Nicholas Thompson is the former editor-in-chief at Wired and currently the CEO of the Atlantic.

You may best know him these last few years as someone obsessed with AI. He gives keynotes,

moderates panels, writes, and even hosts a podcast about it. His latest book comes out on October

28th, and it's all about

running. Because when Nick isn't overseeing the Atlantic's business or talking about

artificial intelligence, he's probably training for a race somewhere. Or maybe he's just commuting,

which he often does on foot. Full disclosure, I'm a fellow runner and Nick was my first boss way back when I was a

wired intern, so I couldn't pass up the chance to talk to him about the book, called The Running

Ground, a father, a son, and the simplest of sports. It dives into family, addiction, resilience,

career, and why running is at the center of it all. And yes, we talk about AI a little bit, too.

Here's our conversation.

Nick Thompson, welcome to the big interview. Thank you. Katie, it is a joy to be here with you

at Condé Nast, at Wired. It's been a while. I love coming up those elevators. I love seeing you as the editor-in-chief. It's A-plus awesome. Oh, that's so nice. I'm thrilled that you're here. I'm thrilled that we're doing this. And we are actually going to start this conversation the way we start all of them, which is with a little warm-up, some rapid-fire questions. Fire away. And in honor of your new book, The Running Ground, which comes out at the end of October, I'm going to make them entirely running themed this week. Okay, great. With apologies to our listeners. Ready? I mean, if your listeners don't want to hear about running. Now would be the time. Now would be the time. But it would happen. But let's go.

Trail run or track run?

Trail run. Running with music or silence?

Silent.

Worst running injury you've ever had.

Achilles tendon going capuch in an ultra.

Most bogus myth about running you wish people would stop talking to you about. That you only need to run a 20-mile or before a marathon. What do you need to run? More than that. 22? 24. 24. 26, 28, 30, they're all better than 20. Why do people die at mile 20? Because they only train them to 20. Running with people or running alone? That's the only one that's hard.

I generally prefer people, but then you have to schedule it, so running alone.

Backup sport of choice if you could never run again.

Soccer.

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