Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday.
Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm recording this on a Sunday here in Bastrop, Texas. I'm not sure when you are listening to it, but I just woke up, went on a long walk with the dog, took the case to Tracy's, a little grocery store we have in town, and then I drove over to Bastrop State Park, where I went for a long run. How long did I do?
I did 7.26 miles, a little slower than I would have liked, but it's kind of a hilly park. It's one of my favorite parks here in Texas, one of my favorite places here in Texas. It's the Lost Pines Forest, this sort of freak of nature. The low-balled pines are almost nowhere else this far west.
You know, you ever look at those Cold War maps of Germany, and you'd think Berlin was on a border, but no, Berlin was just in the middle of East Germany, and that was this sort of lost city, or the surrounded city. The filmmaker Richard Linklater's joke about the Pine Curtain, and Bastrop is the sort of Berlin in that analogy. It's a surreal, wonderful place. It's very hilly and sandy.
It all tragically burned down in 2011, or a good chunk of it burned down in 2011, then another chunk of it burned down in 2015, and another chunk burned down because the county was doing a control burn that got out of control, even though there was a burn van at the time. None of this has anything to do with wine bringing this up. I spent a lot of time in this park running and walking. In fact, I had the idea for the Stoic Virtue series in this park six years ago.
Stoic Virtue series hadn't come out yet. I took the kids and Samantha out for a hike. I guess one would have been in the baby carrier, one was probably in the backpack, and we took a long hike, and by the time we got back from that hike, I had the idea for the series, and Samantha and I talked about it, and that's what I've been working on for the last six years. I guess what I'm saying is I love this park, and I love the miles that I've put on in this park, and that would have been unfathomable to me, not just six years ago, that I'd be at the end of this series, which I am, but if you'd asked the high school version of me whether I would be logging miles voluntarily 20-plus years later, I would have said, what are you talking about?
But here I am. I hated running in school, and I can't live without it now. It's part of my stillness practice. It's part of my writing practice.
It's part of my mental health practice. It's part of all of my practices, and that's why I was really excited to have today's guest on, because I think every runner has a unique relationship with the sport. You love it and you hate it, kind of like writers. You love it and you hate it.
You like having done it probably more than you like doing it, but if you don't do it, you're miserable. Nick Thompson just released this fascinating book called The Running Ground, a father, a son, and the simplest of sports, which is about his complicated relationship with his father and how running played a role in it, and in part one, we sort of nerd out about our running practices, how running and running are both endurance activities, how life is an endurance activity, and you've got to figure it out, and how running is the sort of through line that connected him with his grandfather, his father, and now his kids. I didn't know how this episode was going to go. Nick is the CEO of The Atlantic.
He's a great writer also, but he's on the business side of The Atlantic, which is a publication I actually really like. I've had a number of the writers on over the years. I didn't know if this would be interesting from a Stoed perspective, or I don't know, but I was very excited. I thought it went great.
We ended up splitting this into two parts, because we went way over. The Atlantic, if you've never heard of it, it actually goes way back even with Stoicism. Thomas Wentworth Higginson was one of the original translators of Apertus, and he wrote for The Atlantic way back in the 1850s. It has won National Magazine Awards and every other award you can imagine, and while Nick has been the CEO, he has seen record subscriber growth.
He was before that at Wired and many other places, and he's a very fast runner. He set the American record for the 50K, it's very far distance, for men 45 and plus. You can check out his new book, The Running Ground, A Father, A Son, and The Simplest of Sports. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at NXThompson.
I think you're really going to like this interview. Let's get into it. I'll bring you part two later in the week. I have a funny detail about you and me, so I was looking at my email to get the address or something, and I saw that you had written a story that you were running for BuzzFeed back 20 years ago, and you wrote a story about Outbrain, or you wrote a story that included something about Outbrain, and this is going to get interesting, and at the end of the story, Outbrain, you were like, Outbrain sucks, right?
And at the end of the story, Outbrain was like, well, we're on The New Yorker, and I ran the New Yorker's website then, and so that email, I was sent that story, and I was like, fuck, we have to get off Outbrain, but I couldn't get off them through Condé Nast. People who don't know, Outbrain made it so exist, but it was, like, when you get to the bottom of a story, it was this ad unit, but it didn't look like an ad unit. It looked like referring, like, related articles, but they were all paid trash articles. And they were like the worst, right?
And so I had to get off Outbrain, right? And so, we arranged a study where we analyzed subscription propensity if we had the Outbrain model on versus not, and we basically determined that it so alienated our readers that we were losing money by having it. And so I took that study and brought it to Condé Nast, and we got rid of Outbrain. Really?
And it was actually, like, it was kind of, like, an important moment in my career because it was like, oh, wait, you can actually, like, use the data to get to the outcome that is, you know, right for high-quality journalism. Yeah. And so I found, like, all the trail of all that in my, like, memory bank while, like, getting the address to the studio. I was, uh, never wrote for BuzzFeed, I was writing for The Observer, which was a weird I hated those things, and yeah, it's this sort of blurring line where it's like, everyone knew the premise, the economics only worked because it was tricking people.
Yeah. But the long, it's interesting that you were able to verify, you were able to do some analysis of that because it's kind of a thing that's common in our society, right, where it's like, okay, the short-term profit is there, but it's hard to measure the long-term decay of trust or the opportunity cost of having that kind of exploitative relationship. And so a lot of that, that's why so much stuff sucks, is people who are, now that everything is so highly measured, people are making a lot of decisions that are increasing the, you know, the per-profit click, but not the long-term healthy ecosystem. And so, you know, we sort of played the game.
