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

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

He was thriving in the N.F.L., but then he decided to focus on mathematics — a subject he now teaches at M.I.T. John walks Stephen Dubner through the whole story, teaches him some blocking techniques, and explains why some infinities are bigger than others. If you'd like to see the video version of Better in Person, you can watch it on YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This 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 Steven 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. The entire first season of the show has now been published. So go ahead, binge. As always, thanks for listening. So you'd never open a math book on the Ravens facility. No, never. Because you're busy doing football?

I'm busy doing football. This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and John Urshall. A lot of us spend our lives trying to find the one big thing we're really good at. John Urchel 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. Is this 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. Some of these universities have these programs where, you know, they really accelerate people to med school. You do two years and then straight into med school.

He did exactly this. Where did he play football in the middle of? University of Alberta. Oh. So he's Canadian, I'm Canadian. So my mom and dad had me. I was born in Canada. Yeah.

They moved 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. But I would visit my dad all the time, and he's working as a Thrask surgeon. He's a really busy person. He would pick me up.

He 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. Did that strike you as unusual?

No, it was fun. I 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. And it is the puzzle section.

Yeah. 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. Yeah. I noticed there's like a big bootprint here and coffee stains there.

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. And 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. 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. 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 maybe the bathtub gets too full, things like this.

And 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 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 incidents.

And 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 loved 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 Jake Long, and I wanted to do the left tackle for Michigan. Because, okay, I played tackle in high school. And, you know, there's a star system coming out of high school. I was a two-star recruit. The scale was out of five. Yeah. And so I'm like two out of five. So somehow being like an all-big-10, all-American offensive line at Penn State, this 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. 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, very good. 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 dessert, but at the time, I had this really strong sense of, you know, like... Meaning I've committed to Penn State. I have committed to Penn State. I'm sorry, you know, John Harbaugh calls me to come visit Stanford. And, you know, for me, and I say, you know, I'm sorry, Coach. I've already committed to Penn State.

And he says, oh, that's okay. You can still just come and, you know, see how things are. And I say, no, coach, you know, I've really, I've already committed, I've given my word, like, you know. 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 you're a senior there? Very different. Who's your coach? Bill O'Brien. Right. Okay. Yeah. And 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. Although, I think it's hard to, 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. Yes. 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? It's, I mean, it's a tough, it's a touch strict, and I think it was too strict before. Yeah. I mean, for instance, you know, I was at Penn State, and not that I have any complaints about it,

but I remember, like, you know, my faces on, like, 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, you know, every. everywhere, and, you know, we are not, 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. Or a lot of money. When you started playing at Penn State, let's say, did you think had a pretty decent chance to make the NFL? No, I thought I had no chance. No chance. No chance. When did you start to think you had a chance?

My junior year, I'm playing well. I'm an all-big-10 offensive linemen at the time as a junior. And my coach, you know, sort of meets me after the season, my position coach, and sort of, you know, says, you know, 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 job. Declaring 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 like, you know, this conversation, which was kind of a joke in passing, 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. I was going to say, oh, I was going to say, oh,

Okay. During his last year at Penn State, Ershel 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 Urshall in the fifth round of the NFL draft, Ershel 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. 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? My heaviest period, there was a time where I was 320. And how are 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. That's true. But somehow, you know, things in the NFL are already so optimized. 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 to two, maybe? Let's say two to three. And 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? I don't know.

I usually don't max out. So somehow in college, this is something that happens, you know, a lot. Yeah. You try to see how much weight you can lift. And the league, there's just no point in this. Like, there's no point to do like a one-rep max. So I think in college, you know, like I've lifted 405 before. Really?

Oh, you could lift like 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 a 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? Yeah, it was fun. I had a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, was that the funest 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.

Not hurt. I want to impose my will on you. Yeah. 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, Teo Jacobs. I would get in a stance. Yeah. So I would step. Okay. And then I'm just moving like this. I'm moving. 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.

Do you want to see one that involves two people? Sure. Sit. Hap. So much fun. You're right? Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah. We do. really good health insurance. I'm going to say. So if you broke anything, I think we'll be on. Oh, you're a scoff. Oh, this episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. ChatGPT work moves beyond answers into getting real work done.

