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Jan. 19, 2024 - QAA

01:53:28

Episode 263: Aaron Rodgers feat Arif Hasan

We have to cover the most publicly pilled star quarterback in the NFL. The only problem is… neither Jake, Julian, nor Travis knows a damn thing about the world of professional football. Fortunately for us, we’ve enlisted the talents of NFL writer Arif Hasan. Arif is the author for Wide Left Post Substack - a newsletter covering both football and politics - who has followed Rodgers’ radicalization from his glory days as a Greenbay Packer, to insinuating that Julian’s favorite late-night host, Jimmy Kimmel, is one of the names on the Epstein client list. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAA Written by Arif Hasan (@ArifHasanNFL, wideleftpost.substack.com) Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz. https://qanonanonymous.com Sources: https://archive.ph/4H09S https://archive.ph/aI9b5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States https://twitter.com/Sportico/status/1743273590366032283 https://www.profootballnetwork.com/pat-mcafee-signs-multi-year-deal-with-espn/ https://leaflicker.com/nfl/leagues/208012/players https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/aaron-rodgers-denounces-green-bay-fan-for-prejudiced-comment-during-moment-of-silence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCnoN-qEhuc https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/sports/football/nfl-says-penalty-on-chiefs-husain-abdullah-for-praying-was-a-mistake.html https://andscape.com/features/aaron-rodgers-takes-a-sledgehammer-to-kaepernick-myth/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK8P7aWUvmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3JU_oAEinQ https://twitter.com/ProFootballTalk/status/1456729926023921669 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7108a4-h.pdf https://www.businessinsider.com/nfl-doctor-data-on-covid-19-infections-in-vaccinated-players-2021-11 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/12/21/fact-check-unvaccinated-still-much-more-likely-die-covid-19/10923335002/ https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2788225-qb-shea-patterson-ready-to-be-michigans-savior-after-escaping-ole-miss-wreckage https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2023/11/michigans-jim-harbaugh-has-a-new-stance-on-chickens.html https://www.inquirer.com/eagles/desean-jackson-eagles-anti-semitic-instagram-posts-adolph-hitler-louis-farrakhan-jewish-coronavirus-vaccine-20200707.html https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/12/jersey-city-shooting-who-black-hebrew-israelites/4408073002/ https://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/la-sp-rams-hard-knocks-episode-two-recap-william-hayes-jared-goff-20160816-snap-story.html https://deadspin.com/is-pete-carroll-a-9-11-truther-513149713 https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/30155009/karaoke-trivia-frat-parties-tales-aaron-rodgers-inner-weirdness https://youtu.be/4Ob-lKTDwUE?t=4176 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/mid/NIHMS116241/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULt9LZ3l9iY https://werdsmith.com/genesology/dYybP3bH6asha https://twitter.com/MythinformedMKE/status/1631418882693971971 https://twitter.com/DavidBakhtiari/status/1631647886332100610 https://twitter.com/PatMcAfeeShow/status/1745229186325684362 https://youtu.be/P6ZOdJ5A5Ck?t=463 https://frontofficesports.com/aaron-rodgers-appearances-on-the-pat-mcafee-show-done-now/

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	What's up, QAA listeners?
	The fun games have begun.
	I found a way to connect to the internet.
	I'm sorry, boy.
	Welcome, listeners, to the 263rd chapter of the QAA podcast, the Aaron Rodgers episode.
	As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Arif Hasan, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
	Here at the QAA podcast, we all know a lot about what I call American football.
	From the departure of Will Belichick, to the racist team getting beaten by the other slightly less racist team after the big game was delayed due to rain, we make sure to stay deeply informed about earpiece stoppage time concussion the sport.
	Even though we know pretty much everything there is to know about football, sometimes people will write in and ask us to cover a specific figure often enough to force our hand into providing extra coverage.
	One such figure is player Aaron Rodgers, who keeps making headlines for his public statements that are just pill to the gills.
	So instead of doing the Herculean work of researching the NFL, finding out about it, who this guy is, then documenting his descent into madness, we just reached out to Arif Hasan, the author of Wide Left, a newsletter about the NFL and its intersection with politics and culture.
	You may remember his excellent coverage of critical race theory on episode 150 of this very podcast.
	Additionally, Jake has written a probably unhinged story we'll be enjoying as dessert.
	But before that, Arif, welcome back as a guest writer.
	Hey, thanks for having me.
	Honestly, I shouldn't feel very surprised to be here because if someone had asked me if it made sense to invite an NFL reporter onto a podcast about conspiracy theories, I wouldn't have even hesitated in saying yes.
	Like, it goes deep, right?
	Nevertheless, I'm surprised to be here and I appreciate you having me here.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, you're finally gonna inform us what's on those clipboards.
	What are they writing?
	What's written on those dang clipboards?
	It's gotta be, like, where the children are stored, who's drinking adrenochrome, etc.
	Does anybody go for the extra point anymore?
	Is that even a thing?
	God damn it.
	It's all a work.
	Does Travis know any more than me and Jake?
	Cause I know Jake.
	Oh, I know nothing.
	I know nothing.
	I know more about rugby than I do about American football.
	I mean, I used to watch the NFL.
	I watched the Chargers during the Philip Rivers era.
	I mean, yeah, obviously they never, never did very well, but Philip Rivers, he was a, it was a very fun to watch.
	He was a tough player.
	Until that entire team died because they charged off a cliff.
	It was very unfortunate, unusual decision on their part.
	Rivers actually almost could have, like, there's not enough material for Rivers to have his own episode, but there's like, there's some like threads to pull on Rivers.
	He's a weird guy.
	It's like 10 kids fucking punishing his body with a miserable offensive line season after season to pay for as many, many children.
	Yeah, and like a minivan that like when the team moved he wanted to stay so he had a minivan with like a film installed so he could work on the way to the facility and not have to deal with his kids.
	Beautiful stuff.
	I respect it.
	I'm kind of wondering now if like real football or soccer as the Americans call it is like the less Pilled sport?
	Because I've heard a million things about basketball.
	I know baseball is full of some pretty wacky people.
	Definitely the fighting sports are all insane.
	But, yeah, I don't hear so many stories about, like, big soccer stars, uh, you know, just making a bizarre series of public statements.
	Now, I'm sure someone will write in and correct me.
	Well, yeah, because the conspiracies are contained within the game, you know, which ref is rigged and all of that stuff.
	My experience with football basically begins... I mean, I had a Jim McMahon action figure when I was growing up because you had these things.
	Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.
	I don't question that at all.
	Okay, Arif, take us away, baby.
	Yeah, so, I mean, we're only here mostly because one NFL player picked an extremely public fight with a bafflingly well-liked late-night comedian.
	Yeah, I don't know who to pick in this fight.
	I really don't like either.
	Yeah, I mean, like, I think as it emerges, it's like, okay, I, like, critical support for Jimmy Kimmel, I think is the, is the direction I move in on this one.
	But very critical, right?
	Like, very, like, I, this, my support only extends so far.
	But, like, the, the benefit of this kind of fight is that it made people aware of how conspiracy builds.
	One of the most well-known figures in football, Aaron Rodgers, is.
	So even as people have begun to learn about Aaron Rodgers, they don't really have a lot of context for how deep the rabbit hole goes and where he might lead them if he continues to get platformed by the most popular punter to ever play in the NFL.
	Yeah, yeah, before we talk about what Aaron Rodgers said or who Pat McAfee is and how we can platform Rodgers, we should probably talk about who Aaron Rodgers is, and for that we need to talk football.
	So while people might understand that football is the dominant sport in America, they may not realize how important or dominant of a cultural institution it is.
	In the month of November, the top 12 most watched television broadcasts were NFL programs.
	The only non-football event this month, we're recording in January, to beat the Fox Football After Show, that is, the show they play after football games, is the Golden Globes.
	If you go to the Wikipedia page for the most watched television broadcasts in U.S.
	history, they have three color codes.
	One for news events, like the moon landing.
	One for primetime programming, like the last episode of MASH.
	And one for non-football related sports events, like a Muhammad Ali fight.
	The default color, gray, is for football.
	Amazing.
	Yeah.
	It's 23 of the 30 most watched broadcasts in U.S.
	history, and I need to emphasize that it really broadcasts events, because if you split it up by broadcasts, the moon landing would not be number one because it was aired across multiple networks.
	But Wikipedia has grouped all of the moon landing coverage into one.
	Appropriately, I think.
	And coincidentally, Aaron Rodgers doesn't believe that the moon landing is real.
	Yeah, no, that'll come up.
	There's a lot of like, you know, a lot of these events.
	I don't know if he believes that the Muhammad Ali fights happened.
	I don't know, man.
	Like, it's... We just go through the list of the broadcasts.
	They're holograms!
	Yeah, he doesn't like competition.
	He's like, everything that's in that top 30 is fake except for our stuff.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, whenever you see a list of the top-rated television programs in a quarter or in a year, they're making a decision to exclude football in order to show you the list.
	It's the only way to do it.
	In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched television broadcasts were NFL football.
	Another three were college football.
	Another one was the show airing immediately following the Super Bowl.
	Yeah.
	Only the State of the Union ranked 21st, the Thanksgiving Day Parade ranked 45th, and the Oscars ranked 60th managed to crack the list outside of football.
	Wow.
	When are they going to get Ricky Gervais to host football?
	I think it's in the works.
	I think that now that we know how important it is to cover cancel culture, I think that Ricky Gervais has, you know, moved to the top of the list.
	Absolutely.
	And when are we going to see him flattened by about 10 burly men in helmets?
	Oh, that happy accident, I think, is an inevitability for sure.
	It's a question of when, I suppose.
	But yeah, in a dominant cultural landscape of football, there are dominant players, of course.
	Aaron Rodgers is one of them.
	In the last 12 years, only three players have won the most prestigious individual award in the sport, the Most Valuable Player Award, multiple times.
	Patrick Mahomes.
	Tom Brady.
	And Aaron Rodgers.
	Rodgers has tied with Peyton Manning for having won the award more than anyone else in NFL history as a four-time NFL MVP.
	And his 2011 season was one of the best quarterbacking seasons we've ever seen.
	And back then, the conversation about Rodgers was about whether or not he could replace Joe Montana as the greatest quarterback of all time.
	It turned out to be Tom Brady.
	Looks like in the future it could become Patrick Mahomes.
	But for now, Rodgers remains a premier player in the NFL, even at 40 years old.
	As for Pat McAfee, that might be, surprisingly, a longer story, but it's still pretty relevant.
	He was the best punter in Colt's history, I guess, but the thing that stands out is that he's, like, an unusually eccentric specialist.
	And specialist is the term football people use for punters, kickers, and long snappers.
	Okay, those are just fish to me, but... No, these are the guys who funnel the ball backwards to the QB, right?