You fight fire with fire, right? So I know Jonathan Newhouse a little bit, he's like a fan of stochism. Oh, he's really a fan of stochism. Yeah.
And we had this, he invited me to some conference in Evian, France. Like you? Yeah, it was like a panel. I got to do like 30 minutes of work.
I remember we were having this dinner later and we were talking, and we were talking about running, and he asked me, he was running, and he asked me if I stretch beforehand. I was like, I never stretch, I hate stretching. And he was like, me neither, I never stretch. And my wife was like, I'm telling you, you have to start stretching, this is not healthy.
And he goes, he's like, I've never seen my dog stretch. And I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense, right? And then I got home, we picked up my dog from the dog stater or whatever, and then I'm watching her for like five seconds. And it's like, dogs stretch all the time.
They stretch before they get up. They stretch before they lay down. I was like, it was one of those perfect things where you hear something and you still want it to be true. Right.
That you're like, yes, the logic of that is very, very funny. And then it's actually not only not flawless, it's just the opposite of the truth. I think about that all the time. Yeah, that's great.
That's great. Well, I'm glad you're here. I love the book. I thought it was really interesting.
Oh, awesome. I'm glad you did. Yeah. If you hated the book, this would be an awkward conversation.
But we still haven't gotten through it, which leads me to my first question. Well, my first question is, why have I never been asked to write for the Atlantic? And then my second question is, did you run today? You can just answer the second one.
I was in the first question, so I'm the CEO. I don't ever see editorial, but they should certainly talk to you. I did. I ran 13 miles around the lake with a guy in Austin named Bray Homer.
We had great times. Lovely. It's an amazing trail, isn't it? It's an amazing trail.
Flat, smooth. It's a little hot here, Ryan, I've noticed. But it was not as hot as it was yesterday afternoon when I tried to run around the lake and said, nope, going to turn back home. I was just running in New Orleans a couple weeks ago.
I was thinking, where are the best places to run day-to-day in the United States? So not like, oh, there's this beautiful run in Yellowstone or something. But where day-to-day are some of the best ones. I think the neutral ground in New Orleans is one.
I think town like in Austin is one. Probably up from Chelsea Pierce to the Interfect, like that thing in Manhattan is pretty... It's a little loud. It is a little loud.
But you're not going to get that length with not having to stop in New York City. And then I just did along from Venice to Santa Monica, like that one. I did that two days ago. It was incredible.
It was incredible. Yeah, because you're on the beach, but then when you get to Santa Monica, you're up. You're up a little bit. There's nice little trails, but there's so much going on.
It was so beautiful. I was going to ride at sunset. Oh, amazing. I think the one around Austin is low-key one of the best ones in the United States.
And I know you said it's hot, but it's so shaded most of the year that it's... And Austin isn't quite as humid as other places. I find I can do it at any time during the day. Yeah.
I did it yesterday. It's one of my favorites. It's beautiful. I would have the Washington Mall.
It's pretty cool, too. It's just kind of underrated as a residency. The problem with that Washington Mall loop is that you have to stop and cross those streets like every quarter mile or mile or whatever, and it's not like... It's not quick, and it's not like a New York City thing where you can just jaywalk.
Yeah, but it's only a couple miles from the Georgetown Canal. There's a lot to say for that. Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that one.
I would take a lake over it. Definitely. I'll take a lake over the Washington Mall. Yeah.
It only recently, like, last maybe six years, they put in this boardwalk for part of it. So now you can do the whole thing. It's 10 miles, and then there's just an infinite number of combinations you can do. It's one of my all-time favorites.
Yeah. So I did. I ran this morning. Have you done Barton Springs before?
Do you swim also? I ran up to Barton Springs. I've done. Have you swam in Barton Springs?
No. Oh, it's one of the great public works achievements in the United States. I've run by, like, 12 million people swimming there. That's very cool.
Yes, yes. And in the morning, there's no one there. I'm going to do laps. I love that.
Are you a morning person or an evening runner? I like both. I can kind of run any time when there's time of that. I kind of run to work and from work, so you run in the beginning of the day, you run at the end of the day.
Yeah, that's interesting. Do you just shower at the office? Shower at the office, shower at the gym nearby. Yeah.
Sometimes it doesn't work. You forget to bring your belt or something. You're not always completely. Like, when you're kind of the boss, you should really look the part, but sometimes I don't.
Yeah. Although, do you find splitting it up, like, it only starts working at a certain distance. Not the exercise. Like, I don't know about you, but, like, if you told me, and people have told me, that, like, the physical benefits of running are actually not that great.
You know, like, there may even be some costs to it. I'm like, I don't give a shit at all. I'm not running for exercise. Right.
So, for me, at a certain point, the distance, you have to do a certain amount of distance for the mental health benefits to start. Like, if I just run two miles, I might as well run zero miles. Right. It doesn't, you gotta go longer than that.
I don't know if that's true. Like, if you're in the middle of a really hard process, you can still get a mental benefit from a two-mile run. Okay. So, it actually depends on, like, what is it breaking up?
