Episode 497: Nick Thompson: How Running 100 Miles Taught Him to Run a $13 Billion Media Empire

Speaker 1 Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

Speaker 2 Okay, you guys, Nick Thompson is on the show today. Nick is the CEO of The Atlantic.

Speaker 2 He is the fastest, well, he's actually a record holder, the fastest runner of his age group of 50K, of the 50K, right? Or

Speaker 2 say it nicer than I did.

Speaker 1 I'm the American record holder in the 50K for guys 45 up, and I'm the top ranked in the world for guys 45 up this year in the 50-mile.

Speaker 2 Kind of complicated, but he says it's like a tongue twister. It's a little bit confusing.
He's basically the fastest man in the world in his age category for 50K, right?

Speaker 1 Kind of like weird races.

Speaker 2 For like ultra-marathons.

Speaker 2 And don't forget, also, he is now the author of The Running Ground,

Speaker 2 which is a memoir/slash running book on, and that's actually been like has a lot of life lessons business lessons um which is why i like it i hope so and um and he's on the show today so by the way how we do this show is we start with a magic mind healthy shot since i don't i'm not a drinker and i'm sure you're not either given what you do for fun

Speaker 2 so this is basically a bunch of like yummy good stuff for you like ashwagwanda ashwagandha i can never say that ashwagandha i've said that so many times today you can look at the ingredients if you'd like but it's basically a performance shot.

Speaker 2 So, what you really should be doing is taking one of these before you do one of your big runs, and it'll keep you super focused and keep you, your, it'll keep your mind right.

Speaker 1 I'm all in favor of red beet, I'm all in favor of olive oil, I'm all in favor of everything in this.

Speaker 2 It's really great ingredients, and it tastes delicious.

Speaker 1 Turmeric, lions maneuver.

Speaker 2 It's good stuff. It's really good.
No, no, it's like really good.

Speaker 1 Take it right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And we just go, cheers, and then we do them down the hatchet.

Speaker 2 I've had a lot today. So I have to do it.

Speaker 1 Like all of that at the same time? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 They're good, though, right? Delicious. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're super good.

Speaker 1 I can give you some to take home. Awesome.

Speaker 2 They're delicious. So thanks, matching mine.
All right. So now let me ask you a question.
So you wrote this book. Like I said, it's kind of a hybrid book.

Speaker 2 It's not just like a straight on, like, how to run.

Speaker 2 It really is kind of, this is just like the galley, but it's really about like the book of how you running kind of bonded you and your father together.

Speaker 1 right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a large part of it.

Speaker 2 It is a large part of it. So what was your first running experience? And like, what kind of, like, obviously running had a massive impact on your life.

Speaker 1 It sure did. I started running weirdly when I was about five years old.
And my father, this was the running boom of the late 1970s, early 1980s.

Speaker 1 And my dad, whose life was coming apart in complicated ways, was running. in trying to hold his life together.
And so he's starting to train for a marathon and I would go and run with him.

Speaker 1 And I remember running a mile when I was with him. Maybe I think might have even run two miles, which is a lot for a five-year-old.
You were five.

Speaker 1 I remember running from my house to Pine Manor College and back, which is two and a half miles. Wow.
And it couldn't have been older than five because he left when I was six.

Speaker 1 So that was my introduction to the sport. And then in the 1982, when I was seven, he ran the New York Marathon and I went and watched him.

Speaker 1 And so some of the book is the description of my emotions and feelings as I watched him coming down the Queensborough Bridge or coming off the Queensborough Bridge at mile 16 of the New York Marathon.

Speaker 2 Wow. So describe what that felt like.
You said your daughter, your father left.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so my father left. I didn't understand it at the time.
I just knew he was there and then he wasn't there. He's going through all of this turmoil.
So he's a very interesting character.

Speaker 1 He grows up, you know, kind of grows up sort of poor, not poor, but like kind of on the wrong side of the trap. America.
He grows up in Oklahoma, Bacon, Oklahoma, on an Indian reservation.

Speaker 1 His father is high status on the Indian reservation. He's been a missionary.
He's come, worked at it, was then president of the college.

Speaker 1 My father grows up and he, you know, he doesn't really get along with his dad. His dad is this big, masculine, golden gloves guy from out here, California.
And

Speaker 1 my dad eventually escapes, right? And he's like, I can't handle it here in Oklahoma. And he gets a scholarship to Phillips Andover and then to Stanford and then to Oxford.

Speaker 1 He marries my mother's family. He's like in this prominent family in Washington.
But his career doesn't really work out, right?

Speaker 1 Jonathan Kennedy says he's going to be president, but like my dad just doesn't work out for my dad, right?

Speaker 1 And he starts drinking too much and then he realizes he's gay and that he's been hiding his sexuality his whole life and so that's right about 1980 1981 so he realized that after i'm born obviously yeah um you know obviously yeah i guess i kind of figured that one out right um and so it's this hinge point in his life when he's 40 years old and he's like his his head it's all just turmoil and his life after that is quite chaotic um deeply chaotic which we can get into But at that point, he's still able to hold it together.

Speaker 1 And so he's running, he's running a marathon. It's just kind of enough to keep him going.

Speaker 1 And so for me, my memory is just absolute fascination with watching my father run, this love emanating from him, this excitement. Just missed breaking three hours, which was such a cool goal.

Speaker 1 And I have this vivid memory. He ran like, I think it was like three hours and 50 seconds.
I was like, well, why didn't he just sprint? Right.

Speaker 1 Well, actually, that's quite a big distance, you know? Right. So that's what I remember from the race.

Speaker 2 So, like, when you decided to write this book, so you are, you, you obviously glean so many lessons from running.

Speaker 2 What would you say the number, the biggest lesson that running has taught you for life?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the, I mean, the, the biggest,

Speaker 1 then why don't I start with the realization that led me write the book, which is, which is quite related to your question. And so I, um, when I was about 30, I ran a marathon.

Speaker 1 I ran a lot of marathons in my 20s and tried to break three hours and couldn't. When I was 30, I ran a marathon at 243, which is, which is very good.
And then right afterwards, I got cancer. And then

Speaker 1 it took me two years to really get back at it. And I ran another marathon at 243.
And then for the next 10 years, I ran like, I don't know, 15 marathons. I pretty much ran them all at 243.

Speaker 1 It's pretty weird, right? You know, from age 30 to 40, you should be slowing. You should be doing something.

Speaker 2 I'm going to do that at the same speed on top of it.

Speaker 1 Same speed, like always 243. And then in my 40s,

Speaker 1 I get way better, right? And I run a 229 at age 44, which is completely different, right?

Speaker 1 Unless you're a marathon, you don't really know the difference between those times, but 243 to 229 is, it's a step change, right? It's a big difference.

Speaker 1 And I was thinking after i ran that 229 like what like why why did i run how did i get so much faster and i remember the day and i was running across the brooklyn bridge and i had this realization you know what i hadn't run faster because all i had wanted to do was to run as fast as i had been before i got sick right you got sick before 30 right or yeah i got sick before 30.

Speaker 1 so i had run 243 got sick, recovered, and then ran 243 over and over and over and over and over and over again. And I kind of had this realization.
So I was like, okay, wow.

Speaker 1 So what determines how fast you run is your body. It's how strong your calf muscles are and your VO2 max and all that stuff.
But so much of it is up here, right?

Speaker 1 So much of it is the limits you put on yourself.

Speaker 1 And it was that realization that made me want to write the book to understand more about what slowed me down, what sped me up, what slowed my father down, what sped him up.

Speaker 1 And then to look at the lives of other runners to understand what the sport could teach about the hard things in their lives.

Speaker 2 I feel like running is like a microcosm for life. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right? There you go. That's, see, she just written the blurb on the back of the book.
I know. That's the goal, right? That's like the goal of the book is to show how it can be that.

Speaker 2 It is a microcosm. The reason why I had you on the podcast today was because I

Speaker 2 feel the same way about like overall, like just fitness, exercise.

Speaker 2 I think the like the lessons, the life lessons, the soft skills that people learn by doing these hard things over and over again is like it is it's teaching you how to have grit and coping mechanisms and be successful in every other aspect of your life.

Speaker 2 And so I think fitness is like a microcosm for life. And I think especially running, because running, there's a real mental game with it.
I run every day.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I told you that, not a hundred miles like you, but I hate running. I hate running more than anything on the planet.
I really do. And that is why I do it every day

Speaker 2 because it will, it constantly instills in my brain that I can do a hard thing. If I can do this today, I've accomplished something.
I can do, you know, I could do it again tomorrow.

Speaker 2 And there's nothing that clears my mind and keeps me on point

Speaker 2 better than running. There's nothing.
There's no other cardio. There's no other thing in the world.

Speaker 2 Like, I believe there's a straight line between people who are runners and people who are like super successful in business, in life, in everything else. I really do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, and that's part of the thesis of the book that because running is so simple,

Speaker 1 it's you, it's your shoes, it's the road, right? You can do it any day, anywhere, it's your thoughts. You're alone in your head, right?

Speaker 1 And so you get deep into your head while you run and you can also understand yourself because there's no racket, there's no ball, there's no, there's nothing else, there's no water, right?

Speaker 1 It's just you out there. And so the simplicity of it kind of opens up the complexity of human understanding and habit formation and all the things that you were just talking about.

Speaker 2 So, is that so? Walk me through your life. Like, you were running with your dad, obviously.

Speaker 2 You saw him with like, so did something kind of like tweak in your brain where, like, your neuros, like, did your neuro, like, did something like your neuroplot, like neurons in your brain kind of become addicted to running because you saw what it was doing for yourself, your life outside?

Speaker 2 Did you realize the endorphins? Like, what kind of was that moment where you felt like you became a runner?

Speaker 1 That's a hard question, actually, because it happens really, it really happens maybe three different times. And so it happens when I'm five, right?

Speaker 1 And I think of myself as a runner, but I stop, right? My dad moves away and I run with him occasionally, but I wasn't a runner. And then in high school, I'm

Speaker 1 play soccer, basketball, tennis, and I get cut from the basketball team, right? My sophomore year in high school, I show up at this new school sophomore year.

Speaker 1 I get cut and I get cut from the varsity, which I think I'm going to make. And then I get cut from the JB, pretty embarrassing.
And then I get cut from the JV2, right? Like that's pretty hard to.

Speaker 2 You're not really a good basketball player is what you're trying to tell me.

Speaker 1 Or the cry. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I thought I was pretty good, but clearly not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 2 Other people were maybe a little bit slightly better.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there were definitely players who were, I mean, I still, I should have made that JV2 team. I mean, I will stand by this.

Speaker 1 But no, I wasn't, I wasn't good. And so the only sport you could do was track.

Speaker 1 And so I started to do track and I discovered I was good, right? And then that gave me confidence. I was in a new school.
It's a hard school. I wasn't doing very well.
I wasn't that socially accepted.

Speaker 1 But then suddenly, you know, in a month or two, I'm a track star and suddenly I'm cool.

Speaker 2 Cause you were fast. I was fast.
So could I ask you a question? Yeah. Cause like when you walked in here, I'm like, oh, of course, you know, like you have the body type to make a good runner.