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ideas and projects, download the new chat GPT desktop app today. While 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 ask for permission first. From whom? From the team? From the Ravens, yeah. John Harbaugh. Yeah, so I reached out to the coach. 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, you know, 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, like, 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, but I thought you had your degree in 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 that's, that was, and 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. That sounds like a PhD. and I scanned them in. Is that like, it's, did, was MIT concerned that you were getting, 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, and I would choose, I chose my three courses to make sure there 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, every day I'm devoting just about all my time to football. Yeah. But about the evening? All about and the evening. You're watching film. Yeah, 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. You know, 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. Yeah, 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, you know, someone would say, is that a math book? I'd say, no, it's a chess book. 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, you know, 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, but did that mean you were doubling up with spring courses? Yeah, so in the summer I'm reading books. I 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. And so how long it takes you, the time you invest is mostly invested in increasing your sort of skill and ability. 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, no. Really?

You are a massive compartmental. centralizer, though, it seems. 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. Although, 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.

There'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? Before 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 off-season, 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 contracts 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? Yeah, I mean, a decent amount more, 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. You know, sort of going back to high school me, this, like, I have a year left on 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. Yeah. But when you were talking about having committed to Penn State, you said at the time, I had a lot of moral, whatever about that.

Yeah. So at the time, again, I was really, 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 spend at MIT, math really sort of went above. And 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 math for, not to mention all the hours it's taking away. And the toll is, you know, 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? A truly honest answer. I'm going to say if we define math based off what they think math is, is 4% too low in number. Oh, wow. That's, okay, so that's a shockingly low and slightly sad number. Because I find that, you know, some people, you know, 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. When I think of 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 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 decide. So 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 mean, to me, they look... I see a lot of a millennium problem. What is a millennium problem, John?

You solve it, you get a million dollars. Yeah. 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. So 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, every, you know, whole number. But some infinities are bigger than others. Okay. So for instance... Is this like when you're a kid and you say infinity plus one? Yeah, yeah.

So let's say, okay, this has infinitely. many things. And also, if I looked at this set, which I'll denote with an R, this contains all of these numbers. Right. Sure, I guess. Now let me bring in a third player. Okay. A third player? I'm still processing the first two. This is starting to make football seem simple. You might say this feels bigger than that. Yep. But I could define some pairing of them, where for every number here, I pair it to a unique number here. Okay.

Are you following this? Each one of these boxes, I get a number. Okay. So I say, this is my first number. Okay. And I say, this is my second number. This is my third one. This is my fourth one, my fifth one, my sixth one.

Okay. Though they're both infinite, the sort of size of the infinities are the same because I can associate with every number in this one, a unique number in this one, 100, plus one times two square, which is the same. Got it, yeah. And so if it can't be in the list,

then it means that all the numbers between zero and one, I can't count them. They're what we call uncountable. So that means there are more than one infinity. There's more than one infinity, and this is countable infinity, and this is uncountable infinity. I have to say, I feel like I understood

a solid like 4% of what you just taught. Well, I mean, to be clear, It blew my mind the first time I saw it. Like, infinity is really a hard thing to get your hands on. It dawns on me that for John Eurshal, doing math is to a large degree playing, the same way that football is also, to some large degree, playing. And he loved it, especially the hitting part. But over time, he came to love other things.

Meaning my wife really taught me, I would say, about, like, some of the softer things in life. For instance? You know, my wife is a writer, an amazing. writer. Really good. I'll vouch for that. She's a really good writer. You know, she majored in, you know, English and college. Her name is Louisa Thomas, let's say, for the record. Yeah, of course. You met your wife when she came to write an article about you. When she came to write an article about me, you know, she thought she was going to be a poet originally. And she writes about sports in a very, very interesting way. In a very sort of like...

holistic and thoughtful. And I would say even, like, in a beautiful way. She really, you know, She really, like, paints these pictures of, you know, of these scenes. And so I sort of started to gain an appreciation of just, like, the nicer things in life. Like, we go on vacation, you know, in upstate New York. We stay in a little, you know, cottage and things are nice and quiet. And, you know, she's reading things. And, you know, there's a, like, softness. You have a daughter and a son now.

