In this episode, part of our ongoing art series, Kareem sits down with Jackie deRuyter — studio artist, costume designer, ultramarathoner, and former cellular biologist. Recorded in Twin Lakes, Colorado, about 30 miles from Leadville, where Jackie finished the Leadville 100 last year, this is a conversation about following a creative thread across a life that, on paper, kept pointing somewhere else entirely.

Jackie grew up in central Connecticut, the daughter of an orthopedic surgeon and a college professor, and set out to become a veterinarian. Instead she landed in a cutting-edge lab at UMass Amherst right as Dolly the sheep was cloned, and ended up earning a PhD in reproductive and cellular biology, studying cell division in early embryos. She taught genetics and biology at the university and community-college level for years. But the whole time, a creative side kept running underneath everything — the kid who built haunted houses for her sisters, who learned to sew from her mother and YouTube, who never quite called herself an artist even as she started making things she couldn’t stop making.

The balance finally tipped. Jackie discovered that fabric could be sculptural, and built a body of work — layered fiber pieces so rigid and self-supporting that people mistake them for ceramic — that carried her into the vibrant Cape Cod art scene. Listeners will hear about:

* How she builds large, free-standing sculptures out of many layers of stitched fabric, and why people are stunned to learn they aren’t clay

* The little fantastical houses that became her entrance into the gallery world, and why she eventually had to find out what else she could make

* “Intrusive Thoughts,” her favorite series, where a second form pierces and interrupts the soft, flowing shapes she’d spent years perfecting

* Making peace with the fact that once a piece is out in the world, its story is no longer hers to tell

* Why she loves the process far more than the finish line — in art, in running, and back in the lab peering through a microscope for hours

* Learning to build classical ballet tutus (yes, there is a tutu school) and how much that structural sewing has in common with her sculpture

* The biggest pivot of all: at this stage in her career, enrolling as a first-year student at the Academy of Realist Art in Boston to finally get the formal training she never had — starting with simple graphite drawings

* Her advice to anyone afraid to begin: create what you love, don’t be too precious with it, and take the leap

This is an episode for anyone who’s carried a quiet passion alongside a “responsible” career and wondered whether it’s ever too late to let it lead. Jackie’s answer, in fiber and in footsteps, is that the process is the point — and you can always start again.

You can find Jackie deRuyter’s work on Instagram [handle to confirm with guest].

Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts:

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#FiberArt #TextileArt #SculptureArt #JackieDeRuyter #CapeCodArt #ContemporaryArt #ArtistJourney #CareerPivot #FromScienceToArt #UltraRunning #Leadville100 #CostumeDesign #WomenInArt #MixedMedia #CreativeLife #RealistArt #ProcessOverOutcome #ArtSeries #TrailRunning #PioneersOfPossibility

In this episode, Kareem sits down with Jared Ewing — Army veteran, adaptive endurance athlete, and quite possibly the first adaptive athlete ever to attempt one of the hardest challenges in ultrarunning. They met at the Leadville Run Camp, both training for the Leadville 100, and this conversation happened three weeks out from that start line.

Jared grew up in Akron, Ohio on baseball, basketball, and football, and hated running so much that he considered it a punishment. After studying nutrition at Ohio State and joining the National Guard — where he spent nine years, moving from radio work into cybersecurity — he caught the marathon bug at 30. By late 2018 he was in the prime of his life, having just run three marathons in five weeks. Then, walking down a sidewalk after a night out, he was hit by a car. His lower leg was destroyed: surgeons saved it, but had to remove his calf muscle and Achilles tendon, and told him his marathon days were over.

What Jared did next is the heart of this episode. He rebuilt himself from a hospital bed, then a nursing home at age 32, then a friend’s living room, then a treadmill at the local YMCA where he gripped the rails to walk a quarter mile. Ten months after being told he’d never run a marathon again, he crossed the finish line of the Columbus Marathon. He hasn’t stopped since.