Like, if I'm on vacation, right, I probably have to go run 10 miles to get anything. But if I'm in, like, some hellacious week with, like, stress, like, all kinds of stuff going on, like, I can go run half a mile. Interesting. Yeah, I find, like, there's no walking distance so short that there's not some value.
But I find, like, to get what I need to get to even, like, regulate, it's gotta be a certain distance. And I wonder, does the splitting give you twice, or is it actually half? You know? Yes, I don't know.
Like, I would imagine that the mental health benefits of a 10-mile run are better than two 5-mile runs, right? Because there's, like, a little bit of a start cost. On the other hand, the efficiency benefits of running to and from work and having, like, some running break is, like, a pretty good life hack. Yes, of course.
And then you're also just saving yourself whatever the commute time. Totally. That time is already dead, and you end it into productive time. Right.
You listen to podcasts, you run to work. It's the way you go. You listen to podcasts when you run? You listen to music?
I never listen to music. Oh, why? Well, so I believe that listening to music when you run kind of disrupts the training benefits. I mean, listening to podcasts might disrupt it a little bit, too.
Like, when I'm running a workout, I don't listen to anything. And so the physiological logic behind it is you're trying to, like, understand your body, right? You're trying to understand your nervous system. You're trying to understand pain.
You're trying to, like, maximize, like, coordination. If you listen to music, A, you might go too fast, right? Like, you might be hyped up, and you might not pace it perfectly, and then you haven't learned what you could learn about pacing. So if I'm running hard, I never listen to music.
Interesting. So in the Mirakami book I'm running, he says that you run to acquire the void, right? I find music gets into the void faster. So I'm running for that.
Like, I'm running to get to whatever that kind of state is. It's a different void, maybe? But I find that there's something heightened about the music and the physical. I mean, it can definitely increase adrenaline, right?
It can definitely, like, make you go when you sort of want to stop, right? But I feel like part of what you're trying to learn how to do is how to get your own mind to get you to go when you want to stop. And so music is, it's almost like putting on roller skates. And, like, if somebody can only run while listening to music, go get them, right?
If it can help you work out, go get them. But I also was, like, I'm psychologically scarred from my college coach, who at one point was like, you know, we're here to compete, we're here to win, we're here to train hard. And if you don't want to do that, put on some music and run around campus, right? And so, like, that moment stuck with me.
So it's both these, like, pure physiological and neurological things I'm talking about. And it's also that, like, young Nick was scarred at age 18. No, no, I'm sure. I think we all pick up certain habits or values that were, like, an offhanded comment from someone.
But if you ask them about it in depth, they're probably like, oh, I didn't even need that or it's not important. But I get your point. I'm like that when I see people swimming with fins. Like, when they're doing, I'm like, what do you do?
I don't get it. Like, you're cheating the whole thing that you're supposed to be doing. I don't get it. You're still swimming the same distance.
Or you're swimming longer distance. Why not? What are you trying to be aerodynamic for? It doesn't make any sense to me.
So that's a little bit how I feel about it. So listen to podcasts, but not when I'm doing it. I'm doing work out when I was thinking. Yeah, I think this is all probably totally baffling to some people.
Like, I was talking to my wife about this one. And I was, like, trying to explain that, like, this is what I have to do to get to even. Like, this is, like, just, like, if there's just a certain amount of physical activity, like, if I don't do this, like, I'm just totally dysregulated. And that this is, like, like, I think she was, like, resenting or somewhat peeved about how much time it was taking.
And, you know, this was, like, this is a thing that I was enjoying. And I was, like, I am enjoying it, but I don't think you understand. Right. This is, like, table stakes for me being a functional member of society.
Like, without this, it's not working. And then for people who are not that way, who aren't broken in that way or didn't get hooked on this coping mechanism in this way, they're just, like, what are you talking about? Does this make any sense? You remind me of, I had this conversation before, and I'll go run.
I was, like, I was 75 years old. I was, like, what do you want to run tomorrow? I was, like, I'm running 100 miles. I was, like, how long is it going to take you?
