Positive Leadership

Running From and Running Toward: Rewriting the Stories We Inherit with Nicholas Thompson

• Jean-Philippe Courtois • Season 12 • Episode 2

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What if the stories you inherited about who you’re supposed to become—from your family, your industry, your own fears—are the very narratives holding you back? 

In this powerful episode of the Positive Leadership Podcast, I welcome Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, a visionary media executive who has led transformations at The New Yorker and WIRED, and an extraordinary marathoner who set an American record in the 50K at age 45. 

But Nick’s story isn’t just about professional success or athletic achievement. It’s about the conscious choice to rewrite the narrative we inherit. 

Nick grew up watching his brilliant father—a Rhodes Scholar and academic star—whose life eventually “cracked up” due to alcoholism and personal struggles. Around Nick’s 40th birthday, his father warned him: “All men’s lives fall apart at this age.” That was the script Nick had inherited. A story of inevitable decline. 

But Nick refused to live that story. 

In our conversation, we explore: 

🏃 The Running Ground – How Nick used running as therapy to honor his father while writing a different ending (achieving a 2:29 marathon at 44) 

📰 Truth in the Age of Misinformation – Leading The Atlantic through a crisis of trust, deepfakes, and algorithmic manipulation 

🤖 AI as Editorial Tool vs. Existential Threat – Why he says AI is “the best tool we’ve ever had” but could also “completely obliterate us” 

👨‍👦 Inherited Patterns – Recognizing generational trauma and consciously choosing a different path 

⚖️ ️ The Church-State Separation – Why editorial independence matters more than ever 

💪 Defying Aging – Getting faster with age and what it teaches about leadership limits 

Nick’s profound insight: “I run because of my father. Running connects me to my father; it reminds me of my father; and it gives me a way to avoid becoming my father.” 

That sentence captures everything: honoring where we come from while consciously choosing who we become. 

Whether you’re navigating generational patterns, leading through uncertainty, or simply asking yourself what story you want to live—this conversation will challenge and inspire you. 

Key Themes: Narrative identity, media leadership, AI ethics, generational healing, resilience, editorial integrity, running as therapy, conscious choice 

🎧 Related Episodes You’ll Love: - 

Subscribe now to JP's free monthly newsletter "Positive Leadership and You" on LinkedIn to transform your positive impact today: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Jean-Philippe Courtois (00:01.119)
And we start with a short intro by yourself, Nick, and then open the show.

Nick Thompson (00:05.806)
Okay, great.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (00:12.331)
Hello, this is Jean-Philippe Courtois. Welcome to Positive Leadership Podcast, the podcast that helps you grow as an individual, as a leader, and eventually as a global citizen as well. Today, have the pleasure of welcoming a truly visionary guest. He's a renowned technology journalist, turned media executive, who's led digital transformation at New Yorker and White, and who's steered the Atlantic, a 166-year-old institution, into the future. Under his leadership, the Atlantic surpassed

more than when many subscribers return possibility, proving their principle journalists can thrive in digital age. But what really strikes me about him is his deep commitment to trust and truth as well in media. You know, he marries that with an innovator's mindset. And he's not just a media leader, by the way. He's also an avid marathoner who set an American record in a 50-k race for his age group. He's even written a wonderful memoir.

but running and his father titled the running grounds. He believes in pushing limits, whether it's running faster with age or innovating in the industry while keeping humanity at the core what he does. Nicholas Thompson, Nick, if I may, they are welcome to the podcast. So excited you have your show.

Nick Thompson (01:26.542)
That was a lovely introduction. Thank you, Jean-Philippe. I'm thrilled to be here.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:30.155)
So, Nick, I'd like to start, as I usually do with my guests, with a first question about your early life. You've written, obviously, a wonderful book, which I love, about your dad and how his journey influenced you, and even down to your sheer love of running. But beyond your dad, we'll come back to your dad later on, if you mind. Can you tell us more a bit about your family background? What about your mom, by the way, as well, that you talk a bit less about? And what kind of values did you inherit from them that kind of shape who you are today?

Nick Thompson (01:59.522)
Yeah. My mother is a incredibly strong, kind, generous woman. So my father, my father left when I was six or seven years old. My mother raised the three of us in Boston. She comes from a prominent political family. father was, you know, at that time Ronald Reagan's chief arms negotiator. Her grandmother had been the first female Congresswoman in New York City. So she comes from this wonderful line.

And she married my father who was, had huge political aspirations. And when they met, was returning from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and his career didn't pan out the way he wanted. They had us three lovely children and then he left. So she's a very generous, kind, sweet, smart, you she's volunteered at the church for 30 years. She has, I don't know, 30 God children, right? My memory of her.

When I was just a little kid, you were carrying all the suitcases and making sure that everything was set up and in line for us and extremely protective of us. And we needed that because my father was a tornado. He comes out, he leaves the family, comes out of the closet and then starts just filing lawsuits. It's financial mayhem, it's political mayhem, it's social mayhem. And my mother wanted, you he calls the school and says, I'm going to be kidnapped by his.

know, rogue boyfriend who, he was just killed my sister's cat, right? He's like this, there's a lot going on. And my mother is like, you know what? My children are gonna be all right. I'm gonna protect them. They're gonna read books. They're gonna study hard. They're gonna do well. They're gonna have good values. They're gonna marry kind people. They're gonna treat other people with respect. They're gonna have good Christian values. And that was her mission.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (03:32.789)
Yeah, yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (03:46.987)
Does it mean that was kind of a yin and yang between your daddy or mom? Calmness on one hand and tornado on the other hand as well?

Nick Thompson (03:50.797)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. mean, even he was aware of that. He wrote me this wonderful, revealing letter when I turned 21 in which he thanked my mother for countering some of the chaos that he had brought upon us children.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (04:08.625)
What are the values you think are inherited from your mom? Because I think we'll come back to the values as well, you inherited from your dad.

Nick Thompson (04:18.882)
Yeah, think a little hard to disentangle, a little hard to know what you get from your friends, what you get from your school, what you get from anything. But I do think that there are certain values that I have, probably a kind of a patriotism and love for America that comes from my mother and from my mother's side of the family. I very much respect the rules. I very much respect other people. I very much seek compromises and try to be kind, generous, see the other side. I think that all comes from my mother. And then I think that the

You know, sort of drive intensity probably comes more from my father.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (04:50.219)
father. So, you know, talking about that upbringing reminds me a bit about kind of a common background, a little bit you have with Peggy Johnson, by the way, introduce me to you. Thanks, Peggy. You know, she made a reflection about a family. She's a kid of 15 children. So a few more than yours. And she taught me that, obviously, in that family, every voice matters. And of course, when you're 15,

Nick Thompson (05:11.338)
I know her background is wild, right?

Jean-Philippe Courtois (05:19.615)
but have a good voice to be heard. So I know you've had as well, obviously beyond your early years, some incredible adventures. I've read that you were five and your very first day working at CBS and soon after you were actually kidnapped in Morocco while traveling. And ironically, I heard as well that your dad as well had some funny story in Ghana as well. So can you tell us more about those two separate stories?

Nick Thompson (05:21.742)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Thompson (05:32.738)
Hehe.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (05:48.523)
How did you end up in Morocco, kidnapped by someone? Why? And then the way you lost your job after, I don't know if it 60 minutes, but it was like very fast.

Nick Thompson (05:58.669)
I mean, they're actually connected. So what happened is I graduated from college and I didn't really have a plan for life afterwards, which is quite confusing to me now. And I look back in retrospect, I was so focused on being a good college student that I didn't really focus on what happens next. And I was so immersed in the world of my undergraduate university. So I graduate and then I, know, what should I do? So I go and I go play guitar and I'm playing guitar in New Hampshire, but I also go down to DC and I'm engaged in

Pillicle Life and I meet someone who's a producer at 60 Minutes, someone I've met before. And she says, well, I'm hiring an associate producer. I said, great. And so I go in, I interview. She says she wants someone who'll help her carry her cameras across Laos and memorize the names of everybody in this, every aide in the Senate. I'm like, I can do that and probably could. So she hires me as an associate producer, which is great. And so I leave New Hampshire where I'm playing guitar. I go down to New York. I show up and...

executive producer, this guy Phil Scheffler calls me into his office and he's like, Hey, who are you? I'm the new associate producer. like, What have you done in television? was like, Bob, I've done anything in television, but you know, I got hired. And he fired me on the spot. And yeah, I was so I was there less than 60 minutes. And it was was a couple of reactions. One, I didn't quite understand, probably illegal what they did. It was certainly ethically wrong. I didn't quite understand. I was like, well, I guess I got fired. I'll get another job.

And I didn't quite recognize how badly he had behaved or how inappropriate was. So then I'm like, well, what am I going to do? And I was talking to one of my friends, my friend who had, he was going to England the next year to start graduate school. He ended up getting a Marshall scholarship. He said, well, you know, I'm going to Africa. I'm going to tour West Africa for six months before going to graduate school. I said, I'm coming with you.

And so I got, I went and got vaccinated and told my mother and, you know, met with some foreign correspondents and learned how to like, you know, get some tips on how to live and travel in Africa. We're just going to take buses and stay in hostels at a very small budget. thought I would try to write news stories. Um, so I go to Africa and I've got my guitar and I show up in Morocco, right? Um, 10 years I've taken the boat down from, um, Spain and, uh, you know, I'm in the train station. is day one.

Nick Thompson (08:23.183)
guy comes up to me and he's like, Hey, you want to come home and play guitar for my Ramadan feast? And my friend is with me. He's like, no way. I was like, no, this is great. And, uh, you know, I get in a guy's car and I know something's wrong immediately when he started.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (08:28.075)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Jean-Philippe Courtois (08:36.255)
Just on your own, nobody else, just you. Just you.

