How to Be a Double Unicorn, with John Urschel | Better in Person

0:00This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today. Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and this is a bonus episode that we are calling How to Be a Double Unicorn. Comes from our new video talk show, which is called Better in Person. And the guest is John Urschel, a former NFL lineman who now teaches math at MIT. John is one of my very favorite people, and I think you will like him too. To watch this episode, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel or search for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts.

0:38The entire first season of the show has now been published, so go ahead, binge. As always, thanks for listening.

0:51So you'd never open a math book on the Ravens facility? No, no, never. because you're busy doing football? I'm busy doing football.

1:03This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and John Urschel. A lot of us spend our lives trying to find the one big thing we're really good at. John Urschel had a slightly different problem. He turned out to be world-class at two things, two very different things, football and math. One path led to the NFL, the other to MIT. Eventually, he had to make a choice. I am the son of a pretty good college football player. This is your dad. My dad, yes, my dad. Who also became a thoracic surgeon. Yes, and not only did he become a thoracic surgeon, he, while in college, playing college football, was in medical school.

1:45Some of these universities have these programs where, you know, they really accelerate people to med school. You know, you do two years and then straight into med school. He did exactly this. Where did he play football in? University of Alberta. So he's Canadian, I'm Canadian. So my mom and dad have me. I was born in Canada. They move to Buffalo for my dad's work. And then eventually my dad moves back to Canada. Got it. And you stay in Buffalo with your mom. I stay in Buffalo. But I would visit my dad all the time. And he's working as a thoracic surgeon. He's a really busy person. He would pick me up.

2:17He would take me to the hospital. He would do his rounds. He would let me look around on his computer. And then after he would do his rounds, he would take me to the local chapters. And he would be in the cafe. He would just be working. You're how old at this point? Eight or nine. What are you reading? What are you doing? I'm looking at all different types of books. I'm just sitting and reading books, exploring. And I find myself just mostly hanging out in the math section. And I'm just opening up things and picking up things that I have no business picking up. Did that strike you as unusual? No, it was fun.

2:50I don't know. I'm here four or five hours every second Saturday. I am in elementary school, but this is fun. And I know you liked puzzles from the time you were very young. Right, so this is the other section I would spend a lot of time in. It's the puzzle section. You know, we asked you to bring something for show and tell. Yes. You brought this book. The big book of Tell Me Why. So this is something my mom bought for me. I noticed there's like a big boot print here and coffee stains there. Yes. You think that's your mom or your dad or you think that's you? No, so this is because this would go in the trunk.

3:25And so... Just so that you'd always have it with you when you're... Well, around, let's say, third grade. Okay. So my mom is working as an attorney. Yeah. And she has a lot of night court. She went to law school very late in life. And my grandmother had died the year before. So we're without child care. So now she's taking me places. Wow. So she has night court and she doesn't think I'm quite old enough to stay at home. Well, she did leave me at home a bit, but I don't think it went too well. I mean, were you lighting fires, things like that? No, just like a little bit of chaos. Like, you know, maybe like the bathtub, you know, gets too full, you know, things like this.

4:00And so she would always have this in the trunk and then she would just sit me in the last row of the courtroom. Yeah. And she would just give me the book. There for hours, I would look at this. Sometimes I would do puzzle books, but this was like the stalwart. Maybe look through the book and tell me a couple of things that you recall being intriguing to you. Right, yes. So chapter five, how things are made. Yeah. And that was one I really liked. A striking one, it must be in here somewhere, is how does a mirror work? Ah. And I mean, I'm sure it's - Yeah, how does a mirror work? So it's all about light and reflections and angle of reflection and angle of incidence.

4:35And did that feel like math to you as a kid? No, it just felt really cool. I never viewed the things I really liked. This is going to sound very strange. as explicitly math until i got to college but you love football i love football and when i was a kid my dream was to be an offensive lineman in the big tent wow like i grew up watching like jake long and i you know i want to be the left tackle for michigan because okay i played tackle in high school and you know there's a star system coming out of uh high school i was a two-star recruit the scale is out of five yeah and so i'm like two out of five so somehow being like uh all big 10 All-American offensive linemen at Penn State.

5:16This is just like the dream come true. But you chose to go to a football school rather than, like you were, you had a chance to go to Stanford, but you'd already committed to Penn State, is that right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And at the time. And your mom wanted that? My mom wanted me to go to Stanford. And at the time, I had like this very strong sense of honor, which. You don't have it anymore, you're saying? I mean, I think it was probably misplaced. Like, I'm not sure it was deserved, but at the time I had this really strong sense of, Meaning I've committed to Penn State. I have committed to Penn State.

