This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human run a business and not thinking about podcasting.
Think again.
More Americans listen to podcasts than add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
And as the number one podcaster, I hearts twice as large as the next two combined.
Learn how podcasting can help your business.
Call 844-844-IHEART.
Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers?
Who catfishes a city?
Is it even safe to snort human remains?
Is that the plot of Footloose?
I'm comedian Rory Scovel and I'm here to tell you Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.
It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here.
I'm the director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom.
And I'm Jordan, the show's producer.
And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long.
I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking but aren't.
Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility.
We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about.
So check out the mailroom, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeart Radio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us.
So today I'm delighted to welcome Nicholas Thompson to Before Breakfast.
Nick is the CEO of The Atlantic and the author of the new book The Running Ground, which is a memoir about his family and his amateur but very serious running life.
So, Nick, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Laura.
It's nice to be here.
Thanks for coming on.
Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Well, I'm CEO of The Atlantic, which is an amazing publication.
It covers American life.
It's been around since 1857.
Founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Harry Beecher Stowe.
Try to prevent a civil war.
We try to publish smart, thoughtful, interesting pieces about the world.
I used to work at Wired.
I was the editor there.
Before that, I worked at The New Yorker.
And I run probably more than is healthy.
Yeah.
I was just thinking, those are some big shoes to fill on the Atlantic side.
Hopefully we'll prevent any future civil wars, even if they didn't succeed on that.
But I want to talk with you mostly today about running and your schedule, because this is a productivity podcast.
So people want to hear about how you're fitting that in.
But first, I mean most people assume like athletic achievements are something that happen when you're on the younger side.
You know, maybe like your 20s,
And yet you actually had your biggest running successes as a not so young anymore person.
Can you tell us a little bit about your an old person?
Can you tell us a little bit about your running journey?
Yeah, sure.
I started running when I was a little kid.
My dad would take me running when I was five or six.
And then I kind of stopped.
I ran again in high school.
It was pretty good in high school, but not good enough for college.
My 20s, I ran, started running marathons, tried to break three hours, kind of broke when I was 30.
In my 30s, I was pretty good.
I ran like 243 for a marathon, which is good.
I ran that over and over again.
But then in my mid 40s, it got much better.
And I ran a 229 marathon, which is quite fast.
And then I set the American record in the 50K.
And then I ran, you know, one of the fastest times in the world for the 50 mile for my age.
And so that's really quite a bit different.
So I was much faster in my 40s than in my 30s.
And that was when you had a more demanding career and a family as well, right?
Yes, three young boys, a demanding career, all kinds of obligations in life.
It's true.
So I think people are going to want to hear about how you make this work.
I mean in your peak of training, like going up to a big race that you are training for about how many hours a week does that involve?
It's like eight hours of running, right?
So I'm running about 70 miles a week.
Um, figure I'm running about seven minutes a mile.
So that's 490 minutes.
That's eight hours and 10 minutes.
Um, there's a, you know, a little bit extra time for showering.
Um, you know, that kind of stuff.
I hear beet juice is involved.
I did.
I drank just beet juice like an hour ago.
Um, I do drink a big amount of beet juice.
You know, you focus a little more on your diet.
You focus a little more on your recovery.
You focus a little bit on cross-training, though not that much.
You know, I might stretch a little more on Zoom calls than I do on most other Zoom calls.
I might be testing out my Achilles tendon later on in this call.
But eight to 10 hours is, I guess, not as much as one might imagine.
No, you know, this is one of the nice things about running, right?
If you're a professional cyclist or you're an elite cyclist, you're spending like 20 hours a week, right?
If you're a swimmer, it's 20 hours.
If you're a soccer player, it's like 30 hours a week.
Running, you're bounded because you can't really run more than 100 miles a week without cracking.
And so there's a certain amount of time.
Now, I also am hyper-efficient about those 8 to 10 hours because I'm CO the Atlantic.
I'm supposed to spend my job doing my, spend my day doing my job.
So I run to and from the office.
Um, today, like I, I'll tell you how I ran today.
Right.
So I dropped my kids at school at eight 30.
I had a panel, uh, at 940 in lower Manhattan where I had to wear a suit.
So I dropped the kids at school.
I had to get a friend to sign books that I'm giving away as presents.
So I ran to his house with a backpack full of books.