Listeners will also hear about:

* The night of the accident in his own words — the tourniquets made from strangers’ belts, the decision to stay calm, and the choice between amputation and an uncertain leg

* Why he chose to keep the leg, and the mindset shift in the ICU that carried everything after: focus on what you have, not what you don’t

* How he rebuilt stability without a calf or Achilles by training his hips, core, and weak side relentlessly — to the point that fellow runners can’t tell

* Going from that first comeback marathon to the 50 States Marathon Club, a sub-3:05 PR, the JFK 50, and his first 100-miler at Burning River in under 24 hours

* The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning — four of the five oldest 100-milers in the country in a single summer — and why he signed up precisely because it scared him

* His mission beyond the medals: adaptive athletes are lumped in with the open field because most races have no division for them, and he wants to change that

* The documentary he’s making to put adaptive endurance stories on a bigger stage

* The message he carries to his goddaughters and anyone who’s been told no: the biggest thing standing in your way is the thing between your ears

This is an episode for anyone who has been handed a limit by a doctor, a circumstance, or their own head, and wondered what’s on the other side of it. Jared’s whole life since 2018 is the answer: one foot in front of the other, whether you’re crawling, rolling, or running.

Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts:

Listen on Spotify:

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

Thank you, as always, for listening.

#AdaptiveAthlete #UltraRunning #Leadville100 #Veteran #GrandSlamOfUltrarunning #TrailRunning #NeverGiveUp #ComebackStory #Resilience #100MileRace #EnduranceSports #RunningCommunity #MindsetMatters #AdaptiveSports #DisabilityInSport #MarathonTraining #Akron #OvercomingAdversity #InspirationalStory #PioneersOfPossibility

In this episode, Kareem sits down with Jared Ewing — Army veteran, adaptive endurance athlete, and quite possibly the first adaptive athlete ever to attempt one of the hardest challenges in ultrarunning. They met at the Leadville Run Camp, both training for the Leadville 100, and this conversation happened three weeks out from that start line.

Jared grew up in Akron, Ohio on baseball, basketball, and football, and hated running so much that he considered it a punishment. After studying nutrition at Ohio State and joining the National Guard — where he spent nine years, moving from radio work into cybersecurity — he caught the marathon bug at 30. By late 2018 he was in the prime of his life, having just run three marathons in five weeks. Then, walking down a sidewalk after a night out, he was hit by a car. His lower leg was destroyed: surgeons saved it, but had to remove his calf muscle and Achilles tendon, and told him his marathon days were over.

What Jared did next is the heart of this episode. He rebuilt himself from a hospital bed, then a nursing home at age 32, then a friend’s living room, then a treadmill at the local YMCA where he gripped the rails to walk a quarter mile. Ten months after being told he’d never run a marathon again, he crossed the finish line of the Columbus Marathon. He hasn’t stopped since.

Listeners will also hear about:

* The night of the accident in his own words — the tourniquets made from strangers’ belts, the decision to stay calm, and the choice between amputation and an uncertain leg

* Why he chose to keep the leg, and the mindset shift in the ICU that carried everything after: focus on what you have, not what you don’t

* How he rebuilt stability without a calf or Achilles by training his hips, core, and weak side relentlessly — to the point that fellow runners can’t tell

* Going from that first comeback marathon to the 50 States Marathon Club, a sub-3:05 PR, the JFK 50, and his first 100-miler at Burning River in under 24 hours

* The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning — four of the five oldest 100-milers in the country in a single summer — and why he signed up precisely because it scared him

* His mission beyond the medals: adaptive athletes are lumped in with the open field because most races have no division for them, and he wants to change that

* The documentary he’s making to put adaptive endurance stories on a bigger stage

* The message he carries to his goddaughters and anyone who’s been told no: the biggest thing standing in your way is the thing between your ears

This is an episode for anyone who has been handed a limit by a doctor, a circumstance, or their own head, and wondered what’s on the other side of it. Jared’s whole life since 2018 is the answer: one foot in front of the other, whether you’re crawling, rolling, or running.

Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/pioneers-of-possibility/id1843214492

Listen on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/7qhd9Ol0iaLonKqnRpyA3H

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

Thank you, as always, for listening.

#AdaptiveAthlete #UltraRunning #Leadville100 #Veteran #GrandSlamOfUltrarunning #TrailRunning #NeverGiveUp #ComebackStory #Resilience #100MileRace #EnduranceSports #RunningCommunity #MindsetMatters #AdaptiveSports #DisabilityInSport #MarathonTraining #Akron #OvercomingAdversity #InspirationalStory #PioneersOfPossibility

In this episode, Kareem sits down with Dr. Charlotte Kirk — chemist, soldier, endurance athlete, and climate investor, though no single one of those captures her. Born in London and shaped in part by the Bay Area, Charlotte earned a chemistry PhD at Oxford developing new materials for renewable energy and battery chemistries, using machine learning before anyone called it AI. But she quickly ran into the truth that has driven her career ever since: the best technology in the world means nothing if it never leaves the lab.

That realization sent her from strategy consulting to Fortescue — one of the world’s largest iron ore producers, with emissions the size of France — where as head of technology she worked to decarbonize an entire mining operation. From there she went on to lead European investments for the climate VC fund Clean Energy Ventures. And in parallel, she built a second life most people would consider a full career on its own: she became the first woman ever to pass selection into the infantry of the British Army, served five years, and competed at world championships in ultramarathon running, Ironman triathlon, cross-country skiing, and biathlon — sponsored by The North Face along the way.

It was on the trail that everything converged. Running the Pacific Crest Trail — roughly 55 kilometers a day for 90 days — she ran through forest fires, flash floods, and three separate blackouts, and saw firsthand that the clean energy solutions she’d spent a decade building weren’t reaching the communities that needed them most. So she set out to fix exactly that. Today she runs a fund that deploys catalytic capital to finance climate resilience and clean energy in frontline communities — the outdoor, rural places falling through every gap in traditional financing.

Listeners will also hear about:

* Why she talked her way into an infantry selection that women were formally barred from — and why she says the leadership and trust she learned there outvalue even her PhD

* The difference between climate mitigation and resilience — and why she believes resilience is where solutions actually get adopted, because people aren’t buying solar and storage to save the planet, they’re buying it to survive the next blackout

* How a solar panel on the roof and a battery in the garage changes everything when the grid goes down and the water pumps, vaccine fridges, and payment systems all stop with it

* Why venture capital, private equity, debt, and philanthropy all fail these communities — and how a low-interest loan can do what a grant can’t

* Kareem and Charlotte comparing notes from inside the hydrogen world, including the South African mining hauler that could carry only enough hydrogen for a single round trip to the pit

* Setting the fastest known time running the Camino de Santiago, and why she found the trail magic of the PCT more moving than the Camino’s spiritual reputation

* Her advice for anyone who thinks they must choose one path: the greatest opportunities sit between disciplines, and if you live with integrity and kindness, doors open in ways you can’t predict

This is an episode for scientists, athletes, builders, and anyone who has ever been told to pick a lane. Charlotte’s whole life is an argument that the most interesting work happens where worlds overlap — and that resilience, in the end, is something you can build for yourself and for the people around you.

You can find Dr. Charlotte Kirk’s work at [COMPANY LINK — to confirm with guest] and listen to her energy-transition podcast, Power Plays, at

https://www.powerplayspod.com/

Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts:

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

#ClimateResilience #CleanEnergy #ClimateTech #CharlotteKirk #EnergyTransition #ClimateAdaptation #WomenInSTEM #EnduranceAthlete #PacificCrestTrail #VentureCapital #ClimateFinance #FrontlineCommunities #SolarAndStorage #WomenInLeadership #TrailRunning #BritishArmy #Decarbonization #CatalyticCapital #PowerPlaysPodcast #PioneersOfPossibility

Note to viewers: our guest’s video froze periodically in this interview. Thank you for bearing with the occasional glitch. You can find Wafa and Burgundy Roots Retreats at

https://www.burgundyroots.com/

In this episode, Kareem sits down with Wafa Aouchiche, founder of Burgundy Roots Retreats - a travel company built on a simple idea: the most meaningful way to experience a place is to live inside its culture. Born in Algiers and raised between Montreal and Toronto, Wafa carries an identity she describes as ethnically Berber, culturally Arab, and Canadian by way of everywhere she's traveled since.