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stuff like let's say i want to do crossfit or i want to do jujitsu or some other fit there's no overlap like i still have to run so like i can't trade like swimming a little bit but not like if i swam for a week i'd be like oh fucked you know like like um i can substitute maybe on one day but like not three days in a row yeah or the whole thing starts to get a little a little wobbly you could be like hey it's the same amount of time you burn the same amount of calories you know but it doesn't it doesn't matter it's just the kind of regular thing to make to your wife just to help you out here is that it's by far the most efficient way to do it because you don't like you don't have to go to the pool right you don't go to the jujitsu class you don't have to schedule it right like you don't have to worry about the time you just open the door and you go and you come back yes the only the only time they've appreciated that efficiency it's like when we travel yeah then you know i get up early and i do that and then of course the rest of the day i'm like showing them all i'm like i already know my way around right here i already look at the boring things that you don't care about so you can cross those off the list yeah and then it's like it's like a golfer walks the golf course before you know that they play and it's you're sort of getting your sense of the city you can also like so the other hacks for helping your marriage like how old are your kids uh nine and six you're like the same like mine are 17 15 11 but like obviously the running strollers huge hack and then running errands that's super useful right okay and then dropping your kids running while they're doing their thing and then bringing them back then your spouse a doesn't know you've run and b you've gotten your workout right like you drop them that like the camper they're gonna be for an hour and a half you run for an hour and a half you drive them home you're in the plus right because you've done the errand no no i know this hack very well yeah this is mostly mostly what i what i do where i drop them off at school i run and then i come to the office but you're you're sort of um you're not running you're not driving the place that you're going to run or you're you're you're backing it with the other thing i say kind of as a joke but like part of part of i mean i've run pretty aggressively now for whatever 30 years and part of the way i've made it work with a busy job with three kids i spent a ton of time with and a wife i'm devoted to is by like filling it into these cracks yes right and then also you think about this they're just now too like one of them i can kind of convinced to get in the bike stroller even though he's like technically over the weight limit yeah but it's just like oh we spent like hundreds of hours together doing this yeah doing this thing over the years yeah now it's like i used to be able to justify the walks because it's like not justify they didn't have to consent to the walk because i could just strap them in yeah and then they were just there right now now it's this awkward phase between well first off i have to like bully or bribe them to come they want to stop like you know 60 seconds in like what are we turning around it's like we're not even at the end of the driveway yet and then and then they're just they're a little heavy to carry you know i can't do both of them well wait for a little bit longer so now i uh i train i just turned 50 and i want to run a mile on my birthday and my 15 year old pays me through it like this i now run with the kids um it's amazing so i think about trying to do this before my 40th birthday so i ran a 502 mile my senior year of high school and i remember going oh that's good enough like my parents forced me to pick a sports i picked track and i basically never really tried like i was in that teenager rebellious thing where it's like you try kind of but not enough that if you don't succeed you would have to plug that mirror and go back and i remember even looking at the clock and go oh that's close i wonder if i'm gonna regret like calling it here you've never gone under five no no i did it maybe in my mid-20s once but it's been a long time so i was thinking i would try to do it again at some point you know before i got two years or a year and a half so i'm just thinking about doing it again you've done it before i'm guessing right many times oh yeah and i'd run fast in high school and then i'd run some but i had run one straight down mountain but i had run seven miles and i was training for an ultra i'm also going to try to do it on my birthday and my 15 year old son who's like he had run a seven mile with his track team um he was like yeah let's do it and so we trained we did like 400 workouts on the track together i'd lead one he'd lead one i'd lead one it's awesome it's just like great parenting sure and like what a cool fun thing to do for a 50th birthday and you did it i did he dropped that at 1200 meters he wasn't quite sure how much the time there was to go he thought we were only halfway through he just lost down to the laps we were no we were in the park and like he didn't quite know he's like oh dad i thought we were way off pace i was like we were like way under you're like five seconds under and you only have 400 meters to go dude yeah he's like oops and how did it feel is there some part of you that feels like you're beating time like or defying something i don't run this up in my outfit did not make me feel like i was beating time running like fast marathons and ultras i feel like i'm countering the aging effects i mean i got into the book not because i wanted to like write less of the books i thought there was an interesting story in my father's life and then there's a very interesting question of why i had been able to run a t29 marathon which is very fast at age 44 when i'd only been able to run like 240s in my 30s so when i was in my physical prime i was much slower than i was in my 40s so why did that happen right and that was like that led me down an interesting psychological explanation that i thought made a good story and then my father's like a good story so that's why i wrote the book so you feel a little bit like the point of the book is how that one of the points of the book is how to counter the effects of aging yes well writing and running are two of the only kind of like elite or difficult things right like the arts and then you have athletics where it is you don't fall off a cliff like a lot of writers do their best writing very late in life or very very good writing late in life and then runners especially it seems like in a very high endurance level running not sprinters but tend to do it later and later than you would have guessed and this is all compared to you know like musicians writing their best album at 23 or a nobel scientist you know discovering something in their mid-20s or you're an old man in the nba at like 32 right well like basically you know your reflexes decline pretty drastically like you can't hit baseball when you're 40 right that's all reflexes but you're like lean muscle mass doesn't change that much right so your top end speed changes a whole bunch essentially as you age certain things get worse and certain things get better right you get the benefit of age you get the benefits of wisdom there are some like internal physiological changes that happen to help you there's some in general like the metaphor like you're on a moving sidewalk and it's going slowly backwards right but you can use some of what you're learning to kind of go faster than the moving sidewalk is going backwards so you can still go forwards yeah and i feel like when i wrote when i was younger i could just sort of like rip it out and now i think i'm better