The Disturbing Story Tedx SILENCED | Harry Miller
Julian Dorey · 9 Sep 2026 · 2h 46m
Guest: Harry Miller · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
A former Ohio State offensive lineman recounts his path from being a heavily recruited high school valedictorian to a starting lineman under Urban Meyer and Ryan Day, and then to a mental health crisis that ended his career. He describes the isolation of playing through COVID-era college football, the academic misconduct dispute over a citation on a quiz taken while recovering from shoulder surgery, and a growing sense of depersonalization that culminated in a suicide attempt during his junior year. He details disclosing his suicidal thoughts to his head coach, the response from the athletic department, tearing his PCL, and eventually medically retiring and publishing a retirement letter that went viral. He also discusses being a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, moving to New York with no job, and slowly rebuilding a sense of purpose. A large portion of the conversation moves into wide-ranging philosophical and religious territory: Jungian and biblical imagery, elite theory and political power structures, technology and capital as quasi-religious forces, Nietzsche, Stoicism, and a dream he had after a self-harm episode that reshaped how he thinks about death. Listeners get a firsthand account of the psychological toll of major college football alongside a discursive meditation on suffering, service, and meaning.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Recruitment and Ohio State signing
- Being valedictorian while a top recruit
- Sophomore slump and shoulder injury
- Academic misconduct dispute over quiz citation
- Third-team All-Big Ten but hating himself
- Childhood fascination with death and early suicidal thoughts
- Retirement letter and public disclosure
- Rhodes Scholarship finalist and rejection
- Jobless year in New York City
- Elite theory, atomization, and generational unrest
- Definition of happiness as service
- Dream about death and the banquet table
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“when I viewed myself as property of the television of the institution of media and and managers and all these things when I viewed myself as property suicide became the destruction of property became vandalism”
“I ended up dragging a box cutter across my throat cuz like I I just wanted to be done with it.”