This is an I-Heart podcast.

You are listening to the Dan Patrick Show on Fox Sports Radio.

It is an unauthorized biography of Aaron Rogers, Ian O'Connor, sports writer New York Times best-selling author,

and the new book is Out of the Darkness, The Mystery of Aaron Rogers.

Why Aaron Rogers?

Well, it starts with Vince Lombardi. Vince Lombardi coached my high school. It was the only head coaching job he ever had before the Green Bay Packers. And he lived eight houses away from me in

Anguwood, New Jersey. And so I was always fascinated by the Packer Mystique and thought I had a Packer's book inside of me, so I guess this is the one.

But Aaron, from a distance, I always found him to be compelling, mysterious, intriguing.

He got traded into my backyard. I was working on a LeBron James bio, and I pivoted away from it to Aaron because I think he's a fascinating

character and I thought the marriage of him and this Charlie Brown franchise in New York

would make for a great story. So far hasn't been so great. We'll see how it plays out this year,

but that's why I took the project on. How do you avoid preconceived opinions notions of Aaron Rogers?

It's not easy, but I was determined to go into this open-minded. And I think some of his friends

early on, I ended up talking to 250 people. As Aaron said, I reached out to 500 and a half called me back.

That's about right. And a lot of his friends,

I think early on and close associates were concerned that I had an agenda. That frankly, and one of

his friends told me this, that you're a media guy from New York, probably liberal looking to destroy

Aaron in this book. And that couldn't be further from the truth. I had absolutely no agenda whatsoever.

And I wanted to be open-minded about the vaccine, his stance on that and everything else,

including the conspiracy theories. And so I think I warmed down over time. And that's the reason

that he agreed to sit down with me at his home in Malibu.

Unauthorized versus authorized. How different would this book be if it was authorized? Well, when it's authorized then, obviously it's that subject's truth as opposed to the truth or the pure truth.

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