He signed them.
I ran home.
Took about five minutes to shower and change my suit.
Got on the subway.
Ran from the subway to my panel, because I thought I was going to be late.
Did my panel.
Then came back to Brooklyn on the subway for a meeting.
Did the meeting.
But the meeting ended at 1.
And I had my next, maybe it ended at 1.30.
I had my next meeting at 2.
I had to do a phone call.
So I ran from Brooklyn to Manhattan while doing a phone call with my head of comms about sort of a strategy question.
So I got, I don't know, seven miles of running in today, all of which was like part of work.
And it was actually the most efficient mode of transportation around this fine city of New York was running.
So I wore these shoes that actually, I have one pair of shoes, these Tracksmith Elliot hairs.
And they're kind of stylish.
If you're not able to see, I'm wearing a blue suit, pink shirt.
And I've got these like nice white shoes that look okay on stage and you run pretty well in them.
So it's quite durable.
So in the backpack, at some point I'm running with a suit, some point I'm running with these books, but I'm just getting around.
Yeah, I was going to say I have logistical questions here, because at least one of those runs, and possibly two of them, it sounded like you were wearing business clothes to run or had you changed.
I changed.
I changed.
I changed very quickly in the bathroom into my shorts.
I'm not running in this suit.
The only run in the suit was when you were late to the event.
That was the only time.
Yeah, there I was running in my suit.
And I'm sure there's a security camera in Manhattan that someone is looking at it like why is this guy in this Paul Smith suit sprinting across Liberty Street?
Okay.
But the others, it was a quick change.
Yeah.
And then there was a shower in the morning.
That's right.
But not in the afternoon.
You got to stay cleanly.
You got to stay cleanly.
Okay.
All right.
But it sounds like you managed to fit that in very well.
Quickly, you're a master of transitions here.
I'm very good at transitions.
I'm very good at like, yeah, I'm very good at squeezing runs in.
Like I love to run.
I know.
And if I had more time to run, I would be a better runner.
And so that means that if I can be more efficient about getting my runs in, I can be a better runner.
And so the challenge to me is just finding the time.
Like tomorrow, I'm not gonna be able to run.
I fly to Austin at six in the morning and I'm there until...
I'm on like events all day and then I fly back and return at midnight.
There's zero time to run.
So I can't run tomorrow.
So it'd be good to run today.
Yeah.
And running sometimes with a backpack on as well is what I'm hearing.
Yeah, right here.
So you can actually see the remnants of it.
Backpack and in it, I've got the sweatshirt and the t-shirt and the, Shorts that I ran in.
So, you know, it depends.
I have another event tonight and I'll run home afterwards, depending on what time it is.
Get another five miles in.
All right.
Well, so that we've added up to about like 12 miles today.
Yeah, it's not a bad day.
It's all been productive too.
It's not a bad day at all.
All right.
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with a little bit more from Nick Thompson on his time management techniques here.
Yeah thanks, run a business and not thinking about podcasting.
Think again.
More americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from spotify and pandora and, as the number one podcaster, iheart's twice as large as the next two combined.
So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
Think podcasting can help your business?
Think iHeart.
Streaming, radio and podcasting.
Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com.
That's iHeartAdvertising.com.
Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers?
And what is this?
How is that not a story we all know?
What's this?
Where is that?
Why is it wet?
Boy, do we have a show for you.
From smartless media, campsite media, and big money players comes Crimeless.
Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalist.
And me, Rory Scovel comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.
We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws.
Honestly, it feels more like a high-level prank than a crime.
Who catfishes a city?
And meet some memorable antiheroes.
There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys.
Clap if you think she's a witch and it freaks you out.
He has x-ray vision.
How could I not follow him?
Honestly, I got to follow him.
He can see right through me.
Listen to Crimeless on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte?
The most anticipated guest from season three is here the Trey to my Charlotte, Kyle McLaughlin, joins me to relive all of the magical Trey and Charlotte moments.
He reveals what he thinks of Trey giving Charlotte a cardboard baby.
Why would I bring her a cardboard baby?
I was literally, I was like...
This doesn't track for me at all.
When he found out Trey's shortcomings.
I'm kind of excited at talking about you know.
I think he's a guy who spends time in Central Park.
You know he's probably going to need some surgery stuff, you know, and I was like all this kind of stuff going on and they were like yeah yeah yeah, fine.
