Nicholas Thompson

So that said, you then have to figure out ways that you can really distinguish yourself.

So we distinguish ourselves, we hope, by A, being a publication for the very best writers in the world, right?

And we have a real diversity of writers.

We let them take their own voice.

We let them write their own thing, right?

We also are a place for incredible investigative long stories, right?

And so our hope is that we are known, what we want and what I want,

is I want someone to go to Atlantic.com or to pick up The Atlantic and to know that everything they read will be interesting and smart, that their assumptions will be challenged, that the writing will be beautiful, that they'll be taken to places in their mind they couldn't imagine.

So we want this like constant process of discovery of awesome journalism.

So we're trying to be the greatest writers collective in the world, right?

That's the goal.

And that in some ways is perpendicular to

to the goal of like being totally distinct, but in a way it's not because it is like trying to be something that nothing else is.

So that's the goal.

In some ways, it's the initial realization which triggered the book.

It's going to take a minute to explain, but I think it's pretty interesting.

So I, when I started running, tried to break a three-hour marathon.

And when I was 30, I ran a 243 marathon, which was like very cool, right?

Right afterwards, like a week afterwards, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, right?

And you can, you know, surgery, multiple surgeries later, hard time.