YouSaid · the spoken record

Nick Thompson

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106
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2018-04-27
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2018-04-27
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  1. “Entertaining way to do high intensity interval training or anything else. You just want to get a fantastic gift for someone, check out Piloton. One peloton.com and enter the code Tim. Again, that's O N E P E L. T-O-N.com and enter the GoTima checkout to receive $100.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Visit one Peloton and enter the code Tim. Caps TIM at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. Now you might say, meh.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “So it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet. It or And it fits with no problem. So Peloton is offering”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “When cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attent”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Etc. New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite New York City instructors in your own living room.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Great, what the hell have you been up to? Because he's always doing a weird diet or another, but it only lasts like a week or two. So he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Yeah, I thought we covered a lot of interesting ground. Thanks for your awesome questions and probing. That was really fun.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “I talk to people all the time. I'm at Annex Thompson on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. There's a private page public page. I love talking to people. I love hearing feedback. I'm very active in comments and all that. DMs are open. So I'm available. I'm around. I'm on the internet.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “I love talking to you. I mean, the thing I want, I want people to subscribe to Wired. That would be great. Everybody subscribes to Wired. I'll be a very happy man. Journalism is a complicated business, particularly at this moment, so we would love your support.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Or things seem really wrong. Like you can stop and even do something small that's right, and then that will begin another chain of events that will lead to something really good. And so I often think about that when I'm thinking about whatever the next thing I'm going to do is or the next moment is, right? You're beginning a new chain of events, a new chain of events that will lead you in the right direction. You're continuing in a good chain. It was that idea from Kenon that was based on his historical studies that I think about a lot.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “You know what it is? I'm not going to get the exact quote right, which means I'd have to spell check it. But there's something that George Kennan said that I just find incredibly philosophically profound, which is something I think about a lot. Not enough to remember the exact words, but the idea was when you look at everything that goes wrong historically, you can see a deep chain of continuous mistakes that lead up to it. And in a way, that's really discouraging because it makes you think about like each step, like leading to greater consequences. But on the other hand, it's really encouraging because if you think about it and you think about, oh, wait, what if you do something right? Can you do something right now? You're starting a whole nother chain of events that can lead to a really positive outcome. And so his point when he was making the statement, which is more or less that, is even if things seem like they're going in the wrong direction.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Yeah, so it's something I think about, of course, as soon as I say it, I now find myself like adjusting myself in the chair. Yeah, it's something where whenever I'm kind of out of position or I can feel like something's not aligned, I straighten up, try to think about it when I wash my hands, right? I just, okay, make sure my back is aligned, my hand is aligned. And it's something that I think has prevented a lot of injuries. I almost have never gotten hurt while running, even though I'm running a distance that often will get people hurt, and I think it's partly due to posture training.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “I don't. I kind of think the running is the substitute for that. And when I'm running, I do. It's very much I don't think it's that dissimilar from mindfulness meditation because when I run, I guess there are two things I would say to that. One is the running. So I do very much try to either listen to the podcast or if I'm not listening to podcasts, I'm thinking about trying to clear my mind or thinking through specific things and trying to concentrate on it or paying attention to what I see or what I hear. So I think that's reasonably close to mindfulness meditation. And then the second thing is I do Alexander technique, which is a technique I learned while playing guitar just for how one positions one's body and like a line in your head to make sure it's straight with your back and making sure your feet are solid in the ground. Notice something I did when I was having a lot of wrist pain from playing guitar too much. And I think that's a sort of a centering technique that also plays a similar role. But I've, you know.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “I don't think I've actually read a book on parenting that. Changed my philosophy at parent. I mean, there are a couple books about how to get your kids to sleep, which is like useful technical stuff. I haven't read, you know, that's interesting. I don't think I've read a book on pirating where I was like, oh, I should raise my child that way or I should talk to them this way. It's been much more just doing and just thinking through, oh wait, that wasn't the right way to talk about this. Or, oh, yes, let's try to set them up for success in this way. Or let them do this. So let's go do this with them.