to Conquer a College (Part 3)
- Chapter 6: How to Conquer a College (Part 2)
- Chapter 6: How to Conquer a College (Part 1)
- Interlude: The Tale of King Mustache
- Chapter 5: Social Justice, High and Low (Part 2)
- Chapter 5: Social Justice, High and Low (Part 1)
- Chapter 4: Rise of the Red Golem
- Wop hey
- Chapter 3: The Downward Spiral
- Chapter 2: Politics on the Ladder
- Interlude: The Liberal Games
- Chapter 1: The Ladder
- Introduction: The Big Picture
- What’s Our Problem? – Table Of Contents
- Audiobook
- A Short History of My Last Six Years
- What’s Our Problem? Bibliography
- Wop email
2021 2
2020 4
2019 1
2018 2
2017 3
2016 33
- The Sheer Delight of Google Earth Timelapse
- Wait But Why Holiday Stuff
- It’s Going to Be Okay – Follow Up
- It’s Going to Be Okay
- Results: WBW Election Survey
- 100 Blocks a Day
- The Second Presidential Debate
- SpaceX’s Big Fucking Rocket – The Full Story
- SpaceX’s Big Freaking Rocket – The Full Story (G-Rated Version)
- Mini post: Oceans and Clay
- The Marriage Decision: Everything Forever or Nothing Ever Again
- Wait But Hi – Full Report
- Wait But Hi Sunday Event
- Wait But Hi
- The Confusing Triangle Situation
- Everything I Ate Last Week
- Incredible “Day to Night” Photography
- The Puzzle Of The Pirate Booty
- Myers-Briggs: How WBW readers compare to the general population
- Clueyness: A Weird Kind of Sad
- Post Progress Meter
- Mailbag #1
- Song Kul Lake—pictures
- Confession: I Don’t Think Uber is Actually a Great Business (Yet)
- Why Cryonics Makes Sense
- My TED Talk
- Why I Should Never Drink a Full Cup of Starbucks Coffee
- How I Handle Long Email Delays
- Everything You Should Know About Sound
- The Jelly Bean Problem
- Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story
- Horizontal History
- You’re in the Future: 2016 Edition
2015 38
- SpaceX Launch Live Webcast and Explanation (12.21.15)
- The Tail End
- Birthdays Are Weird
- The Cook and the Chef: Musk’s Secret Sauce (G-rated version)
- The Cook and the Chef: Musk’s Secret Sauce
- Examining Elon Musk Up Close
- Update
- Wait But Why is Hiring
- SpaceX Audio Stuff
- Awesome
- How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars
- The SpaceX Post Progress Meter
- Shakespeare Coined a Shit-Ton of Words
- Pluto’s Big Moment
- There’s an Equal Number of People in the Blue and Red Areas
- Why I’m Always Late
- Three Fascinating Videos With Live Footage of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford
- The Deal With the Hyperloop
- Spectacular Video Putting WWII Deaths in Perspective
- The Deal With Solar
- How Tesla Will Change The World
- Putting Floyd Mayweather’s $210 Million Payout in Perspective
- Elon Musk Series: Introduction
- Gone For a Month
- Is the Man Saying Bar or Far?
- The Procrastination Matrix
- Trying Something Different With the Schedule
- 7.3 Billion People, One Building
- Two Succulent Videos
- The American Presidents—Johnson to McKinley
- The World’s Most Reliable Corollary
- Delicious Visual Map of History
- The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction
- The Most Depressing Buzzfeed Article of All Time
- The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
- Video Zoom-In on the Largest Image Ever Taken of Andromeda Galaxy
- Evolution of the Alphabet
- It’s 2015, and You’re in the Future
2014 71
- Our Most Popular Posts of 2014
- How to Build a Human (GIF)
- Amazing Timelapse Video of the Sun
- Some Street Artists Are Radder Than You
- The Teen Years: 9 Cringe-Inducing Realizations
- What Makes You You?