	That's the snapper.
	And then the punter and the kicker, you're either doing field goals or you're punting at the exchange of sides.
	Who's going to carry the ball up for hopefully a touchdown or a field goal, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Punting is a method of giving the ball away in the, I guess, the least disadvantageous way possible in theory.
	And, like, it's weird, right?
	All of these positions are, like, really highly specialized.
	You can only have 53 people on a roster.
	And so the idea that you would devote, like, one position on the roster entirely to something like a long snapper is strange.
	But when you think about, like, the skill set, it makes sense.
	They snap the ball back on punts and kicks, but not during regular plays.
	That's the center.
	The center is the one who does the quarterback center exchange.
	And it's kind of a lot to explain long snapping, but the ability to fire a football backwards while crouched on all fours for a distance of 14 yards, that's 42 feet, accurately and on time, 1.25 seconds, and then have the ability to handle a 280 pound human trying to get past you is a pretty rare skill.
	And the person who normally has the ball back to the quarterback isn't specialized enough for it.
	So there's an entire spot on the roster reserved for long snappers.
	So these guys are looking like that Peter Griffin Fortnite model or something.
	They have a very specialized physique.
	10 years ago, like colleges started offering scholarships to long snappers because of how important the position became.
	And now there's like long snapping clinics and camps.
	So eventually we'll have a stereotypical long snapper physique before too long.
	Yeah.
	Well, and you can all, and you can tell it's important because they always talk about the snap, you know, on the handful of football games that I've watched throughout my lifetime, there's always comments about like, Ooh, and that's a tough snap.
	You know, if you see the ball sort of come like off, Yes!
	into the guys. I mean there was a whole bit about it in Ace Ventura, the laces
	out. Yes! You know you need to prime yourself to get a good kick or punt or
	whatever. Like that ball needs to arrive into your hands as perfectly as possible
	because you have such little time to then execute another you know another
	move. So I understand and respect the importance of that position. Okay.
	Yeah, it's nuts.
	Like, the thing that you described, Ines Ventura, that's a problem of a long-stepper rotating the ball four times instead of three and a half times.
	It's, like, insanely precise.
	Whoa, that's crazy!
	Yeah!
	So yeah, a very important position, but also, like, football players and coaches don't view them as football players.
	So they're asked to keep quiet.
	They're the least well-paid members of a roster most of the time.
	They're blamed for losses, but not credited for wins.
	So for context, specialists are generally so ignored that one commentator, Rich Eisen, started selling shirts that said, punters are people too.
	Like, that's kind of like where you're at, right?
	So a vocal specialist is often out of the league pretty quickly.
	That happened to Marquette King.
	That happened to Chris Cluey.
	But McAfee was talented enough to avoid that.
	And also, like, the way he was vocal was not, like, very, I guess, problematic.
	He was, like, celebrating really excellent punts, which is, again, like, unusual, but As a result of that, he ended up gaining fans, not losing them for, you know, his vocal celebrations, his surprisingly strong tackling for a punter.
	That was like a notable feature of who he was as a player.
	And he's always been interested in theater and the theater of wrestling specifically.
	He joined a local promotion while he was a punter and kicker.
	Actually, he played both positions at West Virginia.
	So that's just kind of always who he's been.
	He's very into kind of like these very large You know, celebrations, really big shows of, like, his personality.
	And shortly before he retired from the NFL, he tried his hand at stand-up comedy and was moderately successful, from what I could tell.
	After his retirement, he started training with a professional wrestler.
	He's still a part of the WWE promotion, as far as I can tell.
	And he joined Barstool Sports, which, like, really matched his frat bro style.
	But he left Barstool very shortly afterwards because of concerns about their financial transparency.
	Fair enough, and struck out on his own, which turned out to be a really great decision for him.
	He started the Pat McAfee Show shortly after that and was on terrestrial and satellite radio for a while before hitting it really big on YouTube.
	He was already a pretty popular content creator for how gregarious and charismatic he was, and this only really boosted his profile and popularity.
	That exploded to the point where he had been able to negotiate big sponsorship deals, including seven-figure deals with gambling and fantasy outlets like FanDuel.
	So by June of 2020, the show's channel had 272 million total views.
	By May 2023, that figure exploded to 1.49 billion.
	That eventually landed him on ESPN, where he signed, reportedly, an eight-figure deal.
	So we know that he's pretty popular on ESPN.
	There's a recent dispute over the numbers that the Pat McAfee Show drew over the course of the year, a dispute driven by the controversy we'll talk about.
	But the low-end estimates were that his weekday viewers on average on ESPN were 302,000.
	Nielsen reports that in December, the show averaged 387,000 viewers.
	ESPN says that the show averages 403,000 viewers on top of that on YouTube.
	But I think they're combining, like looking through it, I think they're combining clips from full broadcasts with the full broadcasts themselves to get that per show number.
	The YouTube shorts.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's like, you know, if you're going to count like the 27 million you get from like the one story you have about Troy Polamalo, it's going to expand the number a little bit.
	I also noticed when I was watching clips of Pat McAfee is one thing that bothered me about him is he's standing up like a little boy in a high chair, you know, who's done with his meal.
	He's trying to get away from the table and he's like three feet away from his microphone at all times.
	And I was just like, Oh, this really bothers Mike.
	His Mike etiquette really bothered me when I watched the show.
	But who am I?
	Not somebody that gets, you know, 1.49 billion views.
	So.
	Yeah, it's like it's very frenetic.
	Like I think he stands up because it injects some energy into the recording, you know, like the way the show operates.
	Everyone else is sitting down, by the way.
	He's like standing up and there's like six other dudes that he's just like friends with some guys and they're all on the podcast.
	It's like kind of weird.
	I don't know who these people are, but they all have like personalities and backstories and lore.
	So it's fine, I guess.
	But they're all sitting down, and he's just like up, just standing, bouncing around.
	It's a lot of energy.
	Like you said, he's pretty far away from the mic, but he's like yelling all the time, so I guess it's fine, you know?
	But yeah, the total viewership from all of that, it's more than most news programs on CNN or MSNBC get on a daily show.
	So like in that sense, it's comparable in viewership, in total viewership when you combine YouTube and Nielsen, to The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer or The Lead with Jake Tapper.
	So it's like pretty big.
	It's not Fox News big.
	I'm sorry, Wolf.
	I can't put you in that category, but it's pretty big, I think.
	Mm-hmm.
	So yeah, that's like the context for how Aaron Rodgers got to say what he said on ESPN.
	But that's not the context for how he got to where he was as a conspiracy enthusiast, which is kind of important to the events leading up to the moment where Rodgers seemed to imply that former Man Show host and current Late Night Talk Show host Jimmy Kimmel was a pedophile.
	Which, honestly, I would have probably, if I were Rogers, I would have just gone, like, to the Man Show and not, like, made up some stuff about the Epstein list, but we'll talk about that.
	Yeah, Jimmy Kimmel being a pedophile is something that I first heard screamed at the Jimmy Kimmel building at the Save the Children rally, the QAnon rally.
	They were all gathered in front of his, like, show building just going, Jimmy Kimmel is a pedophile!
	So that's cool.
	That's great.
	That's like the process for how to resolve that particular crime, I think.
	So I'm glad that they went through the proper channels.
	What's strange is that I don't like love that this is the direction that we've headed in.
	I don't love doing this.
	Though he was like a star quarterback for the franchise that was intense rivals with the one I grew up cheering for and eventually ended up covering.
	There have been moments throughout Rogers' career where I felt like he might actually be like a pretty good guy.
	In 2015, after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, so you might remember the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I believe, in January of that year.
	There was also another series of terrorist attacks in November that killed, I want to say over a hundred people, 126, something like that.
	The NFL held a moment of silence before the games because of those attacks.
	And before a Packers game, fans evidently yelled out chants filled with anti-Muslim sentiment, including reportedly death to Muslims.
	And Rodgers called out those fans in his postgame presser and made national news doing so.
	And though I'd stopped believing in Islam by then, it touched me as somebody who was nevertheless subject to anti-Muslim hate.
	Yeah, I think it's important to do things like that.
	We're connected.
	As a world.
	As a world!
	That's why we are where we are.
	I must admit though, I was very disappointed with whoever the fan was who made a comment
	that I thought was really inappropriate during the moment of silence.
	It's that kind of prejudicial ideology that I think puts us in the position that we're
	in today as a world.
	As a world.
	As a world.
	That's why we are where we are.
	I would suggest a more global analysis, but for an NFL player, I'm pretty comfortable
	with that.
	That kind of pushback, that's not necessarily a given in the NFL.
	A year prior, the league penalized a Muslim player for praying in celebration after a touchdown, despite having no issue with Tim Tebow and every Christian football player thereafter praying after touchdowns.
	Yeah.
	The NFL ended up apologizing for penalizing Hussein Abdullah, but it's not a wonderful sign for like the way that the NFL tends to treat these issues.
	Right, considering I feel like in every single NFL game I've ever watched, you see somebody going like... You know, pointing to the sky.
	That's you, God.
	Right.
	You know, after every single play.
	And it's like, I think I'm pretty sure I know which God they're pointing up to.
	There's not a ton of mysteries here, yeah.
	The Prophet Muhammad stepping in the way.
	No, not you!
	No!
	Move aside!
	Yeah, literally like every single, every single after, you know, after game interview or halftime interview where, look, let's be honest, there's not a lot to say.
	There's not a lot to, and it's not just football, every sport.
	It's, it's, you know, it's basically some version of like, you know, um, you know, just a lot of faith in my teammates, you know, everybody worked together, uh, really well, you know, we, you know, we were struggling, uh, but the team came together, you know, made a couple of really good plays.
	I mean, and then inevitably, You know, they're always like, you know, I want to thank God and I want to thank, you know, the Most High, you know, praise to the Most High.
	It's like almost every interview is like that.
	None of those guys are getting penalized, I'm guessing.
	No.
	No, no, that's strongly encouraged.
	The mantra in football is faith, family, football.
	And they imply that that's the order that you should care about these things.
	But, you know, I've followed football for long enough to know that it's probably actually the reverse.
	But, you know, that's the image they're trying to project, right?
	Rogers also argued that Colin Kaepernick was unfairly blackballed by the league after Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem in protest of police brutality in 2016.
	Rogers wasn't a latecomer to this stance either, having made this point at ESPN Magazine in 2017, far sooner than almost any other white athlete did, and to the best of my recollection, he called out owners before any other white football player did.
	Right?
	So, like, I had, like, reason to believe that this guy was fine.
	Sure.
	Yeah.
	And that's kind of what makes him being, like, a really annoying asshat, like, really disappointing.
	And I want to talk about that, too, because, like, so this part that I'm going to talk about very loosely has to do with Aaron Rodgers and conspiracies and is more like a venting session for, like, me personally about how Rodgers annoys me.
