Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Nicholas Thompson - CEO of The Atlantic (50k American Record Holder) | The Simple Sport That Reveals Everything About You

Transcript

Nicholas Thompson - CEO of The Atlantic (50k American Record Holder) | The Simple Sport That Reveals Everything About You · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Why is running the simplest sport?
• 0:02
  It's the sport that you can do almost at any time at any moment just by yourself.
• 0:07
  Your successes are your own, your failures are your own.
• 0:09
  I start running very seriously when I'm about 15 and initially I do it for a love of competition
• 0:16
  and I do it because I'm good at it and it gives me status at high school. It makes me cool.
• 0:20
  He's a storyteller who turned media into mission. Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of the Atlantic
• 0:26
  and under his leadership the magazine returned to profitability earned multiple
• 0:29
  Pulitzer prizes and grew its digital subscription base exponentially.
• 0:33
  When you're running, pain doesn't work the way we're talking. Most of your pain is actually
• 0:37
  just the brain sending signals because it's worried about homeostasis.
• 0:40
  If you can reach that level of awareness of yourself you can actually go quite a bit faster
• 0:44
  because you can push your limits. You also co-founded The Atavist, a multimedia publishing
• 0:49
  company acquired by WordPress and wrote The Hawk and The Dove. He runs a daily video series
• 0:54
  dissecting technology, culture and power, reaching millions and reshaping how we think about the future.
• 1:00
  When your life is hard there's something about going into the track and just running to the point
• 1:04
  where you fall over that feels amazing. We're all on Instagram all the time, we're all
• 1:07
  on Twitter all the time, we're all constantly distracted and we feel all those empty moments
• 1:12
  with screens, social interactions and notifications. What's interesting is at the same time that
• 1:16
  that has happened the number of people who run marathons and the number of people who run ultra
• 1:19
  marathons as skyrocket.
• 1:31
  So Nick, why is running the simplest sport?
• 1:36
  Hey Scott, it's the sport that you can do almost at any time at any moment just by yourself.
• 1:44
  You don't need a racket, you don't need a ball, you don't need someone else. You just go out,
• 1:49
  you don't even necessarily need shoes though they're useful particularly if you're on rocky terrain.
• 1:54
  But you have the ability to just go out there and do it whenever you want. And then because it's
• 1:59
  just you, you're able to observe things about yourself and understand things about yourself
• 2:05
  as you do it. Your successes are your own, your failures are your own. You understand aging and
• 2:10
  creates mental space that other sports don't do. So my hypothesis of my book is that if you
• 2:18
  look closely at running and you look at what it does to people's lives and you look at what it
• 2:22
  did to my life, you can actually understand really deep and really meaningful things.
• 2:29
  Do you think that people in general have a hard time being alone with their own thoughts?
• 2:36
  Some people do, some people don't, but we all have to spend a certain amount of time alone,
• 2:41
  so we all should be comfortable. And you know, there's this interesting phenomenon in modern life
• 2:49
  where we're all on Instagram all the time, we're all on Twitter all the time, we're all
• 2:54
  constantly distracted and we fill all those empty moments with screens, social interactions,
• 3:00
  notifications. But what's interesting is at the same time that that has happened,
• 3:04
  the number of people who run marathons and the number of people who run ultra marathon tests
• 3:07
  skyrocketed. And so there's almost an inverse relationship between how distracted we are by our
• 3:12
  phones and how much we seek sort of long distance, long endurance competition. That's very
• 3:20
  interesting. Yeah, I feel like as you describe running in such an eloquent way and I haven't
• 3:25
  heard many people describe it that way, but it's, I've experienced it with a variety of different
• 3:31
  fitness things, but none are as, how do I describe it? Like when you run, you get into a
• 3:39
  state, I guess it's flow state or something where you, there is no distraction. It is really just you
• 3:44
  and your thoughts, which can be a good thing or a scary thing, but it's really interesting that
• 3:48
  you notice that correlation between our thoughts being overwhelmed by social media, being constantly
• 3:53
  stimulated, be constantly bombarded with messaging and images and ideas, and our need
• 3:59
  to find an outlet that gives us back our mental peace almost.
• 4:06
  It gives us back our mental peace. It can access to, you know, we were, right? We hunted antelopes
• 4:11
  on the, you know, Savannah when we were, you know, many, many centuries in generations ago. I do
• 4:16
  think there's something very pure about running. Even when you do it, like I do it in an industrial
• 4:21
  city, you know, most of my running is from Brooklyn to Manhattan over a bridge with a train.
• 4:27
  So it's not like I'm off running in the fields of wildflowers. So I do think that even if you do it
• 4:34
  that way, there's a way it connects you to our ancestors and a way it connects you to the sky.
• 4:41
  I do think there are really beautiful things that happen through it.
• 4:44
  Where does this sort of, I don't want to say love for running, but need for
• 4:50
  being okay with your own thoughts and persevering through difficult times. Where does this
• 4:57
  inflection point or this major theme come into your life? When does it first present itself?
• 5:02
  I mean, I start running very seriously when I'm about 15 and initially I do it for a love of
• 5:10
  competition and I do it because I'm good at it and it gives me status at high school. It makes me
• 5:15
  cool. But I also very quickly also learned that it's a way to be outside, be in the woods,
• 5:24
  think at a deeper level process complicated things. And so it's probably pretty early in my
• 5:30
  relationship with running where I realized like I didn't just want to go out and try to beat people
• 5:34
  on the track. I wanted to see if I could run to the top of Kinsman Mountain, right? I wanted to see
• 5:38
  if I could, you know, get to the next ridge line. And you don't do that because you want to prove
• 5:44
  anything. Now you might do it for a Strava segment, but back then you didn't. And so it was really
• 5:50
  about finding some kind of spiritual peace. So I think that my need, the mental benefits that come
• 5:58
  from running started to make themselves present then. But I think it was later in life when,
• 6:06
  I mean, the inspiration for the book came in a pretty important moment, which was,
• 6:11
  you know, when I was 29, at least when I was 30, I ran a fast marathon. I had this long struggle
• 6:18
  to run a fast marathon. I just couldn't break three hours. I finally break it and I run 243 and
• 6:22
  I feel amazing, right? And then shortly thereafter, I'm diagnosed with cancer. I recover. We talk
• 6:28
  more about that, that process, that whole thing. Then for the next like 13 years, I keep running and
• 6:35
  I just run 243s over and over again, just nonstop. 243 is fast. It's cool. It's great. Like,
• 6:41
  243 is a great time. It's objectively like it makes you the fastest person in your company,
• 6:45
  right? Usually if you run 243, you know, fastest person on your block, whatever. Then in my mid 40s,
• 6:52
  I get way faster, right? And I run 229. And now suddenly I'm like one of the best in the world.
• 6:56
  In my age group, you start setting records and the inspiration for the book, the moment I decided
• 7:03
  to write the book came when I was trying to think through like, what the heck happened? Like, how did
• 7:06
  I get so much faster? And more importantly, clearly, I have this latent ability. Why didn't I realize
• 7:12
  it while I was training my butt off in my 30s? Like why couldn't I gotten faster than like makes no
• 7:16
  sense? And then I had this realization, oh, wait, it's because I had only cared about at some deep
• 7:22
  psychological level, being as fast as I had been before I got sick. Like that was the only thing that
• 7:27
  mattered to me. And so it was that realization, oh, wait, like the things that make you fast,
• 7:33
  the things that slow you down, the things that determine how well you can do at this sport are
• 7:37
  very deep inside. They're not just like your cardiovascular system, your legs, they're deep in
• 7:44
  your mind. And it was that realization that led me to start writing this book. That's very interesting.
