Meet Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic & Author of The Running Ground

An evening with Adam Alter and Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, discussing Thompson’s powerful new memoir, The Running Ground.

Whether you’re a runner or simply someone navigating challenge, change, or a new chapter, The Running Ground - a National Bestseller and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year - offers a powerful reflection on endurance, identity, and the limits we challenge throughout our lives.

In this intimate and wide-ranging conversation, Nicholas Thompson will be interviewed by Adam Alter, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and bestselling author of Irresistible and Anatomy of a Breakthrough. Together, they will explore the psychology of motivation and endurance, how discipline reshapes identity, and the surprising ways running, and pushing beyond our perceived limits, can transform a life.

Your ticket includes a copy of The Running Ground, along with beverages and light dessert. We hope you can join us for this inspiring and thought-provoking evening!

About The Running Ground:

For Nicholas Thompson, running has always been about something more than putting one foot in front of another. He ran his first mile at age five, using it as a way to connect with his father as his family fell apart. As a young man, it was a sport that transformed, and then shook, his sense of self-worth. In his 30s, it was a way of coping with a profound medical scare.

By his early 40s, Thompson had many accomplishments. He was the Editor in Chief of a major magazine; a devoted husband and father; and a passionate runner. But he was haunted by the recent death of his brilliant, complicated father and the crack-up that derailed his father’s life. Had the intensity and ambition he’d inherited made a personal crisis inevitable for him as well?

Then a chance offer gave him the opportunity to train for the Chicago Marathon with elite coaches. Giving himself over to the sport more fully than ever before, he discovered that aging didn’t necessarily put you on an unbroken trajectory of decline. For seven years after his father died, Thompson transforms his body to perform at its highest capacity, and the profound discipline and awareness he builds along the way changes every aspect of his life. Throughout the narrative, he weaves in stories of remarkable men and women who have used the sport to transcend some of the hardest moments in life.

About Nicholas Thompson:

Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic, an American magazine founded in 1857, which earned the top honor for magazines, General Excellence, at the National Magazine Awards in both 2022 and 2023. In his time as CEO, the company has seen record subscriber growth. Before joining The Atlantic, he was the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. He is also a former contributor for CBS News and has previously served as editor. He has long been a competitive runner; in 2021, he set the American record for men 45+ in the 50K race.

About Adam Alter:

Adam Alter is a professor of marketing and the Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He also holds an affiliated professorship in social psychology at NYU’s psychology department. In 2020, he was voted professor of the year by the faculty and student body at NYU’s Stern School of Business and was among the Poets and Quants 40 Best Professors Under 40 in 2017. Alter is the New York Times bestselling author Drunk Tank Pink, Irresistible, and Anatomy of a Breakthrough.