5:47I'm sorry. John Harbaugh calls me to come visit Stanford. And I say, I'm sorry, coach. I've already committed to Penn State. And he says, oh, that's okay. You can still just come and see how things are. And I say, no, coach. I've already committed. I've given my word. Paterno was your coach for your first year or two? My first three. First three years. Okay. And then he's gone. And then what's the program like in your fourth year as your senior there? Very different. Who's your coach? Bill O 'Brien. Right. Okay. Yeah. Turned out to be a really good coach. Turned out to be a really good coach, although he's suffering quite badly at Boston College right now.

6:26Although I think it's hard to win there, especially in the current NIL. So NIL is name image likeness, which is the way for college athletes now to get paid, essentially. Right? Yes. Yeah. I remember when I played, you could not make a dime. You couldn't take a free hamburger. You couldn't take a free hamburger. And really at Penn State, they were really honest about this. I mean, Paterno was very, very serious about this. And so this was legitimate. And so when you're in that environment where you can't take it, does it feel like you're in a, not like a religious order in the military, but like what does it feel like to be that constricted?

7:05I mean, it's a tough, it's a touch strict. and I think it was too strict before. I mean, for instance, I was at Penn State and not that I have any complaints about it, but I remember my face is on banners downtown. I'm doing all these things. There's other players whose jerseys, I mean, my jersey didn't sell so well. I'm an offensive lineman. There are other players whose jerseys are just everywhere and you're not making a single set out of, Not even like some money towards a 401k or something. You know what I mean? So name, image, and likeness. Objectively, a good thing that players can make a little bit of money off of their...

7:49Or a lot of money. Or a lot of money. When you started playing at Penn State, let's say, did you think you had a pretty decent chance to make the NFL? No, I thought I had no chance. No chance, yeah. When did you start to think you had a chance? My junior year, I'm playing well. I'm an All-Big Ten offensive lineman at the time as a junior. And my coach sort of meets me after the season, my position coach, and sort of says, you're coming back another year. Like, please. Not please, but sort of like, I don't want you thinking any crazy stuff. You're coming back another year. Crazy stuff like declaring for the draft.

8:23Declaring early as a joke. Like, I don't want you thinking about anything crazy. And to be honest, I wasn't really thinking about the NFL at all. Okay. And so it wasn't until this conversation, which was kind of a joke in passing. Oh, that's interesting. Like right at the end of the season. Did that give you more confidence then for your final year? The fact that he assumed that you were bound for the NFL? Not confidence, but I would say like this idea that this is something that is about to happen if I want it to happen. Okay. And then he would say things in practice like, you know, oh, they're going to, you know, I do something and you say, oh, they're going to love that in the league.

8:59I was going to say, oh, okay. During his last year at Penn State, Urschel interviewed with nearly all of the NFL's 32 teams. Some teams knew he was a math major and a serious student. Some didn't. His math talent gave him options outside of football. But when the Baltimore Ravens chose Urschel in the fifth round of the NFL draft, Urschel chose football. Can I just say, I think most people don't understand that most linemen, offensive and defensive, it's an arms race. It's a weight race. So you have to put on a lot, a lot, a lot of pounds in order to succeed. Yes. So what was your peak weight in the NFL?

9:36My heaviest period, there was a time where I was 320. And how were you expected to do that? Just by eating and working out or no? Working out doesn't help you. Well, I mean, what us amateurs are told is that muscle weighs more. Yeah, that's true. But somehow, you know, things in the NFL are already so optimized. you know so there's a diminishing return to it yes exactly so the point is i'm already you know let's say in the off season i'm already working out you know one to two times a day okay an hour two to three yeah and um how intense is the workout i'm doing deadlifts i'm doing squats i'm doing bench i'm doing you know what could you bench uh i don't know i usually don't max out like So somehow in college, this is something that happens a lot.

10:27You try to see how much weight you can lift. In the league, there's just no point in this. There's no point to do a one rep max. So I think in college, I've lifted 405 before. Really? Oh, you could lift two and a half of me. Well, to be clear, so this will give you a good sense. When I was at the combine, everyone tries to bench press 225 pounds as many times as they can. And I did it 30 times. Oh, my goodness. So that's the sense. Wow. I think I've conflated your intelligence with your athleticism a little bit. So my job is hitting people. Right. And so you're supposed to be very big. Is the hitting really fun when you're that big?

11:09Yeah, it was fun. I had a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, was that the funnest part of football for you is getting to legally? I mean, it's the only part of football for me. Well, no, but if you're a wide receiver. No, but for me, it's the only part. What do you love about hitting? It's sort of nice. Like, you know, you imagine you're, no, you're out on a field and imagine it's us in this sort of like controlled environment together. Yeah. And we line up next to each other. Yeah. And my goal is I want to move you. Yeah. I want to dominate you. Yeah. I want to impose my will on you. Not hurt. I want to impose my will on you.