Nick Thompson (08:38.455)
He me. And then, you know, he holds me, he has this like strange plan about me selling his drugs in New York, knocks me in a bathroom, his brothers. It's a very weird episode. But eventually he's like, lets me go. I mean, not eventually, a day later. And so I then take the train and go meet my friends. So it was a rocky start to Nick's 22nd year on this earth.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (08:45.152)
Oops.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (09:01.451)
Were you scared actually by that moment when you spent that night with that stranger somewhere in Margo?

Nick Thompson (09:07.447)
I was extremely scared. Yeah, I stayed up all night and I remember him and his brother sitting there smoking pot. And I was like on the couch. I wasn't like tied up. But it was clear that it was a very bad situation. And, you know, I was worried about what might happen. They searched through my bag. You know, they're talking about I remember them talking about Moroccan prostitutes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (09:35.37)
Okay.

Nick Thompson (09:36.56)
I don't know, like, I don't quite remember what the context was. Like, they weren't, they didn't have a gun, they didn't have a knife, but like, it's two, you big guys in country where I don't know who am. so I was scared, but I was never, I know, it was before, you know, for your listeners, this was before 2001, right? If you're kidnapped after 2001 with the sort of the Islam Jihad, Western, after Daniel Pearl, it's a whole different context. This was 1998.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (10:04.779)
Sure. Good care.

Nick Thompson (10:05.867)
And so I never felt that. I never felt like my life was at risk.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (10:11.317)
Yeah, got you. But I'm sure that you've been probably more cautious in not following strangers after the story, even in New York. OK.

Nick Thompson (10:17.263)
I've been quite cautious in not following strangers. I've been, you grow up fairly, I mean, you take a trip like I did, I spent, I don't know, four months there, just, you know, the first place we stayed was like, okay, let's find the cheapest hotel in Dakar, right? And, there's some weird sounds. wait, we've like rented a room in a brothel, right? Like, you just see and learn things and you're like, we gotta get out of here.

And this is for a kid who's like, you know, went to Andover and Stanford. And so now I'm in West Africa and I'm traveling everywhere on a very low budget and trying to figure out if I can balance the books by writing news stories. It was it was a great experience. It was great.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (10:57.791)
So, Nick, as you said, you've been trying a lot of things, I think, in your early years, In your 20s, from being a musician in a subway to working in tech, considering law school, I think, at point as well, even environmental work, if I'm not mistaken. But you eventually found your vocation, if I can call that your vocation, your calling with journalism, right? Could you share with us what ultimately drew you into journalism? Was there a moment, you know, kind of a trigger?

Nick Thompson (11:10.148)
Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (11:25.781)
that made you realize that telling stories and seeking truth was your passion and path for the future.

Nick Thompson (11:33.584)
You know, it's pretty interesting because it didn't happen the way it normally happens. Like most people who go into journalism, they work for the school paper. They realize they love to investigate the truth. They love the process of getting from A to B. And that wasn't me. I mean, I had worked in journalism, but not as a reporter. I had like founded a magazine at Stanford where I was an undergraduate about political debate and was right wingers versus left wingers. That was wonderful. It was great experience actually for now. You know, I had to sell the advertisements for it.

And then I had been a columnist. And so I had seen the persuasive power of journalism. And I had even written op-eds in the New York Times and the Washington Post as like, you a 21 year old with strong views on politics. And so I had seen its political power, but I didn't understand reporting. I didn't understand journalism. I was like an op-ed writer. And so I finished college. I come back from Africa and...

trying to figure out what to do. And, you as you said, I spent some time working as a street musician. I joined a computer company because a friend of mine is running a Linux hardware company, which is fun. I worked for the environmental defense fund as an intern. I sort of, do a lot of things. I'm trying to find my footing and I'm having a hard time finding my footing. And I go, I go to, I go to an interview at, I can't remember if it was an environment. I don't even remember the organization, but it was some kind of like,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (12:39.157)
you

Nick Thompson (12:56.175)
policy organization, right? Because I thought I was going to work. It was an NGO of some sort. was like, was like a, like it wasn't the National Research Defense Council, but it was something like that. And I showed up for the interview and I'm wearing a sweater that's like, I don't got holes in it or something. And I meet with this woman and she sits with me for like an hour. And at the end, she says, you know, you're a really interesting young person, right? You don't know how to dress. You don't know how to do an interview. You don't know how to like,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (12:56.427)
And then geo, geo, yeah, yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (13:24.171)
You

Nick Thompson (13:26.383)
be a professional, but you're quite ambitious and reasonably smart. She said, you should apply to work at the Washington Monthly. I was like, I've never heard of the Washington Monthly. So I go home and I Google the Washington Monthly and it's this magazine in Washington. And so I send them a letter and I say, hey, I'm interested in working for you. So then they call me up and they say, fine. And I didn't realize this at the time, but basically this is this amazing publication that has no money.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (13:36.256)
Mm.

Nick Thompson (13:54.425)
And so when they find someone who they think will write a story for free, they'll assign the story. And they call me up and they say, sure, we'd like you to write a story. We'll pay you for it, but we'll pay you basically nothing. And we need to talk about it. And I agreed to write a story about, it was read about that. Like remember when Thailand's economy, know, Thai currency markets crashed and it caused all sort of waves. I said that I would write a story about currency markets in Thailand. And I had been in Thailand at the end of my Africa trip. I'd gone to Southeast Asia.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (13:55.403)
Thanks.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (14:13.279)
Hmm. Yep.

Nick Thompson (14:24.194)
And so I wrote that story for them and they really liked it and they ran it and then they hired me as an editor. And so there's a system at the Washington monthly where it was run by this benevolent tyrant, benevolent alcoholic tyrant, Charlie Peters, who had gone from the Peace Corps into journalism. And he'd found this magazine and the business model he'd eventually settled on was him at the top and then two young editors, often hired out of like Harvard Crimson. And

Jean-Philippe Courtois (14:32.011)
Hmm.

Nick Thompson (14:52.152)
It turns out that some combination of his ability to spot talent, his mentorship and the network effect meant that a fairly large percentage of America's best journalists had started there, like Jim Fowler, Taylor Branch, know, Kate Boo, Jason DeParle, all these just awesome journalists. know, John Meacham had come right before me. And so I get hired there. I'm hired there by Robert Worth, now writes Atlantic New York Times, great correspondent.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (15:02.965)
Huh. Yep.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (15:19.627)
Okay. Yeah.

Nick Thompson (15:22.256)
And so I start there and I spent two years there and I remember the first, it was like the second story I wrote. I remember, was like, what does the word report mean? Like what does that actually mean? Like I didn't know. And then this is the funniest thing. It's so embarrassing. I found my first story. It has all these great quotes in it from all these people. And Bobby, Bobby Worth is like, that's awesome. You talked to all these people. I was like, no, no, they said these in other publications. I thought I could just reuse them. He's like, no, can't do that.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (15:35.179)
Thank

Jean-Philippe Courtois (15:48.747)
There's a lot of this way.

Nick Thompson (15:49.777)
It work that way. You can say they said that in the Los Angeles Times, but you can't just say they said this, because it sounds like they said it to you. And I was like, And I remember just frantically revising my story to take out. But it was in that process that I learned to be a reporter, and I learned about fact checking, and I learned about how to structure a story and how to interview people and the rhythm of interviews. that was my, and then from then on, that's been my.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (16:05.067)
Hmm.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (16:17.035)
And do you recall your very first kind of editing, mean, some of red lines, maybe, I don't know they are red, that your editor made on your first kind of article?

Nick Thompson (16:29.178)
Well, he very well, in fact, he didn't edit the way he didn't use red lines. So what he did is this, he I file it. would have been my second article. And I don't remember what he said about the Thai currency story, but I send in the story about gambling and he's got this thick West Virginia accent. And, you know, you work seven days a week and I'm in the office on a Sunday and maybe I've handed it in on Saturday.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (16:36.885)
Okay.

Nick Thompson (16:58.728)
And then the phone rings and this is what I hear. Is this Nick? Yeah, yeah. Nah, nah. Now why would someone give me a story like this? Cause they're an asshole. A fucking asshole. Hangs up the phone, right? So then, well, that's not good feedback. It's really not what you want your boss to say to you. Highly motivational. So I go to Bobby and I'm like, man, what's going on? And he's like, man, let me check.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (17:18.763)
Highly motivational, yes.

Nick Thompson (17:27.14)
He like looks, he's like, yeah, the Redskins are losing, he's drunk. But yeah, he's probably not happy with this. And so then I go and I see him, I go to this restaurant on Monday. I go up Connecticut Avenue, we're down in Dupont Circle. I go up Connecticut Avenue and I go see Charlie. And he writes in this green felt pen. And he has my story printed out. And what I remember him saying is I was like, well, can you elaborate? Like, what did I do wrong? He's like, wow, you wrote it like a pompous dickhead. And then...

I remember he showed me, I'm not gonna get exactly right, but I had, there was a program in Georgia where they used lottery receipts to help finance educational grants for poor people. It was called the HOPE program. And at the beginning of the piece, I was very anti-gambling. And so I had called it the ironically named HOPE program. And it it upset Charlie, cause he's like, you

Okay, fine gambling is bad be a moralist but like this money is going to good place like what's wrong with you? Why are you like such a dick to call it? Ironically named just call it the whole program and he wasn't wrong and so I went back through the piece and It's actually a very useful exercise for the kind of journalism I do now which is You may not like gambling Nick, right? You may think it's wrong, but that's it You don't need to shove that down the reader's throats. In fact, like it's not relevant

Your job is to explain what this program does, why they do it, and what the implications are. And that's like your job, not to take your preconceived moral positions and like put them into every sentence. And Charlie was right. I mean, it's not the, I mean, he wouldn't last five minutes in today's media environment before he got canceled, but he, and maybe it's not psychologically healthy to call your 24 year old employee who's just started a fucking asshole like on.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (19:05.056)
Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (19:08.651)
Hmm.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (19:21.897)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Nick Thompson (19:22.682)
all the time, but it is what it is and it worked for me and he was, he was dead on.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (19:25.536)
Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (19:29.195)
Thank you for sharing this wonderful story with a lot of colors as well, from red to green and others. And eventually, obviously, Nick, you landed a wonderful job at New Yorker and later on becoming leader and chief at WIDE. So looking back again at those experiences at New Yorker and WIDE, what were some of the pivotal lessons, a couple maybe, that you learned as an editor and then as a leader? And we'll come back to the leadership position, which is different, that...

being a core journalist, right?