Yeah, yeah. How would you feel about either of them playing football? So the I hope it's okay for me to say The daughter I don't think should be playing football I think that's a level of danger and risk I wouldn't want

All right so that's your daughter What about your son? My son I think I would let him If it really seemed like something He needed to do And what I mean by needed to do Football is a great sport

If you're a young person who really craves and really feels like you could benefit from, like, consensual violence, from controlled consensual aggression. You know, some place where you're, you know, you're following rules. You're not trying to hurt anyone. I mean, it's a proxy for war, if you think about it. You're just going out on the field and you're, you know, you're just running into people hitting people. Right, right.

And I think that was really good for me as an aggressive high school kid. Yeah. And so, you know, if that was the case, I would say, oh, maybe we try wrestling, maybe we tried judo. Yeah. But if he really wanted to, I would. But he's like three years old. So you got a little time. But he's three years old. But if he just says, oh, I want to because you did or I want to because my friends did.

Yeah. I think, no, you really, I really want to make sure you're ready for that, that you have, like, you really have the right. I get it. You have the disposition that's really meant for that. I get it. What's your relationship like with football? now? So these days, I don't do so much. You watch? I watch. So my best friend is a coach. He's the tight-ends coach for Penn State right now. And so I watch Penn State when he was, you know,

the offensive coordinator for Western Illinois. I would watch Western Illinois every time I could. So I watch a lot. NFL? You're watching? Not so much. I just don't have time. Okay. I mean, I don't even have time to watch enough college football. I just sort of watch, you know, I watch whatever team my best friend's coaching. I have to say, I'm just like so taken by you, because you're very, very good at a few difficult things, which, you know, I just admire people who accomplish things like that because they're hard to do. No, I might subtract a little bit because, you know, talent plays a role in that.

And you're plainly talented both athletically and mathematically. I mean... No, you're not that good? In terms of athletically, I mean, I've sort of come around to the fact that I do have some athletic talent. Like, I have broad shoulders. But if you compare me, let's say, to NFL players, I am not talented. So how did you succeed?

Hard work. Just an incredible amount of hard work. Where did the ability and desire to work that hard come from? Wanting to do better. So, you know, for instance. Is that a talent or is that a, like when you look back at the totality of your life to date, what are you, 34, 35? 34. 34.

When you look back at your life thus far. And you look at, you know, let's just take the top two, math professor and NFL player and parent, let's say, right? Those are all nice accomplishments. And you had to create a little pie chart for, you know, genetics, environment, will, luck. How do you assess your route? A lot of luck, obviously. I think most people don't think when they succeeded, obviously. Yeah, but, okay, let me put it like this.

You know, I think it's... No, I'm a math professor at MIT. Like, how many, you know, how many people, you know, there's not that many of us. Growing up dreaming of being that, you're saying? Yeah, well, a lot of people actually do dream of that. You know, a lot of, like, really strong people do. And so, how does luck not, you know, play... Like, yes, you need to be good.

Did your football reputation help you get that job? I don't know. I hope not. No. Yeah. I hope not. I have to say, it's just so great to talk with you, to learn for... from you. I feel like you're

like the little brother I never had. I appreciate that. And also the math teacher I never had. Okay. You know, thanks for coming by. Yeah, yeah. It was great to talk to you, man. Thanks for having me. Thanks again for checking out this audio version of our new TV talk

show Better in Person. If you would like to see the whole conversation go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel or search for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. And that is a wrap on this 10-episode pilot season of the show. I'd love to know what you think of it. Our email is radio at Freakonomics.com. We will be back soon right here with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else, too.

I thought it would be really fun to show some footage of you playing and go over it. But do you know how expensive it is to license NFL footage? Like, I'm making a TV show in my living room, so I'm not the money to license. Do you know how expensive it is? Yeah, we looked into it. Okay, for 60 seconds, I'm going to guess 5,000. Oh, John Herschel, you're bad at math, man. Thanks again to Chat GPT for sponsoring today's episode of Better in-person. Chat-GPT can help teams move from goals to real outcomes.

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