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Hi Matt here. Think back to a time when you knew exactly what you wanted to say but couldn't quite find the right words. Maybe it was a tough conversation, a moment that really mattered, or something you didn't want to mess up. Wouldn't it have been great to have a helpful communication coach right there with you? That's exactly why we built AI Coach Matt, a tool you can use to help you think through what you want to say and how to say it. It's been available inside our learning community for a while, and now we're opening it up so you can try it for free. Go to fastersmarter IO Learning and click on the in the bottom right corner. Give it a try at FasterSmarter IO learning and let me know what you think in any of our social media platforms. Now a word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you.
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Our show free of charge.
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Hi Matt here. Work moves fast. There are more messages, more decisions, and more moments where you need to be clear and sound like yourself. And in an age of AI, it's not just about moving faster. It's about making sure what you send.
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Actually sounds like you.
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That's why I use Grammarly. AI is everywhere, but a lot of tools either take over your writing or flatten your voice. Grammarly works with me. It helps me get started faster, whether I'm outlining an email or starting on a blank page. And then it helps me refine what I've written so it's clear, confident and natural. And I can keep moving fast because Grammarly works across more than 500,000 apps and websites, so it's there wherever you write. I don't have to go back and forth across multiple tabs. In a world of generic, AI don't sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free@Grammarly.com that's Grammarly.com.
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Each of us needs to have a.
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Hobby or outlet that helps us grow and develop. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.
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Today.
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I look forward to speaking with Nick Thompson.
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Nick is the CEO of the Atlantic.
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And the former Editor in Chief of Wired.
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He is also a highly accomplished competitive.
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Runner, holding the American age group record for men 45 and older in the 50k race and being ranked among the.
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Top master marathoners in the world.
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His newest book is the Running Ground.
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Welcome, Nick.
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I am super excited for our conversation.
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Thank you, Matt. I am thrilled to be here talking with you on my favorite campus in the world.
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Shall we get started?
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Let's do it.
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Excellent.
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You've had a front row seat to.
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Many, many changes that we've all seen in the way that we communicate. What makes for a good communicator in today's world of likes, LLMs, and, quite frankly, let's face it, laziness.
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This is cliched, but I found that the things that work are clarity and authenticity. If you can get across what you're really trying to say, if you can say it honestly, specifically, and ideally, briefly, that's good. You can say it in a way that feels like it's you, that's great. Now you can fake authenticity. Authenticity is hard to define, but I definitely think that when you try to force yourself in a box, try to do something that doesn't feel natural, the audience can tell.
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And you yourself, you write. How have you found your voice in all of this? What have you done to find what's authentic to you?
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There are a whole bunch of different ways I communicate. So I do a daily video, right? And the daily video is. Is just me in the moment, right? And I film it wherever I am. Yesterday I filmed it because I had the idea while I was walking to the office on the wharf. And the only place I could film it was by balancing the phone above an ice machine stand facing out over the river. And then I stood up to do it, and then I realized I had a problem, which is that if I took a step back, I would go in the river, right? And so I had to be really careful last night not to fall. But what people like is. It's short. It's to the point I explain what's happening in tech, something that's on my mind, and I just do it where I am. It's not polished. It doesn't go through comms. So that's one form of communicating. Another form of communicating is, of course, what I write, and that's much more serious, right? And that's Hollisch, That's. I try to find voice. I try to add humor. I try to make it as brisk as possible. I try to have scenes and structure. All the things I learned in my years at the New Yorker, at Wired, at the Atlantic. So that's a very different kind. But both forms are things I care about a lot.
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How much do you edit your work?
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The book immensely. So my new book is just out, and it's now November of 2025. I finished the first draft in August of 2023. And so I haven't done a word comparison, but I think if you were to do a word comparison of that first draft versus the final draft, probably 5% of the sentences existed in the final version. It just went through so many different revisions trying to get it right.
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I have learned in my time how important editing is. I used to think editing was just a necessary evil, but in fact I think the most creative things happen during editing. You really to think through who's my audience, what's my structure, how do I make it clear and concise. I've had to learn to be a better editor. And actually now I think I'm probably a better editor than writer as a result.