And they said, but...
He's impotent.
And I was like, he's impotent.
And why he chose not to return to In Just Like That.
They came and presented an idea and I was like, I get, I see it.
It's so kind of a one joke idea.
You don't want to miss this.
Listen to.
Are You a Charlotte?
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts?
I am talking with Nick Thompson, who is the CEO of The Atlantic.
He is also a very serious runner, has set a couple records for his age group in terms of distance races.
So how you figure out the day?
Like, as you were looking at this upcoming day, I mean, obviously you probably have your stuff with you a lot of the time to seize moments, but did you plot out the day and say oh, that's where a run could fit.
I mean, what did that look like?
Yeah, normally I'll do that.
I'll plot out, sometimes I'll plot out the week.
Like, okay, look, it looks like I can run, like I have an hour on Thursday.
I can run on Thursday, right?
So maybe I'll get a workout in there.
My default is I just run to the office and from the office.
Sometimes you...
You have a problem because you have to wear a suit during the day.
You don't have a suit at the office.
You don't have clean clothes at the office.
So you have to arrange that.
But I plot out my day.
So what I do is I wake up at 6.
And I look at my Trello board, which has This is what I'm going to do now.
This is what I'm going to do today.
This is what I'm going to do soon.
These are the five most important things I'm going to do today.
Here's a list of household tasks I have to do.
Here's a list of book-related tasks I have to do.
You know, I'm moving things across the trailer board.
I'm trying to prioritize.
I'm trying to do the hardest stuff first.
And as I'm doing that, I sometimes am thinking okay, when am I going to run and what am I going to run?
And so then you just make that happen.
Then I just make that happen.
And like...
Sometimes I get in enough runs and sometimes I don't.
How far is it to the office from your house?
What is that run commute?
So the shortest way to do it would be over the Manhattan Bridge.
And so it's like 38 miles.
But it's not very pleasant because you run across the Manhattan Bridge and the trains are really loud.
So the Brooklyn Bridge is more pleasant.
And that's about four and a half.
And then the Williamsburg Bridge is the most pleasant because it's kind of the least crowded.
You can run along the Brooklyn waterfront.
That's about five miles.
And so depending on how much time I have, I take one of those three routes.
Yeah, that can be a very beautiful commute, at least some of the time.
Do you do this in the snow and rain as well?
Every day.
Every day.
There's never been the only time where conditions, I didn't do it, was when Hurricane Sandy hit.
And that was just because there was like a, you were like, It's like police warnings not to go out.
I would have run otherwise.
Yeah.
Because once you start to worry about the weather, then you're done.
As soon as you... There are too many factors, right?
It is too narrow a window in which I can run.
And if I also weighed the weather...
I would run like three miles a year.
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like you're fitting it in.
I wonder do you ever I mean sometimes, when people are listening to this like I would like to devote a lot of time to something that is important to me that is not work and is not family?
I mean, do you ever have any sort of guilt about having a very serious hobby outside of those things?
A little bit.
You know obviously like, so I minimize the amount of time it takes away from work and family, right.
But it doesn't take away zero.
And I try very hard to minimize the impact on my family.
If I'm going for a 20 mile run, I try to do it before the kids wake up.
But the cost is not zero, and so I do feel some guilt.
And then the way I justify it is, It helps clear my mind.
It's an important part of who I am.
And it also sets an example for the children.
They love that I'm fast.
I ran the New York Marathon last week.
I didn't do well.
I didn't do as well as I'd hoped.
I missed my goal.
Everybody in the world was positive.
Everybody was like, good job, Nick.
Marathons are great.
It's beautiful.
What a beautiful day.
Except for my kids who were like, dad, that stunk.
You know, they know what you're capable of.
That was not a 229.
We can tell you that.
In fact, what my son said was bury that garbage.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh, my goodness.
It's like the only it's like my son and David Goggins, like the only people who would say that.
Are they runners as well?
Does your wife run?
My wife doesn't run.
She's a former dancer so she's very active and understands kind of like physical.
You know what it means to care a lot about preparation.
Two of the younger boys run a lot and are quite good at it.
Yeah, well, that's fun when you get to go with them.
So you talk a little bit about, I mean, the morning routine features a morning commute.
Do you have anything else that's a regular part of your morning routine?