Nick Thompson (20:02.34)
Well, so, so there's, there's three chapters. There's when I'm wired, I'm a senior editor at Wired and then I'm a senior editor at New Yorker and then an executive at the New Yorker and then I'm the editor in chief at Wired. And so what I learned in that first chapter, which is as a senior editor at Wired and a senior editor at the New Yorker is that when you're an editor, the most important thing you can do is you build a network of writers who trust you and you get the best that you can out of them. Right. And some...

Some can do work at this level, some can do work at this level. Some need to be, know, some you rewrite every sentence, some you don't touch a sentence, right? And you learn, like, you learn what their skills are, you learn what their strengths are, you learn how to talk to them, right? And, you know, your success and the magazine success depends on whether you can get the best out of these people. And there are all kinds of ways you can step on that, right? You can treat them all the same, right? You can...

think that your writing is better than their writing. You can be competitive with them, right? They're all, like editors make all kinds of mistakes. And so I quickly realized when I was at WIRE that my job was to go and to find really good people with whom I could have this relationship. And I remember like kind of struggling at the beginning and then like there's this cohort of writers I pulled in, know, was Evan Ratliff, Jen Conn.

Doug McGrady, like these people who I got the same age as, who I really liked personally, and who produced excellent work. And so then once I'm working with them, I'm really learning and I'm learning from them and they enjoy working with me. And I go from kind of like being a confused editor at Wired to being like a very successful editor at Wired, you know, and then that leads me to the New Yorker where it's the same lesson. Again, you come in and I came in as a senior editor. My job was just, I had like six writers I to work with, maybe eight.

And that's the whole job. The job is not to write, the job is not to do anything else. And so you really learn. I remember I worked with Ken Aletta, who's very different from Califassane. I work with both those people trying to get the best out of them. And it's a great challenge, and I love that job. And also the other thing I learned, I wasn't a reporter, I wasn't a writer. not writing stories myself back then. But you learn how to find stories, because you want them to...

Nick Thompson (22:27.121)
trust you that you'll give them good stories. And so I learned, you know, I would go to a dinner with some with, you know, I'd be at dinner with a group of eight people and I would like be tuned to like, hey, you know, what's going on that's interesting in your world? Like, oh, you're a lawyer. What's it? What's a case you what's a case you've read about that's like surprising and unresolved. Oh, you know, you're you're an investigator or like, you know, trying to sort of you just develop this sort of very curious habit of mind. And then I would go back and write down possible stories and

That became one of my strengths, finding stories for people to write.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (23:01.003)
I love it. And would you say that similarly to some other leadership roles, and we'll talk later about your business role as well, obviously, at the end of the day, your success, success of your journal is going to be about your ability to pick the dream team, the best talents, to grow them, to nurture them, and to get the best out of them because of that unique trust relationship. And if that's the case,

What do do if you land in a place where you don't have the dream team? Do you also recast the whole team?

Nick Thompson (23:38.47)
Well, mean, it's a great challenge, right? So your role, I view my role in all these different places is, and whether I've been at the top or in the middle or the bottom, know, do your best to make sure it's the best team, help anybody you can increase the levels, improve talent where you can. And then the other really important step is identifying what you can do that is most helpful to the team. And so, you know, when I was at Wired,

when I was back when was the editor in chief, actually wrote a bunch because that was what we needed, right? When I was at the New Yorker, it's not what we needed. And so, you know, depending on what your team is good at and where your team is strong and depending, let's say you're equally good at 10 different things. That doesn't mean you should spend equal amount of time on those 10 things. You should identify your team and like, the team is weak in these two. I'll do these two. And in fact, I don't need to do these other eight. And so that's, that's another element to the question of the team.

It's one of the hard, I mean, everybody knows this. It's one of the hardest jobs in management, right? And you come in, and when I came in, for example, to the Atlantic where I had real authority, I mean, even when I came into Wired as the editor in chief, you know, have to, you have to make quick decisions because folks are there who, you know, maybe they want you there, maybe they don't, maybe they're good, maybe they're bad. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets to make a change. And so,

you have this problem where you have an incentive to make a quick decision. Okay, this person is out, this person stays. But you have incentive to make a long decision, I need more information, right? Or we need to really understand this place. I think that a good framework is like, you should basically touch nothing until three months, and then at three months, you should make changes. And then in a year, you should make more changes. And I don't know, can't, that might have come from David Bradley, who's one of my sort of mentors and wisest people I know. But that's what we did at the Atlantic where,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (25:21.525)
Gotcha.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (25:26.272)
Hmm.

Nick Thompson (25:31.183)
made a few changes three months in, like it seemed like a couple people, you didn't really want to be there with me or had a very different view and it's all amicable and fine. And then after about a year, some more changes. now, now the team is utterly superb and functions extremely well together.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (25:44.491)
Wonderful. Let's shift gears a bit and talk about your leadership at Wired. I think Wired, and I was a reader of Wired, must say, in the past, went down from being seen as a cheerleader for Silicon Valley to holding tech giants accountable when needed, if I may say so, right? I think you also made a bold move to implement digital paywall. You paid off by boosting subscription, I think, by almost 300 % in the first year.

So what drove you to really find a wide mission in that way? And how did your audience and team react to that more nuanced stance on technology, which was not that obvious at the time.

Nick Thompson (26:25.362)
It was pretty, it was tricky because Wired was founded as a publication that, you know, Silicon Valley, they were the outsiders. You know, Wired was the real champion. Like just love these people. Um, and Wired, when I had been there from 2005 to 2010, you know, the editor in chief, Chris Anderson, who I adored, you know, said, this is a magazine about optimism. And we were extremely enthusiastic. And then the editor who preceded me, Scott Dadditch, brilliant guy. was very interested in the.

the look and the positioning and just utter brilliant man about that and also good reporting. But when I came on board, it was clear that the position of the brand didn't really match reality as I saw it, which is that these companies, they weren't lovable outsiders, right? Like Sergey Brin and Barry Page are like these amazing coders, PhDs with this great way of putting the web together back in 1997.

And by 2017, they're still totally likable, interesting guys, but they're like monopolists. you know, Facebook, okay, well, Facebook, what a cool company, Mark Zuckerberg's position had changed. Elon Musk's whole like personality had changed, right? Power had, so some of them had like structural power had corrupted them and to some of them just like actual power had corrupted them. And the role of technology in American life was both wonderful.

hugely positive. Technology is hugely positive for us as a culture, for society, for longevity, for GDP, right? But not unambiguously positive. And so I viewed my role at Wired as understand the tech better than everybody else, like hire people who want to take the devices apart and read the terms of service, hire people who want to understand the algorithm deeply, hire people who are interested in what exactly, how do exactly you put a blockchain together.

and then write enthusiastically, but also sometimes critically and take things apart. And so I tried to model that on my report and I wrote some big stories myself, the kind of people I hired. And to then to your question of how the audience reacted, to some of our audience, it was quite jarring and they viewed it, like Elon, for example, was a wired subscriber.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (28:36.82)
Yeah.

Nick Thompson (28:47.41)
was furious, right? He viewed the role of Wired as like a cheerleader. And there were some people, some of the early founders of Wired were, they were mixed, but some were critical and some were supportive, right? So that was tricky. But it's also the case that there were lots of people who just thought, wow, like fine, Wired is now like, now it's serious, right? Now it's like, it's now investigating, now it's breaking news, now it's doing like stories like the ones that we had done at the New Yorker.

And the audience clearly liked it because subscriptions skyrocketed and revenue went way up. So that was how that worked. I'll also say there's like this interesting spectrum where to the staff, I was probably not critical of the tech industry enough, right? So I'm the editor-in-chief of Wired. And the staff is, they all live in San Francisco, they all come from relatively small number of schools and they're very critical of the tech industry.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (29:32.949)
pushing harder.

Nick Thompson (29:43.252)
And so I was in this interesting spot where I think to some people, I was like almost an apologist for the tech industry. And then to some of the older Wired readers, was a, you know, I was this liberal, liberal New Yorker who didn't understand the ethos of the publication. think at the end, I felt it was definitely one of the hardest issues to manage, but I feel like I think we did a, I feel I look back at those issues and I look back at our web coverage and I think we did a great job.

I think we were fair. I think we were honest. think we broke important stories. We tried, you we didn't endorse political candidates when I was there. Like we stayed out of stuff you should stay out of. You're wired, you're a technology journal. And I think that, you know, the success, the success of the magazine, you know, reflects that. that, you know, you've asked a question that was a lot of sleepless nights thinking about that, right? And, you know,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (30:37.255)
I'm sure it took some, we'll come back, it took some courage in terms of leadership as well, because I'm sure that some of the CEOs and founders of many of those tech companies, small or fast growing companies, might not be friends anymore, I guess. I just guess, don't know.

Nick Thompson (30:52.359)
Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, I don't know whether I lost any. I don't know whether I lost any friends because I mean, it's interesting, like even the places where I've written the toughest stories, right. And the company I've criticized, I ran an investigative story about Facebook where we put a bloody picture of Mark Zuckerberg on the cover and it was a very tough story. But, know, everything in that

everything in the story was right, right? And like I had worked at the New Yorker where you fact check everything to within an inch of its life. And like, I had called people at Facebook and I had basically read the entire story out loud to them before we published them. Like, if you think anything is wrong, you can tell me and you can try to persuade me, right? It's factually wrong. If you don't like it, I'm not going to change it. But do you think it's factually wrong? I owe you this. And this is going to be big story. And

Jean-Philippe Courtois (31:32.779)
Let me know. Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (31:40.629)
Yes.