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It's interesting I went the other way around where I was an editor first and then became a writer. So I loved the craft. And you would watch at the New Yorker or I worked at this place called Legal affairs before, and you'd come in and you'd get this 10,000 word draft and hard to get through. And then you would go through all these rounds and you'd end up with this beautiful 6,000 word final version that had all the same good information and was just much cleaner, tighter, better structured character, handoffs, chronology, everything. And so with my book at the end, I was going through it every. I was like reading out loud every hundred word sequencing. Is there anything I should cut? Anything? Like, do I actually have something interesting in this paragraph? If I don't have anything interesting in this paragraph, let's get rid of this whole paragraph. And really working to make it tight and controlled. And I actually made these giant maps of the chronology and like, how can I do a handoff from this character to this character? Okay, this observation happened at this point involving this thing which sort of relates to this event. So there are three places in the book I can put it. If I put it in the third place, what other pins does it knock over later on in the chronology? I put in the second. Okay, let's figure that out. So it was a really complicated process.
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I want you to comment a little bit more about the Reading Out Loud piece. I encourage people to do that and I'm curious why you recommend that. And then to see your narrative, to see your story visually and to connect the dots. I am a huge supporter of having structure and logic in communication. So many people just list and itemize. I love this idea that you actually visually represent it and then take yourself through that mental questioning of if I move things around, what are the consequences? I appreciate that. But talk to me about the Reading.
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Out Loud that was something I started really doing at the New Yorker, and I didn't have confidence. So I worked at the New Yorker from about age 34 to 41. So at, like, a very important point in my career. And I started at a moment where I had done well in journalism. Obviously, I got hired at the New Yorker, but I didn't have full confidence, and I certainly didn't have confidence in my writing. And I show up at this place with the best writers in the world, and I wanted to be like them. And I knew I couldn't write like them. And so I would go home and I would take their stories and I would read them out loud, and I would try to understand what are they doing. Because when you read out loud, you force yourself not to skip words, right? When you're reading on paper, your eyes are scanning, you're moving. You're, like taking a little piece of this paragraph and that piece, paragraph. And you can understand voice and flow when it comes through. You read out loud, forcing yourself to really understand and to study it through it. And then when you do it for yourself, you can't cheat, right? When you're writing, you can pretend that the sentence makes sense, but you read it out loud and it doesn't make sense. It doesn't sound right, or it doesn't flow right, or it's repetitive. You're confronted with it like it's. You know, you look in the mirror and you really see yourself in a way you don't when you're just reading it, right.
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It's almost like you're having a conversation with yourself. And if a conversation doesn't make sense, you change it.
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I will tell you that one of the scariest things for me. So I finished the book. I've gone through and I've read it out loud. I've gone through all this editing, and then I had to read the audiobook, right? And you're in there for 14 hours, but at that point, you're done. You can't change anything. And I remember going to the studio the first day thinking, I'm going to want to change so many things when I read this out loud. And then I didn't. It was fine.
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One of the most stressful experiences I had in writing my latest book was the audiobook reading. I believe attention is the most precious commodity we have in the world today. How do you coach your editors and writers to craft sticky content that's not just sound bites? And how do you actually get people to write in a way that's meaningful? And draws people in.
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There are a couple of rules that I follow that I think are really important. When I was working as an editor at Wired, I would push people and I would say, okay, let's take a look at your story. If you were to describe the story to someone at a cocktail party, would they be interested? And if you were to describe this section of the story, would they be interested? And if not, find a different story. Okay, secondly, now can they visualize it? Not necessarily. Is it going to sell to a Hollywood screenwriter? But as they read the story, is there going to be a little movie playing in the theater of the mind? Right. And if there's not, you need to rewrite it. Because if they can't see it, Right. And if they can't relate to it, they're not going to be able to follow it. Okay, now what is their emotional reaction going to be? It has to be something. They can be angry, they can hate it, they can love it. But if there's no emotional reaction, what's the point? Okay, now we've got those things in order and like the writers there. So now let's go through the story and let's just identify exactly how the narrative is working. Why is this here? Why is that here? Is it completely chronological? Do you have any extraneous characters? And just going through with writers to make sure that the piece was as crisp as possible, as clean as possible.
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I really appreciate the idea of visualizing your narrative, your story, seeing it, what is it showing people? And then what makes ideas sticky for sure is the emotion. And thinking about what is the emotion you're drawing out? And how do you bring that about in people? I can't speak to somebody who does what you do without bringing up the AI question. What role should AI play in journalism specifically and in our everyday communication more generally?