Speaker 2 You know, there is a genetic component, I do believe. Like, I mean, to becoming an ultra-marathoner, like it's, if you are kind of like more voluptuous, I feel more athletic.

Speaker 2 Like it's very hard because it's like the people that do the best, best, they have very, like, they have very narrow hips, they're very, their, their body types are a certain way.

Speaker 2 So do you feel that you just naturally were like you're, you're, you were built to be, if you're going to be doing a sport, I'm not surprised it's running. You're built to be a runner.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I definitely, to those of you who are not watching the audio version, I am a skinny guy.

Speaker 2 That's what I was trying to say. You're a skinny person.
Yes.

Speaker 2 But you're also looks like you're, were you always just very genetically thin?

Speaker 1 I wasn't as thin as I am now. You know, probably weighed a bit more when I was that age.

Speaker 1 But yeah, clearly when I show up on the track team, the coach looks at me and he's not going to say, go do the shot put. Right, right, right.
Or go do wrestling or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, like, clearly, this kid should be running the distances, right? Maybe the mile, maybe the two mile, but he's not going to be a sprinter. He's not going to be a shot putter.

Speaker 1 He's not going to be a long jumper. Yeah.
Yeah. So I'm physically built to be a long distance runner.
Right. And, you know, probably to a degree that...

Speaker 1 you don't even appreciate like part of it is my size but i have other genetic advantages it turns out that i'm reasonably durable it turns out that I have a reasonably high, you know, efficient cardiovascular system.

Speaker 1 And running is this very weird sport where, you know, it's power times efficiency divided by mass. And I have like low mass, right?

Speaker 1 And so you can have like relatively, you know, your power and efficiency. You can compensate by having low mass.

Speaker 2 Do you find it harder to run as you get older because of your, just because it's so hard in your body?

Speaker 2 Like I won't even do a marathon because I find that the pounding on your joints can be really hard.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm extremely fortunate in that I've had almost no injuries in running, which is very rare and surprising.

Speaker 1 Because your body type. Because my body type, then I also have this wonderful thing that happened, kind of weird, which is that I was a musician in my 20s.

Speaker 1 I was a guitarist, and I had really debilitating wrist pain. I played a very like physical kind of guitar, right? Okay.

Speaker 1 And when I was about 24, 25, I was playing in the New York City subways, played all the time, right? Played all these concerts in New York. And I just just couldn't move my wrist.

Speaker 1 I couldn't like open the door. I couldn't like brush my teeth.
And I tried all these different things. I tried injections.

Speaker 1 I used to, in fact, I re-keyed my keyboard so that the letters are kind of closer together. I still type that way, which is like a very nice security hack.

Speaker 1 Like when I give my laptop to someone, they always get confused.

Speaker 2 Wow. I never would ever think to do that.

Speaker 1 It's so cool. It's called the Dvorak keyboard.
It makes you type more quickly, but it also means less strain on your fingers. Anyway.

Speaker 2 That's not it anyway. That's like a great thing to know.

Speaker 2 It's awesome. And where do you even get that from?

Speaker 1 So you can just change your software. Like you can go into your computer right there and just change keyboard layout to Dvorak and then all the letters will be different, right?

Speaker 1 Because the initial keyboard was set up to kind of slow you down so that the keys on old typewriters don't jam. Like look at your keyboard.
The letters make no sense.

Speaker 2 They don't. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.
Like letters you don't use are in the middle of the keyboard where your index fingers go.

Speaker 2 This is crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's so dumb and it's so annoying once you're aware of it, right? There's no logic to it whatsoever.

Speaker 1 So this thing called the Dvorak keyboard puts the letters you use the most and the patterns you use the most in the simplest when i type it's like this when most people type it's like

Speaker 1 right that's so true what a great thing to like that so it probably saves you a lot of time i mean i don't know how much time it saves you but saves you a little bit of time

Speaker 1 and it is a good security hack right like somebody steals my laptop and starts typing away they'll just unless they know how to well now i've given away my secret right oh yeah

Speaker 1 do you have a lot of thieves who listen to your podcast i think maybe i don't know i can make sure to edit this part out

Speaker 1 anyway so back to the back to the injury so i did all these like crazy things trying to make it better. And then I went and saw someone who teaches the Alexander technique.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it's a training of posture training for actors and musicians. And he says, bring your guitar.
And I bring my guitar and he watches me play. And he's like, well, this will be easy.

Speaker 1 And then he just adjusts the way I hold my feet and the way I hold my head and the way I hold my wrist when I play guitar. And then this two years of agony.
goes away in like weeks, right?

Speaker 1 Almost immediately I can feel a difference, like my wrist no longer hurts. So suddenly suddenly, I've learned this way of holding my body that makes this injury go away.

Speaker 1 And so, now that was 25 years ago, anytime I start to hurt, right? Like, I had a, I just did a big race afterwards. I had a little tendonitis in my knee.

Speaker 1 I suddenly have a way of holding my body to increase energy flow, increase balance that makes me hurt less. And so, when I run, my posture is very much based on Alexander technique.

Speaker 1 And I'm convinced that that and the general practice of learning how to like release muscle tension that came from this guitar injury has prevented me or helped prevent me from having injury problems as I've gotten older.

Speaker 1 Now, that said, I'll probably like break my ankle tomorrow. I know.
Don't even say that.

Speaker 2 What shoes do you wear?

Speaker 1 I wear all kinds of different running shoes. I ran my last one in, I guess I ran the Ultra in the Nike Ultra Flies.
I did my last 50 mile.

Speaker 2 You were in Nikes in, you wore actual Nikes when you did like an ultra marathon. Not trail Nikes.

Speaker 2 No, but Nikes, it's kind of known to be like a nice looking shoe, but not really a performance-based shoe.

Speaker 1 Well, the Vaporflies and the Ultra Flies, they have the performance shoes, and they wore the Puma R3s in the last 50 mile. I wore New Balances in the race before that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like, I would think you were an A6 or a New Balance kind of person, because they're more Brooks even.

Speaker 1 I alternate shoes a lot, and I alternate shoes because it changes the tension and pressure it puts on your body. Right.
So if you wear like, you know.

Speaker 1 you know, I don't know, high lift in the heel, right? Like, you know, lots of cushioning under there, maybe it puts more pressure on your Achilles and maybe less on your knee.

Speaker 1 And what you want to do is you want to alternate the amount of pressure.

Speaker 1 And so I actually think you should wear as many different kinds of shoes as you can during a training cycle, but you should be very particular about the ones you race in.

Speaker 1 And so I do a lot of data analysis to figure out what shoes I should race in on a particular course on a particular day. But when I'm training, I vary it a ton.

Speaker 2 That's a really good, that's actually a great tip. So what are your top shoes to train in?

Speaker 1 So for what kind of, like just for around the day?

Speaker 2 No, like just to, if you're just, yeah, for a few miles around the day, a few miles. Yeah.
So three or four miles a day.

Speaker 1 I've been wearing the Puma Nitros. I think they're like a very good pair.
You know, the Puma R3s, fast R3s are what I, what I raced in.

Speaker 1 I think the Nike Pegasus and the Nike Romeros are really good training shoes. And then I use the Vapor Flies for road races and the Ultra Flies for trail races.
I use on shoes for,

Speaker 1 you know, regular running, the Cloud Booms, I think are very cool. I've been running Hokas.
You like hokas? Sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 So, like, I ran in the Rockets. They're cool.
How about you?

Speaker 2 How about the idea of, do you wear orthotics or anything like that? No. Is it because you think that they're not good for your feet? Because it puts your foot into a weirder position?

Speaker 2 Or, because that's what

Speaker 2 a lot of my friends have been telling me that I should be getting out of orthotics and just wear, you know, even go barefoot and like do stuff barefoot. So you should

Speaker 1 slide shoes. I do think you should do some stuff barefoot.
I don't think you should ever run like on a a road barefoot. No, not in a road.

Speaker 1 Okay. There was this, there was this moment like 15 years ago and everybody's running barefoot and then they it was like great for like a week and then they all stepped on nails.

Speaker 2 Right. No, no, no.
I was going to say, how about even like walking on a treadmill with bare feet?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's great. So I think that's good and I think it's good spiritually and I think it's good physically, right? I think it strengthens your ankles, it strengthens your toes.

Speaker 1 I run on golf courses barefoot. So I will go and do sprints on a golf course after a workout or strides or on a soccer field.

Speaker 1 Like maybe I'll run a workout around a track and then I'll do strides afterwards on the grass barefoot, which I think is great for strengthening your feet and just kind of connecting your toes and your head, the sky.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's really wonderful. But I do think that I'm not against orthotics.
Your doctor says use orthotics, use them. I do think you really want to vary your shoes, right? Because I do think that it

Speaker 1 changes a lot. And also, I learned this really interesting lesson once.
And I was talking to this really smart guy about running. And

Speaker 1 I'd like gone and I'd run down. I'd run up and down this mountain and I'd run in kind of worn out shoes and my quads hurt like hell.
I call him up and I'm like, this is so stupid.

Speaker 1 He's like, no, that was smart. I was like, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 He's like, the whole point is you want your quads at some point in your training cycle to get more stressed than they will in the marathon, right?

Speaker 1 And because in a marathon, you're going to do 26 miles, pounding on a road, your quads are going to hurt, your cardiovascular system is going to hurt. You're going to get dehydrated.

Speaker 1 You're going to have gastric distress. At some point in the training cycle, you want to stress each of those systems more than you'll stress it in the marathon.

Speaker 1 In the marathon, you'll stress everything to the max on that day. Training, you want to stress everything a little bit more.
So one way to do it is to run down a mountain in bad shoes.

Speaker 1 And so what he was saying is your quads hurt because you stress them and now they're growing back stronger. You run down the mountain in really nice shoes.
You actually hurt your quads less.

Speaker 1 And so they develop less muscular resilience. And so I kind of like the idea of messing around with different shoes, running barefoot, running in bad shoes, you know, all of that.

Speaker 2 That's really, but like the thing is, what about injury? That's how people get injured, right?

Speaker 2 Like if I didn't, if I have a bad bad ankle or a bad knee and I'm not wearing orthotics, I would be nervous that I would obviously hurt myself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can, that is definitely a counter argument.

Speaker 1 And I would say that maybe actually what you need to do is if you have a bad knee, change whatever shoes you wore when you got the bad knee, or every other day, wear a different pair of shoes because maybe it's those shoes are putting the extra pressure on your knee and you should shift some of the pain to your Achilles.

Speaker 1 But hey, I'm not a knee doctor, and don't take this advice too.

Speaker 2 I'm not a shoe salesman either, but that's i just i i'm very i love um i love like the nitty-gritty of things though too right like that's what i i like love that stuff so okay so now i know the shoe situation so how did you when you became like i still don't know so when you were running like did you become obsessed with the feeling afterwards oh yeah like i didn't answer your initial question which is like what was the thing that pulled me in Initially, I think it was actually, it wasn't the feeling of the sport, right?