	So you're going to have to indulge me, I guess.
	Good.
	This is my favorite kind of rant.
	Perfect.
	An indulgent one.
	Then you're in for a treat.
	So, like, if I was gonna justify it, it would be because, like, Rogers' history of, like, lying and distortion demonstrate that he's an unreliable narrator motivated by pettiness, so that's, like, kind of the veneer I'll put over this part.
	But yeah, let's talk about how Rogers became a New York Jet after becoming one of the greatest quarterbacks in Packers history.
	If he's one of those, why did they trade him to the New York Jets?
	Well, It kind of goes back all the way to, I mean, even before 2020, all the way back to like 2016.
	He had issues with the way the Packers invested resources and how they didn't consult him on roster moves.
	As kind of like a reminder, it's not normal for quarterbacks to be consulted on roster moves, even really good ones.
	But what really set him off was when they drafted his eventual replacement in Jordan Love.
	And yeah, honestly, that's a little bit understandable.
	I actually don't hold that against him.
	But after that, he was asked about his future.
	He said numerous times that he wanted to remain a Packer and was I'm just unsure if they wanted him to be a Packer.
	But at the same time, like at the exact same time, the Packers were sending clear signals that they wanted Rodgers.
	with the president of the team, Mark Murphy, saying stuff like,
	"There's no way in heck that Aaron is not going to be on the Packers. I mean,
	he's going to be the MVP of the league, he might have had his best year ever,
	he's our unquestioned leader, and you know, we're not idiots."
	This, to me, is an unambiguous signal.
	I don't know how else to interpret that.
	The general manager made some pretty similar statements, but despite that, Rogers intentionally missed workouts for the first time in his history with the team, incurring nearly $100,000 in fines.
	And in order to get him back to the team, the Packers were forced to offer a series of concessions to get Rogers back.
	I remind you, Rogers publicly said multiple times he wanted to return, and the team said they wanted him to return.
	But a series of concessions had to be made, and these conditions required that they give Rogers an out, including an agreement to void the 2023 season.
	So Rogers needed a contract to end early for him to return in a Packers uniform.
	He has another MVP season, the 2022 season, And he signs a three-year contract extension with the team, a record-breaking deal at the time in terms of average annual salary.
	He says he, quote, definitely planned to finish his career with the Packers following his contract, and because of that salary, the Packers are forced to trade away his top receiver and draft three new receivers to the team.
	Rodgers adapts pretty poorly to these new receivers, berates them, and then has the worst season of his career.
	During that season, he injures his thumb, and the quarterback the Packers drafted in 2020 gets playing time.
	Immediately after the season, Rodgers is asked about his future with the team again, and says he'll have to wait to give an answer.
	He says the Packers told him that they will wait on his decision, something that they expressed publicly as well.
	And he says he wants to play, whether it's with the Packers or someone else.
	So, long story short, the Packers let him decide whether or not he wants to remain with the Packers.
	Fine.
	He says then, after that, that he's about 90% retired and needs to go to a darkness retreat and remove himself from communication.
	Okay.
	He's going through it.
	And then he says it's, quote, interesting that the Packers are having conversations about a potential future without him.
	He's being messy, right?
	Like, he's stoking drama where there doesn't need to be.
	And he's out of communication for a week.
	The Packers say that they attempt to contact him before his darkness retreat, which I should talk about a little bit just to give people some context.
	Like, it might tell us a little bit about Rogers, too.
	It's a 300-square-foot room in, like, western Oregon, in total darkness, where all electronic communication devices are banned.
	There's a bed, a bathroom, and a meditation mat on the floor, and you get your food through a slot in the door in order to prevent any light from coming in.
	The food is the only sign given to retreat visitors that time is passing.
	You get it, like, once every 24 hours.
	So, this is like jail.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's not locked.
	When someone pointed this out to Rogers, he's like, well, you can leave.
	And it's like, well, okay.
	Yeah.
	But you don't.
	So you just, you're like, what if I was, I need to go to jail for like a week.
	Yeah.
	Awesome.
	For reasons.
	Right.
	Awesome.
	Yeah.
	So it's like, it's like a meditation retreat, I guess, sensory deprivation on steroids, which it's a little unusual.
	I guess it's not alarming, but it's an interesting choice when like your primary complaint with the Packers has been that they have been communicating with you poorly.
	Right?
	The retreat occurred just two weeks before the end of the NFL League year, when contracts expire and you can sign free agents.
	It's one of the few enormous team-building deadlines that truly exists in the NFL offseason.
	And he just leaves, like, right before.
	They can't contact him.
	Right?
	So, the Packers general manager, you know, they ask him, like, hey, Brian Guttekunst, like, what's the deal with Aaron Rodgers?
	Is he coming back or not?
	He said he hasn't had contact with Rogers since Rogers indicated that he needed time to make a decision.
	He says that until Rogers gets back to him that all options are on the table, which is, I think, a pretty reasonable thing to say in that circumstance.
	My quarterback is in a cave.
	I don't know what to tell you, right?
	Yeah.
	So, because he's still under contract with the Packers, they need to give him permission to speak with the New York Jets.
	They give him that permission, and Rodgers meets with the Jets a week later.
	He holds court on the Pat McAfee Show, where he bafflingly says he is not announcing anything before he announces for the first time that he wants to be a New York Jet for the 2023 season.
	It's, yeah, it's very strange and you actually don't hear his decision for about 15 minutes because what ends up happening is that the first 15 minutes are, uh, it's a bitter rant full of grievance where he claims he's not bitter and doesn't carry any grievances.
	Of course.
	Yeah, he complained that the Packers didn't have any discussions with him when that was his fault.
	He complained that the Packers made a decision before he entered the retreat, which there is no evidence of and has been refuted by multiple reports.
	He complained about the attention that he's received while he was drawing out the process through multiple leaks, podcast appearances, and show appearances on the McAfee Show.
	Like, it's the attention he ordered.
	Like, that's what he's complaining about.
	He spent 50 minutes just describing his history with Green Bay before announcing the decision, and he took shots at specific members of the Packers' personnel department.
	I mean, I love attention.
	Like, I don't mind anyone who loves attention.
	That's who I am.
	But I don't pretend that I hate it when I seek it out, right?
	Also, I kind of assume that his week in the cave was not a mentally peaceful one.
	It sounds like he was just mulling everything over and, you know, came out of there fucking fuming, not empty-minded and peaceful.
	I think that's a fair assumption.
	He apparently disagrees with this characterization.
	Yeah.
	He said, like, he came out of the cave with a new sense of purpose.
	You know, he no longer felt retired or whatever.
	He feels whole and full and full of love.
	Yeah.
	He wrote a book called My Struggle.
	Developed a newfound clarity on everything?
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah.
	All I know is that Rivers Cuomo did the same thing where he, uh, quarantined himself off
	in a dark room.
	He painted the windows black and sat in there for, I think it was like something like 72
	hours, something crazy.
	And um, and then he wrote Pinkerton.
	Oh, arguably like one of the best, uh, maybe the best Weezer album.
	He should do that way more often.
	All of this stuff sucks now.
	The cave can be good for some, and then for some you just sit there going, these motherfuckers, they don't respect me.
	They don't respect me and they're making decisions without me.
	I should be a part of those decisions.
	It's always good to have someone on the podcast who doesn't fully know Jake so that they can just be like, yeah, everything he does now sucks.
	And not know that you're breaking a heart.
	Hey, I can- I can- Are you a Beverly Hills pork and beans guy?
	Is that what I'm hearing?
	No, I'm not a Beverly Hills pork and beans guy.
	I mean, I don't hate those songs as much as- but they're not- they're not what I go to.
	But I am a modern- a modern Weezer apologist in that I think that- At least on each of the new albums you are getting at least one to two great Weezer tracks.
	It's not like Blue, it's not like Pinkton or even Maladroit or Red Album where you have the majority of the album is really, really good.
	But, you know, I'm always excited to see what they do next.
	Once again, the connection to what we are talking about is that he also isolated himself briefly.
	Yes!
	That's a connection!
	Aaron Rodgers came out and was a grump, and Rivers came out and wrote a masterpiece.
	I mean, you know, it's... Rivers came out and he was like, these fucking teenage girls...
	Pinkerton's not the one where In My Garage or El Scorcho are on, right?
	El Scorcho's on Pinkerton.
	In the Garage is Blue.
	Blue album.
	Okay, so he came out of his darkness retreat like kinda racist.
	Arif, we have to move on.
	Okay.
	Poor Jake is wagging his head back and forth doing the like... Goddamn you half Japanese.
	Yeah, yeah, well...
	Yeah.
	Okay, so to continue the Rodgers pettiness tour, a report was released that Rodgers had a wish list of players that he wanted to sign, a list of players that the Jets did eventually sign most of, and those players are not very good.
	There was a reason that they were still on the market.
	The only reason the Jets would sign them is if he wanted them to.
	They even traded away better players like Elijah Moore to the Browns to make room for the players that Rodgers wanted.
	But despite this obvious evidence that Rogers had a few players that he wanted to add to the team, people like 40-year-old tight end Mercedes Lewis, he denied the report and was mad at the reporting, mischaracterizing it and criticizing the nature of reporting for not giving him a voice.
	The thing is, each reporter that reported it contacted him for comment on the story, and he told them to lose his number.
	He willingly gave up his opportunity to put the report in context, and then complained about a lack of context.
	This is where I relate, because I'm also a bit of a messy bitch.
	Like, I've gotten it under control, but I can see myself slightly here.
	Well, okay, but like, I don't know, like, do you outright lie?
	So he mischaracterizes the report here.
	Like I said, I got it under control, but I also don't get paid that much.
	Maybe the money would have made me a little stir-crazy too.
	That could be, especially if you're coming out of a darkness retreat, right?
	Like, who knows?
	Absolutely, yeah.
	But yeah, so he, like, mischaracterizes this report, right?
	He says that he didn't hand a literal pen and paper list of players to the Jets and hold them hostage, he didn't issue them an ultimatum, but that's, like, not what the reporting said.
	All it said is that he wanted certain players on the roster.
	He, like, invented a grievance around a report that didn't even make him look bad, and used it as an example of how the media was out to get him.
	Mhm.
	And he's done this, like, multiple times before.
	Like, another example was a previous report that when he was frustrated with that new set of younger receivers that he had in Green Bay, he got mad at them for not understanding, like, the secret on-field hand signals that he would refuse to teach them during training camp.
	He called it fake news, but he didn't tell us, like, what parts are fake, because, like, some of this is just, like, obviously true.
	Like, he definitely uses secret hand signals.
	All quarterbacks use secret hand signals on the field.
	That's, like, part of the deal, right?