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Having kids, so my kids are nine, seven, and four now, and thinking about the responsibilities one has to your children who will live you and who in certain ways will carry on your personality. You carry on your life after you're gone, thinking through my responsibilities to them, how the choices I make will be viewed by them when they're older, thinking about both how I can help them thrive and be the people they want to become and also how I can be somebody who when I'm gone they admire. Those are pretty, those are deeply profound things. And I had no capacity of what it was like to have children before I had children with none. But it's psychologically profound in every way. So definitely that.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Moral choices like the choice to adopt 23 children and bring them into your lives. You just make crazy choices and why they make those choices. And Larissa is one of the smartest writers at the New Yorker. Everything she writes is absolutely brilliant. The book is brilliant, beginning to end. It sort of ten discrete chapters about people who make choices like that. I gave Larissa's book last year and Garber Wright's book this year.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “That I can answer. So this year, so each of the last two years I've given one book to a bunch of people. This year is a book by Robert Wright called Why Buddhism is True, and it's a story about mindfulness and about the science of Buddhism and the current neuroscience about how our minds work, making the argument that the things people have said about mindfulness meditation and the way it changes your capacity to empathize with other people and to sort of break out of the tribalism that we're all locked into, the things that Buddhism has said about that turn out to be scientifically correct. And here's a story about why. Wonderful book Robert Wright is one of the smartest writers I've ever read. His book Nonzero is among my five favorite books of all time. So that book came out recently and I gave that to my closest friend and my family. The year before, I gave a book by Larissa McFarquir called Strangers Drowning, which is a story about people who make extraordinary”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “But I do think about that a lot, right? Like, that was very few moments where your life entirely hinges upon a specific decision, like the choice of who you marry, but that's not really a choice. It's not so much like that. I can't think of any other day that's close to it. I mean, I guess the choice to write Pam McCarthy at the New Yorker had a big influence. You know, there was the choice to leave the New Yorker to accept this wire job. That was a pretty easy choice towards a New Yorker, but you got to be at Energy of Wire, you definitely take it. So there are a few moments, but that was definitely the day where I made the choice that had the biggest effect. But you don't get to live life multiple ways. So it seems like the right choice. Everything worked out as well as it possibly could have. But who knows?”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “You graduate, you're guaranteed a really well-paying, successful career in life in New York. And you're throwing that away, but I went for it.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Was if I go to law school, even if I don't get the wire job, I still maybe have a shot at the book. So the odds were like, the odds are okay. But I, you know, what do I remember about that day? I was in Maine at the place my family has up near Canadian National Park where I spent summers through my childhood, which is like a very reflective, wonderful place, a place where I always feel good and confident. And maybe it was being there. Maybe it was there was some unease, some deep unease about going to law school, some sense that I was giving up, some sense of like, you know, it was the weak choice to make. I don't exactly remember, but I do remember being terrified when I wrote them and said no and thinking, well, this is, you know, you came up with a pretty good backup here, Nick. You came up with a pretty good plan, MY, you're pretty awesome law school to go through. It's three years.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Because that is I mean, the game theory was both a little trickier and in some ways easier because there was a third option. I had written my grandfather, Paul Nitza, had died, and George Kennan had both died in early 2004. And I had written an essay about their parallel lives. And so I had also decided that maybe I would write a book about the two of them. And so I had a proposal for a book. So I had three things that I could do with my life. And I was going to do some combination of one of those three things or two of those three things. I knew there wouldn't be time to do. All three, you can't go to law school, work for Wired, and write a book. And so the law school offer was going to explode mid-August. The wired option, I was going to hear about relatively soon. And the book, I think I had sent a draft of a proposal to my agent. And so either that was going to become a reality or not a reality. And so in some ways the decision”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “Terrific. And he's one of those people who With some people who are like the same age and in the same field, who are like competitive and maybe don't always want you to succeed. And for whatever reason, he and I have had a relationship where I've always wanted him to succeed and he's only always wanted me to succeed. And so we've been extremely helpful to each other. And that's been great. And so look at the cover story of the next issue. And Brandon's name is there. And I'm super proud of it.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “So because I have a friend for whom I've had like an amazing career overlap. There's a guy named Brendan Kerner. He and I are exactly the same age. And I edited something he wrote at when I was at the Washington Monthly. And he was at US Newsing World Reporting when I said to Wash Monthly. And I edited and he liked the way I edited it. And so we became friends. And so then he left US News and got hired at New America Foundation. And then I got hired at New America Foundation after him. And he recommended me. And then he went to Wired and he recommended me there. And so I got hired at Wired. And then I recommended him to my book agent. And he ended up selling a book through that. And then he wrote for me at the New Yorker. He wrote for me at the Atavist and he's got the current cover story and wired. So we've had these like amazing intertwined careers and friendship. It's been really...”