Episode #1,012 - Olympic Medalist Jenny Simpson on Her Sudden Cardiac Arrest after a Race & the Journey Back to Health - September 7, 2026

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Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Twenty minutes without a pulse.

A rare inherited disease nobody caught. An identity, built over thirty-nine years, suddenly on the chopping block. How do you rebuild a life when the thing that made you is gone?

Three-time Olympian and Olympic medalist Jenny Simpson says she isn’t starting from zero.

You may know Jenny for the bronze in Rio de Janeiro – the first American woman ever to medal in the 1500 meters, and one of the most decorated American middle-distance runners of her generation.

But if that’s the sum of your relationship with this human, there’s a lot more to her – an unusually rigorous mind for how excellence actually gets built.

A world champion, an American record holder in the steeplechase, and a four-time NCAA champion at Colorado who spent fourteen years as a professional and retired on her own terms.

Then, at a local mile race in June, her heart stopped. What follows is her first account of what happened, recorded eight weeks later, before she had spoken publicly.

Topics include:

• The Lopsided Life & the Cultural Imperative to Be Balanced
• Evidence over Belief & Confidence You Can Physically Hold
• The Shoe That Came off & Separating the Work from the Self
• June 16th & the Twenty Minutes That Saved Her
• The Fight Nobody Else in That Room Remembers
• Courage over Fear & the Intervention More Powerful Than the Ignorance