• 7:50
  So you discovered that the reason why the reason why you weren't getting better is really because of,
• 7:55
  I mean, to put it very, very simply, sort of a limiting belief for not even like a baseline or
• 8:02
  a benchmark that you thought that was what you wanted to achieve. I mean, this is like obviously
• 8:08
  we're talking about running and sport, but this is something that transcends almost everything you
• 8:13
  do in life. Totally. Like, I don't, like, there's so many multi factors and lots of elements,
• 8:19
  but yes, it was essentially like I was not, I just wouldn't let myself get faster because I didn't
• 8:25
  care because all I was trying to do was prove that I was still alive and that I was like similar to
• 8:30
  the person before he had gotten sick. And that seems to have been what was going on inside my head.
• 8:34
  What is that? What does that teach you about sort of, you know, aging into your prime? Because I
• 8:40
  think that that's something that I mean, like, I don't think a lot of people at, at, you know,
• 8:46
  45 are trying to break records. I don't think that a lot, and I always tie, listen, I am a business
• 8:52
  guy in a sports gun. I do tie a lot of sports performance and sports lessons back to business
• 8:57
  because I think that some of the mindset hurdles that you overcome to succeed in sports and teamwork
• 9:02
  and all these different ideas, they really do translate into, into, into business as well and
• 9:06
  just life success. But I think that you're talking about somebody who's 45. I don't think they're looking
• 9:12
  to, you know, create incredibly new milestones in their career, incredibly new milestones in their,
• 9:18
  in their athletic life, incredibly new milestones in their relationship, even though I think they
• 9:24
  should be, but I think that around that age is when people are thinking, okay, you know, I've
• 9:29
  done it. I figured it out. I'm good. Let me coast into retirement or whatever that looks like.
• 9:33
  Yeah. A couple of things. So one, I had a very good model. My maternal grandfather who doesn't
• 9:40
  really play a role in the book. He's mentioned a couple sentences, you know, worked until he was
• 9:45
  83 years old at the highest levels of US government, right? And he just got fired all the time,
• 9:50
  you know, got fired by him. Seven out of 11 US presidents and then just would work his way back,
• 9:54
  right? So I had a pretty good role model that said, you don't stop, you don't give up, you don't go,
• 9:59
  like you don't say, okay, at 55, I'm going to retire or at like 40, I'm going to stop running. You
• 10:04
  just keep going until until the end. You know, he was playing tennis with me when he was 90 years old.
• 10:10
  I put a little like chair out on the court and you would like sit down between points. So that's,
• 10:16
  you know, that's one element of it. Another element is, I think the lesson that I learned,
• 10:22
  there are forces that slow you down as you age, right? It is inevitable. And, you know, my,
• 10:28
  I don't know, less lean muscle mass than I had when I was 28 years old. I have a, you know, lower
• 10:33
  maximal heart rate, right? I have, they're all kinds of like, I let a lower VO2 max.
• 10:38
  They're all kinds of like physiological things that unquestionably make me slower.
• 10:43
  That said, I also have wisdom, right? I've learned things about training that I didn't know before.
• 10:49
  I have learned actually forms of endurance through my professional life that are useful for running.
• 10:54
  So you have a bunch of forces pushing you backwards. You have a few forces pushing you forward. And so
• 11:00
  I'm never going to, even if I devoted my whole life to running, I'm not going to run 220 or 219.
• 11:06
  But I can, you know, keep, I can keep pushing back against the declining. I had this conversation with
• 11:11
  my mother. She was like, oh my god, my reflexes are just getting worse and worse. You know, it's like
• 11:16
  every day and my reflexes are worse. And I was like, mom, that doesn't have to be the case.
• 11:20
  Like, let's go out on the porch. And I'm going to throw you tennis balls. I'm like, sort of,
• 11:23
  toss them to the right, toss them to the left. I'm going to bounce them. You're going to catch them
• 11:27
  and throw them back to me. And like, we went and did that. And she's like, oh, my reflexes
• 11:30
  are getting better. And you're like, yeah, you know, you can like, there are forces that push us in
• 11:35
  one, you know, towards decay. And you can push back, you know, not at everything, but at what you
• 11:41
  want. You know, we're not going to live forever. You know, I'm probably going to die at roughly the
• 11:45
  same address going to die out if I didn't do all this running. But I'm glad that I haven't like
• 11:50
  given in to the forces of the client, at least not yet. You write about running with awareness,
• 11:55
  not just discipline. Explain what that means. What's the difference? Yeah. So when you're running,
• 12:02
  this is important. It gets into like a little bit of, it's almost spiritual stuff. But you have to
• 12:11
  the trick, one of the tricks in running fast, one of the most important things. And so the
• 12:15
  less than I think applies across life. Pain doesn't work the way we're taught or the way we think
• 12:21
  about it when we're young. Then I started running. I thought that the reason I hurt when I ran
• 12:26
  was because my muscles were inflamed or, you know, something was going wrong with my nervous system.
• 12:32
  Or like, I used to think there's like, there's lactic acid buildup, right? And the lactic acid
• 12:36
  buildup is what makes you hurt. Well, no, it's not. There is lactic acid buildup. But that's not what
• 12:41
  makes you hurt. Most of your pain is actually just the brain sending signals because it's worried
• 12:46
  about homeostasis. And so your brain is, you know, sending signals through the rest of your body
• 12:52
  to try to get you to slow down because it doesn't think it can maintain the pace you're running for
• 12:56
  the distance you want to run. So when I run a marathon or anyone runs a marathon, you get all
• 13:00
  these weird pains, right? And you're like three miles in your shoulder will start to hurt, right?
• 13:05
  And on a regular day, your shoulder's not going to hurt three miles in a run because
• 13:09
  there's nothing going on with your shoulder, right? Like it's just there, right? It barely moves.
• 13:14
  But your brain is like, it's worried about running 26.2 miles on this particular day. And it's
• 13:20
  worried you've taken it out too fast. But it's trying to get you to slow down. And so it's looking for
• 13:23
  weak points. And there are all kinds of studies that show this. And so your brain is running all
• 13:28
  these calculations. How hot is it? Like, how long is this going to take? How hilly is the course? How
• 13:32
  hard of my work? What is my part rate? And it's measuring all these factors. And it's like a thermostat.
• 13:38
  And then if those factors kind of exceeded different level, it like sends a pain signal out.
• 13:42
  And so when you're running, you're trying to understand this and you're trying to understand
• 13:48
  these different pain signals and you're trying to understand like, is this just something I can ignore?