Yeah, it's pretty structured.
So I get up.
The kids wake up at 7, so it's 6.45.
So I'm basically working from 6 to 6.45.
When I was writing the book, that was off in the window where I would work on the book.
Now I'm doing other work.
So then at 6.45, I start making breakfast.
I make them all breakfast.
I set the table.
I clean the kitchen.
They come down.
I'm usually listening to news podcasts then so I can catch up on the news.
And then until they're down, once they're down, I'm starting to talk with them.
Then they come down.
We're doing homework together.
We're hanging out together.
Sometimes we go to the gym together.
Then I walk them to school at 8.15.
And then I had to work.
All right.
Excellent.
Well, we love morning routines on this show.
I have a question Nick, about this, because do you ever wonder, given that you were so fast in your 40s, if you could have been faster faster in your 20s than you were?
Or is it sort of a mental thing that you have developed over time with experience that has allowed you to reach new running goals?
No, I should have been way faster.
Okay.
I could have run a 220, like obviously, you know.
If I can run a 229 at age 44, working it into this ridiculous busy life I have.
How fast could I run if I'd moved to Flagstaff and devoted myself to running?
I would have crushed it.
But whatever, I made other choices in life.
You made other choices in life.
And another question for you, because I have run one marathon in my life.
It was a painful experience.
Done a few halves, also fairly painful.
What is going through your brain?
When I run?
When you run, and especially toward the end of a longer run, what are you doing to sort of keep yourself focused at that point?
Okay.
In a longer race or in a longer like workout?
Either one.
I mean, I guess it's slightly different, wouldn't it be?
So in a race, I'm focused, right?
I'm just like thinking about the person ahead of me, the person behind me.
I'm trying to like run on the flattest part of the road to put minimal impact on my body.
I'm trying to run like straight tangents.
I'm like, you know, I'm basically thinking about my breath.
I'm thinking about my heart rate.
I'm like, I'm just like fully focused on Nick's forward motion and efficiency.
Right.
And if my brain is wandering and I'm stressed, I'm repeating different mantras.
Thinking about how my feet are hitting the pavement.
I'm using tricks that I know to keep myself concentrated on a task.
That's a race.
By the end of the race, I'm so burnt.
I can't think of anything.
I'm just like... You're on autopilot.
You're running around and you go around like you're on Central Park South.
And...
All these people are screaming for him, like, go, Nick.
And you've no idea who they are, right?
You can't see them, right?
You have no peripheral vision, right?
So that's the end of a race.
At the end of a long run, I'm just thinking about whatever I'm thinking about.
I could go if I had a day and I had no responsibilities, which just doesn't exist I would go run for 40 miles, right.
And I would just go run through the woods and my mind would be clear and I would be like thinking about the blue jays and the sky and like looking at the clouds and you know, memories would be flowing back of nice things in childhood.
And I, you know, I just like, I'd be thinking through complex problems.
Like there's nothing better than the way my mind, there's nothing better than me, than the way my mind works when I'm off, like running in the woods.
So they're pretty different.
Are you listening to music or podcasts or you're just going with the flow?
So if I'm I listen to almost never listen to music.
I listen to podcasts if I'm in like efficiency mode.
Right.
I'm like running to work.
I'm running in the city.
I'm someplace beautiful.
I'm trying to let my mind go.
And if I'm in a workout, I don't listen to anything.
Like I'm trying to learn about my body.
I got it.
All right.
Well, we're going to take one more quick ad break and then I will be back with more from Nick Thompson.
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?
Think again.
More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.
So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
Think podcasting can help your business?
Think iHeart.
Streaming, radio and podcasting.
Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com.
That's iHeartAdvertising.com.
Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers?
And what is this?
How is that not a story we all know?
What's this?
Where is that?
Why is it wet?
Boy, do we have a show for you.
From smartless media, campsite media, and big money players comes Crimeless.
Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalist.
And me, Rory Scovel comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.
We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws.
Honestly, it feels more like a high-level prank than a crime.
Who catfishes a city?
And meet some memorable anti-heroes.
There are thousands of angry horny monkeys.
Clap if you think she's a witch and it freaks you out.
He has x-ray vision.
How could I not follow him?
Honestly, I gotta follow him.
He can see right through me.
Listen to Crimeless on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte?