Speaker 1 And I spent a lot of time thinking about this because

Speaker 1 I think it was really just the self-confidence, right? And it was the,

Speaker 1 yeah, you know, and it translated across my life. And I'm a little like embarrassed to say that because now I think I believe like you run for self-transcendence and you run for all kinds of things.

Speaker 1 But I didn't understand that when I was 18 years old. I loved running

Speaker 1 because it's fun. I love going up mountains.
I've always loved going up mountains, right? And I did feel a spiritual connection while I did that.

Speaker 1 And you do get in a Dorphan Rush when you're running fast. But like, I stopped when when I wasn't good anymore, right? I went to a very good, a college with a very good team and I wasn't good enough.

Speaker 1 Where'd you go?

Speaker 2 Stanford, right?

Speaker 1 And so they won the NCA title. And like, they're great, right? Yeah.
And my freshman recruiting class was a class that went on to win NCAs, right?

Speaker 1 So it's a bunch of like great runners and I wasn't fast enough. And I quit, right?

Speaker 1 And I spent a lot of time when I was writing the book thinking about that decision. And part of it, I don't feel great about it.
I think I quit.

Speaker 1 The funny thing thing is this. Now that I realize how fast I am in my 40s, I had the talent to be on that team.
Like I could have been a very successful runner on that Stanford team.

Speaker 1 Like I know that now. I stopped before I realized that.
So why did I stop? And I stopped because I didn't love the sport for deep enough reasons, right?

Speaker 1 I stopped because I got injured, I fell behind, and then it seemed impossible to catch up. And so I quit, right?

Speaker 1 You know, had I understood the kind of the spiritual dimension, the deeper dimensions of running back when I was 18, I probably would have kept running.

Speaker 1 And then sort of ironically, i would have probably realized that i was fast enough to be on the team but whatever i'm glad i didn't run on the team because it's pretty hard to be a college athlete and you miss a lot of other stuff like i probably wouldn't have met my wife so like you don't think so because you've been had so many hours just running well right running is also a solo sport so much of time is spent alone and you but you i would have spent my whole college my college life would have been focused on the team which is great you may have met someone else yeah but you know i'm very happy with the wife i met.

Speaker 2 What I'm saying is, you never know how lightweight.

Speaker 2 You never know, right? Sliding doors, right? Life could have gone this way, life could have gone that way based on whatever small little decision that we made.

Speaker 1 You can't unwind one thing.

Speaker 2 You can't ever unwind.

Speaker 1 Okay, so now back to you. I'm going to actually answer your question because I've now kind of failed twice, right? I've sort of half answered the second time.

Speaker 1 So part of it, so initially I was running for part, I started running because it was a bond with my father.

Speaker 1 When I was 15 and I sort of discovered running for the second time, it was about self-confidence.

Speaker 1 And then I think in my 20s and 30s, right, when I started to really love it, it became a form of meditation, right? And it became a way of,

Speaker 1 it was like a connection to a different part of the world. So I started this very, I've worked very hard in these intense jobs in media in New York City, right?

Speaker 1 And I go in and I work and I work all day, right? And I work on hard stuff and it's stressful all the time. And the way I do it is I run in and then I run home.

Speaker 1 And so running became this way of like detaching, right? Even while you live in New York City, even while you have this intense to-do list, even though when you're working, you're getting up at 4 a.m.

Speaker 1 and working, you're working till late, like running became this kind of release and this different way to recenter myself. So that's when I think I began to really love the sport.

Speaker 2 So how much, how long were you running? Like, how long did it take you to run to work and back?

Speaker 1 It's like, it depends on where my office has been. The longest it's ever been is eight and a half miles from my house.
So then I would usually only run one direction.

Speaker 1 Most of the last 15 years, it's been about four to five miles from my house. And so it's 10 miles if you do it both ways.

Speaker 2 and do you like take a shower at the office or you don't care you just like work i worked at conde nast like i gotta like i'm in the elevators with the editors of vogue yeah i was gonna say what are you doing then you can see you're all sweaty coming to

Speaker 1 coming to the office it's a little it was a little awkward i would shower at a gym nearby right but then you still have to change you change you shower you change back your running clothes and then you you keep your suit at the office and then you change like the bathroom at the office like you figure out how to do it it's it's a little weird it's a little awkward i mean but it works it works but also were you doing it for a sense of like stress like just stress release like you always have these big media jobs was it your like outlet for just stress

Speaker 1 well it was the outlet for stress it's also quite efficient i mean most it's the most efficient right like because you got to get to work somehow somehow and it's like not actually any slower than the subway

Speaker 2 so no but i just mean in general like did you become addicted to running I don't think I ever became addicted to running, but I did.

Speaker 1 You didn't?

Speaker 2 I love it. Every time you ran, like, you actually like

Speaker 2 the process of running.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I love the process of running.

Speaker 2 So I love the feeling after running. I don't love the running while I'm doing it.

Speaker 1 Oh, I like it. Both.
Oh, totally. Oh, you do? Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 So, again, what is your, how do you think running, what about what did running teach you that made you successful in other parts of your life?

Speaker 1 Ah, that's a hard question. And it's also interesting, the inverse of that.
What did working hard teach me about running? I think the most important lesson is

Speaker 1 the sort of the benefit of like consistent daily practice. Because what you realize with running is that if you go every day and you run like you do, right?

Speaker 1 Or you run like anybody and you run three miles every day or four miles every day, you get better, right? And you do see that.

Speaker 1 And because running, it's just you and the clock, you can actually see for sure that you're getting better, right? If you play tennis every day, you might not realize you're getting better.

Speaker 1 You probably do, but it's a little harder. It's very clear with running.
And so you learn that consistent practice gets you better, right?

Speaker 1 And then you go through these periods where you run a marathon, you take some time to recover, you start up again, you're like, oh my God, I'm never going to be fast again.

Speaker 1 Then you just go through the same process again and you realize, actually, I will be as fast again, right? And so you kind of learn the consistent practice and then you learn.

Speaker 1 Like consistent practice is actually hard because some days it's hot and some days it's cold and some days it's rainy and some days, you know, you don't don't have a lot of time and some days your foot kind of hurts and some days you're sick to your stomach and some days there's like a bee's nest whatever right like there's always a reason not to run but once you commit to it then you just learn to get past those reasons and you learn that you should just do it in the time available and that's a really good habit for your job and i'm not sure which i learned first right like if you want to get something done at your job you just have to do it right now right or like the best time to do it is It's right now.

Speaker 1 It's right now. Don't procrastinate.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 And if you have to get something done in the next hour, like start now. Don't complain about how you only have an hour.
Same thing with running.

Speaker 1 If you want to get your running like, and you have a window, you just go and do it. And so that's part of it.
I also do think endurance translates. And that, you know, I do some things in my job where

Speaker 1 you do all hands with the staff in a complicated situation. You have to be on and answering questions for two hours.
Right. And if you make a mistake, like, you know, it might be in the news.

Speaker 1 And like, how do you get good at that? Not that I'm as good as I could be. Probably helps to run marathons, right? Right.
And doing that probably helps you're marathoning, right?

Speaker 1 I too think the two things go back and forth. Like the ability to focus hard at a job, I think helps me focus in my training and the training helps me in the job.

Speaker 1 Now, they distract from each other too, right? Because sometimes I have a project and I go running. Maybe I should work on the project.

Speaker 2 But probably the run afterwards. probably made your brain way more sharp, way more focused, productive.

Speaker 2 Like the benefits I think from the running will probably make you way more successful at your job because you're now like center. It centers you probably too.

Speaker 1 Totally. And I kind of have always worked like three shifts.
Like I get up and I work and then I run and then I have my job and then I go home and I work. Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 In between, I like, now that I have kids, I spend all that time playing with my kids, but at some point they go to sleep. Right.

Speaker 1 And then after they go to sleep, I tend to work. Right.
And when I wake up early, I tend to work. So it's like, if I just work, work, worked, subway, work, subway, work.

Speaker 2 Right. It breaks up your day.
Yeah. It breaks up your day.
Yeah. So, well, I guess what would be your big message then for people listening to the podcast?

Speaker 2 Like what, what they can, what you're, why did you write the book in the first place? Just as a, so you like to run, right? Like,

Speaker 2 big deal. I like to run, but, you know, like, what would be, why did you write the book?

Speaker 1 I wrote the book to try to understand more about. like why I run and what I get from it.
And I also wrote like the book has stories of different runners who

Speaker 1 have used running as a way to get through really complicated stuff. And it's people who enter my life at different points.
So, you know, one of the characters is this guy, Tony Ruiz, who is my coach.

Speaker 1 And he used running as a way to sort of conquer his heroin addiction. Right.
Another is a guy named Michael Westphal who beat my dad in a race and then like was one place behind my son. Right.

Speaker 1 And his story is the fastest runner to run a marathon with Parkinson's. Right.

Speaker 1 And so it's learning about how to cope with the physical decline caused by Parkinson's and how to use running to help with that.

Speaker 1 I tell the story of this woman, Super Beckford, who ran a store down the street from my dad.

Speaker 1 And for nine years in a row, she ran and she won the 3,100-mile race in Queens, where you run 3,000 miles around the same block.

Speaker 1 And so that's a story of using running as like intense self-transcendence.

Speaker 2 This is what I love about it. Also,

Speaker 2 it's like, again, it's like

Speaker 2 to everybody,

Speaker 2 it's funny how running could transcend or transform people's lives in lots of different ways, right? Like, and I see the evolution. Like, I think what you said was very resonated.

Speaker 2 Like, people start for one reason, like for self-confidence, right? Or weight loss, right? And then it turns into like meditation.

Speaker 2 It becomes like my meditation and how it like, it like helps people who, you know, get through really hard times in life.

Speaker 2 Like, it's like, there is something about running that is very different than any other, I don't know, modality out there.

Speaker 1 That's right. Right.
I think that's right. It can, there are negative things.
It can make you self-centered, right? You know, it can make you selfish.

Speaker 1 How?

Speaker 2 How? Because you're saying it's a lot of solo time. You're doing a lot of like stuff for yourself.
And like, because people who are ultra marathoners, you're spending like hours a day

Speaker 2 running by yourself.

Speaker 1 What is the joke though?

Speaker 1 How do you find out how fast someone ran a marathon when you meet them at a dinner party? Don't worry. They'll tell you.
Right. Like, you know,

Speaker 2 that's hilarious.

Speaker 1 You know, there are ways that it can make you a little too focused on yourself. But I think for the most part.

Speaker 2 Why do you think that is, though?

Speaker 2 Well, because I think that's an interesting take.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in part because like you're not part of a team usually.

Speaker 1 It's you, right?

Speaker 1 It's just you like part of what makes it such a good form of meditation and self-understanding is what makes you like potentially self-centered about it so there's it's i guess that's kind of you know it's true right because you're again i always go back to the fact that you're alone it's like a it's a it's a one-man sport type of thing right right you're like and i mean if i if i were sitting here and i wanted to kind of like if i want to make the case against running right a it can make you self-centered and b like what is success like all you're doing is pushing the other people back, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you know, you finish one place higher, everybody else finishes one place lower, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you're actually, like in a team, you're with a bunch of other people and you're competing against a bunch of other people. In a marathon, like, you're competing against everybody.