• 13:52
  This is like this thing in my shoulder. Or is it an actual pain signal? Is it like I've actually
• 13:58
  injured my Achilles, right? So I was running this past Saturday and something started to go wrong
• 14:03
  on my hamstring, right? I was like, okay, is this like a real thing? Or is it just worried that I'm
• 14:06
  trying to run a 20 mile run? And that is like a really profound and deep body awareness that
• 14:12
  if you can reach, and not that I've reached perfection, but if I've written, I am at a much deeper
• 14:17
  understanding of my body than I was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 30 years ago, if you can reach
• 14:23
  that level of awareness of of yourself, you can actually go quite a bit faster because you can
• 14:28
  push your limits. In part by sort of like using your brain, I call it plain height and seek with
• 14:34
  your brain, right? But the only thing you have to use your brain to play hide and seek with your
• 14:37
  brain, but you can kind of convince yourself to go faster. They're obviously physical limits. Like
• 14:42
  it's not like the perfect Buddhist can run a one minute mile, but you know, you can still do
• 14:48
  better if you have a deeper understanding. You actually set records for men 45 and up in a 50k
• 14:54
  race. Like this is not just a casual, uh, I go for a run on a Sunday morning. Was that done
• 15:01
  purposefully? Did you say I never want to be 100% my work? Is that benefited your work?
• 15:07
  Is what's the relationship between this sort of the two conflicting identities?
• 15:12
  Well, it could be a it could be a strength. It could be a weakness. I mean, I think that like
• 15:18
  my whole life, and if you look at different moments and you look at people who have evaluated me,
• 15:24
  you know, the people who like me and the people who are impressed by me and you think I'm doing
• 15:28
  a good job are always like, you know, Nick does so many things, right? And the people who
• 15:33
  kind of think I'm a schmuck are like next distracted, right? And it's a theme that goes through,
• 15:38
  like my academic life, my 20s, my 30s, my 40s. And you know, they're
• 15:45
  there are there are trade-offs when you have a life where you have a bunch of things you do.
• 15:49
  There are moments where your goals end up intentionally with each other. What I've tried to do
• 15:56
  is to make the life work and to make it so that nobody the Atlantic ever thinks I'm slacking
• 16:00
  on the job because of my running, right? I run two and from the office takes about the
• 16:03
  amount same amount of time as going on the subway. I'm often listening to podcasts. I'm going to
• 16:07
  work out, obviously, I'm not because I'm trying to cultivate awareness, right? I'm using running as
• 16:11
  a way they can help my job. There are things I learn from running that really help my job,
• 16:15
  there are things from my job that help my running. So I've been able to build it into my life,
• 16:20
  so they don't think any I don't think anybody at the Atlantic would ever say I shirk on responsibilities,
• 16:24
  you know, I think they mostly think oh Nick has this like hobby that he's able to keep contained.
• 16:29
  And you know, one of the things about running is that you can do it at an elite level without putting
• 16:33
  that much time in, right? You know, you spend I spend what eight hours a week running.
• 16:39
  It's a lot, but like you could spend eight hours a week watching Netflix.
• 16:42
  HubSpot is a success story partner. Now think about listening to this podcast right now.
• 16:46
  You're probably multitasking, you're probably catching 70 to 80% of what we're talking about, but
• 16:51
  let's flip that and imagine you're only catching 20%. That'd be crazy, right? It's really not a good
• 16:55
  use of your time. If you only remember 20% of what we're talking about, but most businesses,
• 17:00
  most entrepreneurs are only using 20% of their data. All the most important details and call logs,
• 17:05
  emails, chats with their customers, it's just left floating in digital space not being used.
• 17:09
  HubSpot, it gives you the access to those insights to help you grow your business because when you
• 17:14
  know more, you grow more. Visit HubSpot.com to get the full picture of your business today.
• 17:18
  NetSuite is a success story partner. Now, what does the future hold for business? If you ask
• 17:22
  nine experts, you'll get 10 answers, bull market, bear market, rates are up, rates are down.
• 17:27
  At the end of the day, it just be easier if somebody invented a crystal ball. But until then,
• 17:31
  over 43,000 businesses have future proof themselves with NetSuite by Oracle. The number one AI cloud ERP
• 17:38
  that brings accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one unified platform.
• 17:43
  Here's what I love about it. Instead of juggling multiple systems, you get one source of truth.
• 17:48
  Real-time insights and forecasting that actually let you peer into the future with actionable data.
• 17:52
  When you're closing your books in days instead of weeks, you're spending less time looking
• 17:56
  backwards and more time focusing on what's next. Whether your companies earning millions or hundreds
• 18:00
  of millions, NetSuite helps you tackle immediate challenges while seizing your biggest opportunities.
• 18:05
  If I needed this product in my business, this is what I'd use. It's a game changer for business
• 18:10
  visibility and control. If you want to see how AI can transform your financial operations,
• 18:15
  download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning for free. That's NetSuite.com slash
• 18:20
  Scott Clary. Indeed is a success story partner. Now, say you just realized your business needed to
• 18:25
  hire someone fast. How can you find amazing candidates fast? It's easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes
• 18:30
  to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites.
• 18:35
  Indeed, sponsor jobs helps you stand out and hire fast. And with sponsor jobs, your post jumps
• 18:41
  to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster.
• 18:46
  And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs posted directly on Indeed
• 18:51
  have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored jobs,
• 18:57
  there's no monthly subscription, no long-term contracts, you only pay for results. There's no
• 19:02
  need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show
• 19:07
  will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility. Just go to Indeed.com slash
• 19:14
  Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com
• 19:20
  slash Clary terms and conditions apply if you're hiring Indeed is all you need. When you think about
• 19:25
  the idea of obsession is obsession useful, helpful to you, a good thing, a bad thing. Just because I
• 19:35
  feel like I love obsession to be quite honest. I think that it and I look at what you've accomplished
• 19:44
  over your life and I feel like a portion of you, not 100% but a portion of you is obsessed and
• 19:50
  that's what allowed that's what's allowed you to get to where you are. What is your thoughts on
• 19:55
  obsession with running with performance, with work, with everything you've done? I'm like,
• 20:01
  that's a good question because obsession is, you know, it's hard to be obsessive about. It's
• 20:10
  hard to be like a obsessive polygamist. And so my whole life I've never really focused in on one
• 20:18
  thing to the exclusion of others. But I am very driven and very focused and I care a ton about
• 20:27
  doing well at my job. I care a ton about running fast and I care a ton about being a good father
• 20:30
  than my three boys and a good husband to my wife. I think obsession, I think sort of like a
• 20:38
  modulated obsession where you like really care passionately and you like you, it's just
• 20:45
  whatever the goal is, right? So the most important goal in my life, right? Besides being a good
• 20:49
  father, good husband, the most important goal is figuring out a business model. So this amazing
• 20:54
  publication founded by Ralph Walder, Emerson and Haribit, Peter Stowe can thrive for generations to
• 20:59
  come and play a role in helping American democracy and helping America like exist as a nation, right?
• 21:05
  That's my objective, right? I don't write the stories. I don't edit the stories. My job is to
• 21:08
  find the business model and I am obsessed by that. I think about it all the time, right? And it's
• 21:12
  in the back of my head, what should we do? Are we doing this? Are we doing this well enough? Can we
• 21:15
  hit this metric, right? So in a way I am like profoundly obsessed about that, but not to the extent that
• 21:22
  it prevents me from spending a bunch of time running. No, I think I like that strategically obsessed.