11:43Yeah. Yeah. And you want to do the same to me. Blocking is more complicated than it looks on TV. So I asked John to give me a demo, but I was not interested in having him impose his will on me. So I offered up our producer, Tao Jacobs. I would get in a stance. Yeah. So I would step. Okay. And then I'm just moving like this. And that's the idea. And the idea is I want my hat like right here. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm being kind. My hands are out here. Don't be kind. Oh, God. Do you want to see one that involves two people? Sure. Sit.

12:21So much fun. You all right? Yeah. We do have really good health insurance, I'm going to say. So if you broke anything, I think we'll be all right. Oh, here it's got to sit.

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13:37While you're playing for the NFL, where they want 110 % of your physical and mental devotion, you're also getting your PhD in math at MIT. Yes. Although I am not cheating, I would say, because I asked for permission first. From whom? From the team? From the Ravens, yeah. John Harbaugh, the coach. Yeah, so I reached out to the coach. Yeah. And I asked if it was okay. I said, you know, coach, I want to go back to school to get my degree. Well, you had two degrees already, right? Yeah. But it's true. I want to go back to school to get my degree. Okay. And he said, you know, absolutely. This is something we completely support.

14:12Like, we support people, like, you know, finishing school and getting their degrees. Yeah, cool. So I say, okay, great. Thanks, coach. So he texts me back maybe like a minute later. He says, but wait, but I thought you had your degree and your master's. And so then I sort of say, but that's true, but I don't have my PhD. And he texts me back something like, oh, okay. And then that was it. Okay, so that's permission. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not attending any lectures. and I'm carefully choosing courses that I can get by on by reading the textbook and courses that do not have exams. Okay. So I read the textbook and I do the problem sets.

14:54That sounds like a PhD late or something though. Was MIT concerned that you were taking a... Oh, no. So I had to take a full course load, which was three PhD courses in the fall. While you're playing football? While I'm playing football. In the NFL? Yeah. And I would choose, I chose my three courses to make sure they were courses that did not have exams so I could pass the class without being there. Okay. I get that. But still, let's just talk about workload. When you're playing in the NFL, how many hours a week would you say you're working on football? A lot. I mean, you know, every day I'm devoting just about all my time to football.

15:35Yeah. All but. What about the evening? All about. And the evening. You're watching film. Yeah, you're preparing. So when are you doing your math? Also, you aren't leaving the building until quite late, actually. You leave after dinner. But let's suppose it's a time where people are winding down. Like a time where you might wind down is you're flying for an away game. And everyone's relaxing. People are watching movies. If I was reading a chess book, this is totally okay. If I'm reading a math book, it's maybe a touch dodgy. Right. If I'm reading a math book, it's a little dodgy. It's dodgy because they might think that you're devoting too much time to your— Maybe I'm reading, and someone would say, is that a math book?

16:17I'd say, no, it's a chess book. And I show them, and they say, oh, okay. So I'm doing football all day, every day. Then how am I doing MIT? Players get a day off from Sunday afternoon all the way until Tuesday morning. Right. I am full math, and I am scrambling to finish my problem sets. And the way that I am able to do this is that I have already read the books for the courses before the semester even starts. Oh. Otherwise, how could I possibly do this? So in the off-season of the course you're reading, which is the off-season of— So did that mean you were doubling up with spring courses? Yeah, so in the summer I'm reading books.

16:57I see. But in the summer you have time. In the spring I'm reading. Okay. I mean, I'm doing some work. And so this is one thing where, you know, I say this all the time. If I was an English major, I don't see how I could have ever succeeded in college, let alone while doing this in the NFL. Right. Because you take some class. You have to read all these pages. You have to write, you know, a certain page report. Right. In math, the way that you're sort of tested is usually you're given very few problems, but the problems are really hard. Yeah. And so how long it takes you, the time you invest is mostly invested in increasing your sort of skill and ability.

17:36Yeah. But if you already know the material pretty well, then the problem sets don't take us long. Were you ever thinking about a problem set while you were in the weight room? No, no, no. Really? Mentalized. You are a massive compartmentalizer, though, it seems. Yeah. Do you think that's a trait that has helped you succeed? My wife would say so. Okay, you're succeeding in the NFL. You're getting a PhD in math from MIT at the same time. And then there's a variable that comes in, which is a huge amount of attention paid to CTE. It's brain trauma, let's call it, from repeated blows to the head. And this, for several years, was really the headline in the NFL, which is brain damage far and wide.