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “When you're 25 and you think back to what would Nick have thought at 19, the funny turn into journalism, which now seems so propitious and so good, that's sort of the weird story where I'm kidnapped and I write the story and I get hired at the Washington Movement and it attracts me. If you look at it from now, it looks like a really fortunate thing that those things happened. But if you're in your mid-20s and journalism isn't working and you look at it and think, wait, I wasn't supposed to be a journalist. I didn't want to be a journalist. So maybe that just all got me going on the wrong foot and I should have like if I hadn't gone to Africa now, like would be in a much better place. So that was really complicated to think through and work through it. And it ended up all working out really well. And I'm extremely happy where I am now. But that was, there was definitely a couple of years where I was totally adrift where my peer group was doing much better than I was doing and where I felt like I was in the wrong field.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “And I did get it and I started it next month. But that was like those were a couple years where I was like, you know, make the right decision. And because remember when I had been a teenager, I hadn't expected to be a journalist. So I had all this self-doubt about whether I had ended up in the wrong profession accidentally. Because if you look at your life as...”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “Life is going to, I know it's going to hinge on this decision, right? Am I going to stay in journalism or am I going to go to law school and then like do something completely different? And the way I'll shake out, I remember I don't think I had been offered the wire job, but I was pretty sure I was going to get it. And so the day before I was doing NYU, I wrote to them and said, no, I'm not going. And then I prayed I would get the wire. Oh my God.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “But from roughly two thousand one to two thousand five, I couldn't get journalism going again. And so in the summer of 2005, I guess in 2005, I was working at a magazine called Legal Affairs, which I will like and is really grateful to, but it wasn't in New Haven. My girlfriend, who's not my wife, was in New York. I applied to law school, which is the way you get out of journalism, right? And the way you retrack your life, right? If you're in your 20s and the career you're doing is not working one great way to retrack your life is through law school. So I applied to law school and I got into NYU and I was literally set to go, I guess I would have matriculated in August of 2005. I think Wired wrote to me in July of 2005 saying, hey, were you interested in me as senior editor? And so that summer, it was crazy, right? Because my whole...”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “Darker period Well, there have been My professional career in my, you know, the first six or seven years was not great. So I finish school, I have that kind of messed up period where I go to Africa, I write to the post, but it's a period of getting rejected by 20 jobs before I get hired in the Weston monthly. So then there's like a moment of awesomeness where for two years I'm editor of the West of Monthly going back to New York playing guitar on the weekends. But the Washington Monthly job is very much a two-year job. And the expectation when I finished was, like all previous editors who watched a monthly, I would go on and have an awesome career in journalism. I finished, you know, I think I finished like September 9th, 2011. And after I finished, I had a really rough time. I couldn't get hired. I got rejected by 20 journalist institutions. I was sure I was going to get hired at the New York Times. I didn't get hired in the New York Times. I'm sure it's going to hire at the Washington Post. I thought I had, it just, it didn't work. I ended up a fellow at the America Foundation, which was fine.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “And it was incredibly powerful to suddenly feel like in a way that signal that I was through it. And so every year since then, more or less every year since then, except the year where I've had kids, I've tried to run the same marathon. That ties you back to the original story about running.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “Normal and it just completely obliterated me. It was the first time in my life that I'd been just knocked off my feet and I couldn't run 15 feet. So that was a really tough emotional period for all kinds of reasons. You're thinking about mortality in a real way for the first time in my late 20s. I had just been married thinking about now will I ever be able to have children? Your expectations on what life becomes are totally different. And so I went through that period and fortunately came out the other side and then it was really emotionally uplifting and psychologically powerful when I guess it was two years after that first marathon. I think in that first marathon I finished it in like two hours, 43 minutes and like 52 seconds and then like two years later I ran the same marathon and finished it in like two hours, 43 minutes and 50 seconds or something like that.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “Just went into a checkup. Yeah, it was like a couple weeks after the marathon. It was marathons in November, and so it was in early December. And the doctor's like, there's a lump. It's probably nothing, but let's check it. And so he checked it and it was like, oh, it might be bad. And then you go through that whole process that people have been sick go through where, oh no, this could be bad, but it'll probably be okay. And I'm in my 20s. I've always been healthy. Oh, no, it looks like it might be bad. Oh no, it is bad, but it won't be that bad. Oh, no, it is that bad, right? And you just sort of go through months of these tests and experiments and biopsies as you either, like you either exit or you just get ever deeper into it. At one point, I remember they thought actually, oh no, you're okay. But in any case, so I went, then I went through the surgery to have it all removed and then the radiation treatment. And then the sort of titration of the medicine to try to get you back.