• 21:29
  Yes, strategically obsessed. There you go. There that's that. There you go. I'm strategically
• 21:33
  obsessed. When you get cancer at a young age, you, I mean, to a degree you're facing mortality,
• 21:41
  how does that change your relationship with running your hobbies, your pastimes, your family,
• 21:49
  work? Like what does this do? What is the thoughts that go through your head when you do get
• 21:53
  cancer at a young age? Well, so one of the thoughts, so I got it when I was 30.
• 22:02
  You do suddenly, you just, you question who you are and what you are because you're like,
• 22:11
  wait, if I die, what have I, have I done anything? Have I left anything? Have I, you know,
• 22:18
  the world would be identical without me or at least if you're 30 and you're like, I was at 30,
• 22:25
  right? I mean, if you're so super accomplished 29 year olds, maybe different. But it,
• 22:31
  it makes you wonder your place in the world. It makes you think more about the people who truly
• 22:35
  love you. You go through this moment and you also, you get to see how people react and you get
• 22:40
  a better sense of who truly loves you and who truly matters in your life. And then if you're lucky
• 22:44
  and you get through it as I did, you take life more seriously and you, you have a, you have
• 22:52
  post traumatic growth, you know, you have this thing you can hold on to, right? You've been to
• 22:57
  the precipice, but you've survived and you, you care more about certain things and you care less
• 23:05
  about other things. And so, right, you maybe care more about trying to figure out your place in
• 23:11
  the world of journalism and you can maybe care less about whether the Red Sox when the AL East,
• 23:15
  right? And so you just sort of like your, your shift of priorities and your way you spend your time,
• 23:22
  I think changes. There have been studies that have shown that people who get cancer and survive it
• 23:29
  end up with, they end up becoming more religious, they end up becoming closer to their family members,
• 23:33
  they end up becoming closer to their deep friends, they end up probably having fewer weak social
• 23:37
  connections and they end up more focused, right? Like there's a kind of, they do a whole bunch
• 23:42
  of things that are very salutary for the mental health and they, I think they also spend more time,
• 23:48
  you know, outside like thinking about important things, like you kind of like remove trivia and add
• 23:54
  important stuff into your mind. And, you know, there have been lots of studies that show that it's
• 23:59
  not true for everybody and you do have to obviously survive it and come out the other side,
• 24:03
  completely intact, right? And you can come out with all kinds of different outcomes. But,
• 24:08
  you know, when I look at my life, there are a lot of things that didn't go right in my 20s,
• 24:14
  I went right in my 30s, running, it's a very obvious one, but they're all kinds of them. And
• 24:19
  part of it was having had this really dark and scary experience with, you know, the thyroid cancer,
• 24:25
  which is, you know, if you're going to get cancer, it's the, the cancer you want to get.
• 24:29
  And very high survival rate, I was very young, there wasn't, you know, I was terrified and thought
• 24:34
  I was going to die, but there is no moment where like a rational doctor thought I was going to die.
• 24:39
  But you come to the other side and you're a different, more serious, more focused person.
• 24:46
  There was one line in your book. It was along the lines of when we're teenagers were pulled by instinct.
• 24:55
  Now my emotions were those of an older man, a steady rain that formed a river pushing
• 24:59
  relentlessly forward. So this sort of, it's very well, very well written and beautifully worded
• 25:05
  a sort of evolution of a person. And was that cancer that brought you through that evolution?
• 25:12
  It was a couple of things. I mean, that line in the book, I was comparing two different races,
• 25:16
  and they're both like very emotional races. So the first was when I was 18 years old or 17
• 25:22
  and it was the New England Championships and it was the 3000 meter race and it was for the New
• 25:28
  England title. And it was both for the individual and for the team title and my race, the 3000 was
• 25:33
  the last race. And so it's me against my art rival. If I win, we have a good shot, a win in the
• 25:39
  title. If I lose, we have no shot. So I have to win. And I go out, I like fall behind, I get depressed,
• 25:48
  he gets ahead, and then I catch him. And then it's just this man sprint. And so
• 25:55
  what I love about those memories is that you can just, when you're running a sprint on a track,
• 26:02
  you can just let your emotions out. You can channel every element of energy you have into
• 26:08
  forward propulsion. And I don't think I've ever felt quite like I felt those last 200 meters
• 26:15
  were neck and neck. We're just going back and forth. I hated the guy. He insulted me on the
• 26:20
  track like three weeks before. It was the only person who beat me all season. It was unfair. He was
• 26:25
  a post graduate. I wanted to beat the guy. And so we're going at it. I pass him a catch him,
• 26:33
  which is amazing. And then I lose. And he wins. And so I was describing the emotions of that race
• 26:41
  and what it feels like to give it all and to like be a young man and be like screaming inside
• 26:45
  yourself and moving on into lane two, which amazingly in track is called the lane of high hopes,
• 26:49
  which is so cool. So that was the first race. And then the second race is the 50K in Oregon,
• 26:54
  where I set the American record, where you know, in that first race across the finish line and
• 26:59
  I black out, like I don't even know I've lost when I cross the finish line. It's so close.
• 27:03
  I think I might have lost, but who knows? And then it's like, um, then in the 50K, it's like,
• 27:09
  I remember the end where I can see the finish line and I know I'm going to break the American
• 27:12
  record and they've pulled out the tape. And I run through and the video is kind of amazing,
• 27:17
  right? And you watch and I go through and I break the tape and I look, I look good. And then,
• 27:22
  and I remember feeling good. And then I like top over, you know, I'm like, I'm clearly like
• 27:27
  completely maxed myself to the exact, you know, it's like, you know, I don't know, you pull into
• 27:32
  the gas station and there's like one drop of gas in the tank. And that was like what I had done in
• 27:36
  that race, but I had done it like in sort of a steady, smooth way as opposed to that first race,
• 27:43
  where I lost. By the way, I will say that the guy who beat me in that race when I was a 17,
• 27:49
  he read an article I wrote about running and sent me an email and said it, he loved it,
• 27:53
  it was great to read about it and like it had inspired him to get out and play more squash. And
• 27:57
  I now, I'm now friends with him. That's so far. The Arch Nemesis. No, but I think that that,
• 28:03
  so yes, you're right. It wasn't just cancer, but it was like this. It was just life just turning
• 28:08
  away. I mean, it's a lot of things, right? There's a lot of changes happen. So I think I really like,
• 28:15
  there's sort of four things that happen at that time period. There's one, I overcome my cancer,
• 28:19
  two, I start having children, right? So I have three boys and they appear in the years after I get
• 28:24
  healthy. Third, I write a book and I write a book about my maternal grandfather, who I mentioned,
• 28:30
  who is this just phenomenal diplomat, but also just a force of nature and a model. I read a book,
• 28:36
  it's the history of the Cold War based on his rivalry in George Kenan's. And then the fourth is
• 28:40
  that I have this very intense relationship with my father. And I watch this very driven man,
• 28:47
  you know, kind of fall off into alcoholism and despair and bankruptcy. And I like have a
• 28:55
  counter example, right? Like if you let things slip, this is what happens, right? And that sort of,
• 29:00
  you know, I start to really process that. So all of those things are happening at the same time
• 29:04
  in my life. That's a lot, that's a lot, a lot. One last thought on this because I think it's a
• 29:11
  useful idea. And I can help people that are going through difficult things. God forbid, hopefully,
• 29:17
  nobody, although probability dictates people who are listening to this are going through cancer,
• 29:24
  some sort of cancer scare, but just negative, negative moments of people's lives in general,
• 29:29
  you found a lot of relief in running to really take your mind away from the cancer. But the
• 29:39
  point is running physical activity, it gave you something that would take your mind away from
• 29:44
  anything negative. Like I'm assuming you've used it to escape a lot of, you know, really
• 29:49
  mentally exhausting and stressful situations over your life. Talk to me about what people should,
• 29:57
  what people should know about running just when they're going through something, hopefully not
• 30:01
  cancer, but if it's cancer, anything else, like what's the, what's the thing that running gives you
• 30:05
  that nothing else really does? You know, I don't know, I mean, for, I don't know if other people,
• 30:12
  it gives you something that's nothing else can give you, but there's, there are a couple of
• 30:15
  things that can happen with running. So one, it allows you, you know, sometimes when you're running,
• 30:21
  what you're doing is you're actually seeking the pain, right? You're like, you're going out there
• 30:26
  and because things are hard in your life, you're just like, you want the opportunity to kind of get
• 30:32
  into ultra runners called the pain cave, but you want to get into like just a point of, there's
• 30:38
  something when your life is hard, there's something about going to the track and just running to the
• 30:44
  point where you fall over that feels amazing, right? So that's one use, right? I don't use it that much,
• 30:50
  that's more kind of like a young person's thing. You know, but that, that was kind of like what,
• 30:56
  you know, if I like broke up with the girl when I was young, I would like just go one hard, right?