but it's harder do you know what i mean like it's interesting so and it's kind of true with running too like i could eat anything i wanted i could get any amount of sleep i could just get up and leave and i mean now like i'm noticing even like i have to think more about like those first couple miles take like my body is literally warming up and i'm just there's just a tightness that wasn't there before i'm sure you're more slowly you get like you turn your ankle and it takes forever like my son i will both turn our ankle the same day exact same extremeness and he'll be like the next day he'll be back in like a month until like oh yeah took the ibuprofen like if i sit down to write on an airplane i'm just immediately fall asleep you know i might have like an amazing session when i'm 22 on an airplane because you're just physiologically different and so but i'm sure that's also true for tom brady or lebron james but there's only so much they can transcend that there's still this hard limitation but that you know right like nobody cares what a musician in their 50s is writing as far as their new stuff they just want to see them perform the old stuff any musician who's like struggled in their 20s and 30s and like really like crushed in their 40s you know every once in a while but but it's like every once in a while like a legacy act will have a new song somewhat charts but like we basically go like no after this age you have transitioned from you know sort of one space in your career to another writing and then also comics i think we let comics bloom slightly later than like what's the difference between being a comedian and actor not that much but we would allow a comedian to hit their stride in their 40s or 50s and be at the top of their game in a way that maybe we wouldn't with you know and is that cultural allowance or is it just like where creativity comes from i think it's probably it's probably the medium and then culture and yeah i think i think it has a lot to do with what will what are preconceived notions because arguably the musicians are much better like they're experiencing ruse brindstein as a songwriter now is obviously better than he was when he was 20 i just mean like he has more knowledge yeah and some of the songs i think are really good and if he had written them in 1983 might we accept them differently but culturally we go no no we don't want to hear new singles from you like that's partly it and then there must also be something about the energy of that we expect from some forms of art or athletic like the vibe is different whereas maybe with writing because writing is much more about perspective and wisdom and less about energy we're willing to hear you know the reflections of an older person right on equal footing with well you know you have like fluid intelligence you crystallized intelligence i think as you get in your 50s like you have more wisdom you know more things you're kind of less creative so the different kind of writing yeah whereas in music you really need like a huge percentage of the new song has to be creative yeah so maybe that's what it is yeah and maybe with writing you know you're getting better at figuring out how to do this thing yeah and there's something kind of otherworldly about the music it is less technique and more something i don't know it's more lightning in a bottle than i think writing is because you know you even read about some of the greatest albums of all time like we worked on this in the studio for a year and then if you told if you told someone that like your favorite book that was only worked on for a year like what yeah like there's something about writing and maybe this is also the truth for comedy where it's like the genesis of the thing that's doing most of the lifting that's part of it but then it's going over it and over and over until it becomes yeah its highest form of what it's supposed to be so i don't know exactly how this connects to running exactly but i mean one of the things that i'm really interested in is i had this conversation with my mom where my mom was like well my reflexes are getting worse i'm 77 years old i was like well mom they are getting worse but they don't have to get worse like and then i kind of convinced her that they didn't have to get worse and so we went out every day when we were together this summer and i would toss her tennis balls like on the porch and like have her like reach out like you know working on her reflexes i would have her like stand on one leg and i would like toss her a tennis ball and she was like wow this is amazing yeah and i said yeah your reflexes are there's definitely pressure making your reflexes worse yes but if you're out there with the tennis ball and you're trading your reflexes you're going to improve them faster than you're declining and your reflexes will get better yes that is also interesting when you look at some of this probably survivorship but when you look at these like musicians or golfers or athletes that are like still doing it and you wonder how much of it is that they never even despite the drugs and drinking the time on the road they never like got out of shape like they never they never accepted that they were old they've just been doing some version of this useful activity non-stop for this whole period of time and there's something about that that i think keeps you totally so one of the things that i one of the things i believe you don't stop running because you get old because you stop running right like if you stop running like you'll put on weight you'll get imbalanced like things will go wrong if you keep going actually like you'll be able to hold off a lot of the effects of aging yes we all will get older we all will die yes like that does happen we all do slow down but really if you keep that in you have a daily habit of running every day it will keep you a bit younger and this is true inside an individual run also like you think stopping and resting would be helpful and it's like the worst thing you can do oh absolutely yeah definitely never stop yes i mean in a long ultra you can like stop to digest like for a couple minutes at your station but never stop in a run yes yeah so running is this thing that kind of runs through your family must be cool to see your kids picking it up that's wonderful to see you do it yeah and they're like they clearly have wonderful talent that's right well speaking of bruce springsteen i was thinking about this thing i heard him say when i was reading your book he talked about how we can choose to be an ancestor or a ghost in our kids lives you know and that sort of his father was this kind of ghostly or ghastly presence in his life this is dad's haunted by all these demons uh and he's sort of abusive and it's just there and it's this thing that you know there's some kind of like guiding force in their life from another generation this sort of choices it's kind of everything yeah it's very hard to as a parent it's very hard to know what you're giving your children i write about this it's kind of this funny moment in the book where i i run a marathon and it's during covid and so i run like i run with one other person i run 26 miles on this little loop in prospect park right and i finish it and i've just completely destroyed myself i come back to the house and i like i lie under a blanket and i'm like shivering and kind of convulsing for a couple hours i remember watching a movie with my oldest son who's probably like 11 or 12 and afterwards he's like you know what dad i'm never gonna run again and then the next day i saw what it did to you he probably did me right and then the next day i go out in prospect park and i'm going for a walk and what do i see i see my youngest son like running around the park what are you doing here he's like i want to run around the park