Nick Thompson (31:43.548)
The truth is, like, I've just done five events with Facebook executives. I'm doing a thing in Davos with Andrew Bogard, who's one of the top executives, right? They understand that I was critical, but they appreciate that it was accurate, because there's a lot of stuff that's critical and not accurate. And so I actually don't think I lost any friends in the tech industry because of our tough reporting.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (31:57.429)
Yeah. Exactly.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (32:05.331)
That's wonderful. come back to that later on in the AI discussion because it's also a new framework for that as well. So your success, Nick, at WIDE caught obviously a lot of attention. And in fact, the Atlantic poached you from WIDE to become the CEO in 2021, a move that doesn't happen every day, I think, in the media world. How was the transition from editor to chief executive officer? And as someone, again, I think, and I could hear it, I could feel it.

where some ink in your blood, literally, right? How do you balance the business side of running a media company with the editorial independence, of course, which is so critical to the Atlantic trust and integrity?

Nick Thompson (32:49.212)
Yeah.

So the job was different. But it's not as different as one might think. When I was at the New Yorker, I had been an editor. But then I had gone and I had run the website. And so I had managed the product and engineering team. I had done our replatforming. I had worked with McKinsey to develop the paywall rules. So I had a lot of business experience there. And then at Wired, I'd worked incredibly closely with the advertisers. dealt with building the affiliate model. I had access to the P &L.

So there was a lot of stuff that I knew from those jobs that came over to the Atlantic job. Now running an entire executive team, know, presenting to a board, selling ads directly. Those are things I hadn't done before. So there's some new things, but it's not quite as new as one might think. The editorial independence, that was what everybody thought. It's kind of, worry too, like, my God, am I going to want to like get in the middle of our reporting? Am I going to, you know, what if I have a good idea for a story? And

You know, we just made a rule very early on that I would have no nothing to do with it. Nothing like not even like one percent, you know, and that we kind of ran the test. I was given a. An incredible scoop, like an incredible scoop that came to me because of my previous reporting when I was like we couldn't run it at the Atlantic, you know, and ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize for an I think was Pulitzer, maybe it was a low award, but for another publication. And it's just the way it works. And so.

And the funny thing is it's never bothered me. Like I don't wake up in the middle of the night thinking, God, how are we gonna cover Maduro? Like it just doesn't, like that's just vanished. It'll be interesting. What I wonder, if I ever go back, I don't know what I'm gonna do next. I'll be here for a while. But whatever I do next, like if I go back into a news job, will I still have those chops? I don't know. But I literally like, just, it was almost like.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (34:44.053)
Hahaha.

Nick Thompson (34:49.489)
It's almost like I just went cold turkey. Like I just, I don't assign stories. I don't know what we're going to publish. I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (34:54.507)
You don't, you just don't. That's pretty incredible. So clearly, you've evolved, as you just said, Nick entails the role. And I think we could agree we are now in what we many people call a post-truth era with misinformation everywhere. A while ago, I was here on this show, Paul Polman, you may know or not, he's a former CEO of Unilever. And he talked about the way that we need to rebuild trust institutions, especially now.

whether in business or media, you need to start restoring trust and trust in society. And as a leader of a major journalistic institution, you face this head on every day. So what do you see as the Atlantic core responsibility in an age of misinformation and cynicism? And how are you working to restore trust in journalism and uphold the truth in public discourse?

Nick Thompson (35:51.123)
It's very hard. mean, so we're entering an era where no one's going to know what's real and what's not real, right? Like there's a very brief window right now where it's possible to create fake videos, but it's reasonably hard and soon it will be infinitely easy. And you'll have no idea, you know, what's real or what's not real. And you'll see it right now. You can see a video online and you can kind of parse it apart and you can figure out what's true and what's not. That will be gone fairly soon. Right. And you'll have no idea whether you're talking to a real human or whether you're talking to just an AI created voice.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (36:14.421)
Right. Yeah.

Nick Thompson (36:21.376)
And that's going to be a very strange transition. And clearly what the Atlantic needs to do is to maintain its position as created by humans and wholly trusted. And we need to, you know, we fact check extremely vigorously. We fight very hard to protect our brand, but we have to maintain that trust and it won't be easy. Like we could get something wrong. We could say something's real. That's not real. Right. Either good publications that got tricked by.

this fake AI character who sent in stories and pretended to be a real person. There are going to be traps out there all the time. And then not only that, we have people, there's this conservative commentator, Dinesh D'Souza, and every six months or so he shares a fake Atlantic headline on Twitter and it goes viral. And it shows something that conservatives might think that a liberal publication would share, even though we're not really that liberal, but whatever. And we have to deal with that and we have to say, hey, please don't share that stuff.

wrong. To his credit, usually does take it down. But there's going to be ever more of that, you know, of more stuff circulating online of fake images that we have to deal with. So we have to maintain our trust. We have to maintain our brand. And then, you know, at the same time, and this relates to that, they're like very powerful people who don't think who don't think it's in their interest for there to be an independent media and who recognize publications that are strong. And so they try to break it down. Right. And you can see J.D. Vance trying to

sort of up anger at the media, both because he genuinely is frustrated with some of the media's coverage, some of it rightly so, much of it wrongly so, and because he doesn't want there to be an alternative power source, an information source. Like the government would like to be able to just tell you, here are the facts and not be challenged. And so you have these very powerful forces, Elon, JD Vance, trying to break down the media. And so you can't, what you can't do is you can't like,

have that turn your soul dark and like fight them. You just have to like soldier. I mean, this is a little bit like what my mother taught me. You just have to keep going through and like publish the most accurate stories you can and try to check all your instincts. Like that lesson I learned, I told you about Charlie Peters about the Georgia story, right? You have to like check your assumptions, make sure that every bias that you're just presenting the news as best you can. And so as you know, those are mostly editorial issues and things for the editorial side to deal with, but

Jean-Philippe Courtois (38:28.331)
Yep.

Nick Thompson (38:43.282)
That's what I hope for for our brand. And then my job is to set up like the business model and the incentive structure so that we have the best chance of surviving if we publish only the highest quality, deepest report of that written journalists that we can. And so that's my role.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (39:00.619)
And this is a very changing line, I guess, to keep, right? And to keep working every day, to keep working on every day. I'd us to dig down a bit more on AI, because I you're an avid user of AI, both for running, by the way, but also for working in many parts of your life, like I do as well, obviously, by my bias after 40 years in tech. So I'd love to understand the way, you approach technology and AI in particular. Number one in the Atlantic.

Because on the one hand, what are the opportunities do you see for AI to strengthen journalism, which I think can happen. And on the other hand, what are some of the biggest challenges that you started to mention that are almost vital for your business?

Nick Thompson (39:46.134)
Yeah. So the advantage is I do think it's like the greatest tool ever for journalism. I remember I told you a few minutes ago about how when I was an editor at the New Yorker Wire, I'd go around looking for stories. And I would ask people like, hey, what's the most, you your ability to use AI to sort through data sets, to sort through masses of information, to help me find something that's interesting. This is the kind of story I want to write. Please like build me a research report. So it can be great at finding stories. It can be great at like helping you understanding things. It can be great at

kind of every step of the writing and editing process. Shouldn't use it to write the sentences, but as like a thought partner, kind of like as an always on call editor. It's a great tool. And I certainly used it that way with my book, right? And like my human editors were far better, but aren't available 24 hours a day. And so I would use it, friend of mine described the way you say AI is like the way you use a backboard when you're training for tennis, just like constantly like playing with and learning.

you know, improving with. And so it's great. It's amazing. It's an incredible tool. And it's an amazing tool, as you know, and everybody listening knows, like for certain organizational functions, like, of course you should do like level one customer service with AI, right? Like, you know, we're trying to like clean up all our old gear with AI, right? Obviously. Okay. So that's all good. Then there's like a sort of a medium turn risk, which is like, does it break the distribution mechanisms you have right now for journalism? And so.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (40:59.615)
Greato. Peace.

Nick Thompson (41:14.101)
Like right now, the plurality of our readers coming through Google, what happens when Gemini and Google are no longer sending people to the outer web? They're just like absorbing and answering the queries, right? And you can see that. You can see total search queries in many publications going down. Okay, so how do you prepare for that? How do you prepare for this new algorithmic age? How do you prepare for a world in which people will increasingly rely on agents to go and summarize the news for them?

Jean-Philippe Courtois (41:23.465)
Yep.

Nick Thompson (41:39.988)
And maybe someone will have an agent who they power through a voice box and the agent, you know, they say to the agent, tell me the 15 most important news stories today. Right. And then how do you monetize that? So how do you want the Atlantic to be part of that? Okay. Do you, the person figuring out the business model there. So that's like a near term problem for us. And then there's kind of a long-term problem, which is a, like what happens if the whole web disappears? Right. Not only is Google not sending out links, but you know, what happens when like some kid in Macedonia can say, can like,

you know, figure out how to scrape the Atlantic's archives from like the way back machine or whatever the Internet archive, you know, and then create a fake Atlantic, give it a different name, you know, create writing for like, and just sort of create information that competes with us. Or what if there's like nothing on the web? So and then and then also what happens if like, it's not just agents, it's like physical AI devices, and we kind of move beyond the text based internet, right? What if like,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (42:14.293)
Mm-mm.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (42:19.467)
Yep.