• 31:00
  And like, you know, sometimes like bringing pain on can process the other pain.
• 31:05
  What I use running for now is kind of the opposite. It's almost like spiritual escape. It's like,
• 31:10
  I'm going to go and I'm going to run and I'm going to feel this different thing and I'm going to be
• 31:14
  out in the universe and it's going to be closer to meditation, right? And I'm going to go,
• 31:18
  maybe something hard happens in my life now. I just go out and I go run in the woods, right? And I
• 31:23
  don't run hard. I don't necessarily run long, but I go and it's a way of like releasing my mind
• 31:27
  and freeing myself. And so I think people can reach that mental state, you know, that kind of
• 31:33
  dissociation. You can reach it through multiple ways. You can go for a walk, right? You can,
• 31:39
  you can go bird watching, right? Like there are different ways of kind of escaping and going.
• 31:43
  Maybe you can meditate. Maybe you can sit quietly in a chair, but for me, it's running that gets
• 31:47
  me to that state that's even really helpful. The HubSpot podcast network is a success story
• 31:52
  partner. Now a quick podcast recommendation. I've been listening to truth, lies, and work. They're
• 31:56
  in the HubSpot podcast network, just like success story. It's this husband and wife team Al and
• 32:01
  Lee and Elliott. They break down why people actually do what they do at work. So if you have a
• 32:06
  business, if you manage people, if you have to hire people at any point, you have to listen to
• 32:10
  their show. I just listened to an episode on my good employees suddenly quit. That's an issue
• 32:14
  that we all have. And it totally clicked for me. One of the reasons I explained is why it's not
• 32:18
  usually about the money. It's about all these little promises that we as founders, entrepreneurs,
• 32:23
  managers, leaders, we break without realizing it. Like when you tell someone you just hired,
• 32:28
  they're going to learn all these new skills, but you just keep giving them the same tasks over
• 32:31
  and over and over again. It made me realize that I've probably lost a lot of good people for
• 32:35
  dumb reasons that I never noticed. And hiring is one of the most important things you can figure out.
• 32:38
  So if you manage people or if you just want to understand what makes your co-workers tick,
• 32:43
  it's worth checking out. Listen to truth, lies, and work wherever you get your podcasts.
• 32:47
  Chipstation is a success story partner. You know what separates successful online businesses
• 32:51
  from literally everyone else? It's not just having great products. It's delivering an amazing
• 32:56
  shipping experience that keeps customers coming back. All of my friends that run the biggest
• 33:01
  e-commerce companies, they use Chipstation and it has completely transformed how they handle orders.
• 33:06
  They save thousands on shipping costs thanks to their rate, chopper tool that finds the best
• 33:10
  discounts. And when it makes Chipstation brilliant, you never need to upgrade because it grows with
• 33:14
  your business no matter how big you get. And they offer discounts up to 88% off UPS, DHL express,
• 33:20
  and UPS rates and up to 90% off FedEx. It integrates seamlessly with every selling channel you're
• 33:26
  already using and your customers get branded tracking updates that keep them happy and informed.
• 33:31
  When shoppers use your products, you turn them into loyal customers with cheaper, faster,
• 33:36
  and better shipping. No credit card required, cancel anytime. That's chipstation.com code success
• 33:41
  story. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now the future of business is happening right now and
• 33:46
  you don't want to miss it. That's why you have to be at inbound 2025. They are bringing together
• 33:50
  the brightest minds in marketing, sales, business, entrepreneurship, AI for three incredible days in
• 33:56
  San Francisco, the global epicenter of innovation and technological disruption. Picture this.
• 34:00
  You are learning directly from Amy Poler about creative leadership. You're getting AI insights from
• 34:05
  Dario Amote, who's literally shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Here's what makes
• 34:10
  inbound special. It's not just the great keynotes. You're going to dive into breakout sessions where
• 34:14
  you can immediately implement what you learn. And plus San Francisco's legendary startup ecosystem
• 34:19
  provides the perfect backdrop for networking with all these great entrepreneurs, decision-makers,
• 34:24
  industry leaders, peers who are actively shaping the future of business. From September 3rd to
• 34:29
  5th at the Moscone Center, you're going to be surrounded by forward-thinking professionals who turn
• 34:33
  insights and ideas into breakthroughs. Don't just watch the future unfold. Be part of creating it.
• 34:38
  Visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. Talk to me about your relationship
• 34:44
  with your father because obviously he's in the title of your book. So that was something that
• 34:49
  was very important. It shaped a part of your life, a big portion of your life. What was your
• 34:54
  relationship like with him? He's a very complicated guy, but my relationship with him was always
• 35:01
  made a very strong relationship. We emailed, you know, more or less every day throughout his life.
• 35:09
  He passed away seven years ago, but he's a very complicated guy where he grows up,
• 35:14
  and he grows up in kind of a tough family where he's afraid of his father. He grows up in Oklahoma,
• 35:18
  and his father, they're on a Native American reservation, his father's president of the
• 35:23
  university there, and my dad just doesn't fit in, doesn't have any self-confidence. And so he
• 35:29
  kind of escapes. He learns about the school called Andover, applies, gets a scholarship,
• 35:34
  and then it's this just like rocket ship trajectory for the next 10 years, right? Where he goes to
• 35:39
  Andover is an outcast, figures it out, goes to Stanford, wins a road scholarship, you know,
• 35:46
  dean of students, you know, I find these recommendation letters where they're like,
• 35:49
  Scott Thompson's the best student we've had since Herbert Hoover, right? John F. Kennedy says
• 35:53
  this guy's going to be president, runs every political organization. He's just a dynamo, goes to
• 35:58
  Oxford, you know, with his road scholarship, comes back with his defail, marries my mother,
• 36:05
  who's the, you know, glamorous daughter of this important political figure. And so my dad's like
• 36:09
  just, you know, the guy's going to be certainly he's going to be senator, right? But then he doesn't
• 36:16
  really like, he never gets on track professionally. And, you know, from the time he marries my mother
• 36:21
  where he would have been me to 26 years old, 27 years old, until he's 40, he's in kind of a rut.