i was like wait a second so this very same thing that i just did has inspired one of you to like sneak out for a run yeah he's like six years old and he's like ran into the park literally six years old yeah he's like running around prospect park not the whole thing but running the center loop and so it's about the very same actor and then so the book is partly about other people but it's partly about my grandfather who's great athlete golden golf champion who intimidates my dad my dad's not a natural athlete hides from him the curtains you're very academic doesn't want anything to do with him and feels just this constant pressure to be a different person than he was my father then takes up running and has the exact opposite effect on me where my father's a cool runner and i'm like i want to run with this guy right and so i'm five or six years old and i'm running with my dad yeah and now like god willing like my running obsession will you pass in a positive way that when my kids write their memoirs or think about things in their 30s like oh so cool about it my dad had this wonderful thing that he taught us and brought us into yeah not oh my god stupid father like we always come home sweaty and smelly yeah it's like that story about the two brothers and one is asked like why are you an alcoholic and he says my dad was an alcoholic and then the others ask why don't you drink yeah this is because my dad was an alcoholic and so the same event can send people down very different way right and so and like one of the other things people often ask me is my father you know led a very broken life and by the end of his life he's i used to say what your parents did well my mother's an artist or my dad runs a male brothel in bali and um he's like bankrupt i'm supporting him and um he's blackmailing me and he's basically like begging for money to pay his prostitutes and like why did i put up with this and part of the answer is he always loved me and he always supported me right and like that's like that's the baseline like if a father does that then you know you owe them a lot yeah i guess i mean like i could easily broken with him and say you know dad's like enough of this like we're done i'm not gonna talk to you anymore like now you've crossed one too many lines how long did it take you to understand that he's this way because of this other person did you meet your grandfather i barely knew him but how long did it take you to understand oh this guy is this way because of this other guy well i don't know if he was that way because the other guy like so my father has this really interesting life where he grows up in oklahoma and he's got this intimidating father it's not really happy they live on um his father is the president of bacone indian university and so they live in in bacone and my father wants to get out and he hears about the school called andover up in new england he applies he gets himself a scholarship like delivers newspapers by horseback to pay for the rest of it then gets himself a scholarship to stanford then win the road scholarship and then marries my mother's family which is like a prominent his most family like that is on track right john f kennedy meets him was like this kid's gonna be president before i am right and i found his like road scholarship recommendations dean of faculty is like this guy's like crushing it but then he comes back he's got his scholarship he's got his d fail from oxford and it doesn't really work right like life doesn't work the way he wanted it to and he like can't really control his dream he's not really getting the jobs he wants he's not really on track to become a senator whatever he thought he was going to do and then he realizes he's gay right and so obviously after i'm born right which thankfully you know that's the one argument that forcing people into the closet in the 1970s was good because otherwise i wouldn't be here and so he realizes he's gay he comes out of the closet and so that this is part of it like why did my dad end up the way he did it's partly like you know he whom the gods should destroy they first make promising it's partly like not living up to his useful promise it's partly like trying to deal with the chaos of coming out he's the first openly gay presidential party working for ronald gregorne in the 80s i'm very proud of that not being able to manage money eventually heading towards bankruptcy and then there's another really important moment in my dad's life which is there's another guy who we thought of as his twin this guy roger hansen who's in a book called remembering denny which is probably some of the classic and roger hansen is also a road scholar also destined for greatness also destined to achieve it also gay and roger hansen commits suicide and he commits suicide in my father's garage and when that happens my father is like i am going to be the most land buoyantly open person ever and so then he just starts like sleeping with everybody and like bringing his like totally inappropriate boyfriends into like every conversation every meeting places like just utter madness it's like his love life it's not even his love life his sex life becomes utterly out of control and so that is a lot of what leads him into this place he ended up in the sex life thing is probably connected to the drinking life habit thing it's the same sort of thing like he never figures out how to deal with his he never like figures out like okay this is how every day i'm gonna do this and not this i'm gonna like work through he never figures out how to build positive habits like how to not drink how to get control of himself he's never able to get control of himself yeah the things are in control of him rather than he is he in control of them he never figures out how to manage a day yeah he has lots of dreams he's amazing to talk to us all these big plans but he never like he never has like an hour where he's like in control i remember you know i wrote a book with him when i was in my early 20s and um you know we'd be writing it and i'd like i'd be like yeah how's it coming it's going well and i'd be like surfing porn right he just couldn't he just couldn't do it wow when you're a productive 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great force for good and then as he got older we would still run and he would still run it was a way that he like kept his demons partly at bay yeah it's not as simple as going oh he had this sort of abusive intimidating father and that's why he was it's that and then a series of kind of shattering events and a certain amount of pressure that ultimately he just can't handle right and why he was never why he couldn't end up handling pressure why he couldn't you know why he couldn't focus that much on the other hand the guy's like he's an amazing guy if you were talking with him he'd be loads of fun if you're on this podcast he's super interesting that guy was so smart and like caring and interesting and people love him he's just a maniac yeah and what's your reaction to all this do you kind of go in the opposite because again you could go in one direction or the other do you see this and you sort of understand this as a cautionary tale and you want to button it up and go in a very different direction or does that reaction evolve over time no it's very much it's i watch it i'm like i'm not gonna let this happen yeah and that's part of the my running is a recognition like i'm gonna stay focused like i don't know exactly what the key is to not become him yeah right but it's clear that i've spent a lot of my life trying to be like him i go to the same schools i do lots of the same things i'm like i was at lunch in san francisco not long ago with one of his friends so one of my father's contemporaries who's now his 80s and another one of their stand for classmates walks in and