Nick Thompson (42:34.973)
Actually, no one reads five years from now because all we're doing is talking to these little Johnny Ive necklaces. And so, you know, that's a hard problem, which I can't see. Anyway, so what do I do? Business strategy wise. For bucket A, like as much as possible, try to get our team to use the right tools to improve processes and go faster. try to, you know, journalists are very wary of AI for good reason. Like our jobs are under threat from AI, but like try to get the Atlantic to use it as well as any other news organizations.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (42:47.147)
Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (43:04.821)
Just in this bucket to stop one second, are you also orchestrating fleet of agents on top of your own basically editors and writers? You're not. OK.

Nick Thompson (43:14.261)
No, we're not yet. We're not yet. And we don't have, we have not, I'm not sold enough on the agentic web to think that's something I want to do. And certainly not in 2025, maybe mid 2026, but use the best tools we can there. And then for the middle thing, like try to get direct relationships as much as possible, right? Like, you know, one of the funny things we did last year is we increased the number of print issues. Why? Well, partly because like print.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (43:40.299)
It's simple.

Nick Thompson (43:41.623)
You just mail the issue to someone through the United States Postal Service, We work really hard to get people in newsletters, we work really hard to get people in the app, we work really hard to have, we just put out a book. We're trying to get direct relationships so that AI is not in the middle. And then we try to plan and we try to see what's coming and then figure out. So I remember when I was at the New Yorker, right? Do you want to bet on video? Do you want to bet on audio? Do you want to bet half on both? And we kind of put all our chips in audio and it was a good bet.

Now it's like, okay, so now with AI coming in, where do you want to put your chips, right? Do you think that, you know, will AI change so much of the reading experience that you should go all in an audio? What's it going to do to virtual reality? Like, should we be dealing with sort of gated ecosystems? And so there's a whole series of interesting questions that come from it that we have to make choices on.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (44:28.459)
So if I continue to peel the onion, Nick, on this issue, because I think it's quite fascinating to understand the evolving role of AI in the media business. I recently had another guest, think that know, Navrina Singh, the co-founder of Credo AI on my podcast. And as you know well, she had a score that AI would inevitably mirror the values of its creators. And ultimately, she's calling, obviously, for leaders everywhere to help build what she calls infrastructure of trust around AI.

Nick Thompson (44:42.39)
Of course. Yeah, yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (44:58.773)
So what is infrastructure or trust that you are building as a Sea of the Atlantic?

Nick Thompson (45:04.128)
Well, I mean, I do think that one of the things, so this is, it's a really interesting business opportunity for us. So our hope is that we can create the most trustworthy and accurate and beautifully written pool of information. And there should be value of that. Like A, you know, if AI models train on it, they should be marginally, they should, should marginally incorporate our values, which I think is probably good for the world. But I do think there's a business model and we probably, you know,

We're not going to make as much money as the Wall Street Journal, which publishes tons of stories. But if we're really trusted, you can imagine a couple of business models. You can imagine a model where we license that data, right? And we license our new data, and we license it maybe to a small number of AI models. And then maybe one AI model is powered partly by the Atlantic, right? And it's whatever AI model we think best captures our values or incorporates our values, and we have the best deal with. And then you can also imagine a world where we take our tools that we use for

verifying information and maybe we build out a product that allows others to verify information. And that would be a great business, particularly if you can sell it into places which really value truthful information, like hedge funds, right? Where there's like market moving, knowing whether, you know, did Ronald Reagan National Airport actually just blow up? Because if it did, we're going to short a bunch of stocks. And if it didn't, we're not, right? And like, can you verify this deep fake? It's a super interesting business model. And so

Jean-Philippe Courtois (46:07.37)
for sure.

Nick Thompson (46:29.812)
We're looking at all of that, but the key thing right now is like, we believe that if we publish trusted, verified source information, there'll be a business model in the AI

Jean-Philippe Courtois (46:40.971)
This is something you're going to explore more. So talking about that, I know that it's public information, so I can talk about it. You recently announced a deal with OpenAI, which is obviously a big player. On one hand, I would say this deal is very pragmatic and future-oriented. On the other hand, I could say, or maybe your writer could say, or your readers could say,

Nick Thompson (46:43.456)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (47:06.633)
what's original and what will be original in terms of writing, what will be AI's made, right? So how do you reconcile Nick the Atlantic's mission, protecting truths and nuance, with the risk of losing your authentic voice, maybe? At a higher level, because I know you and I had a quick chat on that, how would you frame your project for real AI for good, which goes far beyond that open AI deal, obviously?

Nick Thompson (47:32.504)
Yeah, so the open AI deal was quite controversial. And if you look in our archives, you'll see that we, in fact, proving the independence of the editorial side and the business side, wrote multiple articles denouncing both me and denouncing the deal. But it was, in my view, 100 % the right decision and has been vindicated many times over. And so the logic behind the deal was the AI companies came.

and they scraped our sites and they violated our terms of service. And maybe they violated copyright law. Probably they did, but the courts will have their say on that. But certainly what they did was unethical, potentially illegal. And they took all our data and there was no getting it back. So then you look at that and you can either just say, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to stamp my feet and I'm going to like be really pouty and maybe that will be good.

Or what you can do is you can say, okay, here's the situation as it is. Like, let's try to figure out everything we can to stop them from scraping additional data. Initially we're watch.text and now Cloudflare blocking. And let's go to them and let's say, hey, there needs to be a fair exchange of value, both for what you did and for what you're doing. So you can either pay us in money. You can build a product like the old web that has a fair exchange of value where there's information going in and links going out. Right. And, you know, we went to all of the AI companies.

Um, and, and if you don't, then we'll sue you. And so we've joined a lawsuit against Coheer. Um, you know, there may be more lawsuits to come. And with open AI, we made a deal where they pay us and where we also have some influence over their creation of a new AI search engine. And so there's a fair exchange of value, right? And you can imagine that if the deal terms were different, we might've sued them like the New York Times, like to the New York Times tried to negotiate a deal, couldn't come to a deal. And so sued them. We tried to negotiate and we got a deal. So we didn't sue them.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (49:00.693)
Okay. Yep.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (49:12.401)
Yep.

Nick Thompson (49:22.263)
And so we have a deal that I think is quite advantageous to us, provides real compensation. Now there are other AI companies look so anthropic, you know, they've raped our site and they have no, they have done no compensation, no deal. So, you know, who knows what happens with that next, but like that's a complicated relationship.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (49:40.683)
It is. So far so good and you're pleased with that move that you did and you're gonna see.

Nick Thompson (49:45.208)
was clearly the right move. mean, the only thing I wish is that like I had done it a little bit sooner and done the deal for longer because the price of, you know, back when we negotiated this deal, which is the spring of 2023, the value that the AI companies put on, you know, data for training was quite high. And now, now that they, now that they have confidence in synthetic data, the market price has gone down. And so I couldn't have anticipated that. I didn't know that, but I could do it again. I would have like signed a deal with everybody with like,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (50:03.051)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (50:06.463)
Yeah, it's gondonious.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (50:14.08)
Yeah.

Nick Thompson (50:15.179)
I mean, my staff, they might have come in and executed me, but I would have like, know, because there's a moment of extreme tension for understandable reasons. But I think we missed a bunch of opportunities for deals that would have been valuable. Now, the real goal though is not like, you know, I mentioned a couple parts that open AI deal. There's money, which is valuable, but it's short-term. And then there's ideally helping them design a search product. And that's where the, like,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (50:17.926)
That's sure.

Nick Thompson (50:44.055)
The thing that matters, right, is not that like we get cash infusions or like we won lawsuits and we get paid. That's not the goal, right? I mean, it's, it's nice to have money because you hire more journalists and do more good things. The goal is to try to reach a stable equilibrium where the AI companies are giving back as much as they're taking in a way that creates a healthy ecosystem, which is better for them because if all of journalism goes out of business, they're in trouble too, because they have less good data. So like there was a stable equilibrium with Google, right?

Jean-Philippe Courtois (50:49.493)
Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (51:08.309)
Yes.

Nick Thompson (51:13.995)
They read the whole internet, they inputted our links, and then people clicked on the links. They made money selling ads against the links, and then people click on the links and come to the web. And that's great. And we need to figure out that old model doesn't match perfectly yet, the economics of this. And so there has to be a way. And so that's where I put a lot of my time and effort. There has to be a way to get to that. the AI companies, so Google and Microsoft, like back when, and Facebook,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (51:24.811)
The new economics. Yeah.

Nick Thompson (51:43.405)
back when the old iteration of the internet was invented, they got to these stable equilibrium, so it was fair, right? And Facebook built Facebook instant and paid people and then they had external links. The AI companies all think they're like taking us to Nirvana, right? They all think that they're gonna like create infinite wealth and we're gonna reach AGI. And then like the real problem will be how like, you how we merge our brains with machines and then don't have civic unrest. And like kind of, you know, is the New York Times still in business? Do people still read the Atlantic?

Jean-Philippe Courtois (52:00.288)
Yes.

Nick Thompson (52:13.06)
my God, like who are these old folks? Like what are they talking about? And so it's a little harder to negotiate with them, right? When somebody thinks the rapture is coming, it's like harder to negotiate a deal.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (52:19.358)
show.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (52:24.235)
Yeah. Lovely. Well, lovely. I don't know. see later. I like to switch gears now, clearly moving away from AI and talk about Nick as a runner beyond the office. One thing that fascinates me is your passion for running Nick. And of course, he's very well known. You are not a casual jogger for listeners by any means. You're a competitive marathoner who actually got faster with age, defying expectations and gravity, I believe in 2021.

At age 45, you even set the American record for the 50k in your age group. Wow. And you've also written extensively about running, a wide piece on trying to run fast after 40. And know your wonderful new book, The Running Ground, of course, talks a lot about that. So what does running mean to you personally? And how has it influenced your approach to life and leadership?

Nick Thompson (53:20.6)
So running is my single most important hobby. It's my single most important mental release. It's one of the things I've done consistently since I was, in some ways since I was six, in other ways since I was 15, in other ways since I was 30, to structure my life. And so every day I wake up, I run to work, I work, I run home.