• 36:27
  Um, he starts to drink too much, becomes alcoholic, he then, you know, can't really get himself
• 36:33
  going professionally, can't really write an important book, get stuck in all these sort of
• 36:37
  political battles, um, inside the faculty where he's, where he's a professor, he then finally
• 36:43
  like starts to make it in the late 70s. Um, and he becomes kind of a well-known public intellectual,
• 36:49
  Ronald Reagan gets elected and he's the top choice to run the policy planning staff, which is a
• 36:53
  great job. Uh, he doesn't get it. Um, but it's right then that he realizes he's gay. And,
• 37:02
  you know, it's something he thought about, you know, he, it's unclear exactly when he realized
• 37:08
  that he had tendencies, he's clearly bisexual of a some degree, but they were his, his male tendencies
• 37:14
  were stronger. And so then he leaves my mother, he, you know, moves to DC and then he just
• 37:22
  unravels. Um, and he, you know, he starts to, he would, he would, there would be hundreds of men
• 37:28
  who he would, you know, would come to our house and he would, you know, I said he didn't spend
• 37:32
  a night alone for 20 years. Um, and he is, you know, there, many of them are completely inappropriate,
• 37:40
  right? Some of them are like violent, some of them are thieves, some of them are, you know,
• 37:46
  yeah, I don't know, just kind of like, imbisels, right? Like they're not the people that's got
• 37:49
  Thompson should be with. Yeah, there's some people I like, but mostly like they're not really
• 37:53
  the right people for him to be with. And so then he like the next 30 years of his life,
• 37:58
  he's a loving father, he's fully supportive of me, fully devoted to me. Um, he's an amazing man
• 38:04
  to talk to right. The guy is always so smart and interesting and well read and he's like, he's a
• 38:09
  great person to have at parties, but it's just chaos, right? And he like, falls behind on his taxes,
• 38:16
  he makes all these bad real estate deals, he ends up in like thousands of court cases, maybe hundreds
• 38:21
  of court cases, he eventually leaves to Ashex, he can't handle an American anymore. And then by
• 38:25
  the end he's, he's running this hotel in Bali that is it really a hotel or is it just like
• 38:32
  people come and sleep with the male gardeners? And you know, it's a pretty, it's a pretty dramatic
• 38:39
  story of rise and fall from like this little kid in Oklahoma, the, you know, halls of Washington
• 38:46
  the rice patties, you know, and then eventually he dies in Batanga, Philippines. Um, so it's a,
• 38:51
  it's a, it's a, the other reason I wrote this book is because my dad's life story,
• 38:55
  whether there's a lesson in it or not a lesson, it's interesting, right? Like if I tell people
• 39:00
  they're like, they're like, what is your dad do? And they sort of assume your my dad has a kind
• 39:03
  of a different story than what he does. Um, so, you know, it's, he's an interesting guy, but
• 39:10
  what's important, what's most important is that he was completely devoted to me. He loved me. And
• 39:14
  even though he like, he threatened to kill himself to like get a couple hundred bucks from me or,
• 39:19
  you know, all kinds of like blackmail and craziness, you know, order prostitutes to like into my apartment.
• 39:26
  There's like, there's, and there's even worse things that I don't put in the book.
• 39:29
  Um, despite all that, like we maintain our relationship and you know, we stay in touch and we
• 39:34
  have a loving father's own relationships with a very end. Is there, is there a lesson?
• 39:39
  Um, is there a lesson? To me, one of the lessons was, don't
• 39:49
  get knocked off track. And if you do get knocked off track and you do start to like lose yourself
• 39:54
  confidence and you do find yourself, you know, sort of letting slip the things you care about,
• 40:00
  get it back. Like it seemed like what happened with my father was the way he coped with his
• 40:07
  drinking problem was to drink more. And the way he coped with having drunk more was to drink more.
• 40:12
  And what you want to do is the opposite. Um, you want to like, you sort of cultivate a little
• 40:18
  bit of self-awareness. He was a very interesting man and that he had, you know, such incredible
• 40:24
  ability to view the strengths and weaknesses of other people and could see through you and could,
• 40:31
  you know, identify. He wrote me a letter when I was 21 that, you know,
• 40:34
  forced off a huge portion of my life. It's one of the most incisive letters that I've ever received.
• 40:38
  And how well did he know me? I spent two weeks a year with him, spent time with him in weekends.
• 40:43
  I read it just recently and I was like, oh my god, this man. He was, he was, but he didn't have his own
• 40:48
  self-awareness. Yeah. I mean, he, you know, what he would say is, you know, that like his sexuality,
• 40:56
  that he came of age the wrong time that was really hard to be, had been born gay in 1942.
• 41:01
  Right? If you're born gay in 1982, you can come out of the closet. If you're born gay in 1922,
• 41:05
  you just stay in it. And so he was born gay in 1942 and then came out, you know, in during the
• 41:11
  middle of the AIDS crisis, he was, as you mentioned, who's diagnosed as HIV-positive that turned out to be an
• 41:16
  incorrect diagnosis. He would say that he, you know, just life gave him, life gave him a DNA
• 41:25
  imposed limit. And because of his sexuality, he couldn't have succeeded professionally the way he
• 41:32
  wanted to. Like Washington would not have allowed an openly gay man to succeed. And once he realized
• 41:39
  he was gay, he could not, you know, control it. And because he hadn't been able to like be a young
• 41:45
  man exploring his sexuality, when he was a teenager, he had to compensate by, you know, dating this
• 41:50
  endless parade of, you know, 19-year-old guys he met on man jammer. Like that's what he would say.
• 41:56
  Which is not, I think, you know, fully persuasive, but that was his argument. No, I think that there's
• 42:03
  a lot of inner turmoil there for obviously. But I wonder if, and you probably know, you've probably
• 42:12
  thought of this at least once or twice before, if even though it was a good relationship and there
• 42:18
  was a certain degree of chaos in the relationship, but even though it was a good relationship, you're
• 42:23
  saying it was a good relationship, did it? You kind of ended up being complete 180, like a complete
• 42:33
  opposite. Like when things don't go right, you make sure that you don't lean into the wrong,
• 42:37
  you find a way to correct it. Like I see you as actually a very disciplined person,
• 42:41
  as somebody who like leans into the hard things as opposed to sort of giving way to the easier
• 42:46
  things. I think that I don't know if that's part of what shaped who you are. I think for sure that
• 42:52
  there's something that comes from our parents that definitely at least imprint on us to a degree.
• 42:56
  But you seem to be a complete opposite of that. Well, to the extent I am, it's deliberate,
• 43:03
  right? It's like, you're my sister, my two sisters, older sister younger sister, we've all talked
• 43:09
  about like our fear of becoming like him. And the what we do to try to not become like him.