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So AI is the hardest thing in journalism by far. And the reason it's so hard is that there are a whole bunch of different matrices on which you have to evaluate it. And there's a question of how journalists should use AI to do their reporting. And my view is they should use it all the time, right? Not to write anything, because the reader is reading the story, it has your name on it, should be you, right? So they should never write a sentence. Also, it's a bad writer right now, maybe it'll get good, but even when it's good, it should be you. But for finding stories, for understanding topics, for like figuring out chronology, take your 3000 word story before it goes to the editor and Say, hey, are there any chronological gaps in the story? Right. There's a whole set of editorial things you can do with AI. Put it in there. It'll give you suggestions. You can fix them or not fix them, but if you don't, I think you're crazy. So that's one thing. On the other hand, my profession has been very wary of adopting it. My company in particular. And the reason for that is, you know, the industry is built on theft and theft of our material. Right? All of these companies came, scraped our sites in violation of our terms of service, often using bots that they disguised. It made the people in my profession very angry. Secondly, they're quite scared because every study and every ranking of what industry is going to be displaced the most journalism is at the top. So they're very scared and they're very angry. And then also our business is being disrupted by AI, particularly in search. Right? So we have an existential business threat that we're already facing. So there's this funny, complicated mess where we need to use AI, And I really want everybody to use AI, but more or less, everybody hates AI and is terrified of AI.
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And do you use it in your daily life?
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Oh, 50 times a day, like nonstop for prepping for anything. Last night I had to host a dinner for 18 people, and we're talking about a really complicated tech question. I didn't know the 18 people. I knew a couple of them. So. All right, hey, AI, get me bios. Okay, Great. Now, AI, help me sort through the most interesting questions that relate to these bios. Okay, Great. Now, AI, please make me flashcards and quiz me on who everybody is. Give me a name, I'll tell them their company. Give me the company, I'll tell them the name. Takes a process that would have taken every six hours, makes it an hour process, Right. And so I go to dinner, I'm totally prepped. I know everybody's name, I know their companies, I can identify their faces, and I have a bunch of good questions. And so it's so helpful.
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That's a great use case and one I might borrow from you. Like you, I enjoy running. But unlike you, I only run 10Ks. You're a true runner. Marathons, ultramarathons. What does running mean for you and how has it helped you in your life?
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It's my form of meditation. Right? So I go out and I listen to the birds, listen to the sounds, listen to my breath, listen to my body. Understand? It opens up all kinds of thinking. So it's a very important time in my day, by the way, because we're on the Stanford campus and we're not far from Campus Drive. I'll tell you, when I decided never to listen to music, I was on the Stanford track team my freshman year in college. I wasn't good enough to stay through, but I was good enough to be there freshman year. And I remember the coach, Finn Lananana, who's one of the legends of the sport. And I remember it. He gathers us all around and he's like. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like, you have a big race coming up, and we're here to compete. We're here to try to win. We're here to do our best. And if you're not on board with that, just go put on your headphones and run around Campus Drive. And what he was saying is that if you're going to be serious about it and you're really going to try to, like, understand your body and improve, you have to turn off the music. You have to listen to yourself. Anyway, so back to your question. So it's a way for me of meditating, releasing, getting out in the world. I work in New York City. I live in Brooklyn. I'm very domesticated. But I used to love the mountains, right. I grew up and was outside all the time. Like, the thing I love to do most is my mom would just let me go out the back door in Maine and I'd just go run in the forest. And so running is a way to get back to the spirit of that little child. So that's important. But then it's also taught me all kinds of habits of mind and discipline and pacing. Like, there are all kinds of lessons from the sport that apply to my business life. And then also, I like to win and get faster.
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I can tell you've got a competitive streak in you. I have always found and recommended that having some physical outlet, whatever it is, I don't care if it's building Lego models, playing music. For me, it's martial arts. Finding some opportunity to express yourself in a different way. And like you, there are great learning opportunities. I hear you when you say you learn about yourself, your body, but you also can bring that into your work. That's really important.
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It's great. And you disconnect from your phone, right? And you disconnect from all the stuff. One of my theories, people often ask, like, why do so many people run marathon? Why do 55,000 people run their marathon? I'm like, complicated reasons, but in part because they know they're on TikTok too much. And running a marathon and training for a marathon is a way to get away from it.
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Do you often run solo or do you run with other people?