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “There's nothing about on the internet. I got thyroid cancer, which is cancer, which is horrible, terrible thing, but it's kind of the least dangerous kind. But what had happened with running is... I'll sort of tell that whole story. I started running and started running marathons and I remember really wanting to break three hours. As a child, I'd watch my father. He'd run a marathon. It was like three hours and 10 seconds. And he had been frustrated that he couldn't run a three-hour marathon. And so I started running marathons and I couldn't crack it. And then one year I totally cracked it and ran a 243, right? And was like way underneath it. My dad was super proud. And then right after that, I got diagnosed with thyroid cancer. And I ended up having a couple of surgeries going through radiation treatment. How did you diagnose?”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “Than it is on the weekday. So having it structured into my life where I put myself on a wallet and keys and a little pack, strap it on, you run home. It works really nicely and it keeps me, I think it's also a good mental break. You spend the morning like with your kids getting them ready. There's a lot of energy and excitement. And then when I go back home, you know, there's a lot of energy excitement putting them to sleep and then kind of going back to work. So it's nice to have like two little breaks in the day where I'm running.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “Yeah, so I was a runner in high school and college and then I took some time off but I started sort of marathoning reasonably seriously in my late 20s and it's important for all kinds of reasons. It's important as a sense of self. It's important physically. It's important to have physical things one does as one gets older. I'm in my early 40s now. It's important emotionally because at one point in my life I got very sick and so it's a reminder when I can still do it that I'm no longer that. So there are a lot of like intense reasons why I run and why I like to run. But it's really hard to find time to run because I have this ambitious job. I work super late every night. I've got three kids and I'm a very devoted father so I need to be with them in the morning. I need to be with them in the evenings. So I can't kind of take off and run. And in fact it's often harder to find time to run on weekends.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “Yeah, definitely It does give some good advice, but maybe a little bit out of date because it's eight years ago the digital tracking tools are different.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “Or how might people find Wired Vanish, it was all called Vanish, you'll find it. Or if you type in Evan Ratless R-A-T-L-I-S, I think the headline, it's like Vanish. Evan Ratlis tried to disappear. Here's what happened. And it will tell, because after he got caught, he wrote this great 8,000 word story about his life on the run. So good. It was the first story from why I never nominated for a national magazine award in feature writing. Such a good story. So yeah, Evan Ratliff tried to vanish. Here's what happened.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “Had to write a content management system that would make it easier for us to do multimedia storytelling. And so accidentally, we suddenly had a business too, because then we were able to license the content management system to people.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Maybe a month after that, Emmett and I were, maybe two months after that, we were watching at his apartment watching a football game like an Alabama college football game. He's from the south and is rooting for that. And he's like, you know, we should start a magazine that does that kind of thing. I was like, sure, that sounds like fun. And I just published my book and I had a really good web designer. This guy named Jeff Rob. I was like, well, let's meet with Jeff and see whether he wants to do it with us. And so the three of us got together. We said, okay, let's start a digital-only magazine. And so the idea was that I would keep my job. The two of them would go full-time to start the Atavist. We would run experimental stories, crazy long-form stories, and see what we could do. And then right about that time, Apple introduced the iPad. So the idea became they'll kind of be iPad focused and we'll do multimedia. And so we started this company at a super propitious moment in order to create the stories.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “They somehow then figured out that Evan was in New Orleans. We made a deal with Will Shorts that if you solve the New York Times crossword puzzle embedded and it would be a clue about where Evan was. And so I think the clue was something like he'll be at a pizza restaurant. And I had leaked online that he was gluten-free. So these geniuses online that solved the crossword puzzle and basically put together that there's only one pizza place you can go to in New Orleans which serves gluten-free pizza. And they caught him on the last day. This is an amazing hunt. Yeah, so that was really exciting. And so that happens. And Evan and I, of course, bond despite the fact that I've almost written his life as the private investigator. And so...”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “His credit card bills. And it was crazy. People got so excited, and it all happened on Twitter. It was like the first time I was really into Twitter. And so the deal was if he made it a month, he got $5,000, he got caught, the person got $5,000. And so he got caught because he was using Tor to disguise his IP address. It's a masking thing that makes it impossible for people to see what IP address he'd use. But he screwed up once. And by screwing up once some smart coder figured out a little bit about where he was. Then that guy figured out the fake Twitter account that Evanet created and followed it by creating a fake Fembot. And so we had a fake Fembot following editor, Evan.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “I don't think I sleep I might have. I leaked so much information about him. I certainly liked put out his address, his girlfriend's name, his exes, like photographs attended high school, his mother's name, like all the stuff he would have.