• 43:15
  But on the other hand, like I am quite similar to him in other ways, you know, I,
• 43:21
  you know, he was this like bundle of energy who is always doing lots of stuff, you know, people like
• 43:25
  his old friends always say I remind I remind them of him. What what makes something so simple?
• 43:31
  And we did touch on this, but go go a level deeper, please. What makes something so simple
• 43:36
  become so profound and and such a benefit to your life? Yeah, I think it just it opens up
• 43:44
  levels of thought and it opens up levels of experience that you know are pretty hard to open up.
• 43:52
  One of the things I did in the book is I, you know, both tell my story and what running is done.
• 43:55
  For me, but I'll tell the stories of five other people who have struggled with really hard things
• 43:59
  in life and used running to cope with them. And you know, the first maybe I'll just tell her story,
• 44:04
  well, maybe I'll tell two of them. The first is this woman named Bobby Gibb. And they're all people
• 44:08
  who've intersected with my life. You know, she's the mother of a friend of mine. And she, you know,
• 44:14
  grows up and she's just, she's wired differently and she really doesn't, she just can't stand the
• 44:20
  role the women are supposed to play in, you know, 1950s, 1960s America. Like when you can't
• 44:25
  have a credit card, you can't have a job. You just got to be a wife. She just can't stand it.
• 44:29
  And the way she copes with it is she's like, you know, I'm going to do my own thing. And so she
• 44:32
  goes off and she runs across the country. You know, not directly across country. She's in a van,
• 44:37
  but she like gets in the van and she'll drive starts in Boston and drives to the, you know,
• 44:42
  Berkshire's and go every night she'll go and run like, I don't know, for four or five hours,
• 44:47
  you know, and then sleep on the ground and like, look at the stars and look at the sky. And she
• 44:50
  goes across the entire country and goes to, you know, goes to San Francisco. And then she's like, you
• 44:56
  know, I kind of love this running thing and then she goes, enters this 100 mile race in Vermont
• 45:01
  and she was able to run with the horses here on 66 miles and two days. And she's just like,
• 45:06
  running gives her this way of being a spiritual being out in the world that nothing else does and
• 45:12
  helps her like escape these feelings. So then she's like, you know what, I'm going to run the Boston
• 45:16
  marathon. And so it's where she grew up. So she sends a letter. And then we're going to
• 45:20
  as we're like, sorry, women are incapable of running the Boston marathon. It was just like
• 45:23
  belief, right? The women weren't able to run the, I can't remember this. It's like, what year is this?
• 45:28
  1966. Really? Yeah, it's crazy. Well, women like, women didn't run distance races at the Olympics
• 45:36
  until the 70s, 80s. It's absurd. Well, I didn't know that. That's insane. Yeah, it's wild. And so Bobby
• 45:44
  gets this letter back and it's like, women are incapable. Sorry, you can't run the Boston
• 45:47
  marathon. She said, we just ran 66 miles with horses. And so she runs it. She like puts on her
• 45:54
  brother's sweatshirt and like sneaks in the bushes and then just goes out and runs the
• 45:58
  Boston marathon. And she runs it in like three hours and 20 minutes or something. And it's this,
• 46:04
  she's the first woman to run it. And so it's a wonderful story about running, helping this person,
• 46:10
  you know, find her role in civil rights, find her role and you know, bringing freedom,
• 46:15
  bringing equality. And it's just a beautiful story there. You know, all the other five
• 46:21
  characters I mentioned, one of those guy Michael Westfalt. And so he lives on this tiny island,
• 46:26
  30 people out and off the coast of Maine. And there's nothing to do because it's a tiny island
• 46:31
  of eating your powdered milk and staying inside. And so everybody on the island becomes a runner,
• 46:36
  right? And there's one two mile road. And he'll run like 100 miles a week back and forth
• 46:40
  in the two mile road. And they end up having like, population of 37 of them runs sub three
• 46:45
  hour marathons at one point. And so he becomes this great runner. And he runs this road race in
• 46:52
  Northeast Harbor, which is a town on the mainland. And he wins it. He or one year my father runs it.
• 46:58
  So 1981, I think then 30 years later, my son runs the race. So I'm running the race,
• 47:06
  my son runs the race. And I'm watching my son. And he's coming, you know, mile left. And I've
• 47:10
  finished. I've gone back to go find my kid. And there's this guy right with him who's like arms
• 47:15
  are flailing all over the track. And I'm running with this buddy of mine as a cop. I'm like, is that
• 47:20
  guy okay? He's like, yeah, it's Michael Westfalt. And so what happened? What happened to Westfalt?
• 47:24
  He'd gotten Parkinson's. And so he had gotten Parkinson's in his like 40s. It's like runner,
• 47:28
  carpenter, strong guy built up all the houses on the island. And he'd had to learn how to run with
• 47:33
  it. Like he loved running. It was the thing he did. And at first, he was embarrassed. And then he
• 47:37
  learns how to like tie his hands behind his back so they don't flail too much when he runs. And he runs,
• 47:43
  he's like, qualify as Boston Marathon Times with Parkinson's. He said it's a world record for
• 47:47
  fastest marathon Parkinson's. He's incredible. And and so I spent a lot of time interviewing him about
• 47:53
  how he coped with like using running as a way to deal with, you know, I had to deal with decline.
• 47:58
  I had to deal with cancer. I had to do a fear. He gets a disease from which there's no return,
• 48:02
  you know, and he gets it at 49. And he knows that the rest of his life, it's just going to get,
• 48:06
  you know, harder and harder, but he wants to keep running because he loves it. And it's a story
• 48:12
  about what he learned about competition, what he learned about running. So I tell those two stories.
• 48:16
  There's others in the books that are like it, but the point is there's something about this sport
• 48:21
  and the fact that you can do it. Like you can't play tennis if you have Parkinson's, right?
• 48:24
  You can't like, you can just go out and train and do it. You know, you can sneak through the
• 48:29
  bushes and get into the Boston Marathon course, right? Because it's just you and it's just your shoes.
• 48:33
  There's something about the freedom and the self-determination that come from the sport that allow you to
• 48:38
  really reach deep places and do important things for somebody who is like a high performing individual.
• 48:44
  What from work helps them with the running? What from what what from running? Excuse me,
• 48:51
  helps them with their work. Yeah. I think that concentration is really it's something that really
• 48:57
  trends. I mean, you mentioned earlier that there are a bunch of habits, right? Like you eat well,
• 49:01
  you sleep well, you know, you learn how to like modulate your energy levels. Like there's a bunch
• 49:05
  of like you develop this kind of stoicism, right? I'm going to go run today. I'm going to work today.
• 49:09
  I'm going to run today. I'm going to work today, right? Like you develop this confidence in like building
• 49:14
  up your skill step by step brick by brick run by run, right? You learn like the power of consistent
• 49:19
  effort, right? And you learn that through both. But I also think that concentration really does come,
• 49:23
  you know, I've learned through running how to focus and I've learned through work how to focus.
