ARIAN FOSTER - NFL Running Back & Musical Artist

Meg and Dr. G sit down for an exclusive interview with retired NFL running back, Arian Foster, who played with the Houston Texans and Miami Dolphins. An All-Pro on the field, Arian is also an accomplished musical artist, actor, writer, and podcaster. The Sporting News once called Foster “the most interesting man in the NFL.”

 

How do our beliefs affect how we live our life? What is the essence of being an amateur athlete? These are just a couple of the questions Dr. G, Meg, and Arian addresses they weigh in on sports, compensation for athletes, fake news, broken education systems, capitalism, politics, life in retirement, and more.

 

Arian shows his range of thinking, feeling, and what it means to be a human, including an athlete. Destroying the myth of the dumb jock, Arian connects the past with the present to explain who we are as a people today. Many people are unaware that Foster has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee—watch him flex those critical thinking and philosophizing muscles while covering such topics as ethics, politics, education, science, art and music, racist ideologies, sport in society, democracy, money, love, marketing, propaganda, Black Face and minstrel shows, truth telling, stereotypes, social and cultural capital or lineage and pedigree, scholar athletes, self-study vs esteemed degrees, cultural reproduction, Black history, capitalism, normal and the abnormal, astrophysics, scientific method, college major selection and opportunities and constraints, identity, cultural differences and discipline on the football practice field, hegemonic masculinity, and good/bad coach stories. 

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TIPS & TOPICS

• Self-degradation & humor
• Individuality in sports
• Listening to Understand vs. Listening to Respond
• Perspective taking and empathy
• How to determine if something is from a reliable source: A helpful checklist from the University of Maryland: https://sites.umgc.edu/library/libhow...
• Social Science Vs. Natural Science
• Facts Vs. Feelings
• Amateur Athletes
• Political beliefs 
• Capitalism
• Revenue and Marketing of Sports