The most anticipated guest from season three is here the Trey to my Charlotte, Kyle McLaughlin, joins me to relive all of the magical Trey and Charlotte moments.
He reveals what he thinks of Trey giving Charlotte a cardboard baby.
Why would I bring her a cardboard baby?
I was literally, I was like...
This doesn't track for me at all.
When he found out Trey's shortcomings.
I'm kind of excited at talking about you know.
I think he's a guy who spends time in Central Park.
You know he's probably going to need some surgery stuff, you know, and I was like all this kind of stuff going on and they were like yeah yeah yeah, fine.
And they said, but...
He's impotent.
And I was like, he's impotent.
And why he chose not to return to In Just Like That.
They came and presented an idea and I was like, I get, I see it.
It's so kind of a one joke idea.
You don't want to miss this.
Listen to Are You a Charlotte?
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Talking with Nick Thompson, who is the CEO of The Atlantic, the author of the new book The Running Ground, which we've been talking about, how he fits running into his life.
But a lot of it is a memoir of his relationship with his father, who is also a fairly serious person, which is a complicated relationship, for sure.
Yeah, my dad was a really complicated man.
He was a man who came from very little, rose to great heights, had many things predicted for him.
And then struggled with alcohol, struggled with understanding his sexuality, eventually realized he was gay, struggled with discipline, eventually ended up bankrupt.
And struggled with sex addiction and ended up more or less running a male brothel in Southeast Asia.
So, you know. complicated ups and downs, right?
People used to say, what do your parents do?
It's like, oh, my mother's an art historian in Boston and my dad runs a mail brothel in Bali.
And they'd be like, That's a conversation starter for sure.
Or conversation stopper.
But he did run through this whole...
I mean, all his issues.
Yeah, he, you know, he ran, he taught me to run when I was a little kid.
I mean, he really started running when he was about 40, when his life was really coming undone.
And...
This is the running boom of the late 70s.
Everybody's putting on their shoes.
He runs the New York Marathon in 1982.
I go and watch him.
He runs a couple other marathons.
He loved running.
He found something in it.
It was a way of him keeping the kind of demons that were devouring him at bay.
And then he and I would run together.
When I was a teenager, when I was in my 20s, when I was in my 30s, we'd go run a few miles down the road.
I loved running with him.
And then when I got good, he cheered me on as loudly as anybody.
Yeah.
Well, there's a lot to explore in the memoir and I suggest people read it if they want to learn more about that.
But you know, just in terms of for this podcast and our listenership.
We love productivity tips and you are managing a large organization.
Yeah. people who are very good at what they do.
I'm curious if you have any sort of productivity tips or routines that help you through your workday, trying to be as efficient with work as you are running.
Yeah, so the most important thing is...
Every now and then and like frequently throughout the day, and I'll do it five or six times I'll basically take a look at my to-do list and I'll reset and I'll be like what is the hardest thing that I least want to do?
And I'm going to start doing it right now.
And I try to make it like one second from when I realized what it is.
So when I start like, don't check your email before you do that.
Don't like do all the little things that you distract us.
Like one of the things that I care a lot about and I try to cultivate is this sort of the on off switch right.
Like how long does it take from, when you realize what you have to do to when you start doing it.
And if you can get that as tight as possible, that's very important.
And then the other thing and it's kind of from running I do have this very stoic view that the way you get things done Is you just start and you don't worry like about like exactly how long it's going to take.
But you recognize that if you don't start it won't get done.
And if you do start, it will get done.
And so you just kind of go every day.
It's like in running.
If you, if, if you, if you run every day. and you run hard twice a week, you'll get faster.
Always happens, always will, never fails.
If you don't, you run like four days a week and you don't run hard, you won't get faster.
Never will, just doesn't happen.
And so like the same thing in work, you know, if you kind of mess around and like I want to work that hard and you, you aren't that productive.
Like you're never going to get stuff done.
You're never gonna get ahead.
So you know, you just have to it's.
It's kind of stupid and obvious, but like to cultivate those skills.
And I care a lot about practicing and reinforcing those skills.
And every time I don't do.
I know that every time you do something you build a tiny habit.
You make it easier to do it that way in the future.
And so I try hard to continually cultivate that.
But with something like your job, I mean, you are having so many inputs.
