TPOS Podcast Episode 10 – Prof. Robert Turner (“The Pro Football Player Turned Scholar of the Throwaway Society”)

In this episode, we speak with Professor Robert Turner, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership at The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Science, and also holds a position as a Research Scientist in the Center on Health and Society at Duke University. After attending James Madison University on an athletic scholarship, Dr. Turner played football professionally in the National Football League as well as in the United States Football League and the Canadian Football League. Following that, he earned his Ph.D., became a sports sociologist, and authored “Not for Long: The Life and Career of the NFL Athlete”, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. Please listen in to our wide-ranging discussion about “Not for Long”, including why Prof. Turner believes that it is not football per se that is our society’s problem, but rather our greed, our collective dishonesty about the game’s deep-seated profit motive, and our willingness to accept a world that exploits its most vulnerable and leaves many of its best athletes “broke and broken”.