	He said the report was full of anonymous sources, and it, like, it wasn't.
	There were many sources that were, like, named, and some of them, like, still play for the Packers.
	Like, this is, like, the Kayla Kaler's report at The Athletic.
	It's very, like, a well-written The names are on there, like they're quoted.
	So it's just like weird to call it anonymous sourcing when he could have just like called Romeo Dobbs and been like, hey, what's up with this?
	Why did you do that?
	But no, it's the media's fault, of course.
	So after that, he goes to the Jets and plays for four snaps of the first game before going down with injury.
	He tore his Achilles tendon and was theoretically out for the season.
	And for any other player, we wouldn't use the word theoretically.
	An Achilles tear is a season-ending injury.
	But Rogers heavily suggested that he would recover faster than any other player in NFL history with the aid of dolphin mating noises.
	Okay, wrong team, buddy.
	And in the division, too.
	Just crazy.
	That's so cool.
	Yeah, aren't they supposed to squish the fish?
	I think...
	I think we all have attempted to heal ourselves with the aid of dolphin mating noises, but to make such a strong claim, now that's just step too far.
	And he wasn't joking?
	He said this in, you know, in all seriousness?
	So like I watched back, of course it was on the Pat McAfee Show, so I watched back that clip to see if he was being serious, because like sometimes they'll just like talk shit, right?
	Yeah.
	And at first Pat McAfee is joking.
	Right?
	Because he's talking about, like, dolphin therapy in general.
	And I thought Pat McAfee brought it up, and then Aaron Rodgers was kind of playing along with the bit, so I wasn't going to include this in, like, the script, right?
	But then Aaron Rodgers was like, no, seriously.
	Actually.
	I mean, this guy might be afflicted with dating someone in a large felt hat.
	Like, it feels he's slowly sliding off the edge of a large felt hat.
	Into astrology and dolphin mating noises.
	So okay, so his dating life has been like a big part of this conversation And I included like a whole in the original script I included like a whole bit about who he dated and then I deleted all of it because I don't think it's all that relevant because No, we shouldn't be blaming these poor felt hat women because well, he's engaged to Shailene Woodley who is no longer here.
	We fucking no longer See Jay, we were not gonna mention their names Okay I liked her.
	I thought she was good.
	No, we don't.
	We don't then rate the women.
	What was that?
	That Meryl Streep show about Skarsgård.
	He murdered somebody.
	Okay, nope. Nope, nope, nope.
	Or maybe they murdered him.
	Okay, okay.
	Alright, we're going back to Aaron Rodgers who, now empowered with dolphin mating noises, is attacking his rehab with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
	One detail about the NFL that's important to understand is that when a player is likely to be injured for more than four games, teams can retain their rights but take them off their roster so an injured player does not exhaust the 53% roster limit.
	It's called Inter Reserve, or IR, and Rodgers was placed on IR to make room for another player on the roster.
	The Jets ended up doing pretty poorly without him and cycled through a number of quarterbacks in his absence, and that's pretty normal.
	It's a bit of a shame given how good the rest of their roster was, but that's like, neither here nor there.
	Importantly, as the Jets closed out the season, they had a small chance of making the playoffs.
	So the Jets took Rodgers off of IR late in the season, even though there was no chance he'd be able to play with his injury.
	But it did feed the comeback narrative Rogers wanted to entertain and gave him credibility in undermining modern medicine.
	I'm now imagining that he actually puts his feet in a tank full of dolphins that are fucking like he's not he's not just listening to this on a little speaker like he is he has a tank of dolphins and he's like dangling his feet over the edge.
	So he did talk about this a little bit.
	That part was definitely joking about how he would approach making sure that there were dolphin mating noises near him.
	But Pat McAfee appropriately told him to be careful about that because dolphins are not particularly careful about consent and might go after his leg.
	Okay, wow.
	So they're just building.
	They're just a couple of joke craftsmen there.
	Yeah, no, they're like, they're really wonderful comedians.
	I told you he was a stand-up comedian, right?
	But yeah, so Rogers wants to undermine modern medicine.
	He wants to feed this comeback narrative about this unprecedented return from an Achilles tear.
	What it means, though, of course, is that in order to get him back on the roster, they had to, like, fire a guy.
	Like, in order to entertain his delusion, they like, they just fired fullback Nick Bodden.
	They were like, hey, 53-man roster limit.
	Rodgers is coming back.
	Bye!
	Like, it's just like, which I think is like nuts, right?
	Yeah.
	But yeah, they did it because he's the starting quarterback and they want to make him happy.
	And he never suited up.
	He had a couple of practices, but the Jets were eliminated from playoff contention.
	And so they shut down this like weird experiment.
	So he never took the field.
	But that kind of gives us a little bit of an understanding of who he is and how he understands medicine.
	Okay, but surely when the vaccine comes along, he'll be normal about it?
	Ah boy, do I have some stories for you.
	I'm so glad you asked.
	So yeah, that gives us an opening to talk about that.
	So we can actually rewind a little bit then to when he was back on the Packers and to that incredible 2021 season that he played so well in.
	It would be pretty unfair to say that the vaccine controversy put the Pat McAfee Show on the map, but It certainly elevated McAfee's profile for better or worse, so it is like part of everybody's story here.
	And already, Rodgers' appearances on the Pat McAfee Show were kind of like appointment viewing.
	Like, so athlete access has increased pretty massively in the past 10 years with podcasts and YouTube shows all hosted by the athletes.
	Rodgers' appearances carried a bit more weight than other media from football players given his star power, how much more out there he was, how he lied to Packers media.
	As well as his increasing dissatisfaction with the team that he was on.
	It was like we've all said, he's messy.
	And we love to watch messiness.
	In order to get to that thing about him lying to Packers media, we have to lay out a pretty clear timeline for Rodgers and his interaction with vaccination status.
	So, in 2021, NFL players were required to go through a stringent set of protocols in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included a separate track for vaccinated players and unvaccinated players.
	Vaccinated players test once a week when they are active and do not have to wait for the result of the test before they can enter the team facility.
	So they can show up that morning, walk into the testing facility, get a test, and walk immediately in, and then 15 to 30 minutes later, there's going to be an alert on their phone telling them if they tested negative or positive.
	If they have days off or they miss testing, they need to test immediately upon return and then wait for a result, but otherwise there's no change.
	Unvaccinated players must test every single day instead of every week, and they may not enter the facility until the test returns a negative result.
	If they have days off or missed testing, they must wait five days before they can enter the facility, and they still must test every single day until they have five days of negative tests.
	There are different media and facility protocols for vaccinated and unvaccinated players, as you would expect.
	Media access is limited for unvaccinated players, and unvaccinated players must wear masks throughout the facility.
	And the six-foot distancing requirements, they apply to unvaccinated players only.
	It also happens to be the case that if a player contracts COVID during the season, that they would sit out different lengths of time depending on their vaccination status.
	So any unvaccinated players who are deemed close contacts with a positive test They automatically have to sit out as well for a small period of time regardless of their test results.
	Vaccinated players who are close contacts only have to sit out practices and games if they test positive.
	So again, if you're unvaccinated, it's pretty clear and obvious based off of like a disease event whether or not you'd be able to be able to play.
	There's a big competitive advantage to being vaccinated in addition to the moral component that we've all kind of assigned to vaccination status, which, fine.
	As a result, the media asked players, especially quarterbacks, the most important player on the field, about their vaccination status.
	On August 26, 2021, Aaron Rodgers was asked that question.
	This is what he said.
	Are you vaccinated and what's your stance on vaccinations?
	Yeah, I've been in the eyes.
	You know, there's a lot of a lot of conversation around it around the league and a lot of guys who have made statements and I made statements.
	Owners have made statements.
	You know, there's guys on the team that haven't been vaccinated.
	I think it's a personal decision.
	I'm not going to judge those guys.
	There's guys have been vaccinated.
	Contracted COVID so.
	It's an interesting issue.
	I think we're going to see played out the entire season.
	I'm not sure what they're going to do with, you know, the testing schedule.
	I know that talking to J. C. The P. A. Had talked about testing every single day for everybody.
	The league, obviously, I think, shot that down or we didn't want to do that.
	I don't know if that was financially incentivized or whatnot, but yeah, it'd be interesting to see
	what happens if we can, uh, you know, if the protocols change at some point, it's obviously
	something that's, that's moving. It's, it's, uh, you know, the protocols and the outline guidelines
	are kind of changing day to day. I don't want to be like a body language expert, but my man
	is acting shady as fuck, dude.
	Yeah, he's like, you could tell he's sort of in the midst of becoming pilled.
	And I think it's worth noting that there's a direct correlation into how conspiratorial somebody's mindset is, you know, in regards to how much they look like Jared Leto.
	Yeah.
	Yes, and how low they wear their cap, and if their head hangs up or down.
	In this case, down, low cap, shifty eyes.
	Yeah, right.
	So yeah, I think we do have the benefit of hindsight here.
	But yeah, he, uh, he was not acting 100%, uh, I would say trustworthy.
	But, you know, he said yes, right?
	At the very beginning, like, you know, are you vaccinated?
	Yes, I've been immunized, right?
	And then he also, like, on top of that, the reason I wanted to play, like, the full clip, like, two reasons.
	He said he wouldn't judge people who are unvaccinated, which, like, clearly positions himself as someone who is.
	Right?
	And then, like, he gives a long answer, which is a pretty good way to prevent follow-up questions, right?
	He very clearly wants to make it seem as if he's vaccinated without technically lying about it.
	So headlines go out, headlines, you can, like, search them up, like, to this day, if you use, like, a Google date search, that went out telling the world that he was vaccinated.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	He wasn't.
	This was a lie.
	That's awesome.
	Yeah.
	It's, it's very like, thanks dude.
	So no matter how much he wants to get around by what he thinks was like a really clever play on words, he intended to mislead people, saw that they were misled and was like satisfied with the result.
	Which to me, like that's, that's a lie.
	We don't got to like work around technical definitions.
	So, he also got the Packers organization to, like, buy into this lie and keep up the illusion.
	So, while he was otherwise following the protocols for an unvaccinated player throughout the facility, whenever he was seen with the media, he would act as if he was a vaccinated player.
	So, he still met with the media, first of all, in person, without a mask, in violation of the policy.
	No unvaccinated player on the Packers, other than him, met with media in person.
	They all met with media over Zoom or Skype or whatever, much less without a mask.
	He wanted all the advantages.
	He wanted all the advantages of a vaccinated player.
	But he didn't take the vaccine!
	That's who he is.
	That's what he wanted.
	Also, isn't that like a little bit of disinformation if he says he's immunized, immunized or whatever?
	Like, I don't think that anybody was selling the idea that the vaccine makes you immune.
	It was just that it'll make your symptoms lighter and you'll have a, you'll have a tougher time contracting COVID.