You know, I do workouts a couple of times a week. I run marathons a few times a year. I run ultra marathons a couple of times a year. And through that process, I've learned habits of mind, habits of pacing, mental resilience. I've learned dietary habits, health habits, all kinds of things that kind of keep me functioning at a higher level. And I think give me a more Zen approach to life, an ability to both work through pain, understand limits, a much better physical understanding, but also a mental understanding. And so I view running

And it's not like only running could have given me this or only running can give other people this, but there ways that running has just made me a more observant.

more thoughtful, more dedicated, more disciplined person that have been quite useful to my life. It can also create habits of mind that are useful, useless. It's probably made me more selfish. It's made me waste time. I've missed things that are important. Like, I don't know, I miss work events where you have like real social connection all the time, because I never go out in the evenings. I'm running early in the morning. So they're trade-offs, but it's been, it's unquestionably one of the, been one of the most important structural forces in my life.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (54:57.725)
And so it's very clear. And I think we can feel it as well in the way you talk about life, the way you've been writing again this essay, Why I Run. And this essay you wrote very candidly about your dad, obviously, struggles. And you took up writing to be like him and kept writing because he stopped, actually. So there's a particularly moving scene where you describe around your 40th birthday.

where your dad publicly warned you that all men's lives fall apart at this age, reflecting on his own life, I understand, and you resolved not to let that happen to you. Can you tell us more about that story and what you learned deeply from it?

Nick Thompson (55:34.412)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so my dad, we talked about it a little bit early on, but my dad at this point, so when I was 40 years old, my dad was 73. And his life had been...

Nick Thompson (55:51.497)
had not lived up to what he had thought he was going to, you you know, I have his old letters. He like the man thought he was president states, right? He was a Rhodes scholar, the Stanford provost, that is the best students since Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy had said he was going to get to the White House before him. And his life hadn't quite worked out that way. All right. And by the time he was in his 70s, he was bankrupt. He's an expat. He's living in Southeast Asia. He's dealing with alcoholism. He's dealing with sexual addiction. He's running something like a brothel. It's kind of a very complicated, messy life. But

amazing guy loving to me. And I turned 40. And he puts his note on my Facebook page, like public note, right? And I've like, I don't know, 70,000 followers there or something at the time. And he's like, Hey, Nick, you know, happy birthday, right? Things are going well for you. You have great kids, great wife, happy job. You should know that all men's lives fall apart at 40. Right? And you know, his life, that's when he divorced my mother and come out of closet. His father has like started really struggling with alcohol and

professional anxiety then. And 40 is a hard age because you're still taking care of your kids. You can't use youth as an excuse if your life hasn't really. You don't have the professional aspirations that you wanted to hit. You probably have sick parents. And your own body is starting to break down. And so in some ways, it's a great age. But in other ways, it's a really hard age because you have pressure from people younger than you, pressure older than you, pressure from the side. And my dad's view was that it's at that age that men crack.

You know, many of them like get divorced, they, you know, they can't handle aging, right? And that he, my father dealt with aging and like his, the frustration of his body breaking down by, you know, dating ever increasingly younger men, right? Like totally, like 22 year olds in the Philippines, like totally inappropriate. And people he even just met on manjammer.com or whatever website he's on, right? Like not, not the folks he should have been dating. And so he puts that on my website.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (57:23.115)
Thank

Jean-Philippe Courtois (57:38.187)
Hmm.

Nick Thompson (57:48.858)
I'm sorry, on Facebook, I'm like, Dad, send me a text message. But what I also it made me think about, you know, why his life had come undone like this, and like what had happened to him, and you know, very, I'm very similar to him in a lot of ways. And part of my realization was that he had just like, let his, either he'd let his discipline slip, or he'd never quite had it. And, you know, I decided like that, I have to be very focused to not let that happen.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (57:51.243)
you

Jean-Philippe Courtois (58:13.067)
Thanks.

Nick Thompson (58:18.785)
And part of that, though not all of it, but a part of it was running, right? Where he had kind of, when he'd been running, his life had been more disciplined and contained. He had like a little centripetal force in his life. And when he stopped, he didn't have it. And so, you know, part of my resolution to not become my father was to keep running.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (58:22.069)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (58:35.979)
So in a way that person's Facebook was a big kicker for you in your life.

Nick Thompson (58:41.643)
It was a big, it was a big, was a, it was a real, let's just say I read it, I read it a lot. I think he may have deleted it. When I went to fact check the book, I couldn't find it online. Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (58:44.895)
Reset. Yeah.

Really? Okay. There's actually something deeply moving in how you describe recognizing generational patterns, Nick. Your grandfather's scandal as well, we didn't discuss that. I think yet your father's breakdown that you talked about and then consciously choosing a very different path reminds me actually of a very powerful idea shared by a French journalist called Natasha Kalestreme who I had on this show, who's an author who blends science, spirituality, even shamanic

Nick Thompson (59:03.769)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (59:21.163)
traditions to help people heal emotional wounds. So, know, one of our protocols helps people release inherited trauma to identify and cut the thread of a parent of an ancestral unresolved pain. So it doesn't simply shape their own lives, which happens to many people, it turns out.

So it struck me that running seems to be your own therapeutic protocol beyond, of course, this very healthy habit you have every day, a way maybe of processing pain, reclaiming identity, and healing across generations. Do you see actually your running as a kind of emotional release or just that ritual and discipline, daily discipline for you that you just talked about?

Nick Thompson (01:00:12.043)
It's definitely the latter. I think it's probably the former. You know, the other element of running that's so important is that it is it's a sport that I had started because of my father, right? And I watched him run a marathon and he had taken me on runs when I was six or seven. And I have very strong memories of watching him run. And then when I was in my teenage years in my 20s, I would run with him. I do think it's a way, you know, and as you said, it's a way that I've like both tried to hold him close, like do this.

do this thing that we love doing together. And also a way to not become him. I do think that when someone dies, and someone who's close to you, a good way to mourn, right? You can mourn by like, you know, praying and thinking and reading their letters, but a good way to mourn is to do the thing that you did together, the thing that you associated with them. If you went for walks, go for walks. If you skied, go ski. And it just allows you this sort of...

The way memory works, happens in your brain, it happens in your body. And the way processing information works happens in your brain and in your body. I think it's one of the most interesting differences between humans and AI. And you can go like someone you love to use to ski with, right? And you go skiing and I think certain things happen with the way you process those memories in a way that's healthy. so for me, running, particularly in the year after he died was a way of like thinking through this.

incredibly complicated man who died all of a sudden, right? I didn't have a chance to mourn him before he left. Like it wasn't, I knew he was old, I knew he was sick, but he wasn't supposed to die that year, even the next five years. so running was a way to process his death. So in a way it is both this like healthy habits, but also this like spiritual connection.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:01:56.779)
Yes, we got you. Thanks for sharing that. to finish a little bit on that particular story through the running around again, your story unfolds distinct seasons again in your life from your very first smile, I think at age five with your dad you just talked about, to that defining run, Cadillac Mountain, I think at 29, when you choose to bet on yourself, to facing illness as well, just after your fastest race, and later chasing new limits in your 40s.

after your dad's death. So each season to me kind of blends discipline, purpose, personal recording. It echoes what Bill George with the pharmacy of Metronik share with you on the podcast, what he called the crucibles of life in his book, True North. know, those moments that test and ultimately shape our own lives and leadership. So how do you reflect on those seasons of running? Do you see them as your seasons of life?

And what are those couple of crucibles that have taught you about growth, purpose, and the kind of human you become eventually?

Nick Thompson (01:03:07.137)
It's interesting, your running is tied into many of the hardest and most important moments of my life.

You know, in part because I use it as a way to handle those crucibles. So that Cadillac Mountain story is revealing. That was the, you know, in retrospect, the single most important day of my life was in the summer of 2005, August of 2005. And I had worked at the Washington Monthly and I had done very well. And then I had struggled as a journalist. And so I was at this point, I was 30 years old. I had finished the Washington Monthly four years before and it had been rocky, right?

worked for this wonderful man in New Haven. I'd done some good reporting in West Africa, but I wasn't, I didn't have, things weren't on track. And so that summer, July of 2005, I was called by Wired and they wanted to interview me for the senior editor job. But by the time August came around, I didn't have the job. And so had three, I had three prospects in life, or three sort of professional prospects. I had applied to law school, just not because I wanted to go to law school. It kind of did, but.

Mainly it's like an off ramp, right? Like law school is a great off ramp for an ambitious person. You sort of check yourself for three years into the school and you have come out on the other side with this great credential and you have all these paths. You can become a professor, you can work for the ACLU, you can work for a firm, you can make lots of money, you're okay, right? And I had like gotten into NYU law school. My wife lived in New York. I had been traveling around trying to get myself to New York.

And so I have these three opportunities. I've like got a proposal for a book, but that it hasn't sold and I'm not sure it's good. I have the possibility of a job at Wired or I have law school and I have to decide law school by, let's say it's August 15th, right? Cause that's when it starts. And so it's like August 14th and I'm in Maine and I haven't decided yet. And I keep waiting. I know that if Wired offers me the job, then yeah, I'll defer law school, right? If I was certain I could sell the book, sure. I would write the book.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:04:55.157)
Yeah.

Yep.

Nick Thompson (01:05:12.116)
and I remember going on that run and like sunrise and you, you, it's, a pretty hard run, right? Cause you, my mother's house in Maine, you go out the door, you have to run through the woods in the dark. Right. And so you run through the woods in the dark and then you run through these nice carriage trails. And then you run again through the woods and like up these like scrambling rocks and like, it's like iron holds you have to hold onto. I don't remember if I had a headlamp.

