Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

I thought that listening to Wright Thompson was one of those experience where you are talking to someone who isn’t afraid. He isn’t someone who gets starstruck. He isn’t someone who is afraid to say things that he believes in. He isn’t someone who is living life without engaging in it. I think that is sometimes harder to do than it appears. I think that fear is good in some sense. It helps guide us to making good decisions in some instances, but it also censors us.

I think some of the things that I loved listening to Thompson say were things like a brand is a fancy name for a lie, when writing about people that seem so big people have to find the things that normalize them and when writing about normal people, we have to find the things that make them extraordinary and my favorite, the confederate statue is the biggest participation trophy. These were the things that I repeated to other people that I saw after. These were the things that I wrote down to remember.

I think though that there were other things that I will also remember from listening to Thompson speak. One thing that struck me was the fact that he seems to be able to judge people and their character quite well. He talked about Jordan and his fears and insecurities. He talked about McGregor and his self-destructive actions when he is unfocused. It was all analytic and without judgement though which is the part that I found quite impressive. He talked about Tiger Woods and how his marketing and packaging forced him to fit a mask instead of the other way around. He talked about the way one person’s greatness can devolve into obscurity just with the passage of time.

I quite like reading his article but listening to him talk was different than I expected. He had the voice of storyteller in person too, instead of just on paper.