Wafa's didn't expect to end up here. She studied French and history, spent six months learning classical Arabic in Damascus, and became a teacher almost by accident, all while nursing a travel bug that took her solo to a small Peruvian village to teach English. On the way home, she made an unplanned stop in Jamaica - and everything changed. She found a Muslim community there that lived with a freedom she'd never seen growing up post-9/11 in Toronto: a man in a kufi calling out to coworkers from his car, watermelon on the roadside, reggae in the air, faith worn lightly and joyfully. That single trip became the seed of a business.

What began as a Facebook post inviting a few women to Jamaica became, within a year, six retreats. Today Wafa runs Burgundy Roots full time across four continents, roughly five months a year on the road.

Listeners will hear about:

* Why she scouts every destination herself

* Her pointed critique of "halal travel" and the all-inclusive resort model, including the economics of tourism leakage and why she considers a resort in Jamaica a kind of beautiful prison

* The difference between an excursion and an experience

* Why she pushes her Muslim guests beyond the "safe" itineraries of Islamic history toward Brazil, Jamaica, and sub-Saharan Africa: "No one says Muslims can't go to Brazil. We can also create new ones."

* The deal her father struck with her before she'd leave teaching, and how she finally knew it was time to leap

* The three qualities of a guest who'll love her trips: curious, considerate, and kind

This is an episode for anyone who suspects that travel can be more than a photo op - that done right, it can return you to yourself. As one of Wafa's guests put it: in Jamaica, the people and the landscape are the museum. You don't observe it. You live in it.

Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts:

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

#BurgundyRoots #MuslimTravel #HalalTravel #TravelRetreats #Jamaica #ImmigrantStory #CareerPivot #FemaleFounder #ResponsibleTravel #CulturalTravel #SoloFemaleTravel #Algeria #Toronto #Wanderlust #SustainableTourism #MuslimWomen #TravelPodcast #AuthenticTravel #ExperientialTravel #PioneersOfPossibility

In this episode, Kareem takes you onto the floor of the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo in Las Vegas; 360 exhibitors building the future of green and electric mobility, all in one room. This is a field report from the front lines of how the world moves its goods, and how that’s about to change completely.

The transportation sector is one of the most polluted corners of the global economy; heavy trucks, port equipment, freight, refrigeration. The ACT Expo is where the companies trying to fix that show their hand. Kareem walks the floor from the smallest vehicles to the largest, following the entire energy chain from the molecule up: how landfill gas becomes clean hydrogen, how that hydrogen powers an 80,000-pound truck, and how you actually charge a fleet of electric semis without taking all afternoon to do it.

Along the way, you’ll hear about:

* Utility Global, a startup turning landfill and waste-treatment gas into clean hydrogen and biogenic CO2; one of the only paths to genuinely negative carbon intensity hydrogen available today

* Indigo Tech’s ride-hailing and final-mile delivery EVs, featuring a two-minute automated battery swap, a four-passenger cockpit, and FedEx as an investor

* Kenworth’s 650 kWh battery-electric truck built for cement and dump operations; and their philosophy of having a truck for every application and drivetrain

* Toyota’s sprawling hydrogen ecosystem: the Nikola joint venture hauling parts across California, an 80,000-pound fuel cell truck on a Kenworth chassis, fuel cell generators, and megawatt-scale stationary power

* A deep-dive interview with Jed Routh of Kempower on their megawatt charging system; 1.2 megawatts capable of charging a Tesla Semi in a little over half an hour, with a flexible cable setup for trucks that aren’t there yet

* Volvo’s “towards zero” vision; zero emissions and zero accidents' - across everything from mining haulers to autonomous vehicles

* Why autonomous freight is the holy grail of logistics, and what it looks like up close

This is an episode for anyone curious about where transportation is actually headed. The future of how the world moves is quieter, cleaner, and closer than you think.

Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts:

Listen on Spotify:

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

#ACTExpo #CleanTransportation #HydrogenMobility #ElectricTrucks #EVCharging #HeavyDutyTrucks #FuelCell #Hydrogen #Decarbonization #ZeroEmissions #Trucking #Kempower #MegawattCharging #AutonomousFreight #CleanEnergy #FutureOfMobility #GreenTransport #Sustainability #Logistics #PioneersOfPossibility

In this episode, Kareem sits down with Michelle Goldberg, a two-time finisher of the Cocodona 250 — a 250-plus mile point-to-point ultramarathon through the Arizona desert from Black Canyon City to Flagstaff. Michelle didn't run at all growing up. She was athletic — gymnastics, dance, mountain biking — but running wasn't part of it. At 38, with two young kids and a demanding career as a psychologist managing disability services for standardized testing companies, running found her almost by accident: a mud run with friends, then an impulsive 5K during a work trip to Hawaii, where she remembers thinking, for the first time, I think I could be a runner.

What followed was not a plan. It was a slow accumulation of small permissions. Early morning runs became sanctuary time — the one part of the day that belonged to her alone. A Thanksgiving 15K she didn't think she could finish. A marathon in Philadelphia in 2019 where a friend had to tell her she'd qualified for Boston, because she had no idea what a BQ even was. Then, in April 2020, her first 50K — a virtual ultra she'd signed up for before the pandemic, run in loops from her own house while the world shut down around her.

That summer, a virtual relay across America: 2,300 miles, six people, just over a month. Eventually that path led to Cocodona — one of the most demanding ultramarathons in the country, crossing desert, pine forest, ghost towns, and three mountains over 8,000 feet, with a brutal first 38 miles of exposed, rocky climbing before the course even begins to ease. Listeners will hear what it's actually like to run through the night in the Sonoran Desert, how huge temperature swings between scorching days and dangerously cold nights have to be managed, and what it means to hallucinate faces in the rocks by the second night of a multi-day race.

This year, Michelle went back with a different approach. Instead of a time goal, her only goals were to eat as much as possible, stay present, and enjoy her crew. She talks about her mantra — "low mood, eat food" — and about a training run before the race where she climbed the course's final brutal mountain in advance, just to make peace with it. The result was a 117-hour finish, a personal best, and a finish line crossed at 2:27 in the morning.

She closes with something that has nothing to do with running and everything to do with it: the idea of self-limiting beliefs, and the image of a swan gliding across a pond while paddling furiously underneath. Nobody is built for this. Everybody is capable of more discomfort than they think. It's a choice, and it's always available, no matter where you're starting from.

Listen on Spotify:

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #Cocodona250 #UltraRunning #TrailRunning #UltraMarathon #WomensRunning #MidlifeTransformation #EnduranceSports #ArizonaDesert #SelfBelief #RunningJourney #MentalToughness #Flagstaff #TrailRunner #PersonalGrowth #PioneersOfPossibility

The conventional wisdom about hydrogen energy right now is that the industry has hit a wall. Funding pulled back, political headwinds from a new administration, momentum stalled. Frank Wolak, President and CEO of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, has a different read. He doesn’t see a valley. He sees a high elevation plateau — built on twenty years of rising momentum, solid technological foundations, and bipartisan roots in Congress that run deeper than the current moment. And he thinks the path back up is clearer than most people realize.

In this short but sharp conversation recorded at a recent industry convening, Kareem sits down with Frank to take stock of where hydrogen energy stands — and where it’s going. The FCHEA, now 35 years old, represents the full cross-section of everyone involved in the production, distribution, and use of hydrogen across the United States. Frank has spent years walking the halls of Congress making the case that hydrogen isn’t a partisan issue — it’s an evolutionary one.