But I'm running like in the dark and I get to the top of the mountain and the sun is coming up, right? So I must've left at three. And, you know, I'm thinking a lot while I run. And I think, I think, well, I do a better job. Like if I'm like sitting down, I'm like, okay, now I'm think about this thing. Maybe I can't think about it the same way that if you run, because when you run, your mind goes to it and your mind drifts away. But you've made some progress, then your mind comes back and then you drift away and then you come back, right? And so when I finally came home, I decided, you know what?

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:05:55.391)
Yeah.

Nick Thompson (01:06:05.754)
I'm just going to bet on myself. I'm going to defer law school, see what happens with the book, see what happens with the lawyer. And I could have easily made a different choice. if I had made like, there very few moments in life where there's like a specific choice and you don't quite know it at the time what's right or what's wrong, but completely diverts. And maybe like, maybe I'd be like in the United States Senate as like a law school graduate right now. I'm like, God I wasn't still a journalist, right?

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:06:19.125)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:06:23.157)
For sure.

Nick Thompson (01:06:35.002)
But looking at it now, 20 years later, thank God, right? Thank God I made that choice. And then it worked out. I got the wire job. I sold the book. I wrote the book. It turned out well. Everything worked out. Everything from that moment on worked out pretty well.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:06:45.909)
Yep.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:06:50.443)
So would you say that you've made most of your most critical life decisions when running, actually? When you think about it?

Nick Thompson (01:06:58.296)
I don't think so. Some, I remember I wrote the speech for my wife for our wedding while running in my head. In my head? Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:07:06.591)
Wow. In your head. Wow, that's pretty hard. Without any AI, embedded AI on you, no, talking to yourself.

Nick Thompson (01:07:14.65)
And it's remember like the structure came to me and then I came home and wrote it down.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:07:17.235)
Okay. Yeah.

Nick Thompson (01:07:20.962)
I don't, I think some of them, but other hard life choices I've made sitting, talking, but running is always part of it, you know, in part because I have something important going on. You know, the other day, so last Thursday, we had an all hands and I had to talk for a long time. And I had to figure out how to present some complicated things.

And one of the ways I prepared is I went running and I just rehearsed it in my head while I ran. So I do use it as a way to process hard stuff all the time.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:07:56.299)
Yes, good. So now, Nick, let's enter into the very last section of the podcast. It's all about leadership, positive leadership, and the kind of future you are shaping today and for tomorrow. You know, again, in this show, I had the pleasure to welcome a few years ago Daniel Goldman, who wrote this book, obviously, on emotional intelligence. I'm sure you know Daniel as well. And of course, he emphasized a lot that empathy and trust are what make a leader someone we actually like and follow.

And from what I've seen, you fostered a culture of trust for sure and excellence in organization by empowering your team. And the way you talk about your team, people, the way you let them do stuff is very clear to me. How would you describe your leadership style at the Atlantic? And what kind of culture are you trying to build in a newsroom and a broader organization that has led the Atlantic to that wonderful success?

Nick Thompson (01:08:51.033)
Yeah, so.

In my executive team, so there's 10 people who report to me. What I want is I want people who are team players who don't demand individual acclaim, who aren't sort of out there for turf, who work well with each other, who are ferociously smart, and who are better at what they do than I am at that thing. And my CFO better be better at finance than I am, right? our publisher better be better at selling ads than I am. And they are.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:09:11.179)
Yep.

Nick Thompson (01:09:23.675)
And our communications head is better at communication strategy than I am. And so I work very closely with all of them, but I also give them a ton of independence. And they can make their own decisions. And they know when to come to me if there's a tiebreak or there's a hard decision. And sometimes they can just make a decision and inform me. But I'm not in their way. And there's a lot of independence.

Next level down, I try to get to know everybody, but I can't, I can't know everybody, you know, and you can know everybody's names and you can know some of their strengths and you can do check-ins with them every two weeks. But, you know, and again, with them, it's, like, I don't know enough to be able to demand as much. And so there I'm just, you're trying to like, listen, be helpful, convey strategy as best I can in these skip levels. Beyond that, right? You can know people's names and you can have like social relationships, but it's tricky in an organization. Like you can't.

You can't have strong evaluations of 150 people. So what I try to do is try to convey the values. So the values of the organization. We care about force of ideas, spirit of generosity, sense of belonging. We want people to be smart, to feel like they're welcomed, and to feel like they treat each other well. I care a ton about energy and velocity. I like people who want to win. If you like,

You don't all like not everybody has to win like you could enter a marathon and like, you know, not really care and like just want to finish right and that's that's great. Right. And it's great for a marathon. Right. But that's not the attitude to bring to the Atlantic. Like I want people who show up every day wanting to win. And it's not true of everybody, but it's true of a lot of people. And I try to hire people with this wonderful phrase. I think it was Dario Amadei told me and it was like talent density matters more than talent mass. Right. Meaning like

It's better to have like three 10s than four nines, right? And so it's kind of amazing, right? Cause you would think four nines, well, that's 36 is better than three 10s, that's 30, but it's not. And so trying to get to the culture to the point where like everybody is, you know, generous, smart, excellent, and like working really hard. And we're not, we're not there. Like there's still changes to make people to hire people, to mentor people, to bring up people who should be moving to different roles.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:11:19.071)
Hmm. Makes a whole difference.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:11:43.125)
Yep. Yep.

Nick Thompson (01:11:44.764)
So that's the goal. And then my leadership style, I try to be very open and try to be very available. I don't know whether I fully succeed. I think there's still some people who are scared to come in my office, but I try to like, if the door is open, come in, right? Like the strategic plan is right there in sticky notes on it, right? Come on in and I'll show you the strategic plan. I'll talk through everything with you.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:12:02.603)
Yeah, okay, I can see many notes.

Nick Thompson (01:12:11.355)
I try to model good behavior. try to model certain kinds of ethics. I try to model ways of treating people. And then you hope that there's a combination of direct messaging. This is what we're doing. This is where the strategy is. These are our goals. We just set two big goals. These are the goals everybody tried to get. And it's a combination of setting big goals, setting the strategy, and then modeling behavior. And that's the way I do it. And then I try to like...

I know that I didn't grow up in a management culture. I didn't grow up where I was reading books. so I also try to have a... There's only one book on my desk right now.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:12:48.491)
Which one is this?

Nick Thompson (01:12:50.765)
It's Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson. And she was the CEO of Stripe. And it has a lot of really smart analysis. was, I just went through my annual reviews and so, okay, what do you do when you like really are trying to get more out of someone? Okay. What do you do if you're doing this? How do you have this kind of conversation? And so I'm trying to learn all of that and try to like, we're growing fast, right? Like the Atlantic growing fast. So the organization gets more and more complicated. We're not like tech growing fast, but we're media growing fast. And so.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:12:52.363)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:13:12.64)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:13:17.718)
but exactly.

Nick Thompson (01:13:20.687)
I'm trying to get better at that stuff.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:13:22.843)
Thanks, Nick. So very clear in terms of the way you kind of shape that serial in terms of setting the vision, picking the talents, the 10s and the 9s, but mostly the 10s, but also certainly some shared values. But it's also in my experience also about kind of building and shaping a of a worldview, right? Particularly as a media more than anybody else, I guess.

And I know the Atlantic has a strong tradition of engaging with the big issues, climate change, social justice, the future of democracy and so on, with often a perspective of improving society. And again, back to the example I share of another guest, Paul Pahlman, you know, in a previous show, he urged leaders to adopt what he called a net positive approach, which is the name of his book as well, to give more to the world than they take, which is...

very similar to the concept of the givers and the takers, this book that you may know as well. So Nick, can media organizations like the Atlantic aim to be net positive by addressing societal challenges like climate change, threat to democracy? And do you feel a real stability on your shoulders as a media CEO, and not just to report on those issues, but to lead on some of them in some ways?

Nick Thompson (01:14:17.126)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Nick Thompson (01:14:44.144)
Yeah. Well, okay, so this is hard.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:14:48.521)
It's very hard.

Nick Thompson (01:14:50.254)
Net positive, yes. Right. And like, that's why I do this job. Right. I think that the Atlantic, like we were literally founded by a group of people who were having conversations about how to prevent an American civil war. Right. Like Frederick Douglass wrote for the early Atlantic. Ralph Waldo Emerson was at that table. Like this publication was created for a social purpose. You know, it has served that social purpose. Some ups and downs, but mostly since 1857.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:14:53.973)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:15:03.785)
Hm. Hm.

Nick Thompson (01:15:18.472)
and that is an incredible legacy to have, and it's a burden to bear. And I don't want to be the guy who screws it up. so that's one thing. And so I certainly think it can fulfill that mission. Now, I do think that society has huge challenges with climate change. I do think they're major threats to democracy. I do think that there are correct policy choices that one should make, whether it's about, you know, better choices and worse choices you can make about how you handle the protests in Iran, what you do with Venezuela.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:15:23.435)
Yeah.

Nick Thompson (01:15:47.377)
what your policy and cryptocurrency is. I think that the Atlantic's role though, and I believe this very strongly as does Jeff Goldberg, is not to say what that is and to push America to that. It is to just hire the best writers in the world and the best editors and the best social media people and put out stories that people might disagree with. is to create a great writers collective and a group of thinkers that publishes fair accurate information about all this stuff. And if it ever appears that we're partisan and if we ever become predictable,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:16:11.157)
Yes.

Nick Thompson (01:16:15.024)
And if you know what we're going to say about climate change or you know what we're going to, if Nicholas Maduro gets captured and you know that we're going to say it's great because we love Trump or we're to say it's terrible because we hate Trump, not, well, this is complicated because who knows what happens to Venezuela? Like nobody knows. Right. And if anybody ever comes to think that we're entirely predictable, A, we're not serving our social purpose. B, our

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:16:19.723)
Good.