	I don't know if there was ever, ever any dialogue saying, you know, you take this and you're immune forever.
	His interaction with what you just said is also fascinating, by the way.
	That comes up too.
	Oh, I'm sure.
	Yeah.
	So while the Packers are helping him prop up this lie, we find out about his real vaccination status on November 3rd, when Rodgers was ruled out for a Week 9 matchup against the Kansas City Chiefs.
	Given the timeline, vaccinated players would only be out for five days, or maybe at the time as soon as they return to consecutive negative tests.
	Unvaccinated players are out for a minimum of 10 days.
	The only way this could be dispositively true, that he would not be available for the game, is if he was unvaccinated.
	So we find out he's unvaccinated.
	So on November 5th, he gave an interview on the Pat McAfee Show explaining his side of the story and, you know, the reaction and why he didn't lie.
	So this is what he started off with.
	I realize I'm in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now.
	So before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I think I'd like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies that are out there about myself right now.
	Banger.
	Let's go.
	I love it.
	Cancel culture casket goes so hard.
	Yeah, woke mob, cancel culture.
	This man, if he was struggling with his pillidness in the first interview, then in this one, he has arrived.
	Yeah, full bore.
	He's ready.
	So yeah, he complained about, like throughout that interview, he complained about being silenced.
	He's perhaps the least silenced athlete in modern football.
	He not only can just call a press conference whenever he wants, he has a weekly television spot on ESPN, or had, we can get into that.
	He was on the Joe Rogan Experience, which means that he went from the most popular sports podcast in the United States to the most popular podcast in history.
	Not silenced, I would argue.
	And this is another trend we see constantly.
	There's people with massive platforms, like the top 001% of people who are able to get their voices broadcast to the world complained about being silenced.
	I just want one of these people to reckon with this, this idea that you somehow are not able to speak when you are the most listened to people on the planet Earth.
	It's nuts, like, so he talks about, like, cancel culture and being silenced, and I don't, like, I don't know what it means for Aaron Rodgers to be canceled, right?
	Like, it's always been true that, like, cancellation, like you said, almost never means what people want it to mean, but with Rodgers, it's the most true it's ever been.
	So many people have been cancelled and have never been materially impacted by it.
	It's really just like, in essence, you assign to yourself.
	Like, it's a way to signal, like, who you are now, right?
	Like, you know, your Netflix special called Triggered?
	Like, that's your post-cancellation, you know, Netflix title, right?
	So that's just like a cultural signal, right?
	And that's how Rogers uses it, right?
	Because what has changed for him, aside from earning hero status from, like, a bunch of anti-vaxxers?
	He still gets paid 40 to 50 million dollars a year in on-book salary, he still gets paid over a million a year by the Pat McAfee Show to appear on air, and he still gets his endorsement deals.
	He lost, like, some spots with some medical companies, right?
	Which is, like, most of those were, like, charity-related anyway, so he wasn't getting paid a ton regardless.
	And that's it.
	Like, he's still making tens upon tens of millions of dollars.
	He certainly hasn't lost his platform and almost certainly never will, but he just gets to wear cancellation like it's another jersey, right?
	Like, that's just what it is.
	So yeah, he went on to claim that he didn't lie during that August presser, where he lied, and complained about the witch hunt culture against unvaccinated football players.
	He said his, quote, plan was to answer any follow-up questions about what it means to be immunized truthfully.
	And then he kind of tells Pat McAfee what he would have said had a reporter given him a follow-up question.
	I'm not, you know, some sort of anti-vax flat earther.
	I am somebody who's a critical thinker.
	You guys know me.
	I marched to the beat of my own drum.
	I believe strongly in bodily autonomy and the ability to make choices for your body.
	Not to have to acquiesce to some woke culture or crazed, you know, group of individuals who say you have to do something.
	Health is not a one-size-fits-all for everybody.
	And for me, it involved a lot of study in the off-season.
	Much like the study I put into Hosts in Jeopardy or the weekly study I put into Playing in the Game.
	I put a lot of time and energy and research and met with a lot of different people in the medical field to get the most information about the vaccines before making a decision.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	He, um, I mean, he considers himself to be very intelligent, and to his credit, he did actually host Jeopardy, and he did win a season of Celebrity Jeopardy, which, you know, we could have a lot of theories about what intelligence is.
	I would say that that is not actually, like, a great sign of intelligence, but it is impressive, right?
	But yeah, like, he discredits conspiracy, right?
	Like, he's like, I'm not some anti-vax flat-earther.
	But, like, he very much embraces conspiracy in, like, ways that, like, we'll dig into.
	But also he runs through, like, the gamut of arguments that we've all heard, right?
	Including, like, another shot at wokeness, the idea that infectious disease prevention is somehow only a personal decision, that people are, like, requiring him to be vaccinated.
	Like, the primary locus of anger comes from the fact that he's unvaccinated instead of the fact that he lied about it.
	Right?
	And he mentions later in the interview that he had an allergy to the two mRNA vaccines.
	It's very difficult to verify, but it is, it is possible.
	It's very rare, but it is possible.
	I talked to, I totally forgot what allergen specialists are called, but I talked to a couple of them and I was like, is this like a thing?
	Is it possible?
	And there's like one ingredient in the mRNA vaccines, it's not in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, that is registered as a possible but rare allergen.
	Okay.
	The only reason I express skepticism here is because the NFL has a medical exemption policy that he could have invoked, and also because he regularly misleads the media, right?
	And so I'm just not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on these, like, very rare circumstances.
	But he said he eliminated those vaccines, and then he also eliminated the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is not an mRNA vaccine.
	Because of issues with safety, issues that were well-publicized, but ultimately turned out to be, as study after study indicated, non-issues entirely, and ones that did not impact his demographic anyway, right?
	They were issues that were primarily localized to, I believe, 40-plus-year-old women at the time, and it turns out that was an anomaly, and study after study indicated that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was actually safe within that demographic as well.
	So all of this was well known and it was resolved well before August.
	In fact, I believe it was resolved in April.
	And so these feel like excuses to me.
	Well, sure, because it's not like it's the woke mob that is, you know, clamoring for you to take the vaccine.
	It's like the millions of people who are dying from this illness.
	You know, it's not like... Well, how do you know those numbers are real, Jake?
	Sounds like Jake's not a critical thinker.
	Yeah, I guess.
	Yeah, I guess.
	Well, I don't know.
	You hear, I don't know.
	You hear people, you know, friends of friends or friends of family who get incredibly sick.
	I mean, you know, I was lucky enough not to have anybody in my immediate family, you know, get really, really sick in that first wave of COVID.
	But I had friends who had parents who passed away from it.
	And I was, you know, anecdotally aware of, you know, people who were getting really sick and dying from Yeah, we're like in the middle of another wave, so it's like pretty apt, I think, to talk about this again.
	I think like one important thing here is that if he had said all of this in August, he would have been fine.
	In fact, if he had said he wasn't vaccinated without that explanation, like if he, you know, because he at some point says, I don't need to disclose that I have an allergy to these vaccines, which actually I agree, like you don't have to do that.
	But if he'd said he wasn't vaccinated without any explanation, yeah, there would have been some pushback, but he would have been fine.
	Other high-profile quarterbacks went through less than he did.
	Dak Prescott refused to disclose his vaccination status.
	So did Lamar Jackson.
	Kirk Cousins wasn't vaccinated.
	And for some time, people were left with the impression that Josh Allen wasn't either.
	He turned out to be, but you know, sometimes it's kind of difficult to get information out.
	And that's a completely different story, which is Aaron Rodgers chose not to be vaccinated, but he has been following all of the unvaccinated protocols.
	Yeah.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like that's all it would have taken.
	The conflict here comes because he didn't want to take the vaccine, but he wanted to enjoy the perks you know, that vaccine players got.
	Maybe he felt, maybe it felt yucky to be with the unvaccinated.
	It's, it's, it feels like there's a lot of sort of cognitive dissonance sort of going on in, in his brain.
	And I feel like you can see a little bit of that even as he sort of hems and haws his way in that initial interview
	when, when he's asked about his status.
	Oh yeah, no, for sure.
	And he is kind of creating a new history for how unvaccinated players are treated, because I covered the Minnesota Vikings at the time.
	They were the least vaccinated team in the league, right?
	Well, they're Vikings.
	They've got their own method.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he would have been fine, but he lied, right?
	And in doing so, he prevented reporters from being able to make informed decisions about whether or not they wanted to be in a room with an unmasked, unvaccinated player.
	Which is why a lot of Green Bay reporters were, I think, justifiably mad.
	One of them, if I recall correctly, had a wife who may have been immunocompromised, which I feel like is pretty important, and also something he shouldn't have to disclose either, right?
	Like, if Rogers doesn't have to disclose the fact that he's apparently allergic to two of the vaccines, certainly a reporter doesn't have to disclose that he has valid concerns given his family.
	So he made a unilateral decision that it didn't make sense for vaccinated individuals—he says this multiple times—it doesn't make sense for vaccinated individuals to worry about an unvaccinated player infecting them, which is why he says he didn't wear a mask in pressers.
	Obviously, the real reason was in order to keep up the ruse, right?
	In order to keep up the illusion that he was, in fact, vaccinated.
	So he frames it kind of like a gotcha, right?
	Like, well, if the vaccine works, why are you so scared kind of stuff?
	But he knows, like you said earlier, he knows that the vaccine doesn't eliminate the risk of COVID, it only reduces it and mitigates the symptoms.
	He thinks that this is some kind of, like, gotcha, but his desire for people to respect his decisions doesn't extend to others because he doesn't give other people the tools to make their own decisions.
	And I that I think is it's it's very like this tells you a lot about his worldview, right?
	Because it's everything is internal outwards.
	He is the protagonist of reality, right?
	Like the decisions that matter are his and not anybody else's.
	He feels no obligation.
	It feels like to other people.
	So that's kind of like that issue.
	He goes over in this episode of the Pat McAfee Show, all of this like research that he did to decide that he wasn't going to be, that he was going to be immunized rather than vaccinated.
	So he said he talked to a lot of medical professionals.
	He does mention some Harvard MD, I guess, but we primarily know that he heavily consulted with Joe Rogan before the season and during the season on how to treat COVID using a combination of hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, zinc, and ivermectin, none of which have been shown to adequately treat or prevent COVID.
	But he does now also have messed up weird nipples.
	Yeah, it's perfect.
	Right.
	He was very concerned about the hormone changes that come with the vaccine.
	And now he just has this instead.
	You know, I feel like I feel like my one step plan to improving the health of the world is finding a way to stop everyone from getting their health advice from podcasters.
	That seems to be downstream from a lot of problems.
	People trusting, you know, the voices they hear in their heads about serious health decisions over, you know, medical science or professionals.