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I mostly run solo. I prefer to run with other people. But then you have to schedule it and like, my life is so complicated, I've just foregone that.
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You've noted that running is the simplest sport and the simplicity can be a tool to understand complicated stuff. Can you give us a concrete example of how you've taken those lessons of simplicity and brought it into what you do for a daily thing?
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So what I mean by running is the simplest sport, you really, you control it all yourself, right? You can open the door and run and you can do it any day, any time of night. I ran at 4 o' clock this morning and it was cold, but it was fine. I couldn't have done any other sport at four o' clock in the morning in Washington D.C. on the wharf. No one was there to play tennis with me. I didn't have a ball, I didn't have a bat. Right. Running you really can control when you do it and how you do it. And not only that, you can tell how you're doing. You can go run a 10k and you run it a minute slower than last year. That's bad. You run it a minute faster, that's good. And there's no external factor, like maybe the weather, but really it's like about you. And so what that does is it means that you can see yourself aging in a way that's hard with other sports. You can see I just went through this thing where like, I couldn't really tell I was sick, but I was kind of sick. And then I ran a marathon. It was like 30 minutes off my goal. Well, clearly I had some kind of respiratory problem. Like you understand things about yourself, but then the important part is because it's you and because you control it, this gets to the habits you can go every day, which means that you can teach yourself a habit, sort of a stoic habit of, I'm going to go and run every day. It's like a tennis game and you got somebody else. Like, it's a little harder. It's harder to blame yourself when you fail and it's harder to credit yourself when you succeed. And so running for better or for worse really lets us kind of form ourselves and shape ourselves in good ways, bad ways.
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I really like how you use it as a tool for growth.
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We're going to Take a quick break.
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For a word from our sponsors.
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Their support allows us to bring you this episode free of charge. Some of the best conversations in my house happen around the dinner table. And for me, HelloFresh makes that possible even when life seems full. Like a lot of people, I'm busy, my days are packed, but I still care about eating well and I really care about yummy food and good conversation. HelloFresh helps make that happen without turning dinner into another stressful thing for me to deal with. Each week you can choose from over 100 recipes, including high protein and Mediterranean options with ingredients that feel good and taste great and everything shows up ready to go. It's been a real help on really busy days for me. What I appreciate most is that it helps me focus less on logistics and and more on what matters. Good food and good times together. Go to hellofresh.com thinkfast10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwillick knife. That's $145 value on your third box offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied at discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan.
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Before we end, I'd like to ask everybody three questions when I make up just for you. And two I've been asking since the podcast started. Are you up for that?
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Of course.
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So in order to train like you must have to train for ultramarathons, marathons, you must be a master at time management. How do you make it fit in? Clearly, it's a priority, but I have a lot of things that keep me busy in life. I can't imagine the allocation of time I need to run the distances you do.
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Well, I mean, I train eight hours a week, which is a lot, but it's not 20 hours, it's not 30 hours. And a lot of it is multitasking. Like, I run to the office, I could take the subway to the office and it would take just as long. So it does take some time, but not that much time. And I think that net, it creates time because of the way it relaxes me and the way it opens my mind and lets me think about things. So I sometimes wonder, and I think my wife probably wonders this too. Like, Nick, just stop running. Like, what would. Where would that extra time go to? Would it go to working more efficiently? I don't know what it would go to, but I think it would. I think my life wouldn't work as well if I didn't spend that time running.
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I hear you on that. And because running is something you can do whenever you can Use it as a way to get to work. I think that's great. So somebody who might be not as into running as you are, might, upon hearing this, say, oh, there's ways I can fit it in. Question number two. Who is a communicator that you admire and why?
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I think Adam Grant's amazing. His ability to very pithily say what's important in life and to explain it. I just. I've never seen someone like that. Every time you see something that he says, something that he does, the questions that he asks, I think he's just great.
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He's a very economical communicator who also is able to get to the point. Question number three. Our final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?
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Understanding your audience. Who are you talking to and why? I don't know what the exact right word is, but it's almost like the water of a recipe or the milk of a recipe. It's like, are you conveying the essential thing and is it right there? There can be some fluff around it to set people up, and there can be some fluff at the back, but are you putting the right thing at the core? Are you getting the actual important stuff in there? The third ingredient, respect. Are you respecting the person you're talking to? Are you respecting the audience? And is it actually about them? And that's really important.