Nick Thompson (01:16:41.596)
Our financial model is cooked and our reason for being is cooked. So we have to continually surprise and be fair and truthful and honest and interesting. And that's really hard. So I don't think we should lead on any of those issues you mentioned, but I do think that the people who lead should be reading the Atlantic.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:16:55.552)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:17:05.259)
Got you. So if I may push a little bit harder on this one as well, does he mean that any societal issue anyways is political? So you cannot lead in a way that is not partisan, but is about really embracing, let's say, climate change, right? Of course, it's highly political in many different ways. But you could say, there's a well-understood actually set of reasons.

for why the planet and the humans in the planet should take care of the planet in which we live, right? So I'm just trying to get to a point where is there, you know, is there an upper cause, whatever it is, where you can lead the way, not by forming a monolithic opinion to the people and say this is the way to think about it, but where you engage in a deep way the cause.

Nick Thompson (01:17:58.108)
Yeah, so there, okay, so you have a whole series of really interesting notes in there. So one thing I'll say is that there are issues where we are, we do have absolute views, right? And those are like, and where I'm allowed to make public statements and feel comfortable. So like about press freedom and about democracy and first amendment rights, like things that are core to our publishing and our sense of being. And, you know, I do not make statements about ICE.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:18:08.64)
Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:18:16.043)
Yep.

Nick Thompson (01:18:24.731)
but I will make statements about imprisoned reporters. So there's like one category that is easier for us to talk about. Now there's a second category like climate change where

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:18:27.371)
I see.

Nick Thompson (01:18:36.177)
We are on the side of truth, right? And the facts clearly show that there is manmade climate change. Now, the degree to which humans are contributing and like, you know, whether carbon sequestration is the right policy or not the right policy. So where the Atlantic will, I hope, have surprising views about like carbon sequestration, like you will find that can among the people who accept that there's a bunch of people who just gaslight, right?

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:18:59.061)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Thompson (01:18:59.933)
they're not going to publish in the Atlantic and we're not going to pay them credit. And we're not going to like both sides of it. Like, well, one expert says that climate change is happening and one says it doesn't. But what we'll ideally will do is find the interesting arguments and like conversations within that reality based climate change conversation. So that's the way we do it. And also, okay, so the question of whether everything is political, that's a great question. And I'll answer it more the way I dealt with it at Wired, which is

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:19:18.667)
Gotcha.

Yep.

Nick Thompson (01:19:30.493)
Because at Wired I had to say over editorial and I was there during the first Trump administration.

There were issues that were political, right? And there were issues that fell within Wired's domain, right? Like who's going to be the head of the FCC, right? What policies are we going to have encryption? Will TikTok be banned, right? And on those issues, we should cover the Trump administration. But there's a lot of stuff that Trump administration does that has no bearing on Wired's world, and we should not include it. And then there are lots of stories we write that have nothing to do the Trump administration. And there's a temptation.

When you live in America at a time like this, where like every story has to have something to do with Trump, right? And like every reporter wants to put in and like you write a story about education and you want to like whack the Trump administration when you write it. And so when I was at Wired, it's like, I would go through stories. I'd say, no, no, no, no. He doesn't need to be in the story. Like this isn't about him. This is about something else. Right. And like, but everything's about him. No, no, it's not actually. And so.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:20:16.159)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:20:36.491)
Hmm.

Nick Thompson (01:20:36.701)
That's a really interesting balance. and the other thing I would do if there was a story and it was about something to do with the Trump administration, right? And let's say it was about whether to ban tick tock. You have to really like, if you have a reporter and the reporter just tries their best to be fair, but they really don't like Trump, right? Or maybe they try the best to be fair, but they really do like Trump. You have to go and make sure that they're like, I used to do this thing where I'd be like, okay,

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:20:38.997)
Yes.

Nick Thompson (01:21:06.107)
find your best Republican friend or your best Democratic friend and read the story out loud to them and just see where they like get upset. Right? what are the assumptions that you've embedded in there that are totally unnecessary? Like what is the, I use this line on a podcast I kind of like, which is like, what is the like random thing you've said about Brendan Carr that you don't need to say? Right? And then take that out. So there's like an editing challenge in that as well.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:21:12.427)
with the

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:21:25.483)
Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:21:31.315)
I got you. Very last couple of questions, but quite important ones for the listeners as well. As we start looking ahead, I want to zoom out to the bigger picture of positive leadership in media. A discussion spans, as you can imagine, across empathy, trust, purpose, and positive impact, societal impact, I just touched about, right? The core themes of these podcasts. With my guests, I often reflect on how these qualities can flourish in different fields. So, Nick, when you...

Heal the world's positive leadership. What does it mean to you personally in the context of running a media organization?

Nick Thompson (01:22:08.542)
So I think when I think about positive leadership, and I'm sure there many other ways of defining it, I think one of the things that I believe and have for a long, like I'm pretty optimistic about the world and that you can find a path through it. And I felt this way at Wired, maybe it was sort of coded into me when I was at Wired, but that, not only is the world likely to be, there are ups and downs and there things that I hate that are happening in the world right now, but in general, you know,

we're going in a good direction. And in general, like not only that, if you are optimistic, you are more likely to be helpful to the world, right? And if you're pessimistic and you're like, man, it's just the worst. like, you know, ISIS shooting people in the streets and I can't move because of it. that's not gonna, you're gonna end up doing less good than if you're like, okay, there are a lot of problems in the world. know, AI is like a big problem, but like, I'm gonna try and understand. I'm gonna be curious about it.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:22:47.221)
agree with that. Yep.

Nick Thompson (01:23:05.022)
I'm very curious about what's coming and I'm very interested in it and I generally believe that if you have an optimistic attitude you can do more.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:23:11.723)
100 % agree with you, Nick. So next question is really about what is your core purpose or what is called your personal mission that drives you each day and as that personal mission evolve over time. So if you had to say a few words about my personal mission is, what would that be?

Nick Thompson (01:23:33.724)
my personal issue is my personal mission is creating positive business models that allow serious journalism to thrive. And that's been my that's I didn't realize that was my mission until about

2012, when I started that, you know, in 2012, 2013, I was given this role by David Remnick, one of my heroes, to help the New Yorker become a digitally forward publication with a consumer business model. you know, it was mostly like the New Yorker was going to go out of business, but it was like figure out the future for the New Yorker. And, you know, with a group of amazing people, we did a good job of that. And since then, that's been my job.

And that was why I took this Atlantic job. If your mission is, what is the position you can take that can do the most good? Whereas if you do this job well, the amount of good journalism in the world will increase the amount. And that was like, you can be a writer. I could go start a sub stack and I could publish good stories. I could go and be an editor somewhere and I could publish like six or seven people and have six or seven times as many stories going to the world. Or you can try to like make the Atlantics business. When I started, we were losing tons and tons of money. Subscriptions were in decline in the beginning.

And the amount of great journalism we could do was under threat. And so, you know, the fact that we've been able to reverse it the last four years is great for this project. So that's my mission.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:25:00.757)
Very clear and pretty amazing, amazing mission. My very last question now, which is something I love to ask my guests by the end as well, it's about passing on your wisdom, right? So what advice would you give to listeners, to my listeners, particularly young leaders and spending a lot of time with young people? Because I believe in betting on new generation to positively change the world. So why would you tell those young people who are trying to lead positively

and with purpose in their own fields, whatever it is, right? To shape a better, brighter future for all of us.

Nick Thompson (01:25:37.723)
You know, if I have one principle, right, and I have one, it's not really advice and maybe it's mundane, but it's kind of a lesson from running, which is like,

If you want to get faster, you have to go out every single day. And some days you have to push yourselves really hard, but you don't ever stay in, right? And if you do do that, you always get faster. And if you don't do that, you never get faster. And so it's kind of led to like my philosophy of how I work, which is you've good days, you have bad days, you make decisions that are wrong, you make decisions that are right. But you just kind of are always like sort of each

day, each week, each hour, you're figuring out, okay, so I'm going to try to like, a lot of things I'm trying to do, I'm going to try to figure out like, what is the best thing I can do and move it forward? Whoops, screwed that up. Okay, well now let me try the next thing. Whoops, screwed that up. Okay, let me try this thing, right? Like, and you just, it's this kind of continued, it's almost like stoicism, right? But you just, keep going out there. And that's, that's my main, my main bit of advice. And I try to say to my kids, like,

You identify the things you love and the things you want to do and the things that are important and you just keep trying, right? And if you like, you don't sit and wallow and look at your phone or you don't like, you get all depressed and you know, you don't, you don't take a day off because like you need to like, maybe you do if you need to refresh, but I generally don't like you just keep going and you just do it every day, whether it's sunny or rain.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:27:11.167)
going. Basically keep running and driving your passions one day at a time. All the time.

Nick Thompson (01:27:16.923)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I believe. It's interesting because like, at some point you have to stop. I don't know. Let's deal with that. I hope not for a little while.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:27:23.275)
Yes.

Thank you so much. It's been a wonderful and lightning high energy conversation. I tell you I got so much positive energy through the screen, through Riverside. And for all of the listeners, please, if you love the episode, leave a rating, five stars always welcome, obviously, and subscribe to Positive Leadership Podcast. And again, a wonderful, wonderful, amazing discussion. Thanks so much for joining me for 90 minutes altogether, which is a big.

Nick Thompson (01:27:31.383)
Thank you, Jean-Claude. You ask amazing questions.

Nick Thompson (01:27:38.906)
Amazing.

Nick Thompson (01:27:57.021)
Wow, it's a long time.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:27:57.469)
Not a marathon, but quite a long time.

Nick Thompson (01:28:00.829)
Thank you. Thank you for bringing me on. Thank you to introduce media readers, your listeners. I'm thrilled to be here. Cheers.

Jean-Philippe Courtois (01:28:07.884)
Thanks so much. OK. Are you happy with the discussion?

Nick Thompson (01:28:11.272)
That was fun.