sits at a different cable and the guy i'm having lunch with us like you know i'm gonna try something and so he brings me a video cable and he's like paul this kid here he's the son of one of our classmates you know you've never met him who is he and he looks at me and he goes that's scotty's son i was like oh my god right like so i'm quite similar yeah in lots of ways right you're not in all ways and so i know that i don't want to be like that so it's unquestionably a force for focus in my life yeah there's a famous quote about tiger was another stand for person and says uh one of the after all the stuff that happened someone who knew him and his father he said mirror mirror on the wall we become like daddy after all yeah it's true yeah and i try like so i try very hard not to let my discipline drop um in part because i don't want to do that yeah i think about this with my oldest who's very similar to me and i try to remind myself like i've had 30 more years than him to figure out how to deal with this stuff yeah he's just starting to feel and understand he's kind of like forces like he's he has all the same ingredients but none of the coping strategies none of the experience is he hasn't touched this stove and been burned this way he's on this path of kind of figuring it out yeah and that like part of what's driving me nuts about it is like he's doing stuff that i don't let myself do right you know right and you have to let him do it and like he's gonna touch the stove and he'll learn from touching the stove yes hopefully don't touch the stove that's too hot right keep away from that stove yes that's the trick of parenting right like you've got to let them like take risks and be on their own and you have to also protect them without like them knowing that you're like you know you have to create boundaries and safety that they're not quite aware of so they feel they have total freedom but they're not really at risk yeah and then you go okay it took me relatively recently to understand hey if i don't do x y and z i'm not regulated and these things are harder for me yeah and it's like again i was like a grown-ass person when i figured this out like if you try to explain this to me when i was eight i'd be like what yeah right you're like what are you talking about yeah what are you talking about that doesn't make any sense and then even if i was like okay i get it i not only couldn't actually do it but i wouldn't have literally had the freedom to do it like you don't control your environment your life if you're an eight-year-old and you're overstimulated in a school classroom you can't like get up and leave and be like i'm gonna go to a different you can't design you have no ability to design your environment or make choices that are better for you or do things in the order that you would like to do them so so much of being a kid is is like the system the world is designed for how most people are you know and if you're one of those people you fit really nicely into this thing and if you're not you're gonna have a rough go of it you think about this is true for adults too you know if your dad was maybe straight and maybe had slightly less demons maybe he does become a senator or like he's gonna he had all the ingredients and how the access to thrive in that sort of late 20th century political intellectual academic circles but because just a couple switches aren't the way that everyone else's were he probably feels totally alienated like an imposter or he's having these feelings that ultimately kind of make him blow it all up and if he had been able to deal with disappointment and like not living up to expectations and there's still some things like i found all of his diaries you know crazily he had like gone to his house which he had sort of was gonna be torn down like he was still alive and there's a filing cabinet up front and i like open up one door and there's a snake in it and like um this is a live snake he moved to asia like everything was just madness in his life and i'll take his filing cabinets and i like put in the back of my car and drive him back and then after he died i wonder what's in these filing cabinets and it's like bank statements and crap and then it's like his diaries yeah so i had a lot of insight into his life um but there's still things i don't understand like i don't really understand like when it when he kind of starts to lose control yeah it's unusual it usually goes in the other direction right the story is like my parent didn't have it together yeah and then they got it together and as a when we were both older we reconnected and figured it out you had kind of like a benjamin button situation he's like as you're getting older and responsible and mature and thriving and functioning in the world it's like you have a teenage son we would joke about that he'd be like we have a reverse father-son relationship because like that you've got to like you cannot go out tonight right like enough of this right like you have a husband like no more corrality right like you have stuff to do you have to get your column to the card post you have to file it tomorrow like get that done dad he's like no i'm going out and you're like oh god have you had to deal with some kind of codependency stuff from that like like because these are conversations you shouldn't have to have it's not just you yes you had this reverse relationship but it's probably not good for you to have this relationship with your dad you should be able to go to your dad and ask for advice about stuff right he should be giving you a hard one wisdom about how to be the age you are now and he didn't do that right and he would help me through any hard dilemma and if i had like he would read my essays like give me some more commentary on them right so he was he was still very useful in that way he can't give you the experience of being a well-adjusted functioning 80 year old because he's not a well-adjusted functioning 80 year old he can't give you that perspective he could not do that yeah yeah there's a eulogy that james baldwin gives to his father who was like this not a guy that he's super loved and he said something about it's like it's kind of a ballsy thing to say at someone's funeral i guess but he said you know like we knew his sins but we didn't know his wrestling like you tend to just think like especially when you're a kid because you're just you're entitled i think to like get what you need from your parents yeah and when you don't all that you feel is that you didn't get it yeah but you don't know how hard they were working to give it to you or how hard they were trying to be different or the shame they felt about like you don't all you see is the binary like yes or no yeah not what went into falling short all you feel is that it wasn't enough right and i was i was blessed where i had this you know crazy dad i had an infinitely loving mother like infinitely patient raising these three kids on her own yeah you know who did an amazing job like you know just creating shelter with the chaos of my father's life around us yeah do you feel like running was maybe for you an outlet like like running is a place where you're in control it's simple i always say like i've never left for a run and not you know like i've walked back but like every time i've left my house i've come back so it's like it's this win baked it baked into your into your life into your day it's definitely that so i get you know i run a little bit when i was like five or six years old with my dad and then i get back into high school where i you know i cut from the basketball team joined the track team and like suddenly i'm very good right and that creates this like self-confidence cycle that then helps me do better work makes me cool at school as opposed to kind of a loser so it plays that role in life