	It's crazy.
	And Rogers argues that he had his own medical team and that people should kind of like follow suit, which is like pretty rich.
	Like, I don't have the resources to acquire a medical team.
	Right.
	So, like, okay?
	But yeah, no, I agree.
	It's 100% like finding unfiltered, unqualified sources to kind of follow and kind of affirm your own identity through, and then they give you medical advice that somehow matches that, you know, political or cultural identity you've created for yourself, which is not great because you live in concert with other people and your decisions impact other people.
	Rogers mentioned a months-long immunization protocol, and he submitted, he says, 500 pages of research to the league when he petitioned to be treated as a vaccinated player.
	Again, the months-long immunization protocol was just hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and the league, much to his chagrin, would not treat him as if he were vaccinated.
	He claims that he asked the League why there was no medical or religious exemption in the protocols, but there is one.
	It's very clearly outlined in the protocols, the medical and religious exemptions.
	I have no idea why he didn't, like, take a medical exemption if he did, in fact, have an allergy to the ingredients, which is, like, another reason I remain somewhat skeptical of that one.
	And he also said that the NFL's medical professionals told him that it was impossible for a vaccinated person to get COVID or spread COVID, which he regards as misinformation.
	And if that were true, that would be misinformation.
	It would be a misleading statement from NFL medical officials.
	But NFL medical officials confirmed that Rodgers never contacted them at all and that they never spoke to him.
	And they also confirmed that they've never held that stance, much less communicated that kind of stance to anyone.
	I don't know.
	I've talked to a lot of doctors throughout this process, and I've never heard anyone make a definitive statement about anything, much less a new vaccine, right?
	Like, it's just crazy that he would suggest that.
	And this actually, this has occurred, like, throughout the NFL.
	Like, I remember asking Kirk Cousins, like, hey, you said you did a bunch of your own research.
	Did you contact the NFL's Dr. Ellen Sills, the chief medical official?
	And he was like, no.
	And it just feels like, okay, it's like a free resource that's, like, on call for you that you just choose not to talk to.
	That's cool.
	Rogers claimed that the protocols separating vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals were unscientific and didn't make much sense, adding in the supposition that unvaccinated players are actually safer because they were distancing and masked and they tested more often.
	There's no data to support that claim, it's just kind of what he feels like is true.
	The protocols are designed to equalize risk between vaccinated and unvaccinated players.
	But despite that, unvaccinated players still contracted COVID at a higher rate than vaccinated players by nearly 50%.
	So, it turns out that the protocols actually did not treat unvaccinated players with the right amount of risk.
	They should have treated them as higher risk.
	Vaccinated players also, according to the league's data, recovered faster, got back to the field sooner, regardless of protocol, and they test negative in recovery quicker, which also tells us about their ability to spread viruses when infected, because the tests that determine whether or not you're positive test your viral load, which are correlated with your ability to transmit that viral load.
	So he spread some pretty classic misleading information.
	If the vaccine is so great, then how come people are still getting COVID and spreading COVID and unfortunately dying from COVID?
	He's such a master debater.
	This is so incredible.
	The blank stare on McAfee's face, you know, and his, like, buddy who is also inexplicably there, who looks like he's been formed from a block of wood.
	You know, you can see on their faces, they're both registering, like, how much trouble are we going to get in for platforming this?
	It's nuts.
	And, like, the thing is, these are, like, clearly, like, points to win an argument and not, like, genuine questions he has, right?
	Because he knows that he asks a medical professional, anyone, including the ones the league employs, whose job it is, is to just, like, return players questions, right?
	Like there's a whole part of the league where the medical professional, like the whole deal is that they answer players when they have questions.
	So if he asks a medical professional that question, he would get an answer.
	By that point in time, unvaccinated people were three times more likely to contract the virus and 18 times more likely to die of the virus once it was contracted.
	Like that's, that's your answer, Aaron.
	And it's, it's out there.
	And if you had done your own research by looking at ResearchGate, you would have found it.
	It's very easy.
	It didn't take me very long.
	It doesn't take the league very long and you didn't even have to do it.
	You could just ask the league.
	So, after he finishes his statement, Pat McAfee mentioned that McAfee himself couldn't access ivermectin after he was diagnosed with COVID, and claimed that only rich people had access to it.
	Which, technically, I suppose, that's okay.
	He essentially implied that ivermectin was like a secret medicine for the rich, instead of something so ineffective that pharmacists wouldn't give it to you, so you have to find other means of acquiring it if you want to, like, believe in that fantasy.
	It's strange that McAfee, like, actually chimed in with like, hey, it's ivermectin stuff, like, why can't I get it?
	Yeah, and so when Rogers was asked about whether he was violating a league rule by not wearing a mask in front of media, this is what he said.
	The great MLK said that you have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense.
	Oh my God.
	Man, McAfee's fucking face.
	He's just like, he's doing the like squinty face.
	Like, oh, what am I, what am I, what, uh, what?
	So cool.
	There's so many things I like about that clip.
	First of all, we're recording this episode on MLK Day, so it's perfect.
	Right.
	But also like the invocation at all is crazy, but at the addendum at the very end where he's like, or rules that don't make sense.
	Did MLK say that part?
	Well, he was riffing on MLK.
	He was building upon it.
	Yeah, if he didn't survive, he certainly would have said that too, he's sure.
	Yeah, liked MLK enough to, you know, name drop him, but not enough to not attribute things he didn't say to him.
	Yeah, you know, I think it's like any body of research or any academic.
	You're always standing on the shoulders of giants, you're always adding to their body of research.
	And so that additional sentence, I think, is part of the academic process.
	Regardless, the NFL did not jail Aaron Rodgers in a prison in Alabama.
	They merely fined him $14,000.
	Again, at the time, he's making $50 million a year.
	That is less than 1% of his income.
	In fact, it's less than one-tenth of 1% of his income.
	It is one-fourth of one-tenth.
	Pocket change.
	Pocket change for Rodgers.
	If I had pocket change right now, it would be a greater amount of my net worth than that $14,000 was to him.
	He's kind of like if the Joker had extremely low intent.
	Smoked a little bit too much grass.
	Getting lazy, unmotivated, but down to appear on the Penguins podcast.
	Perfect.
	So yeah, that sense of self-importance is one reason why Jimmy Kimmel made fun of Aaron Rodgers in his opening monologue in the show prior to the Packers Week 9 matchup on November 4th, and it's the first time I think Jimmy Kimmel talks about Aaron Rodgers.
	Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is in quarantine right now.
	A-Rodge tested positive yesterday for COVID and will miss Sunday's game against the Chiefs.
	He'll be watching it from ma home.
	And no one seems to know that he wasn't vaccinated.
	He hasn't been wearing a mask, even where it's required.
	And at one point, he claimed he was immunized.
	But looking back when he said it, it should have been obvious that he was not.
	Aaron, you said you like to learn as many things as you can to hang in any conversation.
	Are you vaccinated and what's your stance on vaccinations?
	Yeah, I've been immunized.
	Yeah, you see, did you notice the air quotes?
	That's how you know.
	We now know he is not vaccinated because unvaccinated players who test positive have to isolate for 10 days.
	Had he been vaccinated, he would have had a chance to play this weekend.
	Aaron Rodgers reportedly received a homeopathic treatment over the summer instead of the vaccine.
	You know, we shouldn't know because nothing says I heal myself with crystals like this haircut.
	I mean, that little knot on top.
	Aaron is a Karen.
	That's the fact of the matter.
	Honestly, the only thing worse than not getting vaccinated when you're in close contact with other people is letting them think you're vaccinated when you're not.
	It's basically the COVID equivalent of the condom fell off.
	Kimmel is so fucking annoying.
	I'm Jimmy Kimmel.
	I would like to be left alone.
	I'm Jimmy Kimmel.
	It's me, Jimmy Kimmel.
	I'd like to be left alone by this guy Aaron Rodgers so I can, by my own act, fall down an elevator shaft and mangle myself horribly at the bottom.
	That's an incredible Kimmel impression.
	Thank you so much.
	Yeah, not to be confused with the other guy, the Jimmy, other Jimmy, whatever his name is.
	Jimmy Fallon.
	Well, it's funny because, like, if you looked at, you know, Kimmel's career trajectory, right, the way funnier and more talented guy was Adam Carolla.
	But he is now, like, pretty, pretty right wing.
	And Kimmel is now, you know, making probably more money than Aaron Rodgers as a night show talk host.
	Talk show night, who gives a crap about whatever it is?
	Being a center-left late-night talk show host is way more profitable than being Adam Carolla, I think.
	Which, Carolla's humor has gotten way worse.
	Yes, absolutely.
	And most comedians that have become canceled and turned to right-wing comedy are bad.
	Carolla's better than most of them still, but it's all bad.
	It's all bad.
	But yeah, so like, vaccine skepticism.
	Not actually, like, you know, that surprising for a lot of people, but it is a bit rare among NFL athletes.
	94% of NFL players were vaccinated by the end of the 2021 season, and though many of them did feel pressured into vaccination despite not trusting it, like, I can verify that there are players who got vaccinated who didn't want to because of the differences and advantages that you get as a vaccinated player.
	It seems pretty clear that most players just got the vaccine out of the way without buying into any conspiracy.
	It was like, hey, there's a new disease, this is a new medicine, okay, I'll take it, right?
	Doctor says I gotta take it, I trust my doctor, right?
	So it's a bit rare, but generally speaking, NFL players are not strangers to conspiracy, at least compared to like the general population.
	I want to emphasize that Rogers is very deeply in the rabbit hole on these issues in the way that other NFL players are not.
	But NFL personnel seem to be more prone to conspiracy than most.
	So here's like a couple of examples that I just thought of while I was writing this.
	Former NFL coach and current coach of the National Championship Michigan Wolverines, Jim Harbaugh, told his players not to eat chicken because they are a, quote, nervous bird.
	So true.
	Yeah.
	It's incredible.
	Like, how can you deny that fact, right?
	Like, they are.
	That's true, they are nervous birds.
	This feels a little bit more like superstition than conspiracy, but maybe they're the same things, I don't know.
	Just wait.
	No, you should only eat the noble, you know, steady-handed eagle, you know, because they call me nervous.
	Well, you want to be at the top of the food chain, so you might as well find the top of the food chain and dominate that, right?
	But as a former Michigan quarterback, Wilson Spate, said, Harbaugh thinks some type of sickness injected its way into the human population when people began eating white meats instead of beef and pork.
	There's the conspiracy.
	Yeah.
	He has walked this back, by the way!
	He's changed his mind.
	He began raising chickens of his own.
	He didn't, like, intend to do that, by the way.
	He, like, didn't think through the consequences of buying his kids baby chicks and ended up raising chickens.
	But he likes them and he no longer believes this thing about them being nervous birds or about their existence in the food chain as being some sort of conspiracy.
	Well, they're great around the kids, you know?
	Basically!
	They're not that nervous, you know.
	Nobody's getting pecked.
	Like, literally, I think the thing that changed his mind is that when he got home, they were excited to see him.
	Awesome.
	Which is like, I'm not suddenly interested in eating dogs, so it's not like a, there's not like a great, like, I don't know.
	Sure.
	But like, sure.
	But an animal you're used to eating.
	Right, yeah, exactly.
	All of a sudden, seems like it might have a soul, and you go.
	Yeah, right, and you're like, this animal is not injecting sickness into the human population.
	Another one, Deshaun Jackson, a former NFL wide receiver, once posted to his Instagram stories a few photos, including a fake Hitler quote claiming that black people were the real Jews, while white Jews quote, blackmail America.
	And he highlighted a specific passage claiming that white Jews will quote, extort America.
	Their plan for world domination won't work if the Negroes know who they were.
	These were quotes attributed to Hitler.
	They're not.
	They're not Hitler quotes.
	But like, if you think they are, why would you share them?
	But okay.
	Awesome.
	That's so many layers of, like, dumb and insane.
	I love it.
	Yeah.
	So he, I think, fell down a black Israelite conspiracy theory hole, right?
	Which is actually somewhat relatively common among athletes.
	It should be noted this is, like, distinct from the argument that, like, black Jews exist.
	There's no conspiracy there.
	Black Jews definitely exist.
	This is not that.
	Uh, instead it argues that black Americans are all descendants of ancient Israelites.
	Many black Israelites espouse anti-semitic conspiracies, like the one Jackson shared.
	He also cited Louis Farrakhan, who is not a black Israelite, but also does spread anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
	This was particularly troubling given that the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, who Deshaun Jackson played for at the time, is a Jewish man.
	Yeah, that won't go across very well with him.
	Correct!
	The fact that he had to apologize spurred on other conspiracy theorists, of course.
	So it was just all bad.
	Here's a light-hearted one.
	Former Rams defensive end William Hayes doesn't believe in dinosaurs, but he does believe in mermaids.
	In what capacity?
	I blame the Discovery Channel for both of those things.
	That's awesome.
	He was on like Hard Knocks, which is like the NFL's all-access during training camp.
	Well now also during the regular season, but at the time during training camp they would like have all-access documentary access to players and coaches and stuff like that.
	And he just like kind of mentioned that he didn't believe in dinosaurs.
	So like the next episode they were like, we gotta take him to a museum to see how he interacts with the information that a museum has.
	And I don't know what they expected because he was like, that's all fake.
	But he does mention the Discovery Channel mockumentary on mermaids.
	You know, the one that they did not tell people was a mockumentary until like the very end.
	Very good work from the science education channel, the Discovery Channel.
	He's like, you know, I don't see any evidence of dinosaurs walking around the earth.
	He goes, but I do see a lot of fish.
	And some of them have amazing breasts.
	The fish, you know, half of them, that's part of a mermaid.
	Half of that mermaid still exists somehow.
	It's evolved.
	But dinosaurs, he's like, I don't really see anything.
	I mean, I guess an alligator, but there's only one of those and there's millions of fish.
	I found mermaid bones in my backyard.
	He said that's what he needed to change his mind on dinosaurs, by the way.
	Someone had to go to his backyard and dig up dinosaur bones.
	Awesome.
	Did he really?
	That's so funny.
	Yeah, he's like, that's the one thing that'll change my mind.
	He's like, we have like a dozen scientists at this museum and a camera crew, and you could talk to any of them, ask them any question, and nothing they could do will convince you.
	And he's like, no, because you could just make up all your answers.
	Which is like, true, I guess.
	Yeah, he hasn't met the right scientist yet.
	We need to get this guy together with Richard Spurr, who's the Mud Fossil University guy.
	Yeah.
	Richard Spurr's online presence would skyrocket if he paired up with an NFL player.
	That would be huge for him, I feel like.
	They could have a conversation about big paleontology.
	Oh, perfect.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah.
	So, like, it's pretty common.
	One last example of, like, NFL conspiracy.
	Pete Carroll, who up until a few days ago was one of the longest tenured and most accomplished coaches in the NFL, once asked retired four-star general Peter Chiarelli, a former Army Vice Chief of Staff, whether the attack on the Pentagon on 9-11 really happened.
	According to Ricky Ellison, a former NFL linebacker, father of former NFL player Rhett Ellison, and director of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, Carroll ran through, quote, every 9-11 conspiracy theory you can think of, end quote, to the point where Kyr really got so agitated he had to leave the room.
	Nice.
	Wow, that's amazing.
	You get access to, like, a four-star general?
	I approve.
	That rules.
	Pete Carroll is, like, kind of cool, by the way.
	Yeah!
	Yeah, he was, like, super upset about the Iraq War, like, when it was happening, and he was like, look, if you just took 10,000 people, no guns, and just put them in Iraq so they could just ask people questions, like, hey, what are you feeling?
	What do you need?
	What's going on here?
	You could have solved this problem without violence.
	Which is not, like, really the issue here, but I really love that energy.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, you know, it's not all the conspiracy theorists are like bad.
	But yeah, so this episode is not about them or conspiracy in the NFL in general.
	It's about Aaron Rodgers, so back to him.
	He is unique in the conspiracy department among NFL players.
	This might be like a recently uncovered fact, but it is not new to Rodgers.
	So I don't know exactly when he started investigating conspiracies, but we do know that he was transmitting this passion of his to colleagues all the way back in 2013.
	That year, Seneca Wallace was a backup quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.
	Seven years later, Wallace would share some stories about what kind of stuff Rogers would delve into in those 2013 practice sessions.
	Rogers had asked the backup quarterback about what, quote, all that stuff is flying behind the jet stream, saying, quote, do you think that has anything to do with maybe why everybody's getting cancer?
	I assume a lot of people listening to this podcast are pretty familiar with that one, but for those unfamiliar, it's a long-standing conspiracy theory, often shortened to chemtrails, that posits that the government or some other entity is spraying the populace with cancer-causing chemicals in order to enrich the pharmaceutical industry and or keep the population docile.
	Because the cancer-causing chemicals also, like, have a mind control effect or something, right?
	So in addition to believing the chemtrails conspiracy or suggesting that people look into it, Rogers would also share conspiracies about aliens with backup quarterbacks.
	Brett Hundley, who was his backup quarterback from 2015 to 2018, and Joe Callahan, a backup in 2016, both shared stories about how Rogers would quote, unabashedly, Let's put a pin in that UFO thing, by the way.
	aliens through the presence of UFOs, and would frequently engage in long discussions about
	who built the Pyramids of Giza.
	Let's put a pin in that UFO thing, by the way.
	That's going to come up later.
	Rogers also seemingly initiated discussions about who killed President Kennedy.
	There is seemingly not a conspiracy theory that he won't touch.
	There are a few more I want to talk about, but as an aside, this kind of debunks one
	of the more popular theories for how Rogers fell down this rabbit hole, which is the people
	You know, I'm not going to get a ton into it, but his past two relationships have involved people very much into the anti-modern medicine, pro-wellness scene.
	I'm sure you have a dozen episodes on this scene.
	And they include wellness influencers and an actress who advocates things like eating clay in order to detox the body from heavy metals.
	Getting naked and sunning.
	I think the technical term is your perineum.
	Your butthole.
	Yeah, butthole sunning.
	I believe the wellness term is like your ninth chakra.
	They're calling it butthole sunning, and that is definitely something we've delved into.
	Perfect.
	Yeah.
	Personally.
	One of the people that Rogers is dating was super into this.
	So yeah, but he had these beliefs about medicine and conspiracy before he met either of these people and they probably dated because he shares beliefs with them.
	So I don't think that there's any, you know, she led him to this thing.
	I just don't love the set of theories that generally like blames women in people's lives for their beliefs.
	Yeah, the main difference before and after is that Rogers has a beautiful tanned asshole.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's a little cancerous, but a beautiful, gorgeous tanned asshole.
	So net positive, really.
	But yeah, Rogers believes some weird things about the vaccine.
	He mentioned UFOs and that the Kennedy assassination isn't what people think it is.
	As far as conspiracies go, it's a bit out there.
	You'll find a lot of people worried about the vaccine, or people who believe in UFOs.
	But chemtrails is a little bit more extreme, and Rogers is even more extreme than chemtrails.
	I'll let former backup quarterback DeSean Kaiser explain.
	Shut the door, and the first thing that comes out of Aaron Rogers' mouth was, you believe in 9-11?
	What?
	Do I believe in 9-11?
	Yeah, I mean, why wouldn't I?
	He was like, you should read up on that.
	Okay.
	Now we start learning about the playbook and stuff.
	I'm like, wow.
	Like, I don't know where this is going.
	But what it ended up being was just like a real thought experiment where he wanted me to go back and look into some of the conspiracies around it and provoke a lot of great conversation.
	And we really bonded over that.
	And, you know, we started sharing some books and talking about some other things and got into history and business and finance.
	Do you have any other conspiracy theories?
	Talking about some shit.
	Inner Earth.
	Moon landing.
	The moon?
	He's probably got some crazy theories on the moon landing.
	Reptile people.
	Y'all are laughing.
	Go do your research.
	I'm telling you.
	Go do your research.
	I might have to take you guys to Agartha.
	I'm telling you.
	Do your research.
	You guys are laughing.
	It sounds like jokes.
	Oh no!
	Oh no!
	I thought this was gonna go one way and it went another!
	Right?
	Right?
	Oh, he fucking got into it all!
	Yeah!
	This is how easy it is!
	But then he's buying into it and you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!
	You started sharing the story like you thought it was funny, but now you're telling me this is the thing that you think.
	Oh god, that rules.
	Yeah.
	You know, I just want to say, you gotta go to Agartha before you tell people you're going to take them there.
	Okay?
	Don't just fucking make your first trip the one where you take the skeptics.
	Yeah.
	Go to Agartha first.
	Take a good look at it.
	Come back.
	Then we'll talk.
	So Kaiser sounded pretty convinced by the end of that interview.
	This is deep in the shit.
	This is like mole people.
	This is the Anunnaki.
	I mean, you're breaching on David Icke type shit.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And, well, I mean, you are, because you mentioned lizard people, right?
	Yeah.
	But, like, yeah, it's all of the things.
	It's a conspiracy about a crystal city that contains the ancestors of Atlantis, Hyperborea, and, depending on who you ask, Nazi Germany.
	I don't know, like, why that's included in some of the ones, but, I mean, I know why, but, like, don't.
	It's an advanced civilization living in community with nature.
	They have extinct species down there.
	There's a sun in the center that we call the Earth's core, mistakenly.