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “Guess August 2009. And the experiment was Evan Ratliff has disappeared. If you find him, you get $5,000. And then the rules were that I would have all the information a private investigator would have. So I would be able to interview his family members, I would have access to his old photos, like a social security number, all those things, and I would leak them out through Twitter over the course of the month. And we had no idea it was going to work. It was one of those things that maybe he'll get found the first day, right? Or maybe no one will care. Did you end up leaving?”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “About how to fake your death and start life over, and then we would run it, and then he would fake his death, and we would run like a manhunt to fight him, or not fake his death, but basically go off the grid and Wired would run a manhunt to find him. This is early Twitter. And so we took that idea to the Wired Kitch meeting. It got a very high score, got approved. He wrote part one, which is here are some stories about people who've tried to start over in the digital age. And then he went on a run. And so we ran this experiment for a month. It was August of...”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “Oh my God. So that happened. So I was an editor at Wired and Wired, particularly under that time under Chris Anderson really encouraged people to do different things. I have done this crazy, wonderful story where there's a writer Evan Ratlas who I edited at Wired, awesome guy. We had gotten very drunk one night and we were talking about for some reason there were like a lot of people who were kind of faking their death and starting life over which is an interesting thing to do in the digital age because it's kind of easier to start a new life and create a new identity, right? Just create a new email address and your Twitter account, but it's also easier to track people. So it's kind of an interesting wire dilemma. And we were talking about how to tell that story with two other friends, David McGray and this woman, Jen Conn. Four of us were having Saviche and alcohol. And somehow through this long conversation, Evan came up with this idea, which is that he would write a story.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “The concern he had was basically that you would come on and you want to write and do television and do all these other stuff instead of like just putting your head down and being an editor. I said, no, I won't put my head down and be an editor. I can prove it to you. You'll give me another edit test. They gave me another edit test and then probably a week or two later they hired me. So it was entirely mce that spurred me to write that email to Pam and then got me hired.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “How so emotional, how, you know, I want to give the New Yorker another shot before I totally step away. So that night at 2.30, I sent an email to the Deputy Editor Pam McCarthy. It's like Pam or dear Miss McCarthy. I know you almost hired me, you know, four months ago. And I'm about to leave the company WiredWire Work Man and where I work now as part of Condate Master, New York is also part of the stack. I'm about to leave the company to go somewhere else. But I really want to work for you. So this would be the moment, and I'd love to add another shot at it. And it was kind of a strange email to send, but I was just sort of so emotional after reading McFeed. And Tam wrote back and was like, okay, let's come meet with me again and meet with Remick again. And so I went upstairs to their office, met with them again. Remick was very blunt about why he hadn't hired me the first time, asking whether I could address the concern.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “Nick Thompson, oh my God, they went back and forth, back and forth. They almost hired him, but they didn't hire you, right? I was like, well, that's interesting information. It's both it's painful, but it's interesting. And so then two months later, in about February, I had gotten, I knew I was about to receive weirdly sort of two other offers, one to go into television, one to work for another magazine, those of which were very tempting. And so I knew that I would be switching my career soon. And I remember staying up late one night. I read the shape of the bark canoe by John McSee, which is just a kind of unknown book, but just brilliant. Yeah, so good. And so I read it and I finished it, I remember lying on my couch. It's like 2.30 in the morning, and I finished it.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “Since you said that I'm going to tell a story about McShe because he's in some ways the reason why I ended up working at the New Yorker. So when I was at Wired as a senior editor, the New Yorker reached out and said, hey, we've heard you're a good senior editor. We have an opening. Would you like to apply? I said, of course, I mean, I loved Wire and I loved everything about Wire, but New York would be an amazing challenge. And so I applied and I went through the process and the process was you edit to 10,000 work stories, you rewrite things, it's an exhaustive process. You interview with eight people. And I went through it and I didn't get it. But I could kind of sense in the note that they sent that I had been close. And then maybe, so that was probably, I think this is 2009, it's probably October of 2009. And then there was a holiday party in December of 2009 where I met somebody who had been an assistant at the New Yorker.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “It's probably there are different ways to tell the story, but it probably has two things. It probably has like Section A crime, section B, the chase, right? And then so sort of titles for all the sections and then sort of lines with the different characters who are being introduced and where they're being introduced and maybe even the different themes that are being introduced and where they're being introduced. So it's not really circles. It's more like it's closer to the bullet points.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “Is not a particularly interesting structure, but it's a very good one. You'll see interesting ways to do it. You can do it watching movies too, but I think it's a really useful exercise and will make you a better writer and observer to take these things apart.”

    2018-04-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT