Founder of iLLOGICAL iNFLUENCE, McSweeney's contributor, and author brings a satirist's eye to Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey, and the Wood River Valley
-- KETCHUM, Idaho, April 17, 2026. The Idaho Mountain Express has welcomed Kristopher Michael Wood as the voice behind "Thin Air," a new monthly humor column chronicling the peculiar, the beloved, and the bewildering realities of life in the Wood River Valley. The column appears in the paper's Wood River Journal features section, in print and online at mtexpress.com.
Wood, a Hailey resident, is the founder of iLLOGICAL iNFLUENCE, a behavioral science and brand strategy consultancy that applies his own proprietary research and the research of Robert Cialdini, BJ Fogg, and Rory Sutherland to marketing, UX, and brand communication. He is a founding member of the Cialdini Institute and is one of a small group of practitioners in the world trained directly by all three of the figures most closely associated with modern behavioral science and persuasion research.
"Mountain towns tend to get written about in one of two registers, the reverent travel-magazine version or the grim think-piece about gentrification, and both of them miss most of what actually makes life here interesting," said Wood. "The Wood River Valley is funnier and stranger and more contradictory than either of those treatments allow. 'Thin Air' is an attempt to write about it the way residents actually talk about it at the post office."
Alongside his strategy work, Wood has built a parallel career as a humorist and political commentator. His work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The American Bystander, Points in Case, Sorbet Magazine, Weekly Humorist, and Humor Times, with guest op-eds in the Portland Press Herald and The Idaho Mountain Express. He is the author of two books, New York Birds Don't Climb: Ernest Hemingway and the City and Business Lessons from Taylor Swift: What Every Business Can Learn from a Global Icon, the first business book to analyze Swift's career as a case study in brand-building and strategic decision-making.
Before his writing and consulting career, Wood spent more than a decade in the lighting department of The Late Show with David Letterman and over twenty years on tour with bands including Radiohead, Elton John, Cher, Roxy Music, and Sheryl Crow. His production credits also include the Grammy Awards, the Olympics, the Democratic National Convention, and the NBA Finals.
About Kristopher Wood
Kristopher Michael Wood is a writer, humorist, and behavior design strategist based in Hailey, Idaho, and the founder of iLLOGICAL iNFLUENCE, a consultancy applying behavioral science and human-centered design to brand, marketing, and UX challenges. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from New York University and a Master of Arts in History and Literature from Columbia University, with additional study at Université Paris-Sorbonne and École Normale Supérieure. A founding member of the Cialdini Institute and a Certified Cialdini Coach, he is trained in Behavior Design by BJ Fogg and holds the Mark of Distinction from Rory Sutherland's MAD//Masters program. He is also a Certified Member of the Global Association of Applied Behavioral Scientists. Wood serves concurrently as Director of Brand Storytelling at Lotos Nile in Nashville. His humor writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The American Bystander, Points in Case, Sorbet Magazine, Weekly Humorist, and Humor Times, and his
op-eds have run in the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal, and Sun Journal. He is the author of New York Birds Don't Climb: Ernest Hemingway and the City and Business Lessons from Taylor Swift. Before his writing and consulting career, he spent over a decade in the lighting department of The Late Show with David Letterman and more than twenty years touring with Radiohead, Elton John, Cher, Roxy Music, and Sheryl Crow. More information is available at kristopherwood.com and illogicalinfluence.com.
"Thin Air" can be read online at mtexpress.com in the Wood River Journal features section.
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Name: Pam Morris
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Organization: The Idaho Mountain Express
Address: PO Box 1013 Ketchum, ID 83340
Phone: 208-726-8060
Website: https://www.mtexpress.com/
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