18:19Although, to be fair, the evidence for this is very difficult to assess. Yeah, exactly. It's a difficult thing to exactly nail down, but... You can't diagnose it while someone's living? Exactly. The brains that are donated for research predominantly come from people who died young or tragically. Yes. It's a bit of a strange thing that, you know, this thing comes out and this thing that happens around the time that I'm, like, really thinking about retiring. So you're saying it gave you cover? It gave me very good cover. I mean, of course, it was like... Because until then, you weren't concerned about it particularly, were you?

18:54Before then, I was concerned about it. There's a couple things going on. You can focus exclusively on CTE. Yeah. Or you can talk more broadly about the wear and tear that your body suffers. And what I was concerned about, like that offseason, was I was sort of thinking, is this going to be my last season? Or do I even want to do another season? You're playing off your rookie contract still, I assume, right? Yes. So this is the last year of my rookie contract. And your next contract, had you gotten one, which you probably would have, you were on a trajectory to get one, that would have been a lot more money, correct?

19:25Yeah, I mean, a decent amount. I mean, a couple of— At least a million a year. But, like, my base salary, I think the first year in the league was$420. Okay. And so, you know, I'm thinking, maybe I do one more, maybe I don't. And, you know, I'm going back and forth, and I'm just saying, no, I'm not going to—like, come on, I need to—and then I say, no, I should. But, you know, sort of going back to high school me, this like, I have a year left on my contract. I need to see my contract out. So this is similar to when you committed to Penn State and even if Stanford might have been a nice choice for you.

19:56Yeah. But when you were talking about having committed to Penn State, you said at the time I had a lot of moral whatever. Yeah, so at the time, again, I was really struggling. These days, I don't even know why I was, I mean, I get it. But like, they could have fired me whenever they wanted, you know? That's a good point. And these contracts are not guaranteed. And they're not guaranteed. If you're hurt, you're done. And, you know, in hindsight, why is this such a hard decision? Like, I needed to retire and focus on math and, like, go, like, hang out with my kid. And the more time I spent at MIT, math really sort of went above.

20:32And then, you know, this idea of being a parent, this is also going above. And so now, like, in hindsight, like, if football's the third most important thing to me, and it's a legitimate liability for the first two, you know, for, you know, a long mass career, not to mention all the hours it's taking away and the toll it takes on your body, you know, not even your head, but, you know, your entire body, to walk when I'm 50, to, you know, be able to pick up my grandkids or, you know, even pick up my daughter when, you know. Okay, let's say 100 people in America, what share of them would you say probably like math?

21:13A truly honest answer. I'm going to say if we define math based off what they think math is, it's 4 % too low. Oh, wow. Okay, so that's a shockingly low and slightly sad number. Because I find that some people say I really like math, but it's very rare, even among quantitative people, I find sometimes. Well, back up a minute. You said it depends what you think of math as. So why don't we figure out what you think of math as? I would say my sort of view of math is math is some quantitative language that we all collectively have that we use to reason about problems. And so when I think of an engineer, I think that's math.

22:04When I think of, you know, someone doing physics in some sort of theoretical way that's using quantitative information. I think this is math. I think of statistics as math. I think of theoretical computer science as math. And so I have a very broad view, and I really think about it as not so far apart from doing puzzles, not so far apart from, you know, just this goal of understanding something. Last semester at MIT, John taught matrix analysis and computations. I thought it might be fun to have a private math lesson with him, so we picked a bunch of problems from a textbook, and we used a big spinning wheel, the kind you'd use on a game show, to let gravity decide which one to solve.

22:43So I thought maybe if you could walk us through a proof of some kind, is that what you would call it typically? Yeah. So it's a beautiful spinning wheel. Okay. With a lot of math problems that I'm told are not that hard. I see. So you picked some very hard things. You think they are hard? I see a lot of millennium problems. What is a millennium problem, John? You solve it, you get a million dollars. Okay, I guess it isn't fair to give John a problem that has never been solved, but can't blame me for trying. We'll give the wheel another spin. Okay, let's see what we get.

23:21So what can you show us about Cantor's Diagonal? Yeah, so Cantor's Diagonal argument is about something that's really hard to think about, but is pretty cool. And the idea is that there's levels of infinity. So it's about infinity and it's about levels of infinity. Wait, stop right there. What does that mean? Okay, so first let's think about something infinite we know. If I just started counting numbers, you know, one, two, three, four, five. I do happen to like math, but I have a sense that John Urschel math is well beyond my comprehension. So we'll just do our best. There are infinitely many numbers in the set.