- 10 Types of Odd Friendships You’re Probably Part Of
- From 1,000,000 to Graham’s Number
- From 1 to 1,000,000
- Where Wait But Why Gets Its Traffic
- Fully Disassembled Volkswagen Golf
- Introducing the Dinner Table
- The Dark Secrets of the Bird World
- The Greatest Basketball Ending You’ve Never Seen
- Why You Should Use Lyft Instead of Uber
- Apple Pay is the first step in Apple’s financial services takeover
- Religion for the Nonreligious
- How Religion Got in the Way
- Why I Can’t Post On Time
- 29 Delicious Slow Motion GIFs
- Tuesday at Noon
- Odd Things in Odd Places – All 7 Travel Posts
- The Genie Question
- But What About Greenland?
- How the Panama Canal Works
- From Muhammad to ISIS: Iraq’s Full Story
- The Sun and Planet Sizes to Scale
- Your Life is Worse When You Know About Dust Mites
- What Makes a Face Trustworthy?
- This is a Single Photograph
- 19 Things I Learned in Nigeria
- Japan, and How I Failed to Figure it Out
- Russia: What You Didn’t Know You Don’t Know
- Happy Birthday Wait But Why
- Odd Things in Odd Places: Intro
- Amazing Run-Through of 17 British Accents
- Why Americans Don’t Love Soccer
- Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think
- If Andromeda Were Brighter, This is What You’d See
- Why You Secretly Hate Cool Bars
- The Fermi Paradox
- The Blood Vessels in Your Hand
- The Titanic Compared With a Modern Cruiseship
- 10 Absurdly Famous People You Probably Don’t Know Enough About
- Your Life in Weeks
- Traveling To The Third World Is Great And Also It Sucks
- Stick Figure Puzzle
- Stick Figure Puzzle – Solution
- Spending Profiles—More Info
- Everything You Don’t Know About Tipping
- Watch Yourself Evolve From Cell to Human in 53 Seconds
- The Tiniest Castle
- What Could You Buy With $241 Trillion?
- Why Sports Fans are Sports Fans
- Incredible Video Footage from 1906
- Why is My Laptop On?
- Energy for Dummies
- Worldwide Prevalence of Circumcision
- The Most and Least Expensive Cities
- Animation Showing Global Internet Usage
- The American Presidents—Washington to Lincoln
- How to Pick Your Life Partner – Part 2
- How to Pick Your Life Partner – Part 1
- Why Bugs Ruin Everything
- Your Family: Past, Present, and Future
- Frank Oz: The Most Impressive Man Alive
- The Great Perils of Social Interaction
- What Disney Characters Would Look Like in Real Life
- Head-On Collision Between 1959 Car and 2009 Car
- Every Single Laundry Cycle
- Crazy Fact About Population Density
2013 30
- 200 People’s New Year’s Resolutions
- Wait But Why Holiday Post
- Meet Your Ancestors (All of Them)
- How to Name a Baby
- 11 Awkward Things About Email
- Life is a Picture, But You Live in a Pixel
- 4 Mind-Blowing Things About Stars
- How to Beat Procrastination
- Why Procrastinators Procrastinate
- The Primate Awards
- The Battle to Lose the Independent Vote
- 10 Types of 30-Year-Old Single Guys
- What Does a Quadrillion Sour Patch Kids Look Like?
- 20 Things I Learned While I Was in North Korea
- Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy
- Putting All the World’s Water into a Big Cube
- All the Weird Toys From Your Childhood
- The Apple Game: How Good a Person Are You?
- 7 Asinine Things About Society
- Putting Time In Perspective – UPDATED
- Creepy Kids in Creepy Vintage Ads
- What If All 7.1 Billion People Moved To Tunisia?
- A-List Stars In Tiny Roles
- The Bunny Manifesto
- The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown
- 14 Shitty Sayings
- 12 Types Of People You’ll Find In Every Hostel
- God’s Wounded Ego
- Medieval People In Bad Situations
- 7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook