We spend a lot of time, in America, telling athletes to shut their mouths about politics. Colin Kaepernick sacrificed his career in the National Football League to protest police brutality, and the sitting president rallied his own political base by ostracizing the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback. The pressure to avoid controversy is intense. Chinese business partners are deserting the National Basketball Association after the Houston Rockets’ general manager expressed support, in a now-deleted tweet, for demonstrators in Hong Kong.

In this light, Pocock’s political and ethical commitments are almost startling in their breadth and their enthusiasm. He argues that, even in a hyper-politicized time, we might not be talking about politics—especially the politics of race—nearly enough. “I think you guys might need some sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Pocock told me, only half in jest. I didn’t disagree.

I met David and Emma in 2017, while he was taking a break from rugby to pursue a leadership course at Harvard Business School. I grew up as the son of a sports journalist, and I remember my father talking to athletes and coaches in sterile interview rooms accompanied by minders. I reached out to David through an intermediary, expecting the same treatment, and was surprised when Emma texted me and invited me for dinner in their rented apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Earlier that afternoon, David had led a training session for Harvard’s undergraduate rugby team.

I have played rugby on amateur teams for most of my adult life, reluctantly “retiring” when the second of my three children was born and I could no longer justify all the weekends spent away from my growing family. But I was interested less in Pocock’s life in rugby than in his views about everything else. What had prompted one of the world’s best athletes to also develop into one of the most intellectually curious and socially engaged?

At the beginning of dinner, I lazily mentioned that it’s not too common to see professional athletes as engaged politically as David. He gently corrected me, suggesting I read Dave Zirin’s A People’s History of Sports in the United States, which he said had made a big impression on him. Emma said she first saw David at a gathering in support of the large youth homeless population in Perth, the city in Western Australia where David began his professional rugby career. Emma, a recent university graduate with a degree in women’s studies, asked David what he did for a living. “I play a bit of rugby,” he replied. She responded that she wasn’t aware anyone could do that for an actual living.

David had, in fact, skipped university to begin his professional career. As a young man, he was such a physical specimen that his first professional coach, John Mitchell (who later coached the U.S. national team), threw him on as a mere teenager for his professional debut against one of the top South African sides. By the time he met Emma, he had already played his first game for Australia’s national team, replacing one of the finest players to ever play the game, George Smith, in a game against the rival All Blacks of New Zealand.