Speaker 2 Everybody, exactly. But how is that different than swimming?

Speaker 1 It's not. It's not.
I mean, well, swimming, I guess, I mean, I don't know exactly how most swimming meets are scored, but.

Speaker 2 Well, no, but it's similar.

Speaker 1 It's similar. I mean, in swimming, it might be worse because you can go out and you can do it like four hours a day or five hours a day and like turn turn everything else off in your life.

Speaker 2 Well, what do you, okay, how do you use running?

Speaker 1 So part of like part of the hard thing, like one of the interesting and complex things in running, right?

Speaker 1 I guess we're going to go down the like, what's hard about running a bit for, which is nice because, you know, like if my wife were here and you gave her truth serum, right, she would tell you that she's annoyed at my running sometimes.

Speaker 1 Like, what the hell? Like, you're like, she came downstairs the other day. Like, normally I get up.
Right. I make everybody breakfast, right? Put the breakfast on the table.

Speaker 1 And then like they come down and we all eat. And the other day I went running because then I'll go run to work.
Right. But the other day I like went running.
She came downstairs.

Speaker 1 I'm like, where's Nick? Right. And I kind of thought I'd be back before she woke up, but no, right.
And that's a minor infraction. Right.
We have a very healthy marriage. We've been together forever.

Speaker 1 But there are times where like,

Speaker 1 you know, I'll go for a long run and she'll be like, what is he doing? Why isn't he here? Like, there's stuff going on.

Speaker 2 Like, how many hours are we talking?

Speaker 1 Well, if I go for a long, I try to do it before everybody wakes up, right? So, if I'm going to go run three hours, I'll go leave at six, right? Or I'll go leave at five.

Speaker 2 But by the way, that's actually quite like thoughtful in a way. You're not running at like 10 o'clock when everyone's running around looking for you.

Speaker 1 Of course not.

Speaker 2 Nope, don't be, don't say that.

Speaker 1 I would be divorced by that.

Speaker 2 I mean, well, right, but I have, I've had a lot of people sit here with me who are big ultra-marathoners and all the things. And the ones that like who check themselves, they're doing it.

Speaker 2 They're running at four o'clock in the morning or doing all these things because of this reason, right?

Speaker 1 Also, So part of it is like running has never been the most important thing in my life.

Speaker 1 It's always been important, but it's never been, I mean, this was part of the problem at college. It wasn't the most important thing in my life, right?

Speaker 1 You know, it's why I,

Speaker 1 you know, at my age of peak physical fitness, I came in, you know, was, I don't know, 200th place in a marathon where if I'd really like focused, I could have come in, you know, significantly faster.

Speaker 1 It's always been something I've put a lot of time and effort into, but it's always had a place, right?

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Speaker 2 So, again, so did you write the book to kind of what was the main message of the book, though, that you wanted to share with people?

Speaker 1 The main message of the book is that running can be a wonderful psychological force in your life, and it can be a way for you to understand yourself, to understand others around you, and to build habits that are great for the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 Is it because, okay, so that's the beginning.

Speaker 2 And then is it because you have a lot of time to think and it and it gives you a place where you can like, that's for me, I get my best ideas when I'm running, right?

Speaker 2 Like I don't like to do yoga, but I like to run because that's when I think of the best. Is that what you mean by that? It's a, it's a very meditative, it could be very meditative.

Speaker 2 It can, you know, bring up certain things that you because you're, it's kind of like you're bored.

Speaker 2 You're like alone in your thoughts for all these hours that's when creativity lies that's where i you know thoughts come into your head yeah is that what you mean like are you a better ceo because you run definitely definitely it's a way of spurring a creative process in your head, right?

Speaker 1 So you have the possibility of thinking, right?

Speaker 1 And as you observe yourself, as you run, you think more deeply about yourself and you think more deeply about your place in the world, which is why, like in that case of Tony, who I was just mentioning, like it was a very important factor in his ability to come back from, you know, debilitating drug addiction, right?

Speaker 1 It's a way to like stay centered and to think about who you are and what your place in the world is, right? And it's a way to just understand like complicated things in life.

Speaker 1 So my sense is that now running isn't the only way to do this stuff, right? Like my point is not, you know, run, don't bike or run, don't swim. Running is just the thing I know.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so it was a way for me to write about the thing I know in the deepest way I could come up with, right?

Speaker 1 So the first review of the book called it Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for Runners, right?

Speaker 1 And so the idea there is like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a way of writing about bikes, right? That would help you understand father-son relationships kind of philosophy, right?

Speaker 1 One of the books I read a lot was Barbarian Days. That's a way of like writing about surfing as a way to understand father-son relationships, how a young man develops.

Speaker 1 So this is a way of like writing about running as a way to try to get at some of the complicated things in life, including my relationship to my father, all of these different other runners coping with different barriers.

Speaker 2 Talk about the father relationship. Yes.

Speaker 2 What was the relationship? Like, how did running help you cope with your relationship with your father?

Speaker 1 Yeah. So to get to there, so my father, I mentioned a little bit his like interesting, you know, childhood.
And then.

Speaker 2 Is he alive right now?

Speaker 1 He passed away in 2017. But his life,

Speaker 1 so he comes out of the closet in the 1980s. He's working in the Reagan administration, and he's actually plays kind of an important civil rights role.
Like

Speaker 1 he's a rare, outwardly gay Republican, right?

Speaker 1 And he has this position that being open about your sexuality, you know, the more people who know that gay people are everywhere, the more tolerance there will be in the world.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm very, you know, I have a lot of admiration for that. But he's also kind of a maniac, and he ends up in relationship after relationship, like hundreds of men a year who he's dating.

Speaker 1 He like proposes marriage and exchanges rings with like dozens of of them. He ends up essentially running a male brothel in Southeast Asia.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so he has this and he's, you know, he's run out of money. He's kind of a tax fugitive.
He's like in all of these lawsuits with everybody.

Speaker 1 Like there's all of this like incredible tension in mayhem. He's calling me up and like threatening to kill himself if I don't send him $200 so he can pay off the prostitute he's just got.

Speaker 1 Like it's a mess, right?

Speaker 1 So he's a complicated guy, like a guy who John F. Kennedy said was going to be president ends up in Southeast Asia like completely bankrupt with a harem, right? Like complicated stuff.

Speaker 2 So really, this is a book about your dad, but you have to like, you have to kind of couch it as something beyond because nobody knows who he is.

Speaker 1 Nobody knows who.

Speaker 1 He's an amazing character, right? And he's a very complicated character.

Speaker 2 And I have to

Speaker 1 deal with him. And I stay weirdly to many people.
I stay quite close to him his whole life, even as this is going on. Like, I love the guy deeply.

Speaker 1 email back and forth every day, even while he's going through this. I'm kind of financially supporting him at the end, the last five or ten years of his life.

Speaker 2 Even though he didn't raise you after five.

Speaker 1 Correct. And even though he was pretty hostile to my mother, yeah.
I mean, he was a,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 he, he did a lot of bad things, but he always loved me, right? So that's like a very important part of part. He always wanted the best for me.
He always like thought the world of me.

Speaker 1 He always supported me. He was always there for me.
You know, he was never,

Speaker 1 he never didn't love me. And that's the first thing you should ask for from a parent.
So I forgave him a lot.

Speaker 2 Did you have a time when you didn't forgive him? Was there ever a moment in time when there was like estrangement?

Speaker 1 Or there's never estrangement. There is anger, but there's never estrangement.
Yeah. He was estranged from my sisters.

Speaker 1 Like he was, they had a more complicated, they had a harder relationship with him, but he was, I was never estranged from him.

Speaker 2 It's funny, even when you talk about your dad now, you can see you're very emotional about him.

Speaker 1 I know it's a little hard to

Speaker 2 talk about him.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 many people who met him said they never met anybody quite like him. Like, he was this

Speaker 1 just incredible, like, bundle of energy and excitement and interesting. And he's like so smart.
And he'd be so fun to talk to.

Speaker 1 And if you met him, he was here for a, like a party or dinner or cocktails and showed up.

Speaker 1 He'd like showed up and he'd probably like break something and he'd like spill wine on this nice chair and like be kind of impossible.

Speaker 1 And he'd probably like, you know, offensively hit on someone who might be straight, but he'd be convinced is gay, but he'd be awesome, right? And you'd have like a lot of fun with him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, I kind of, this is kind of like an homage to your dad, the book.

Speaker 1 It really is. A little bit.
I mean, there's a lot. Like, I don't know what he would think of it, right?

Speaker 1 He told me at one point, he said, like, you should write like a very candid memoir and you can say anything you want about me. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I'll be very interested when his friends read the book and their response to it.

Speaker 2 When you sold the book to your publisher, how did you sell it? Where did you say this? What?

Speaker 1 You know, it was interesting. It was a different structure back then.
I said, you know, I said it was a book about running.

Speaker 1 I said it was a book about my time in the sport, but the initial structure was that it would be like it would trace like the stages of a marathon, right?

Speaker 1 It would talk about the beginning of a marathon and what happened physiologically in the first five miles, the next five miles of the marathon, and then it would layer like my life story and running and my journey from being pretty good to be very good.

Speaker 1 And then that structure just didn't work, right? It was like a good, maybe it was good for the proposal, like it sounded cool. And you couldn't, I tried to write it that way and you couldn't read it.

Speaker 1 And so then it became a very different book.

Speaker 2 Well, you just said something that I find interesting, the psychological stages of what happens when you run that long, right? How do you keep yourself from not giving up and keep on going?

Speaker 1 Okay, so at what distance, at what race? Because there are different things that I've learned as I've shifted.

Speaker 1 You know, when I started writing the book, I was only a marathoner and I became an ultra-marathoner

Speaker 1 process.

Speaker 2 Okay, even to go from marathoner to ultra-marathoner.

Speaker 1 So this is, this was really interesting for me. So I was a

Speaker 1 Most of my life, I've been a marathoner, right?

Speaker 1 And when I'm a marathoner, I'm out there and I'm like trying to run a specific time and the window, like the band of possible finishing times is quite narrow right like you know when you start that there's like a 95 chance you run between like i don't know 235 and 245.

Speaker 1 right you said that yeah you know and so you like when you run an ultra you have no idea like i just ran this 100k up in the fingerlakes where i just wanted to finish before the sun went down right so you have like a totally different you start at four in the morning and you know the sun's gonna set at seven so you kind of want to finish in 15 hours but but by the way that's not to say that's only but you're not even, that's not 100 miles.

Speaker 1 No, that's just 100K.

Speaker 2 Not just 100K, but it's like 65 miles or so.

Speaker 1 The other, weirdly, 100K is 62 miles, but the race was like 66 because I don't really wanted to mess with us.

Speaker 2 Have you ever run 100 miles?

Speaker 1 No, I've never run 100 miles. So, but in a race like that, so I learned a lesson the first time I did it.
The first time I ran it, this race called Twisted Branch. So this was.
last year.

Speaker 1 I've run it twice. And I had this very important moment where I was like 30 miles miles in and I'd been running for like, I don't know, six hours because you're going up and out mountains.

Speaker 1 And I was like, my God, right? I've like run longer than I've ever run before. And I still have 30 miles to go.
And I've got like my heart rate monitor on. I'm like looking at my pace.

Speaker 1 I'm like checking all the. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to turn my watch off.
I'm going to turn my heart rate monitor off. I'm going to like forget about all that stuff.

Speaker 1 And I'm just going to think I'm a kid running in the woods, right? And I'm just going to enjoy where I am. Like I'm no longer racing.

Speaker 1 I'm no longer worried about the the finish time i'm not worried about anything i'm not thinking about hydration i'm not counting calories i'm just a kid running in the woods and this was something that had been taught to me by that woman i mentioned earlier super babector who runs you know 3 000 miles on a block in queens right like just think you're a kid right and so i kind of turned the the racing part of my brain off and once i did that I was great.

Speaker 1 I was just like galloping through the forests. Right.
Same mind tricks, basically.

Speaker 1 And then when I'm running, when I'm running a race, like I'm running a, I ran this 50 miler in Connecticut in April, and I was trying to set the American record, right?

Speaker 1 And so I knew exactly what I was trying to do. And, you know, I was on pace through like 43 miles, 44 miles.
And, you know, the last five or six, I'm falling apart, right?

Speaker 1 And you can just, like, my body's in, there's a photograph of me coming across the finish line. I just, I'm like.
tears are down my face. I just look totally deformed and wrecked.

Speaker 1 And, you know, at that point in a race, right, when you're trying for a time and your body's giving out, then you're like just trying to sort of, all right, focus on a mantra, like focus on, I focus on a mantra where I go one, two, three, one, two, three, where it's right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, left foot, right foot, right foot, right?

Speaker 1 And it's a way of both keeping myself balanced, Alexander technique, right? So you're not landing too hard on one side and the other.

Speaker 1 And it's a way of just like really meditating and letting go of everything else. So sometimes I'll do that.
If that starts to break down, I'll be like, okay, I'm just going to run to the next tree.

Speaker 1 right let's see if i'll just like hold this pace to the next tree that's not working and maybe i'll look like in that race you're lapping runners. You're like seeing people in the distance.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna just, I'm gonna run hard until I pass the person in blue, right? And you're playing like all these different mind games to stay in it, right?

Speaker 1 So you're like in the Twisted Branch race, I'm dissociating, right? Like I'm like stepping, like I'm moving up to a cloud and like watching Nick run through the forests, right?

Speaker 1 And in the like Warramog, that 50 miler, where I'm like trying to stay on pace, I'm like locking into a very narrow version of myself. And both of those experiences, right?

Speaker 1 So when you're running a race like that 50 miler,

Speaker 1 you like lose all awareness, right, of what's going on around you. It's, it's this very interesting experience where it's almost like mind and matter are like one.

Speaker 1 Like there is no external, there's no thought, right? Like if you were to have a videotape of what is going on in my brain, there is nothing, right? It is just like forward motion, right?

Speaker 1 Straight ahead, as opposed to this kind of like, you know, cinematic, wonderful thing that's happening when I'm dissociating.

Speaker 1 And so sometimes you're focusing and sometimes you're dissociating when you're in in like in a tense and complicated race like that.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 what, so, okay.

Speaker 2 What did you

Speaker 2 like? So how did you kind of train differently besides like the mind games?

Speaker 1 So in which period for the like when I started running ultras or when I like got fast in my 40s?

Speaker 2 I think I was going to ask you on both, but really, I guess now that you say so, how did you, how did you get fat? How did you become the fastest man in your 40s? Like, how did you train differently?

Speaker 2 What did you do differently?

Speaker 1 So that, that was like when I was 43, I met with these coaches.

Speaker 2 How old are you now?

Speaker 1 I'm 50. Okay, 50.
So, it was when I turned 43, it was just, it was a year after my father died, which I don't think is a coincidence. And they looked at my training.
They looked at my old logs.

Speaker 1 They asked me how fast I thought I could go. And I was like, well, 243.
That's what I always run. Yeah.
I was like, I'd love to hold on to that. And they're like, okay.

Speaker 1 And so I set up a fairly specific routine where I, you know, would run seven days a week.

Speaker 1 And then three days a week, I would do something hard. So on Tuesdays, I would go and I would run basically stressing my VO2 max system.

Speaker 1 So I'd run like 400 meter repeats, you know, like 1,2,400s or 1,600, 400s or 800, 800s. Thursdays, I'd basically be working on my lactic threshold.

Speaker 1 So I'd run like four by two miles, three by two miles, two by three miles. And then Saturday or Sunday, I would run 20 miles, right? 22 miles.

Speaker 1 And I just kind of kept changing the goals on each of those workouts and getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

Speaker 1 And through doing that, I both like improved physically and I like improved mentally and realized I could go faster than I thought I could go.

Speaker 1 Those coaches were kind of tricking my mind to make myself think that I could go faster than 243 pace. So 243 pace is like 615 miles.

Speaker 1 And I was terrified of running a marathon at under six minute miles, which is 237 pace.

Speaker 1 And so they would have me run like workouts where I'd be doing short distances under five minutes in the hopes that it would reset my mind so I'd be less scared of going under six minutes in a marathon.

Speaker 1 And so that eventually got me to run the 229 marathon, which is like, I don't know, 541 pace, right? And so that was step one. That was how I got like fast at marathons.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, I ran the 229 in 2019, COVID hit.

Speaker 1 Then when it was training for ultras, which I've done maybe the last four years or so, it's similar, but obviously I'm not running as many like 400-meter repeats on the track.

Speaker 2 But are you, what other training do you do to kind of improve your endurance or stamina or your strength? Do you do any weightlifting?

Speaker 1 Or straight, well,

Speaker 2 okay, I'm going to rephrase it. Do you do any kind of resistance work?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I do some weight lithine. And now I do it with my, okay, this is the funniest thing or the, one of the revelations.

Speaker 1 I was talking to a physical therapist once, and he asked me, when was the last time you got hurt? And I was like, oh, it's like 12 years ago. He's like, 12 years ago.

Speaker 1 I was like, yeah, that was the last time I missed a workout. And he's like, that's crazy.
He's like, what do you do for strength training? I was like, oh, I don't do anything.

Speaker 1 He's like, what do you do for mobility? I was like, oh, I don't do anything. He's like, do you just run? I was like, yeah, I just run.
And he's like, but like, do you ever like move your body?

Speaker 1 I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. I play like nerf basketball with my kids and I wrestle with my kids.
I play soccer with my kids. I play water wars with my kids.

Speaker 1 I like, you know, do one-arm push-up contests with my kids. I do parkour with my kids.
And he's like, well, that's why you don't get hurt.

Speaker 2 Right. Right.
You do all this cross training.

Speaker 1 I do all this like incredible cross training because I have like three sons who are active. How old are they? They're now 17, 15, and 11.
Right. But I play with them all the time.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so wow, that's so. It was like, that was my cross training.
Yeah. And now they're like, now they're a little older.
I like, will go to the gym with them and I'll weightlift with them, right?

Speaker 1 Like, and I was like, you're weightlifting? So, like, my, I was like, I was like supporting my 11-year-old while he's bench pressing like 35 pounds the other day.

Speaker 2 So you're super active. So, you know what? This is actually very,

Speaker 2 I'm a big believer in this too. You don't have to be going to an actual gym to get fit.

Speaker 2 You're doing all the cross training you need by doing all these, like you're playing with your kids, doing so much functional training also, right? Like holding this, doing that.

Speaker 2 So you do do a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do.

Speaker 1 I mean, and now that they're older i do more stuff and i'll like i also like and now i don't know like so we're talking on it's i think it's a wednesday and on monday my kids play for these my two younger kids play for this great soccer team this great club and i will like do workouts with them so i had a couple 11 year olds over and we were doing like glute work together right like what Just like leg lifts, leg drives, like squats, box jumps, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I'm like training.
You're all working out. Totally.
But I'm like training with 11-year-olds, right? I'm not like at a CrossFit gym. Right.

Speaker 2 But I think you're so conditioned, like, especially with the cardiovascular and endurance. And you're so, like, you're very lean, you know, so it's easier for you to do other things.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Well, and here's the nice thing about training with an 11-year-old, right? Like, you're not going to do so many box jumps, you get hurt.

Speaker 2 Right? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Like, you're going to do like kind of the right amount of box jumps. And like,

Speaker 2 you're not doing like 500.

Speaker 1 Right.

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Speaker 2 So, okay, let's talk about being the CEO of Atlantic. Okay, so what is that? Like, what do you do every day? Like, give me your habits.
Like, I know you run, God knows. What do you eat?

Speaker 2 Are you eating, are you a vegan? Are you, uh, do you eat animal protein?

Speaker 1 I'm a pescatarian, so I do eat some animal protein. I am, I'm like pretty strict on my diet.
So

Speaker 1 I get up, I have a, I don't know, I usually have like oats mixed with like chia seeds, ground flax seed, and a bunch of nuts. And then I add some fruit.

Speaker 1 I have that with coffee and green juice for breakfast. You know, at lunch, I'll try to have like salad, vegetables, add in a protein.

Speaker 1 And at dinner, you know, kind of similar, right? So lots of green vegetables, you know, lots of whole wheats. Lots of carbs.

Speaker 1 Oh, you do eat carbs. You do.

Speaker 2 You have to with that kind of running schedule.

Speaker 1 Also, carbs are delicious. Yeah, they are good.
I agree. They're very good.

Speaker 2 So, but you eat pretty healthy. Okay, I want to talk about being the seed.
Okay, so, you know, there's very few publications that are relevant anymore, as I'm sure you know, right?

Speaker 2 Yours is probably one of the very few. How do you keep it?

Speaker 2 How does The Atlantic keep its relevance? How many people are subscribed? I want to know like the nitty-gritty now of The Atlantic.

Speaker 1 Sure. Yeah, this is my, this is what I do for Atlantic.
So we now have 1.35 million subscribers. We are up substantially.
We were at maybe 800,000 a few years ago. So we've been skyrocketing.

Speaker 1 It's great. We've gone from losing lots of money.
to making a good bit of money, which is amazing.

Speaker 2 How is that just through advertisers?

Speaker 1 It's actually most, I mean, advertising has grown. So I've been the CEO for four years and advertising has grown.
And if you're an advertiser or CMO listening to this podcast, please do advertise.

Speaker 1 But the principal growth has been through subscriptions. And so the way that the model has come to work is that we have

Speaker 1 been really focused on how to get someone to subscribe. Right.
And so there's a whole bunch of questions that come into that. Like, so what is the subscription offer? What is the meter?

Speaker 1 What is the color of the background? If somebody comes in from Google, do you push them to subscribe?

Speaker 1 If they come in from Twitter, if they come in from a newsletter, okay, what are the places where people have real subscription propensities, right? So there's this giant math equation.

Speaker 1 And every time someone comes to theatlantic.com, they're either a potential subscriber or they're not.

Speaker 1 And what you want to do is you want to put the paywall in front of the people who might subscribe and not in the ones who won't.

Speaker 1 And so if you can get better at that, marginally better at that every day, you make the product more successful. How can you do that? Well, you run a whole bunch of tests.

Speaker 1 You know, you test what happens if we make the price $69? What happens if we make the price price $79? Okay, what if we offer this?

Speaker 1 What if we put the gate, we allow people to read two stories a month before the gate?

Speaker 1 What if we make the gate so you can only read one story a month except on stories where there's a subscription propensity above X during the first 12 hours of the day, right?

Speaker 1 You run just all of these tests and you build models behind it. That's what we do, right? And so building that successfully and you get really good at running advertising.

Speaker 1 And so you put advertisements on Facebook and Google, driving people to particular stories, and you identify the stories that people are most likely to pay to read.

Speaker 1 And you run that over and over and over and over again. And you look for what users want and you try to build that.
And magic, it's worked.

Speaker 1 What we have never done, like what's being also, I should also add, our journalists are amazing and they keep writing awesome content.

Speaker 1 So what we have done is we've taken what the journalists want to do and then we've built a business model based on that, as opposed to what happens at a lot of media companies where they say, you know, there's a real opportunity for selling advertisements to electric car companies.

Speaker 1 Like, why don't you write some stories about electric cars? Right. And then you do that.

Speaker 1 And then, like, the journalists either say, like, buzz off, or they write kind of bad stories about electric cars, right? What we say, hire the best journalists in the world.

Speaker 1 Here's a bunch of money to do that. Have them write the stories they think are the absolute best.
And then we will try to get people to subscribe to read those stories.

Speaker 1 And that model has worked fantastically, at least for the last four years. Like, who knows what happens with AI? But for now, it's going gangbusters.

Speaker 2 So, since you've been at the helm, the subscription have skyrocketed.

Speaker 1 Yes. Now, I wouldn't make that might be correlation, not cause, but it is true.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, it is a correlation. It could be, but it is.
Yeah. I mean, like, you were at Wired before.

Speaker 1 I was at Wired. We did great.
We published all kinds of wonderful stories about tech.

Speaker 1 And then the big shift was shifting from being the editor-in-chief and being in charge of what stories you run and reporting and writing to being the CEO where you're in charge of the product decisions, the engineering decisions, the advertising calls.

Speaker 2 How did you go from editor-in-chief of Wired to the CEO of The Atlantic?

Speaker 1 I mean, why did they hire me?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because that's a different job. That's a creative job versus now you're in a business position.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So the Atlantic had a very particular need where they wanted someone who understood business and understood tech, but who also appreciated editorial.

Speaker 1 And so it would be very, they couldn't have hired someone from a straight business background because the system would have kind of rejected it. Right.
So then I was actually a very rare candidate.

Speaker 1 When I had worked at the New Yorker, which is the job I had before Wired, I had been in charge of the website, I'd been in charge of the iPhone app, and I'd actually been in charge of the product and engineering team, right?

Speaker 1 Because I was the only guy at the New Yorker who had, like, who knew how to fix the printer, right? And could like, you know, like plug the keyboards in.

Speaker 1 Like, I was put in charge of the tech team, right? And so I knew all this stuff. And I'd covered the tech industry.
So I knew a lot about business and tech and engineering and product.

Speaker 1 And so I had a lot of the skills that kind of mapped onto the Atlantic CEO job. There's a lot of stuff in this job that I'd never done before, but I had managed teams.

Speaker 1 I knew how to, you know, I knew how to handle product managers. So I was a reasonable candidate.
And then they kind of, I don't know, it took a long time for them to settle on me.

Speaker 1 Like it was kind of a hard call.

Speaker 1 Really? I mean, I don't know, you'd have to get, you know, Lorene Powell jobs on the podcast. But yeah.
No, like they, it was a the Atlantic's a sacred publication.

Speaker 1 Like it was founded in 1857 to stop the American Civil War by people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harry Beecher Stowe. Like it is an important institution.

Speaker 1 It has an amazing editor-in-chief, Jeff Goldberg. And like getting the right CEO is kind of tricky.

Speaker 1 For sure, it is.

Speaker 2 Well, it seemed to have worked out for you, but worked out for me.

Speaker 1 And I think they're reasonably happy. And they're reasonably happy.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 what have you seen has been an uptick? Like, what do people care about the most? What gets the most traction in terms of content?

Speaker 1 You know, it's actually really wonderful where it's like stories that are deeply emotionally resonant and that people spend a lot of time working on, readers love. love.

Speaker 1 Like readers love our best stuff. It's kind of wonderful, right?

Speaker 1 So if you look at the stories that drove the most subscriptions, you know, it's this, well, obviously Jeff's story about Signal, right, where he was mistakenly included on the White House's, you know, secret chat.

Speaker 1 That drove a lot of subscribers. Oh, wow.
That was a big one. That was a big one, right? That drove, that drove a lot of subscriptions.
But like, you know, from the previous year.

Speaker 2 How many subscriptions did that story, the Signal story, drive?

Speaker 1 Many tens of thousands, you know, lots of subscriptions. I don't know the exact same thing.

Speaker 2 I bet you it it'll put you on the map. I bet you a lot of people didn't even know what the Atlantic was.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then they saw it in the news all the time because of that journalist from your, from, yeah, from the Atlantic.

Speaker 1 Well, and he handled it exactly right. I mean, that was the beautiful thing about it, where it wasn't like Scoop kind of fell in his lap and he handled it perfectly.
Right.

Speaker 1 And that reflected well on the institution. Well, how did he handle it?

Speaker 2 I don't remember, but I know he'd had a lot of class with it, though. He did.

Speaker 1 So what happened is he's mistakenly included on the chat, right? What a bunch of morons.

Speaker 2 How could that even happen?

Speaker 1 Do you want my theory? Yeah. Okay.
So this, it's, this is unclear, but like, this is my theory. His name is Jeff Goldberg.
Yeah. Initials JG.
He meets Michael Waltz at a party.

Speaker 1 Like we have photographs of him meeting Waltz, like Waltz's business card. Like they clearly meet Waltz is the national security advisor.

Speaker 1 My theory is that Waltz puts Goldberg's number in his phone under JG, not under Jeff Goldberg, because he doesn't want his staff to know he's talking to a reporter. So he puts his name under JG.

Speaker 1 Then they're starting the signal chat to like talk about bombing the Houthis. And he wants to add the trade representative because it involves the straits of removes.

Speaker 1 And it's the trade representative is Jamison Greer. And so then he adds JG thinking it's Jamison Greer.
That's my theory.

Speaker 1 And then in Signal, like when you look at who's in a group chat, if they're in your address book, they show up as how they are. So it shows up as JG on Mike Waltz's phone.

Speaker 1 And like Pete Hegseth doesn't have Goldberg's number, so it just shows up as 202, whatever his number is. Right.
And so nobody realizes he's in there. That's my theory.

Speaker 1 So now there are other theories, like maybe someone's stuck among, some with fat fingers, maybe who knows? Any case, that's my working theory. He gets in the chat and he starts to see what's going on.

Speaker 1 He's like, what the hell? Right.

Speaker 1 And then he stays in for a while because he thinks it might be a hoax. He sees what's happening.

Speaker 1 And then he leaves the chat when he realizes they're discussing classified information and he shouldn't be there. Right.
So that is actually the proper thing to do.

Speaker 2 He left the chat.

Speaker 1 He left the chat. Right.
Because,

Speaker 1 you know, clearly he shouldn't have been in it.

Speaker 2 True, but curiosity, you know, like, and just, you know, being a voyeur.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, curiosity versus espionage act, right? I mean, you weigh these two,

Speaker 1 you weigh these two things against each other.

Speaker 2 Okay, you're right. Espionage, curiosity, very similar, but different.

Speaker 1 He leaves the chat and then, you know, he writes up a story because it is in the national interest to publish the story, but he's very careful to leave out.

Speaker 1 like secret details and to leave out details of the specific raid and to leave out details of things they wrote.

Speaker 1 He writes the story and then as a good reporter should, he calls the White House House and says, hey, here's the story we're going to publish. Like that's what you do with Danica.
You call the person.

Speaker 1 You don't just publish it in blindside. And you want it because you call them because you might have something wrong, right? Or there might be something where you need their opinion.

Speaker 1 And then they say, oh, yeah, that's true. Yep, go ahead, you know, accurate.
So then he writes the story, right? Everything done by the book, right? Like we've called our sources.

Speaker 1 We've handled it, you know, admirably. We've taken into account national security.
Like Jeff's kid, like, is in the military.

Speaker 1 Like, Jeff cares a lot, you know, about the military, cares about national security. Like, we were founded as a magazine to protect America.

Speaker 1 Like, sometimes we don't agree with Donald Trump, but we are a magazine in favor of America. And so he does it.
And then the White House, at first, is like, yep, it's true.

Speaker 1 And then for reasons that are beyond me, and again, I'm just the CEO, they start to say the story is not true. And like, ah, no, no, no, no, there's nothing classified in that chat.

Speaker 1 Like, we don't know what the Atlantic is talking about. Like, they're making stuff up.
Like, there's nothing in the chat that was classified.

Speaker 1 Cause remember, we haven't published the screenshots, right?

Speaker 1 So then they're like, wait, what? Like, why are they doing this? Like, they've already, normally what happens in journalism is someone denies the story and then eventually admits that it's true.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 They don't do it the other way around.

Speaker 1 Admit that it's true and then like weirdly deny it. Right.
And so they're now denying the story, which is banana cakes.

Speaker 1 And so then like Jeff and Shane Harris, his co-writer, are like, well, I guess we're obligated to publish the whole thing. And so then we put all the transcripts online.

Speaker 1 We put the screenshots online afterwards, the second day. And so, you know, that's the story.
At no point, right? He's, and he's always like, he's always checking. Everything is always 100% accurate.

Speaker 1 Everything is to the book, like calling your sources. Like,

Speaker 1 you know, even if someone is denouncing you, right? And even if someone is lying about you, you still call them because you can't be wrong on your side, right?

Speaker 1 You have to be as accurate and honest as fact check as you can be. So he does everything exactly by the book.
He does everything exactly the way a reporter is supposed to do it.

Speaker 1 And so the story ends up reflecting really well on us. So it's a benefit to the Atlantic.
Like he gets like the scoop falls out of the sky, right?

Speaker 2 Literally, yeah.

Speaker 1 Literally falls out of the sky onto his phone while he's at like the Safeway parking lot.

Speaker 1 But, you know, like he handles it perfectly. So it reflects really well on the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 So who denied it? Was it that woman, the press, what's her name? The blonde lady?

Speaker 1 Yes, she, she definitely, she definitely, Caroline Levitt. She definitely

Speaker 1 denied it and denounced us.

Speaker 1 I think she called us, you know, like a failing magazine.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was either her or Trump that says that we're like a failing magazine about to go out of business, which we're clearly like, I run the P ⁇ L. Like we're actually doing great, right?

Speaker 1 Like media is having a hard time. We might go out of business next year, but right now we are like.
crushing it financially. Like we're doing better than we've ever done.