I think what a lot of people struggle with is you may know what is the hard thing to do, and you also have a hundred emails that have come in since the last time you checked, and many of them are going to be important because they've gotten kicked up to you.
So I'm curious how you balance that of knowing what needs to be done and managing all the inputs that are coming at you.
It's a really interesting question.
And I think what I do is I kind of have an intuitive sense of like, what is tier one?
And everything in tier one is stuff you're just going to have to do today.
And so, you know, I don't know.
Like I just I just did this meeting and this check-in and part of me was like I don't really want to do this right now.
I've got like so many things I got to get done in the next half an hour.
And then I was like, no, I have to do this today.
Like we're going to have to cover these things.
So let's just do it right now.
She's here.
I'm here.
We'll do it.
And so you just kind of are like you're spending some time where you're in your to-do list, being deliberate, and you're sometimes just being reactive.
And then the trick, when you're being reactive, is to very quickly adjudicate is this thing like above the line or below the line?
If it's above the line, do it now.
If it's below the line, Not only don't do it now, just don't ever do it.
And so you kind of manage your to-do list that way.
Yes.
Kick it forward eternally if need be.
I mean, there are some things that are like, okay, I'm going to do that tomorrow, right?
I actually was just talking to my assistant.
I was like, I can't get this done by six.
I'm going to get this done tomorrow morning and I'm going to send it to you at 11 am tomorrow morning.
Is that okay?
Right?
Like, so sometimes you kick it, but like generally it's like either do this now or don't do it.
So Nick, I ask all my guests this question.
We always love little things that can help make our days better.
Is there something you have done recently to take a day from good or great to awesome?
Something like one thing I did during the day?
Maybe.
I flew to Los Angeles on Tuesday and I actually, I, I, I, I had like sort of have like this.
One of the nice things about writing a book is that you get like 20 emails a day from people who are like.
This book made me cry.
This book changed my relationship to my dad.
And so I'm basically like they've all like piled up and like, in some ways it's lovely and it's wonderful.
And all these people sending beautiful things.
And in some ways it's stressful because they're in the same inbox as like the work problems.
And I just said, I'm going to spend five straight hours on this airplane.
And all I'm going to do is I'm just going to work through these.
And I did.
And I was, I guess, on Tuesday.
And it has reduced the stress because now I'm kind of, I haven't caught up, but I'm closer.
The lady next to me was like, that was weird.
I've never seen someone just take out their laptop and go the whole time.
There was no movies involved.
She's like, I found that kind of stressful.
I was like, sorry.
Had to just do it.
Um, but you know that was it's a little stupid and like, email is a little bit of a trap because you can feel productive when you're not actually being productive.
Um, but it was, that was a useful, that was good.
That was today is Friday.
That was Tuesday or Wednesday.
Yeah.
Well, if you got to read through all the emails about the book, I bet that was kind of fun, too.
Oh, it's amazing, right?
I got an email from this woman who dated my dad in 1960.
She has all her diary entries and you know, letters that he wrote that she's sending me.
So like it's incredible things are coming through.
Wow.
That'll have to be saved for the sequel, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Nick, where can, where can people find you?
So I'm all over the internet on NX Thompson.
So Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter.
I post a daily video every day on artificial intelligence policy.
I just posted one right before coming on.
I would love it if they go and they pick up a copy of The Running Ground at their bookstore or Amazon or Walmart or wherever.
And I'm around.
Awesome.
Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback about this or any other episode, you can always reach me at laura, at lauravandercamcom.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
You can reach me at laura, at lauravandercamcom.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers?
Who catfishes a city?
Is it even safe to snort human remains?
Is that the plot of Footloose?
I'm comedian Rory Scovel and I'm here to tell you Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.
It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here.
I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom.
And I'm Jordan, the show's producer.
I haven't been to the doctor in way too long.
I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking but aren't.
Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility.
We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about.
So check out The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
What up, y'all?
It's your boy Kev on stage.
I want to tell you about my new podcast called Not My Best Moment, where I talk to artists athletes entertainers creators friends, people I admire who had massive success, about their massive failures.
What did they mess up on?
What is their heartbreak?
And what did they learn from it?
I got judged horribly.
The judges were like, you're trash.
I don't know how you got on the show.
Check out Not My Best Moment with me Kev on stage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an I Heart podcast.
Guaranteed human.