• 49:29
  And I think the two feed each other. One last question about running. You've run through time
• 49:35
  square at midnight. You've been chased by cows and a lemur. You've dissipated like a thousand
• 49:40
  no trespassing signs. Just what was the most insane running story that you have, not somebody else,
• 49:46
  but something that you've dealt with? You mean like the weirdest run or like the most?
• 49:51
  Oh, that's a good quote. You take it however you want it. Give me the weirdest and give me the best,
• 49:54
  whatever. One of the points I'm making in that chapter is that like you just find time to run,
• 50:00
  right? And you just run wherever you are. Actually, I'll say like this is actually an important one.
• 50:05
  And this is this was something I didn't even know this had happened until I was right in the book.
• 50:09
  There was a time where I went to my my then girlfriend's house and she you know she'd become my wife
• 50:15
  but it's the first time like meeting her parents and I go over there and we have a big dinner.
• 50:20
  I think they're out living in Berkeley and I don't know maybe I drink some wine. We have a good time.
• 50:24
  I maybe I'll watch a movie together. I have kuno's and then it's like 11 o'clock and I'm like okay,
• 50:29
  I'm going running and because I hadn't gone running that day. And I leave and my future mother
• 50:38
  law says to my future wife like wait, what's wrong with that guy? And my wife is like what you don't
• 50:44
  get is that he enjoys it. And so there've been a lot of situations like that where I just go and run
• 50:50
  in places. I've you know I've run and I'm like what's coming to mind as I remember once for some
• 50:55
  reason like I came out of all these roads. I remember running like a 10 mile run in this
• 50:59
  tough small parking lot in Las Vegas. I can't remember why I had to do it. But it was like the only
• 51:03
  place I could run that particular day. You know and you just there's actually I remember I was
• 51:09
  I ran out during there was a time when I was up in the cat skills and I couldn't leave my kids but
• 51:16
  I had to do a run. So I just like ran around the house which is like pretty small but I ran like 10
• 51:21
  miles like a little like tiny loops around the house. You just figure out what to do. I had another
• 51:26
  time running in Vegas. I don't know why it always happens in Vegas where I was like giving a speech
• 51:29
  and it was one of those things where I like show up and actually I guess I have a whole bunch of
• 51:36
  Vegas stories. Once I've met a friend's bachelor party like he's going up the elevator with a bunch
• 51:40
  of people he's met at the you know at the club. I'm coming down to go running. It's like the rest
• 51:45
  of the bachelor party's going up and I'm going out. Then there's another time where I'm in Vegas and
• 51:50
  I've like forgotten to bring a t-shirt and but I'm only there for like three hours and I have like
• 51:56
  15 minutes when I can run between meetings and so I had like a winter coat because I've been in
• 52:01
  New York and so it's like 80 degrees and I'm in shorts and a winter coat running in Las Vegas.
• 52:07
  Anyway so the point being like I just love to run and we'll do it wherever I can.
• 52:12
  What do you want? What do you want if you're going to pass on a lesson about running to your three
• 52:17
  boys what would that lesson be? The lesson that I hope I've passed and I don't know is that they see
• 52:27
  that. They can't really understand my work right and they can't. I mean now they can. They're
• 52:33
  17, 15 and 11 but like when they were little they couldn't and they didn't like quite know what I
• 52:37
  did. They had some sense of it. They don't really know what it means but they can see the effort
• 52:42
  right and they can see the discipline and they can see the consistency and they can see that
• 52:47
  it's like they can learn some of the lessons from running about resilience, perseverance,
• 52:56
  dedication, building things up steadily and that's what I hope they get and I you know in a way
• 53:02
  I like my eldest son doesn't run but he works so hard right and he works so hard to
• 53:07
  school work and it works so hard as debate tournaments right and he you know he's clearly
• 53:13
  whether he's learned it from watching me run or watching me work or watching my wife who knows but
• 53:17
  like he's picked it up the other two boys like they both run and they do it really well.
• 53:22
  You know I just one last thought I think it's like a lesson that I'm picking up from you like
• 53:28
  running you I mean like you you say running connected you to your father but you also use it
• 53:35
  as an escape when things are difficult you can use it to focus on something or you can use it
• 53:39
  for meditation to get your head out of work like it's just it's like this tool really that's
• 53:44
  that's how I see it it's this tool that you can apply it in different ways just to improve your
• 53:48
  life and it's such like a multifaceted diverse tool yeah yeah it's definitely that is a very
• 53:53
  good way to put it because you can do you know there's no one thing I do when I run I seek different
• 53:58
  things when I run I seek meditation I seek self intense focus I sometimes seek dissociation
• 54:04
  sometimes I'm running like away from things sometimes I'm running toward things there's a lot you
• 54:09
  can do with it and I think it's beautiful because I think that we keep trying to add more complexity
• 54:14
  into our lives with routines and all these different things and all these different
• 54:20
  fitness things and health things and and they're all good to a degree but I think that sometimes
• 54:24
  simple just wins and that's that's really what it is um so the book the running ground a father
• 54:31
  a son in the simplest of sports that is available October 28th so we'll make sure this podcast
• 54:37
  goes up around the exact same time when this is live and you can get that book anywhere you get your
• 54:41
  podcasts um if people were going to just take it home if somebody wanted to pick up this book what do
• 54:48
  you hope they would get from it what's the one lesson or the one idea that you really want to drive
• 54:52
  home I mean the best thing that happens is when people who don't run read it and then say they
• 55:00
  went running and I have been a couple times just as I would send out drafts to friends I really
• 55:05
  love that they're like you know I like I now can think more deeply about this sport and I'm
• 55:09
  going to go do it and I love that response I love that I think it's just like a leading indicator to
• 55:14
  picking up running like a leading indicator to a better happier healthier life um last question
• 55:20
  I ask everybody uh you kind of already you're you already told me what lesson you want to pass over
• 55:26
  to your kids through running but just a lesson that after going through everything in your life you
• 55:33
  would like to tell your younger self your 20 year old self what's that one lesson that was really
• 55:36
  important to you that you think would help that younger version keep at it you know I think I
• 55:41
  spent too much time I didn't understand then this thing I'm I really believe that if you do your
• 55:52
  best every day good things happen right and like you don't see it right you don't see yourself
• 55:59
  getting better you don't see it improving nothing's linear in life but if you keep at it you'll get
• 56:06
  there and one of the problems I had psychologically in my 20s is that I sort of wanted the world in a
• 56:11
  minute you know and I like I just sort of assumed that things would happen really quickly and like
• 56:20
  whatever success I saw or whatever accomplishments or whatever like I thought I'd be able to like
• 56:24
  write really great stories as a journalist really like you can't like you you have to learn so
• 56:28
  much and it takes a long time and I didn't quite appreciate the benefits of like compound interest
• 56:35
  the compound interest of daily work and it took me a while to realize that and because of that I
• 56:43
  sort of would stop and start and I made it like a bunch of sort of dumb professional mistakes in
• 56:48
  my 20s and pretty off track and I think it's because I didn't understand that I didn't have the
• 56:53
  confidence I didn't understand that if you keep at it and if you do your best and if you treat
• 56:58
  people well and you know you're kind and generous and thoughtful and work hard like it will
• 57:05
  stuff will like not always and there's all kinds of biases and injustices in the world but
• 57:11
  you know things will work out better