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Focusing on the audience is by far the number one bit of advice people give. Critical to start there, this idea of distilling it down to its essence, its core, making sure that's clear and getting that up front, really important. And I really like this idea of respect. I think people are so focused on just getting the information out, they don't really think about that. Respect that somebody's giving you time to listen, to read that you need to respect them. You don't have to agree with them, and you might even challenge them. But, Nick, this has been fantastic.
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Not only have you taught us about.
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Better writing and better communication, but you've taught us about the importance of having a sport in our life that can really help. And yours is running. I run as well. And I certainly can see how the feet on the ground can help you be grounded for sure. Thank you.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. For more information on movement and activity and how it relates to communication, please Listen to episode 183 with Kelly McGonigal. This episode was produced by Kathryn Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.
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To Podium podcast company.
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AI coach, quests and challenges, and much more. Join us at FasterSmarter IO Learning. That's FasterSmarter IO Learning hi Matt here. I can't believe that this month is the six year anniversary of Think Fast TalkSmart's launch. As we start the new year, we're excited to bring you even more ways to learn, practice and grow your communication and career skills. We'll now be releasing eight episodes a month, coming out on Mondays and Thursdays. For those of you who like to watch your podcasts, we are now posting full video versions of each episode on both Spotify and YouTube. We're moving to a weekly email that shares specifics about the current week's shows and previews what's coming in the future. If you're not subscribed yet, head to Fastersmarter IO and hit subscribe. When you do, you'll also start getting our monthly newsletter. Fastersmarter IO is also the place to go for transcripts and show notes for each episode and under the resources menu you can find English language learning content for each episode. Speaking of languages, I'm excited to share that a Hindi version of the show is now available. You can get access to our extended deepthinks episodes and listen ad free by subscribing on Apple Spotify or at fastersmarter IO Premium. I'd love for you to join us on our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning community where people from all over the globe are coming together to develop and hone their career in communication skills by taking asynchronous lessons, participating in learning quests, enjoying live author book talks, and getting individual guidance from my AI coach at fastersmarter IO Learning. Be sure to look at our social media channels for our video shorts, frameworks, infographics and protocols. You can also help us by giving us a five star rating and positive review. 2026 is going to be a great year for becoming more confident, clear and compelling in your communication and career. As always, thank you for your support and thank you for listening.
Host: Matt Abrahams
Guest: Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic & former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED
Date: February 12, 2026
This episode explores the critical difference between sounding smart and actually being clear. Matt Abrahams and Nick Thompson dive into concrete strategies for sharpening ideas, building clarity, and practicing authentic communication—both in writing and in conversation. The discussion draws from Nick’s experience as a writer, editor, media executive, and record-holding distance runner, offering a woven tapestry of lessons from journalism, storytelling, and self-development.
Clarity & Authenticity
Different Channels, Different Styles
On authenticity:
“When you try to force yourself in a box, try to do something that doesn’t feel natural, the audience can tell.” (02:54 – Nick Thompson)
On editing:
“If I don’t have anything interesting in this paragraph, let’s get rid of this whole paragraph.” (05:31 – Nick Thompson)
On clarity over intelligence:
“Smart isn’t the same as clear.” (Theme throughout, restated by Matt near the end)
On AI in journalism:
“We need to use AI, and I really want everybody to use AI, but more or less, everybody hates AI and is terrified of AI.” (11:13 – Nick Thompson)
On effective storytelling:
“Is there going to be a little movie playing in the theater of the mind? And if there’s not, you need to rewrite it.” (08:38 – Nick Thompson)
On running and communication:
“Running is a way to get back to the spirit of that little child.” (13:23 – Nick Thompson)
Time Management: Nick stresses that running is a priority but he multitasks, using running as commuting time and as a mental reset.
Admired Communicator: Adam Grant, for brevity and clarity.
Top Three Communication Ingredients:
“Are you putting the right thing at the core? Are you getting the actual, important stuff in there? … Are you respecting the audience?” (19:03 – Nick Thompson)
The conversation is candid, brisk, and peppered with humor and humility—both host and guest reflect vulnerably on their own learning curves. Tips are presented with warmth and practical anecdotes, making insights relatable rather than prescriptive.
This episode is an essential listen for anyone seeking to crystalize their thinking, cut through clutter (both personal and professional), and leverage tools—old-school (editing and reading aloud) and new (AI)—to communicate with power and authenticity.