Speaker 1 So they're making stuff up out of finances, which annoys me as the finance guy. Of course it does.

Speaker 1 But then like Hegsys is out there, Nikki Haley's out there saying there's nothing classified in it, which is nonsense.

Speaker 2 The whole thing is a total,

Speaker 2 how that even happened, I know that what your hypothesis makes perfect sense, right? How that could have happened. In any case, why the hell are they on signal talking about this stuff?

Speaker 1 It's so like, A, they shouldn't be on signal, right? Like they should be using like a skiff, right? Like they're government officials planning an attack, like not on their phones, not on signal. Duh.

Speaker 1 Two. Even if they are on signal or even if they're in a skiff, they shouldn't be like boasting and BSing about it.
Like there are details that that Hegseth is putting there that he has no need to.

Speaker 1 He's just trying to like impress the folks in the chat. Like it is beyond.

Speaker 2 It's beyond me.

Speaker 1 It is so weird.

Speaker 2 It's beyond. But this is just like, it's like a gaggle of clowns, really, who are doing all of this.

Speaker 1 And then when the story broke, like when we published our first story, what they should have done is like, you know, this was a mistake. We've cleaned it up.

Speaker 1 We've made it so we won't do signal, right? Like, you know, what this showed is there was a good conversation, but yes, the Atlantic is correct.

Speaker 1 Instead of like making it so much worse by saying, well, there's no classified information, lying about us, lying about the conversation, right? Like they shot themselves in the foot there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would say so. Are you guys then not? This is obvious.
Are you guys not allowed to be in the press room?

Speaker 1 In the White House press room?

Speaker 1 I actually don't know the exact policies right now. They have not come after us.
Like, Jeff went to the White House and interviewed Trump afterwards. Like, really?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't want to speak out of turn because I don't manage the journalist, but we have like gone there.

Speaker 1 And like, Trump calls our reporter, called our reporter, Michael Scher and Ashley Parker, at like two in the morning one night, like from his cell phone. Like he still cares about the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 Of course, he well, listen, it's a very prestigious magazine, but why is he calling these people at two o'clock in the morning from his cell phone? Does he think they're going to answer the phone?

Speaker 1 Did they answer the phone? No, it was a voicemail or like it was like a just a missed call from, you know, you wake up and it's like Donald Trump in the night. Donald Trump called you at 2 a.m.
Right.

Speaker 1 Like he might be on the phone with Ashley Parker right now. I have no idea.

Speaker 2 Does he not sleep this man?

Speaker 1 I think he sleeps different hours.

Speaker 2 It seems like a, you know, what is what are those and those not dracula, you know, vampires that they don't sleep during the day. Like, it's a, by the way, not for nothing.

Speaker 2 This man is like 80 something and the guy doesn't sleep. The guy has more energy.
He eats McDonald's all day. Like, I think that I'm doing things wrong.

Speaker 2 I mean, I should have his energy and his stamina.

Speaker 1 Well, he has this theory, right? That I don't know whether you agree with it, but that I believe he stated this publicly multiple times, but that humans have a fixed number of heartbeats.

Speaker 1 And so the trick is to not use those heartbeats up. Like when you're born, there's a whole bunch of people who believe this, right? That like every animal has like a similar number of heartbeats.

Speaker 1 That if you look at the number of times an elephant's heart beats, it kind of matches that of a mouse. And that humans are kind of in the middle.

Speaker 1 And so if you use your heartbeats up, you're likely to die sooner. Now, I disagree with this hypothesis.

Speaker 1 Really? He has stated this. Yeah, it's a pretty interesting theory.
You'll have to talk to a physiologist.

Speaker 1 He may have stated it like haphazardly. He may say that's not what he really believes in.

Speaker 1 I don't want to misquote the president of the United States of America, but like it is a theory that I've heard from multiple people. I don't think it's correct, to be honest.

Speaker 1 But he's doing, like, he's clearly vigorous.

Speaker 2 Clearly. So does that, by that hypothesis, does that mean if I work, you run and I run, we work out a lot, our hearts beat, our hearts are beating faster.
Are we going to die faster?

Speaker 1 Okay, so this, okay, so

Speaker 1 we'd have to pull out a calculator, but it's actually a pretty interesting calculation. Okay.

Speaker 1 It depends, right? And because what happens when you exercise, your resting heart rate goes down. Right.
And so that's true. Let's say your resting heart rate goes down 10 beats a minute, right?

Speaker 1 Because you exercise a lot. So it goes from, say, 55 to 45.
So then 23 hours a day, you're saving 10 beats a minute, right? For one hour a day, you're going up, you know, 100 beats a minute, right?

Speaker 1 So you have to do the math.

Speaker 2 Right. So like it's a, it's a deli, it's like a balance.

Speaker 1 It's actually pretty close, right? I'm, I'm not sure whether, it depends on how much much exercise reduces your resting heart rate and your sort of your average walking heart rate.

Speaker 1 And it depends how much your heart rate goes up when you exercise. I think probably

Speaker 1 like an hour a day of exercise is like the optimal amount if you want to like keep your total lifetime heartbeats, you know.

Speaker 2 That makes sense. So an hour a day.
So someone like you or people who are doing ultras for 12 or 13 hours a day,

Speaker 2 the fact that you're even alive at 50, you should have been dead like at 37.

Speaker 1 Well, this gets to another really interesting debate, which is, is there a point at which too much exercise is bad for your heart, right?

Speaker 1 Like this is so the heartbeat debate is kind of like a silly, fun one, but this one is a serious one, right? And there are very smart cardiologists who believe that there is a limit, right?

Speaker 1 And there are very smart cardiologists who believe that if you look at the data and you look at studies of like ultra endurance finished skiers, the more exercise, the more time, the longer you live.

Speaker 1 It's clear that like exercise to the extent that I do it does some bad things. Like, it increases my odds of atrial fibrillation, right?

Speaker 1 It does increase, it does some bad things to the heart, but it also does so many other good things that it may be a net benefit.

Speaker 2 Right. It might balance itself up.

Speaker 1 Right. I kind of think it's a net benefit, but of course, I think that because I love running, right? Right.

Speaker 2 Well, you could justify, anyone can justify anything.

Speaker 1 But you could find some smart cardiologists to like scare the hell out of ultra runners if you wanted to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't, I'm actually, I believe that, though. That I can believe.
I mean, there's, I mean, there's a lot of people that I know who are like stupid fit.

Speaker 2 Like they play tennis five hours a day, like like perception, like kind of like from the outside, like optics would say that they were really fit.

Speaker 2 And they drop dead of a heart attack when they're like 45. Yeah.
And maybe it's because of that, it's that whole thing that you just said, right?

Speaker 2 Like they've used up their tics or it's because it is, it's actually can be counterintuitive. Like sometimes like more,

Speaker 2 like more is not like, or whatever, like less, more is actually

Speaker 2 more is less, not more is more.

Speaker 1 Right. I mean, and there, you could, there are also a couple of other like additional hypotheses.

Speaker 1 So, one, it's like all of that, like the hearts of muscle building the muscle, like maybe that's not totally great in every way. Two,

Speaker 1 a lot of people, when they exercise a lot, they use that as a justification, right? Like, I can have the fries, right? Because, like, the engine burns hot.

Speaker 1 You can put anything in the engine, but that's not true at all, right? Like, true, you know, I can have a drink because I exercise hard day. I have a second drink, I have a third drink, right?

Speaker 1 I'll be able to run it off in the morning, right? And so, exercise can create good habits. I'm not going to drink at all because I have to run in the morning, or it can create bad habits, right?

Speaker 1 I'm going to run in the morning so I can drink, right? And so I think a lot of super fit people actually have a bunch of terrible habits.

Speaker 1 Like I was listening to your podcast with Lance Armstrong, right? Right. And he was, and you were talking about like he ate four hot dogs and had, he's like, and I had a Diet Coke.

Speaker 1 I was like, what the hell? Right. Totally.

Speaker 2 And he doesn't, he's a perfect example of this. But I meet people like Lance a lot where a lot of my, a lot of friends of mine who are like super athletes, like Lance level, just not in

Speaker 2 biking. And I go out with them and they're not doing all these, the crazy stuff.
They're not biohacking their lives to death.

Speaker 2 They're actually like, they're like eating kind of much more freely. They're like exercising, but not like, they're not like frantic and crazy about it.
They're more balanced in their life.

Speaker 2 To be honest with you, what I want to say is that I actually think that's actually more healthy because I think anything extreme like is

Speaker 2 what it does to your mental

Speaker 2 like the psychology that goes on in your brain is actually why it's detrimental, more so to your body. And overexercising, like people, I'm just going to, how about this?

Speaker 2 Because I overexercise for sure. Cause it's for, I do it because if I didn't, I would be like a lunatic.
Yeah. But I've broken down my body.
I have ankle problems. I have like a knee problem.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Like I have like probably like my cortisol is high versus people I know who don't really do much and they're probably way healthier in the inside.

Speaker 2 I may look better, like fitness, I may look more fit, but my insides are probably much more fucked up than somebody else's who kind of like casually does some walking and some yoga.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Totally.

Speaker 1 My

Speaker 1 grandfather, my maternal grandfather lived to 97 and he

Speaker 1 smoked a lot, he drank a lot. And his philosophy was this amazing philosophy, which is like, what you should do is never exercise except occasionally exercise like really hard.

Speaker 1 Like play like tons of tennis or hike a really hard mountain or like go skiing like crazy, right? Yeah, and so he lived this awesome life and he had so much fun.

Speaker 1 And he liked sport was this just a source of joy for me. Mountaineered and never stressed about it.
I like, he wasn't taking his resting heart rate when he woke up in the morning.

Speaker 1 He had a very healthy relationship to it. Also, like, there are genetic elements, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I just had my blood work done, and I have, there's a genetic component of heart disease risk, which is your life, your LPA, right? And mine is massive, right?

Speaker 1 It's like in the 99th percentile of bad, right?

Speaker 1 And so I have like a huge genetic risk of a heart attack, which I wouldn't have known and which could like wipe me out despite all of my running, you know, when I'm in my, a much younger age than you would expect.

Speaker 1 So there's all kinds of reasons that are like totally independent of how we train that could, you know, mean the end of us.

Speaker 2 I know, what also I find interesting about the running part is the burning of all the lean muscle mass.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2 Like I, I, you know, whenever I look at runners who are like crazy runners, extreme, they never, they're like soft fat. You know what I mean? They don't have like tone in their body.

Speaker 1 Well, this, because back to like, this, it's kind of fun talking about like some of the bad things about running. Like it can also like,

Speaker 1 it can make you in a way anorexic, right? Like, you know, there's, there's this coach.

Speaker 1 When I showed up at Stanford, right, to join the cross-country team, right? I'm a pretty lean guy. I, he sends this thing, right? And it's like, you should weigh two pounds per inch.

Speaker 1 right sounds fine right and i was like okay cool whatever i was like okay so i'm six foot one that's like 73 inches inches. So I should weigh 146 pounds.
I weighed 165, right?