The episode covers:

* Why hydrogen sits at the intersection of both fossil fuel and renewable energy worlds — and why that’s actually a political advantage right now

* The difference between a valley and a high elevation plateau, and why the framing matters for how the industry moves forward

* How hydrogen hubs — five of seven still intact — can drive the scale needed to bring costs down to market viability

* Why energy dominance and hydrogen aren’t in conflict: hydrogen is additive, not disruptive, to existing resources

* The bipartisan case for hydrogen, and why support in Congress cuts across party lines when the conversation shifts to jobs, competitiveness, and energy security

The story of hydrogen is the story of a technology that keeps arriving just ahead of the world’s readiness for it. Frank Wolak is one of the people making sure the world catches up.

Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts:

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

#FrankWolak #FCHEA #HydrogenEnergy #FuelCell #CleanEnergy #EnergyPolicy #HydrogenFuel #Sustainability #EnergyTransition #GreenHydrogen #CleanTech #EnergyInnovation #PioneersOfPossibility #PioneersPodcast #EnergyDominance

Buy We Are Eating The Earth: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/We-Are-Eating-the-Earth/Michael-Grunwald/9781982160074

More Mike: https://michaelgrunwaldbooks.com/

Mike Grunwald has a simple, uncomfortable truth for you: agriculture is eating the planet. Humanity has already cleared a landmass the size of Asia and Europe combined just to grow food, and our food systems contribute a massive one-third of global carbon emissions. But while most environmental narratives focus on the evils of modern factory farming, Mike argues that the real ecological tragedy occurs the exact moment we transform wild nature into picturesque, pasture-raised farms. To save what is left of our biodiversity and climate, agriculture cannot continue to expand—it must become more intensive, not more extensive.

A veteran journalist with over 30 years of reporting experience, Mike initially knew next to nothing about the food system. His journey into the subject began through a long-standing source and friend, Tim Searchinger, a self-taught world authority on the intersection of food and the environment. Tim’s meticulous research exposed a glaring flaw in the early green energy movement: lawmakers were completely ignoring the opportunity cost of land. By demonstrating that growing fuel instead of food triggers massive global deforestation, Tim proved that corn ethanol wasn’t a climate savior—it was actually twice as bad as burning standard gasoline.

The problem only compounds when you look at the global demand for meat. More than three-quarters of all agricultural land on Earth is currently dedicated to livestock pasture or growing animal feed. Because cows require ten times more land and emit ten times more greenhouse gases than chickens, our appetite for beef is driving the relentless destruction of tropical forests and critical savannahs. Combine that with the fact that humanity effectively uses a landmass the size of China to grow food that ends up directly in the garbage, and it becomes clear that our current trajectory is entirely unsustainable.

So, what is the path forward? While Mike remains agnostic about the specific labels of farming, he emphasizes that high crop yields are non-negotiable. He walks readers through an array of cutting-edge tech solutions: alternative proteins that match the taste and cost of real meat, bio-pesticides that targetedly eliminate pests using RNA technology, and artificial intelligence models being used to radically re-engineer the inefficiencies of photosynthesis. The blueprint for systemic policy change already exists in countries like Denmark, which recently passed sweeping agricultural reforms that tax emissions and promote plant-based alternatives while simultaneously scaling up total food production through sheer efficiency.

In this episode, Kareem and Mike discuss:

* How traditional climate models completely missed the devastating environmental math behind biofuels

* The stark resource differences between chicken and beef production, and how a rising global middle class impacts the planet

* Why organic farming’s 20% to 40% yield penalty actually drives greater global deforestation

* How an editor’s blunt, narrative feedback led Mike to frame the global food crisis through the personal journey of a singular scientist

* Why consumers are remarkably bad at making personal sacrifices for the planet but exceptional at inventing technological workarounds

* How New York City hospitals successfully flipped patient meals to 51% plant-based with sky-high satisfaction rates

* How scientists are using big data and gene editing to fix a 3-billion-year-old biological process and boost crop yields by 50%

* How Denmark is leading the world by taxing agricultural emissions and rewilding marginal farmland without cutting food production

Mike Grunwald’s latest book, We Are Eating the Earth, forces us to confront the deep systemic inefficiencies of how we feed ourselves. It is a call to move past agricultural dogmas, look plainly at the data, and accelerate the technological and policy revolutions required to stop our march into the natural world.

