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You need Indeed. Good about it, everybody. It is Bart Winkler for The Bart Winkler Show slash Into the Winklerverse, a combo episode. I got to talk to Ian O'Connor, who's got the new book Out of the Darkness, The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers, and I think it's something that plays both for Wisconsin fans, obviously, but also to the Infinity Sports Network audience. So what I have for you is a conversation with Ian O'Connor about 20 minutes. I had a goal to ask him about all the different like refrains and phrases I have said about Aaron Rodgers, whether it's personality, chameleon, or he would be more normal if he was married with kids. And I think I got to everything that I wanted to address to him. I don't know that I will ever have the chance to speak with an Aaron Rodgers, but the opportunity to talk to someone who has and has done it extensively and has talked to a lot of people in Aaron Rodgers life. And it's a good, you know, maybe maybe looking for closure with his era as the Packers. I think there's different instances in people's lives that you're like, I wish I had some more closure. I wish I could fill in the gaps there. I think this book does that for a lot of reasons. It's available on Amazon.
You can get it at hard copy later in the week. But this is my interview with Ian O'Connor. This is the Bart Winkler show.
I'm Bart Winkler. Ian O'Connor is here. He has written a book that I'm sure you have heard about by now. If not, you will be hearing about it right now. But I'm pretty sure you've heard about it by now, especially if you've followed anything that I've done in Wisconsin.
It's called Out of the Darkness, The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers. Ian O'Connor is here. Well, there's two things I really want to do with you today.
One, promote your book. I think that's a good thing. Two, I've often been somebody who, you know, I'm about the same age as Rodgers, and I've been a Packer fan my whole life, and I've followed him and covered him. And I feel like I have a grasp on what kind of guy he is, and that is he's not really sure what kind of guy he is. The phrase that I've used a lot, so I'll throw this one at you first, is personality chameleon, where throughout his life, he was in college and was a college guy.
If he dated somebody, he was more of like a nerd with Olivia Munn or getting into the ayahuasca with Danica. Maybe now he's in an era where, you know, he's doing a lot of his own research. Is that a phrase that would fit after everything that you've had conversations with him and everybody around his life? Does Aaron Rodgers know who he is? I think that's a good way of putting it, and a chameleon, a contrarian, and he's always throughout his entire life, back to when he was growing up, always asked why.
Why are we doing this? He asked the why about absolutely everything. And one of his good friends told me when they were growing up, they believed in miracles and magic, and when you believe in that, you believe in the possibility of everything, including conspiracy theories. So that explains that part of his or that side of his personality, I think. And yeah, that was one of the draws to doing him in this biography. And I originally was down to write a bio of LeBron James, and there was another book on LeBron coming out, unbeknownst to me. So at the same time, Aaron got traded into my backyard in New York, and I thought he was probably the most mysterious figure, polarizing figure, certainly in the NFL, if not all of American sports. So maybe I should trade LeBron, who's not as mysterious, for Aaron, who I think is very intriguing and fascinating and distant and elusive.
So I did that, and I think it's a good trade. Hopefully the readers will see it that way, but he's not easy to nail down. And I did a book on Belichick, and that was a great challenge. And not just because he was calling people, asking them not to talk to me, but because he was a mysterious guy, and he basically is operating or was operating the Kremlin up in New England.
Aaron was almost, it was really more challenging because he was a moving target. And he used to be considered one of the good guys in the NFL, Bart, as you know, and then all of a sudden he became a villain. And why did that happen?
How did that happen? I did explore that with him in our sit down in Malibu for a couple hours. So yeah, this was a great challenge, and hopefully I conquered it, and the readers ultimately will decide yes or no on that question. You're listening to Into the Winkler Verse, as well as The Bart Winkler Show.
Our conversation with Ian O'Connor will continue momentarily. Just wanted to inform everyone, maybe remind you about Happy Place Hemp. HappyPlaceHemp.com, the promo code is Bart.
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More with Ian O'Connor coming up. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day, Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed, the better it gets. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash BlueWire. Just go to Indeed.com slash BlueWire right now and support our show by saying that you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
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You need Indeed. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. I'm sure by now you've all gotten back into your Sunday routines, but they could be even better. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get the most live NFL games all in one place, every game, every Sunday. And you can even watch up to four different games at once with MultiView, one of my favorite inventions of this decade. It's exactly what you need to catch all the action.