i then you go to college i'm not quite good enough i leave the team after the um after my first year i take it back up in my 20s and i definitely think that what you're talking about kind of the daily practice like i've run i believe this one's cute i need to do a hard thing first thing in the morning it's easy to do the next thing right i also believe that the focus required for running helps you with everything else like if you can go run two hours at a focused pace you're gonna have a better time at your hard meeting at work right like i absolutely believe that it creates these habits and so part of why i do it is this like daily practice of i'm gonna do this hard thing i'm gonna do it again tomorrow and i think it's gonna make everything else in my life work a little better yeah like when you're two thirds of the way into a manuscript and you're like is this a fucking book like it's taking longer than i thought it's not coming together i don't want to do it i hate this you know you're like oh i know this feeling just keep going you keep going and then at some point you finish and you're like oh that was better than i thought right and the thing you learn about running like it's one of the best lessons is that if you run every day and if you run hard from time to time you get faster like it just happens it always happens but imperceptibly so like you know there's not some magic day where you're like oh it's just this cumulative game block by block i had that feeling this morning so i ran this race two and a half weeks ago 100k i haven't really run much since i went out and ran 13 miles this morning i was like god i am so slow i'm like look at my heart rate look at my pace what is going on i'm like every single time right like it takes a little time to recover like it's hard to recover from a race it takes a while but i guarantee you like i'm just gonna run every day for the next six weeks i'm gonna run a bunch of workouts and six weeks now i'm gonna be back in great shape right and it just happens and so that was a lesson like when i was writing this book which took me like i have a hard day job right so i gotta work all the time i'm working on the book like 20 minutes this morning or like you know like 30 minutes that night but part of it was the self-confidence from running that you just you just do it a little bit here you do it there and like it gets done right eventually it's done right when at some point you have the capacity to do a thing that seems unimaginably difficult so like you run you run 10 miles and you run 20 miles and you run 8 miles and you just do this day in and day out and then when you go do a heart whether it's a marathon or ultra marathon and you go how where did my ability to do that thing came from it came from these little things and writing is similar in the sense of like you worked on it for 20 minutes you worked on it for you thought about it you read these books it's just all this stuff is going in and then at some point you have like an editable manuscript right where did all this happen i was just sitting in here yesterday and i finished the audiobook for the book that i just did this thing was almost unrecognizable to me because i didn't i didn't ever do it as a thing right i did it as each of its component parts like one day i showed up and i wrote this paragraph and then another day i wrote these seven paragraphs and then at some point i stuck them together and moved them around and edited them but like i never there was never at any point maybe there are some writers this way where i have the whole thing in my head and then i'm starting here and i'm ending here it was it's this cumulative project that's chipping away and eventually cumulatively you have a thing right and then when you have the thing the other hard question is when you stop right because like if i made it better yesterday that means i might be able to make it better tomorrow so when you call it off and when is it done and chipping that is a very there's a really big moment in my career that gets to this lesson one of the most important moments in my career and um i was i was a young editor at a new yorker and i was i was in 2013 and um i was just running a new yorker so i didn't have any confidence in my writing right and i hadn't written at the level of the i was a great editor i wasn't a great writer and the boston marathon bombs happened right and i'm following it and um david remick one of the greatest journalists in the world one of my idols boston new yorker comes into my office and he's like nick um you're gonna write about the boston marathon i was like no i've gotta i gotta manage this i've got like three other freelancers we're working with around here i'm trying to call this guy and i was like i really don't think i should do it and i was like no you're gonna write that and i was like well and then he's like stop he's like this is what's gonna happen you're gonna put your phone down right now and then you're gonna close the door and in one hour i'm gonna open the door and you're gonna hand me your story and that's what we're gonna do and so he closes the door and goes away and so i'm like okay and so i wrote the story and it was done in an hour it's pretty good you know but it was like a really good lesson it was like just he would just do that right he'd be like i'm gonna write this piece i'm gonna close my door and i'm gonna open it in a few hours and i won't have done anything else in those few hours and i'll have the story for you why do you think he thought you were ready at that moment it was like it was so clearly i knew so much about marathoning like i had grown up in boston like if there was ever a story that was like the right story for nick thompson to do like it was this story and you know i don't think he knew my insecurities about writing he maybe knew it a little bit maybe intuitive a little bit but he just like do it what an incredible gift to give someone absolutely like override their self-consciousness, imposter syndrome, whatever, and just force them to do a thing. And then you come out on the other side having done it, and you go, oh, I can do that.
And I write lots of good things that I'm proud about for the New Order, right? Well, yeah, there's actually this really great passage. It's from B.H. Lee Delhart, the British historian.
He's talking about William DeCumse to Sherman. And he's saying, look, there's a sort of pantheon of military heroes, right? And he's like, some of them, your Napoleons are born just like thinking that they're Napoleon and they deserve to be Napoleon and they can conquer the world. And then there's these other ones.
And it's interesting because both Grant and Sherman are very similar in this way. Had this kind of unglamorous, slow, plodding rise that in many ways is a surprise to themselves. But every step of the way, they're accumulating a certain amount of confidence. They're doing the thing.
And he says that success is much sweeter for them because they earned it. And in some ways, you almost imagine, like you think about Julius Caesar famously stands in front of the statue of Alexander the Great in his 30s and he starts weeping because he hasn't accomplished everything that Alexander had by that age. And so you go, okay, this guy thinks he was entitled to do it and is disappointed that he hasn't done it. Then when he does do it, there's probably a certain amount of letdown even then because you believe you deserve it and the external accomplishments never give you what they think they're going to give you.
But if your expectations are lower, that letdown is probably less a little bit. Because when you exceed even your own expectations, you're like, oh, this is nice. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show.
We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.