This episode of The Pioneers of Possibility was produced and edited by Danny Vagnoni.

Listen on Apple Podcasts:

Listen on Spotify:

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

#MikeGrunwald #WeAreEatingTheEarth #Agriculture #ClimateChange #Biofuels #AlternativeProtein #Sustainability #BigAg #FoodSystems #PioneersOfPossibility #KareemAfzal #EnvironmentalJournalism

Ron Horn will tell you himself: he doesn’t like running. Never has. From the first step to the last, it has never felt natural. He’s done it for almost fifty years. He’s run thirteen marathons, eight ultramarathons, and directed or timed more races than he can easily count. He cried at the finish line of every major race he’s ever done. Five of the seven people at his wedding were runners. His wife has worked every Pretzel City Sports race for thirty years. So when Ron says he doesn’t like running, you have to understand what he means — because what he likes, and what he’s spent half a century building, is something else entirely.

Ron grew up in York, Pennsylvania, playing football, baseball, and softball. He was a decent athlete with a big frame and a love of food he has never once apologized for. In 1980, a teammate named Jerry Smith went to Houston for two years and came back looking, in Ron’s words, like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. When Ron asked what happened, the answer was simple: I took up running. Ron started jogging after softball games. Weight dropped off. Two miles felt like an achievement. Then a 10K, then a marathon. Then another, then another. He ran his first at the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach, missed four hours by eight minutes, and was too stubborn to accept that. He ran five marathons before he broke it.

What really hooked him, though, wasn’t running — it was the community. He joined the Pagoda Pacers, the smallest and friendliest of the three running clubs in Reading at the time, became its president, and started directing races for the March of Dimes when he was on their board in 1987. He had a background in corporate marketing — nearly thirty years in senior positions — and he knew how to read what motivated people to show up. By 1996, Pretzel City Sports was officially a company. This July will mark thirty years.

Today, Pretzel City Sports times roughly 250 races a year across southeastern Pennsylvania and beyond. Ron’s signature events include Labor Pain, a twelve-hour endurance race on Labor Day that sends every finisher a custom sweatshirt printed with their exact finishing distance weeks after the race — something no other race he knows of does; March Madness, a ten-hour timed loop event; the Dirty Bird trail race; the night run series Ghouls & Fools; the summer Thirsty Thursday series; and, notably, two clothing optional races at nudist camps, which Ron describes as his two happiest days of the year.

Labor Pain is his favorite — a race that functions more like a festival, where people show up not knowing what distance they’ll run and leave with a number that belongs to them alone. There are runners who haven’t missed it in seventeen or eighteen years.

In this episode, Kareem and Ron discuss:

* How a transformed softball teammate became the unlikely catalyst for a fifty-year running career

* The galvanizing moment of being beaten in a 10K by a 67-year-old woman — and what it lit in him

* Why running is one of the few honest measures of progress in life

* How Pretzel City Sports was born from a March of Dimes board meeting and a race that was about to disappear

* The art of the race application — and why Ron’s read more like essays than entry forms

* Labor Pain: the twelve-hour race where your sweatshirt is waiting for you six weeks later, with your exact distance on the sleeve

* Why the trail running community will stop and carry an injured stranger on their back

* The business of remembering names — and what it means to a runner at mile 18

Ron Horn built something people come back to for two decades. Not because it’s the toughest, or the fastest, or the most prestigious — but because it’s fun, and because he never forgot that’s why people lace up in the first place.

Listen on Spotify:

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod

#RonHorn #PretzelCitySports #TrailRunning #RunningCommunity #RaceDirector #LaborPain #Ultrarunning #PennsylvaniaRunning #MarathonTraining #ReadingPA #PioneersOfPossibility #PioneersPodcast #EnduranceRunning #LocalLegend #Running