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NFL Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital-only games. You know, when we would talk about the Packers and cover them for the longest time, they were good. And it's nice to be invested in a team that is good. But then as the year started, you know, going without having another Super Bowl appearance, it felt like as a fan, we're investing a lot of time into this guy who isn't winning the Super Bowl.
I always said, look, if you win another Super Bowl, I'll invest all the time that you want. But there became more like controversies and then more stuff that he was doing that you had to like follow. A lot of people then would look at and you explore the villain part of it when he said immunized.
OK. But to me, that was like the fifth or sixth time that he did something like that. I was so happy to see that the book mentioned the folks thing where there was a time where Jordan Rogers was saying stuff and he was falling out with his family. And Rogers is at his locker goes, I dinner with my folks. And so especially in Wisconsin, folks means folks means that's your parents and your family. And I just feel like that generated headlines everywhere. TMZ had a big headline.
Aaron Rodgers reunites with parents. I think it was crazy. Yeah, because I feel like Rogers has always done that with language where he'll a word to him is defined different and it's vague so he can like accept it, but deny it. And I think and I know it's for you to do this unauthorized book, but also or biography, but also have his input a little bit. It's great for you because you can you know, you're not beholden to what he has to say, but also gives him like, oh, yeah, that chapter, I love the chapter on my grandpa. Oh, my God. The chapter where he said that thing that I didn't approve of.
So it's like I feel like he's a guy who likes to straddle that line between it's it's real when I want it to be and it's not real when I don't want it to be. Yeah, he did an interview in New York yesterday with Boomer Esiason and Greg Giannotti on their popular morning drive show. Yeah, actually, it was yesterday.
Yeah, yesterday. And he basically said, I'll definitely read chapter one because that's on my grandfather. I'm not sure about the rest of it. He did a lot of research and it was more or less positive. I know he tweaked me a little bit, zing me a little bit, but I thought it was more or less a compliment, really, that he was saying this guy clearly put a lot of work into the research and he appreciated that. And I had to wear some people down, including him, because I was putting in requests to get him, obviously, to sit down through the jets, through his agent directly to Aaron. I sent him books on Coach K and Belichick. I had written to, hey, this is my work.
This is how I do it. I'm deadly serious about telling the full story of your career in life. And I think there were some of his friends and close associates who assumed I was a media guy from New York, probably a liberal who was looking to destroy Aaron over his Vax stance. And I it couldn't have been further from the truth. I had no agenda whatsoever. I had no negative feelings about him going into this process.
And I think I did convince people of that, in part because they looked at my past biographies and saw that they were fair. And the bad parts, they have to be in there. In part, there's one thing that I want to give Aaron credit on is when we sat down at his home in Malibu in his backyard. His backyard is the Pacific Ocean.
It was the best backyard I've ever sat in for an interview. Not bad. Yeah. But I said, as a biographer of you as a human being, not not as a quarterback, I'm writing about the human being and your life, not just your career. Do you understand?
And we could debate this, that I have to write about the family estrangement. And he said, yeah, I understand. How could you write my life story without including so not every superstar athlete. And I did a book on Derek Jeter. He never would have understood that. He would say, well, just write about my career. But why do you have to write about my family? Aaron knew that it had to be part of the story. So I think that allowed us to get into some topics that he had never really discussed before, particularly about the family. And so he was he was an elusive guy to nail down in a lot of ways on a lot of different levels. And I think I did.
I believe I did. It was a great challenge. And again, the readers ultimately decide. And I'm I'm good with that. Talking with Ian O'Connor here.
The Bart Winkler Show. The book is Out of the Darkness, The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers. And I think so again, I'm very eager to read more of this just as a Packer fan book comes out the 20th of August, because it feels like sometimes you have relationships in your life and something happens with whoever and you don't get that closure. I feel like for Packer fans specifically, this is a this is like a book that can fill in some of the gaps of some of the things we didn't understand. We didn't know. And a lot of the family estrangement stuff that you brought up might be a good like, oh, that makes sense here.
That makes sense here. That was because of Olivia, for the most part. And they're not I mean, that family is shattered now, right? Well, I think there's a chance of a reconciliation. I do. And I don't lay all the blame at the feet of Olivia Munn.
I thought that was too easy to do. And he hasn't dated her in seven years. And the strangers got married and has a two year old kid. Absolutely. She's also had a very serious health situation.
So I hope she's she's doing great. But to blame her, they haven't dated in seven years. It's still going on. I think it's a living organism now. And Aaron doesn't know how to kill it.
And so instead of confronting it, it's easier to just let it linger and fester. But I do have a scene. Well, let's go back to Olivia. I think when he entered that relationship around 2014, Aaron already had and he told me this. He said, I had issues with my family before I met Olivia. He carried some feelings into that relationship about do my family members really appreciate fully the generosity that I've shown here with them?
Do is the family unit revolving too much around my fame, fortune and success? And I think Olivia did notarize all those feelings. So she had a role in it.
But I don't think it's fair to blame her for it. Aaron was making his own decisions at that point. He had cut some people out of his life before he ever met Olivia. And he's one of those guys.
If you slide him once real or imagined slights, you're done. And his best friend, Jordan Russell, kicked him out of his life for three or four years and then took him back in. Most people I call it in the book, the island. Aaron puts people on this island and it's a very cold and distant and lonely place. And you usually don't escape from that island.
Jordan Russell escaped and was brought back in by Aaron. And he did say, like, does the punishment fit the crime with the family? This is going on almost 10 years. And when you look at there, it's not there's not one reason for it.
There are 14 different reasons and a lot of them feel minor and petty to me. So I don't I don't know if you've read any of the book yet, but there's a scene in there with his father at Lake Tahoe last year where they come together at the golf tournament, the celebrity golf tournament, his dad playing himself in the crowd. Aaron sees him on about the ninth hole on Saturday. And he he he's thinking to himself, do I ignore him?
Do I act like I'm on the phone? Do I act like I didn't see him or should I go over there and give him a hug? And he decides today's the day I'm going to give him a hug. He goes over and Ed Ed Rogers, the father, was actually looking back at the ninth tee, I believe, and lost sight of him for a minute. Then he turns around and Aaron standing there looking at him from 15 feet away. And Ed said, I froze because I forgot what it felt like to have my son look at me and be in my presence. They hug.
They say, I love you. Ed is crying. Aaron, I think, was emotional.
We had to get back to finish the tournament. And I'm surprised there wasn't a follow up that weekend. But they both told me on the record that that moment, that hug and that expression of love meant a lot to each other. And Aaron said, I want a relationship with my father. And he said that on the record, the father obviously wants to.
So I'm hoping within the next few months, there's a coming together of father and son and then the rest of the family unit falls into place after that. Yeah, you know, like to say, hey, great book. Let me talk about the Olivia and let me talk about Danica. It feels like, OK, that's the you know, it always felt weird in doing the radio shows and people after Rogers would have a bad game, say. Oh, Olivia, Danica, as if like he's the one person that's ever had a relationship and also played sports. But as I said, I want to promote the book Out of the Darkness, The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers, Ian O'Connor.
Available on Amazon.com right now. Yes. And also try to have you help me confirm things that I've said about him. And the thing with that is me and my buddies kind of joke about it. But I look at my friend group. I've got a friend group. And again, I'm I'm about his age, 40, and I've got a friend group where a lot of a lot of them have a wife and multiple kids. You know, I'm married with a kid and we like don't have time for a lot of the stuff.
A lot of the stuff Rogers has time for. Then I've got this one buddy who is 40, unmarried, no relationship. And who is the who of all my friends is like deep dark into every conspiracy that's ever existed. And who's the one always asking the why and who's the one sending me, you know, memes about different Illuminati stuff?
It's that guy. And so I think like if Rogers, I don't know if he got married five years ago and had two kids, I don't think he's this guy right now. I agree with you. And I think there are family members. I know there are family members who feel the same way that if you had kids that this estrangement would have ended.
It may not have ever happened. But when you have kids, it's such a fundamental change in your life. You wake up and I only had one kid. He's now not a kid anymore.
He's 28. But you wake up in the morning for the first time and you your first thought is about another human being, not yourself. So, Aaron, he's not with his he's not in communication with his family, his parents and his siblings for now almost 10 years. And he doesn't have his own family. So everything is viewed through the prism of how it impacts him.
And it's a very I don't want to sound like J.D. Vance here with this, but it's it's a very self-centric world that he's living in every day. So it's so there are a lot of people close to him who have those same thoughts. And he's got a lot of time on his hands outside of football. And I think he's on the Web a lot and sometimes going to places he shouldn't go to on the Web.
And and that's who he is. But I do think that he does want to have kids and he can still do that, certainly. And I know with his friends, he's got a good friend in New Jersey, Steve Levy, who's one of his best friends from Cal, former teammate. Aaron's great with his kids. He's great with his friends, kids. I think he wants to be a father. I think he'll be a very good father.
I do. Just seeing him with children of other people. And he's very good around them. And so that'll be the next stage of his life. He said it's the next stage after football is being a father and we'll see what kind of impact that has on his life.
So last one for you with the book being called The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers. Is he because I think that sometimes there's a lot of attention on him that like he'll bring up a story and then refute the story. I feel like he likes he plays like he doesn't.
But I feel like he likes when he's being talked about. Is he a mysterious guy in terms of people you've interviewed and people that you've come across? Is Aaron Rodgers truly a mysterious person or is Aaron Rodgers someone who's trying to cosplay as a mysterious person? I would say both. All of the above.
That's a good question. I think I think he's naturally mysterious as a contrarian and as a guy who always asks why about everything. And now I think he has leaned in over the last few years to this into this villainous thing. But he is a human being, too. And at the same time, he's taken some major hits in the public arena. And I do think that has left some scar tissue with him. And he's admitted that he's a human being.
I think it does hurt sometimes. He told me that. And so I think he's he's he's a natural mystery. And maybe he does also play that game. But at the end of the day, I think he's a I don't think he's one of the bad guys.
He's portrayed that way now. And I had a prominent NFL person say that. Even though he can't stand Aaron and his positions, this guy knows hundreds upon hundreds of NFL players that he's never met an NFL player who doesn't like him.
And that is something that's never talked about. All of his teammates with the Jets, they revere him. I think for the most part over his time in Green Bay, outside of an occasional remark by Greg Jennings or Michael Finley, who have also said some very positive things about him at times, the guys universally admired and respected as a teammate and as a leader.
And yet that's never part of the public discussion about who Aaron Rodgers is. And that's curious because he spends more time with the players, his teammates than anybody else. They love him unconditionally. It's like he doesn't want you to know that he's like. That's why I like him.
But then he puts up this shield. I'll give you an example, too, of his his marketing agent, Ed Berry at CIA, who's Saquon Barkley's agent. He said that there were things he does behind the scenes, acts of kindness and generosity. And I know he spends a lot of time with kids with cancer. The Jets had the Jets had a kid last year at Camp Braylon. Hodson was his name and he was dying. He had a rare cancer of the brain stem.
It was a real tragedy. And his father had read about Aaron in the media, knew nothing else about him in recent years and thought he was a bad guy and figured there'd be no interaction. Well, he said Aaron Rodgers spent the most time with his dying son of anyone and was really genuine with him.
Unfortunately, Braylon died on September 12th, the morning after Aaron got hurt last September in that opening game. And when he died, he had Aaron Rodgers jersey with him. And so there are things like that. And he does things for for people. And his agent wants to publicize it.
And Aaron won't let him. Yeah. So really, through the media, you're getting in the last three, four years only negative information. Now, some of it is self-inflicted and some of it there are unforced errors.
I think he's committed and he's certainly contributed to that. But the full human being there is not being portrayed. And I have that in this book.
A lot of his friends are frustrated by that and told me the positive stories, including Ed Berry. And so I think people will see this as a balanced and fair portrait of Aaron Rodgers in full. You know, with how much time we've spent talking about him, watching him, seeing these interviews, it's nice to fill in a lot of these gaps, get a lot more information.
And that's why it's so good that you've spent much of your last couple of years on this book out of the darkness, the mystery of Aaron Rodgers by Ian O'Connor. Thank you very much. Great to talk to you.
And good luck with all the book and the future books. Hey, it was my pleasure, Bart. I should say Vince Lombardi coached in my high school in New Jersey. So I've always been fascinated by the Packers mystique and I'm a big Lombardi guy.
So always it's a great thing when the Packers are really good. But thank you for having me, Bart. Bart Starr met my grandparents at an airport when I was one. They told him my name was Bart. He saw him at an airport the next year. He asked him how Bart was doing. I'm not surprised because that was the story they've told me.
I hope it's true. I got a chance to meet Bart at the end of his life. So he wasn't in a position then. He had no memory of even his career with the Packers at the time, which was tragic.
But no, all the stories I heard about Bart Starr is I think that was genuine and that did happen. Pretty great stuff. Get a copy of the book tearing through it myself. Again, it's available on Amazon.
Out of the Darkness, The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers also will be on hard copy and in stores by the beginning of next week, August 20th, 2024. Thank you all for listening. This is Into the Winklerverse. Also that interview to air on the Infinity Sports Network, The Bart Winkler Show. We will talk to you next time. And have a great weekend.
