So my guest today, John Urschel, played in the NFL, played professional football for the Baltimore Ravens, played as a linebacker.
What it takes to succeed, the work ethic, the talent, the extraordinary grit to get to the level where you're actually chosen and you're playing in the NFL is an astonishing story on its own.
But that is not the entirety of John's story.
In fact, from the youngest of times, John developed kind of a passion, obsession, love for math, for complex problem solving, and found himself actually immersed in the world of math and mathematics from the time he was a little kid teaching himself all sorts of things just for the fun of it.
That ended up eventually landing him degrees in mathematics while simultaneously playing at Penn State for one of the biggest teams in the world in college.
And then, as hes wrapping up his pro career, making a decision to go back and pursue his PhD in math at MIT, which is actually where he was when I sat down with him to record this conversation.
I love the way that he weaves together this deep passion and love for two worlds, for football and for math and complex problem solvings.
It's really compelling.
It's all laid out in a new book called mind and a life in math and Football, which also has a pretty cool structure.
He literally alternates chapters between math and football, which I thought was a fascinating way to travel the journey with him.
And we travel that sort of parallel journey in this conversation.
So excited to share it with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
You've got this lifelong love affair with sort of like movement with football and with mathematics, and it feels like underneath that is just a profound interest in solving complex problems.
And it sounds like a lot of that came from your mom, and she was probably pretty similarly wired to you.
Yeah, she was.
She loved mathematics when she was younger, loved sort of quantitative things.
And, you know, she ended up becoming a nurse, but this was largely due to her feeling, one, sort of a little self conscious about her math abilities or her perceived lack thereof, and two, not really knowing what you could do with math and physics.
You mean like an applied in the real world?
Yeah, in the real world, in the sense that.