Speaker 1 So I was 19 pounds overweight. Right.
Skinny guy. And I was like, oh my God, I'm 19 pounds overweight for the Stanford Cross Country.

Speaker 2 How much do you weigh right now, by the way?

Speaker 1 I'm like 155. So I'm still like nine pounds overweight.
Wow.

Speaker 2 You're so skinny. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And like, but I'm like super overweight. Now, he would never say that now because you're not allowed to say it.

Speaker 2 Only because it's not PC to say.

Speaker 1 But he still thinks it, right? And everybody knows he thinks it, right?

Speaker 1 So Mark Wetmore, who was the coach of Colorado Buffaloes, won a a bunch of national titles, told his runners that they should look like a skeleton with a condom on,

Speaker 1 right? That's what he told the guys, right? That's not healthy. It's really not healthy for 18-year-old girls to be told that, right? Terrible.
Right. And it's really psychologically unhealthy.

Speaker 1 And you get like, this is why women, so many of women runners have like all these broken bones and they don't have their period and all these horrible things happen, right?

Speaker 1 It can be a very destructive sport if you focus on the sort of the weight loss element. On the other hand, like my coach at Stanford has coached a ton of Olympians.

Speaker 1 Mark Wetmore coached a lot of winners. Like that is the thing they are doing.
Like one of the ways that you can win is be phenomenally skinny, which is potentially unhealthy.

Speaker 2 Well, by the way, yes, exactly. So there's like that, it's like a very delicate balance, right?

Speaker 2 Because the truth is, if you're, if you're coaching at such a high level, you obviously want the team to have every advantage to win, right? And

Speaker 2 I hate to say it, but for running, well, for a lot of things, like it does matter how much you weigh, right? Because if you are small and thin, you'll be faster.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.
That's just, it's just,

Speaker 2 it's just physics. Yeah.
Right. Like biodynamics, bio, it's, it's, it's what it is.

Speaker 2 So like you can't, you can't really like, you have to understand from the perspective of you're hiring someone to win a team, win, win for you, right?

Speaker 2 Or else you'd have a bunch of like body positive people there, like hiring whoever to do it and you will never win a thing. Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, you do better at ultras, right? I remember my wife came to, uh, she came to a mountain race I did. At the end, she said the funniest thing.

Speaker 1 She like watches the finish and at the end, she's like, you know, Nick, the people who beat you in this race, they look a lot more normal than the people who beat you in your other races. Really?

Speaker 1 Why is that? So this is a mountain race. Like to be a great mountain runner, you need like a little extra muscle mass.
Strength. Yeah, you do.
You're literally like pulling yourself up a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, it's different.

Speaker 2 Well, that's what I'm saying. Every sport, for like running, it makes sense.
Well, you have to be like very,

Speaker 2 you know, thin and I was going to say frail looking, but I don't mean it that way. Yeah, no, I know what you mean.
I mean very like lean.

Speaker 1 But look at the people who win the hundred milers, right? They don't look like the winners of the marathon, right? Like, and in fact, the women, right?

Speaker 1 The women who women actually are better than men once you get up about like 200 miles, right? In part because they store extra

Speaker 1 extra fat and extra energy. Yeah.
You know, and genetically are set up to do that because, because, you know, childbirth is so hard and takes so long, right? Or that is one hypothesis.

Speaker 1 So, women have an advantage when you get to really, really, really long races.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's actually true.

Speaker 1 So, they have a huge disadvantage in like the mile and the marriage for lots of reasons, like testosterone levels. I was going to say hormones.

Speaker 2 Like, this is why running is not a great sport for women, though, in general, when you're doing the sprint, like the track, because of the hormones. By the way, that's not even, it's not just running.

Speaker 2 It's, it's like, look at gymnastics, right?

Speaker 2 Overexercising, overexerting yourself for hours and hours and hours a day is hormonally not great for you.

Speaker 1 Right. It totally screws up a lot of these

Speaker 1 women and they become like, I tell the story, one of the runners I read about, like I read about five runners. And I interviewed tons and tons of different runners.

Speaker 1 I chose five because they each tell something interesting, but one of them is this woman, Julia Lucas, who, you know, starts running in high school, realizes she's this incredible talent, you know, goes to college, but just like, she breaks her leg like seven times running in part because of like, you know, all of the pressure that's put on these women for the intensity they have to train while you're going through this period of growth.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I mostly tell her story. I tell her story for lots of reasons.
One is like, she finishes college and it's so hard to make a living, but she's so focused.

Speaker 1 So she's actually homeless while she's like training as an elite runner. She lives in like, you know, Forest Park in Portland, right?

Speaker 1 And like brings her stuff when it rains, like puts her stuff in a bag and like rents a little locker at the train station. Right.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, while she's training and she becomes an elite runner and she becomes the best miler in the country, right?

Speaker 1 By then, she like has a sponsor, but she has to go through this period of years where she's just injured all the time and her body's broken and she's homeless and goes through it. And then,

Speaker 1 you know, I tell the story of her, she comes as close as you can come to making an Olympic team without making it, right?

Speaker 1 She runs this race where she either has to come in the top three or have the third place finisher run slower than 1520.

Speaker 1 And she comes in fourth and like pulls the third place finisher to a 1519.9, right? Like you cannot have a closer miss of the Olympics.

Speaker 1 It's like the most incredible race to watch. Like, and she's just, she's an awesome person and she's so smart and she's so reflective on this race.

Speaker 1 But I love the story of like how, and then she has this very like stoic, amazing interview afterwards where she's like, well, I had no pain, no pain at all.

Speaker 1 And she's like this very deep philosophy about running and why she does and what she's trying for.

Speaker 1 But she also the whole time is struggling with some of the questions we've been talking about about like, how much do we run to like optimize ourselves and to like be the perfect machine and how much do we run for the spiritual release and she has this constant tension between these two so i tell her story for all those reasons that's a great story yeah it's it's really she's an amazing and amazing person that's a good one to choose actually yeah all right my dear nick the book is called the running ground nicholas thompson thank you for being on the show that was so much fun to talk we covered a lot of ground

Speaker 1 yeah i did not think we were going to get quite so deep into signal gate but i'm very happy that we did oh my god i'm so happy we did too i love that.

Speaker 2 I'm going to clip that. I think it's so interesting.
Yeah. Are there any other like juicy little bits you want to tell us?

Speaker 1 I've worked on a lot of interesting stories in my life, like a lot of interesting reporting.

Speaker 2 What would be the, well, give me one story. What was the most interesting thing that you've ever worked on?

Speaker 1 I had a very long friendship with Stalin's daughter. I had a very long friendship with Stalin's daughter.
And for years, we wrote letters. And

Speaker 1 I couldn't publish it while she was alive, but it's a story of a woman who grows up in the Kremlin and

Speaker 1 who has this intense relationship with her father where her father sends her boyfriend to the gulag, right? Like a lot of people have like father issues where they don't like the boyfriend.

Speaker 1 They're normally not sent to the gulag by Stalin.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 So she has some problems with her father, but also loves him and is like, he's devoted to her in a way. Her mother commits suicide because she's married to Stalin.
So this woman grows up.

Speaker 1 And she's so smart. She's so interesting.
And she's like so creative. She flees.
She comes to America. It's a big sensation, right? And then she kind of disappears.

Speaker 1 And so when I discover her and find her and start writing her letters, she's living in this like old folk home anonymously in Wisconsin. And I, at the time, was writing a book about the Cold War.

Speaker 1 And I was writing about this character, George Kennan, who she had been friends with. And so she responds to me.
She gets interview requests all the time because she's Stalin's daughter.

Speaker 1 But I write to her not to ask her about Stalin, but to ask her about George Kennan. And so she starts writing me back.
And she's so smart. And she's observed like everything about Kennan.

Speaker 1 And she sees things that nobody else had seen. And so we become friends and we write these hundreds of letters.

Speaker 1 And then eventually she starts talking about her life and her loves and her ambitions and what she missed and, you know, her failures in life and her aspirations. She sometimes gets really mad at me.

Speaker 1 Right. And she denounces me and says she's never going to talk to me.
And then she'll start writing me letters again.

Speaker 1 And so the story of my friendship with her was one of the more fun things I've ever worked on.

Speaker 2 That is really interesting.

Speaker 1 It is a crazy story. I could only write it after she had died, but I published that in the New Yorker maybe 10 years ago.

Speaker 2 That's a great one, too. Tell me one more.

Speaker 1 I wrote a really interesting story at the end of my time at Wired and I loved to hike and I had heard about a guy who had hiked on the Appalachian Trail and he had been hiking for months and he'd hiked from New York to Florida and then he'd been found dead in a tent, right?

Speaker 1 Emaciated in a tent and no one knew who he was. And so I wrote the first story and everybody in the trail knew his name was mostly harmless, but he'd used cash when he'd bought things in the stores.

Speaker 1 He'd never revealed his own name. And so I published the story and I was like, look, this will be in Wired.
And like someone will know who he is.

Speaker 1 Like someone had called me because on the trail, he had said he was a coder, right? He had told somebody he's an engineer. And like all these people were looking for him.

Speaker 1 And so I published the story in Wired and millions of people read it. And no one knows who he is.
And no one can figure it out. And so I start getting all these tips.
These Facebook groups are formed.

Speaker 1 And there's like hundreds of people going through every clue and like looking at photographs.

Speaker 1 And like they do DNA analysis to try to trace his, like, trace his relatives and like can they figure out like where he's from so then the DNA analysis reveals that he's like from a family in Louisiana so I start buying ads on Facebook in Louisiana driving to my story so that people will read it and identify who this guy might be and then like finally after like months of tips and red herrings and craziness and all these hunters like someone is like wait That's my old friend Vance.

Speaker 1 And it turns out it's this guy named Vance Rodriguez who had had been estranged from his parents. So they weren't looking for him.
Like no one was looking for him. He'd like been cruel.

Speaker 1 He's like kind of a bad guy. He'd like been cruel to his girlfriend.
And so he had disappeared to start over and no one cared, right? No one was looking for him. It's like kind of a sad story.

Speaker 1 But then he turned himself into this like saintly character on the trail who everybody loves. So it's this.

Speaker 1 like missed opportunity of total reinvention where this guy who is a dark force in life becomes this beloved character. This is why so many people are hunting for him because they're in love with him.

Speaker 1 He's like this very handsome, like wonderful guy. And then it's revealed that he like kind of beats up his girlfriends and is cruel.

Speaker 1 And so it's like this incredible like cognitive dissonance that all these people have when they realize, wait, the guy they were hunting for isn't Prince Charmie. And so I wrote the first story.

Speaker 1 It's called The Search for Mostly Harmless. And then the second story about his life.
So those are two of the last stories I wrote at Wired.

Speaker 2 I think that's so exciting. I love that.
That's so interesting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a pretty interesting tale. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I love this. Well, thank you for for being.
Listen, I think this, I had a great time talking to you.

Speaker 1 So thank you. That was so much fun.
It was amazing. It's great.

Speaker 2 So much fun. And good luck with this book.
I'm sure it's a really nice read. And you guys have to check it out.
The Running Ground by Nicholas Thompson. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.