	Some versions of the myth say that people can be taller than 12 feet and that they can live thousands of years.
	Other versions of the myth maintain that aliens from other planets take their base there.
	Some argue that the pyramids are a passageway to the kingdom.
	You all know, but it's like, you know, for people who want to listen for the Aaron Rodgers stuff, like this is nuts, right?
	This is nuts.
	And this isn't just like a passing conversation for Rodgers, especially given how often he seemingly has these conversations with other quarterbacks on the team.
	Those are four different backup quarterbacks that I quoted over the course of Aaron Rodgers' cycle as a Packers quarterback.
	Given how often he has these conversations, it's very clear that it enters into this worldview.
	And then this year, on January 9th, he said this.
	Uh, conspiracy theorists?
	That's fine, because if you look at the track record of conspiracy theorists in the last few years, they've been right about a lot of things.
	So, I don't care about that one.
	Anti-Semite?
	That was called, I mean, that's just like, this is their game plan.
	They use these words to cancel people, and they went and ran with this, because it's the crazy anti-vaxxer wacko again, talking about, you know, accusing somebody of being a pedophile.
	Like, of course, this is the game plan that they use.
	Incorrect, but that's the environment that we're in.
	You know, we're, there's a lot of people who have been captured by various, you know, entities, government entities, whether we're talking about pharmaceutical industrial conflicts, or whether we're just talking about believing that the government has a vested interest in mind, and we're puppeting, you know, various narratives.
	In the end, if you are not someone whose opinion aligns with the mainstream narrative, this is what they're going to do with you.
	Okay, so we've got McAfee kind of sitting down, squinting, doing a big show of going... And the guy on the right, I mean... He's smiling like a parent who's listening to a child.
	So I promise you we will hear the guy on the right's voice, which is a rare treat for people who don't actually watch the McAfee Show and just watch clips, because he is never talking in clips.
	That's awesome.
	When I was a kid, I had this toy.
	It was a Terminator toy.
	2 toy and the whole thing was it came with an exoskeleton and then basically a tub and
	you would pour this kind of flesh colored goo into like the mold around the skeleton
	and it would dry after a while and the point of the toy was that you could pick the flesh
	off, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger and expose the robot underneath.
	I'm sure there's a couple listeners who also had this action figure and we can message about it on Twitter after the episode comes out.
	Rules.
	Oh my God.
	But when the flesh dried, you know, before you started, you know, creating your own, you know, sort of war-torn Terminator, it was like shiny and like bright and very pink.
	And that's what that gentleman looks like to me.
	Actually is a freshly molded Terminator, you know with you know 1990s sort of like synthetic Synthetic rubber for Jake watchers out there.
	This isn't even the first time we hear about this toy Wow I'm learning so much Jake law.
	I'm so happy, Julian, that you have a better memory than I do.
	I can't believe this is something I've brought up more than once.
	I'm totally ashamed.
	Awesome.
	So that interview occurs after the Kimmel controversy, which again, we'll lay out the timeline for, but like you just heard from like the Pat McAfee Show that Roger's gift for mischaracterization, it comes through again.
	So he said that Kimmel called Rogers a wacko for believing in the existence of the Epstein client list.
	That's not really what Kimmel said.
	Rogers claimed that the United States government was releasing evidence of UFOs, which he already believed in, by the way, so let's unpin that portion.
	Right, he believes in UFOs, but the United States government was releasing evidence of UFOs as aliens in order to cover up news about the Epstein client list.
	So here's what Rogers said last February.
	Well, there's been a lot of disclosure recently.
	There's a lot of old papers and files and different things about interactions that Navy pilots have had, especially Navy pilots, I believe, with unidentified flying objects.
	So this is not surprising.
	Obviously, there was some sort of Chinese spy balloon that was up in the air, allegedly.
	And there's been a few other objects that have been shot down.
	I believe that this has been going on for a long time.
	Interesting timing on everything.
	There's a lot of other things going on in the world.
	What?
	Like what?
	Well, you're saying things are... You're saying, oh, lookie here.
	Is that what you just said?
	Ah, ah, ah, bang!
	That's what you said?
	Could be some of that, yeah.
	No!
	That doesn't happen.
	Of course not.
	There's some wild shit going on right now, Aaron.
	Did you hear about the Epstein client list about to be released, too?
	Well, allegedly.
	I assume we have to say because I'm getting sued by a guy that used to be a starting quarterback in which you were a backup quarterback, but what's that?
	What are you talking about?
	There's some files that have some names on it that might be getting released pretty soon.
	Oh!
	Are you on there?
	Look out, AJ.
	You know, Maxwell was the only person ever convicted of trafficking, and nobody who was involved in the trafficking ever went to jail.
	So, nothing to see here.
	No, nothing.
	Look, there's UFOs flying everywhere.
	We just shot them down.
	Johnny Depp trial!
	Hey, that'll help.
	That'll do that whole thing.
	That's what you're saying, obviously.
	I'm excited to see how this whole thing, you know, there's a lot going on right now.
	Oh man. A single brain cell for three men is something to behold. I love the Mac. If he has
	like an increasing amount of toys and objects in front of him.
	He looks like he's gonna be subsumed by the table in front of him.
	All his little trinkets and stuff.
	And, you know, I mean, they don't even have enough information about the thing they're talking about.
	It's just like, huh?
	You heard of that?
	It wasn't even a client list.
	It wasn't a list!
	It wasn't a fucking list, you idiot!
	Yeah, it was not what was being released at all.
	This was last February, right?
	So this wasn't even, like, the current round of documentation that was released, which just happened to be a couple of depositions, right?
	This was, like, back in February.
	They're like, oh my god, the client list.
	They just, like, made up that the client list was coming out.
	Yeah, that's been going on for a long while, this idea of a client list, which may exist, but absolutely was never threatening to see the light of day and definitely has still not.
	Rogers just sounds, he looks and sounds profoundly pilled.
	Yeah, he is.
	Yes, he is.
	He's confused now.
	Like he's in this zone where he's like, you have no idea the amount of stuff that I'm holding back from saying.
	Also, his video background is baffling to me.
	Sometimes in this video, it was just kind of a whiteboard.
	And then other times it's a green screen, but he's not using the green screen at all.
	It's just a mounted up green screen.
	Maybe he thinks that the other show will put in a background for him or something.
	Well, he thinks he's in a Marvel movie.
	He actually thinks he's on set acting.
	Oh, that's perfect.
	Yeah.
	No, this is amazing.
	I love the guy mumbling lasers.
	That rule.
	Which, by the way, the guy who said lasers was not one of the three people that we saw on the screen when I played the video.
	Oh, just a bodiless voice.
	Yeah, it's because like the McAfee Show has like, like six people on it.
	Of course it does.
	Four of them are in studio.
	One of them is Aaron Rodgers.
	Aaron Rodgers only shows up like once a week, but in those instances, like Aaron Rodgers, and then the voiceless person is A.J.
	Hawk, who, a former linebacker for the Packers, all-time leading tackler for the Packers, a former teammate of Aaron Rodgers.
	And he rarely talks, of course, but the peanut gallery that McAfee pays to have there, they'll say stuff like lasers.
	It rules.
	It's actually a killer podcast format.
	I'm jealous.
	In the 80s, this would have been so much cooler, right?
	You have this massive sports show that's watched by millions and millions of people on a huge network that's owned by Disney.
	And once a week, like, a pilled quarterback comes out just to spout, like, random conspiracies and, like, you know, wild shit.
	In, like, 87, like, that would have been awesome.
	But now it sucks.
	Yeah.
	Like, can you imagine Jim McMahon doing that?
	Exactly what I was thinking!
	With his sunglasses on or Mike Ditka, any of those, any of those guys.
	It would have been fun.
	But now it's not fun.
	Now it's just, now it's just annoying and sad.
	Yeah.
	It's, it's rough.
	And also, like, we really got to, we have to evaluate the concept or the notion that, like, the existence of news is somehow bad.
	Right?
	Like, oh, there's new news?
	That's a distraction.
	Right?
	Stuff happens in the world, right?
	There's like 8 billion people on it, and, uh, sometimes stuff happens, and so, like, it's not always, like, a distraction from other things.
	I remember, like, when the Ukraine War broke out, people were like, oh, that's a distraction.
	I don't even remember from what anymore, so I guess it worked.
	But, like, that was just, like, a war?
	Like, people die.
	Like, I... Yeah.
	So, like, news is such a great conspiracy, because it's just so broad.
	I love it.
	I love it.
	It's my favorite conspiracy.
	News.
	So, I couldn't find the original monologue from Jimmy Kimmel's for Bruce Willis.
	Like, I watched every Jimmy Kimmel opening monologue from February 14th to March 2nd to see if I could find the video that's being passed around, and I don't know if it wasn't during a monologue or whatever.
	I am a worse person now for having done that.
	Yeah, of course.
	We do know that the clip that's being passed through conspiracy Twitter gives us enough context, edited or not, that tells us that that's actually not what Jimmy Kimmel said.
	Jimmy Kimmel did not say that Rogers was a wacko for believing the existence of the Epstein client list.
	So this is the clip I downloaded.
	Needless to say, all this UFO talk has the tinfoil hatters going wild, including Green Bay Whack Packer Aaron Rodgers, who offered this hot take on the Pat McAfee Show.
	I believe that this has been going on for a long time.
	Interesting timing on everything.
	There's a lot of other things going on in the world.
	Did you hear about the Epstein client list about to be released, too?
	What's that?
	What are you talking about?
	There's some files that have some names on it that might be released pretty soon.
	Oh, might be time to revisit that concussion protocol, Aaron.
	Even this edited version, like, very clearly suggests that Kimmel thinks Rogers is crazy for invoking UFOs as a distraction in the list, and is not, in argument that the list doesn't exist.
	I grabbed that video from a Twitter account called MythInformedMKE.
	I'm sure you're all familiar with that one.
	It is a well-known conspiracy Twitter account, one that was quote-tweeted by David Bakhtiari.
	This is back in February in 2023.
	It was quote-tweeted by David Bakhtiari, who is Aaron Rodgers' teammate in Green Bay and an all-pro left tackle.
	He's one of the best players at his position in the league.
	He said, tell me you're on the Jeffrey Epstein client list without telling me you're on the Jeffrey Epstein client list.
	That tweet was viewed 25.2 million times.
	So if we can trust Twitter's view count, but suffice to say a lot, right?
	So this isn't even the first time Kimmel was accused by a Green Bay Packer of being on the list for suggesting that news is not a conspiracy, but is actually just news.
	This is common to all conspiracies, of course.
	When the credibility of the conspiracy theorist is challenged, any challengers become part of the conspiracy.
	So, for a brief moment, a fake list that happened to have Kimmel's name on it was circulated through conspiracy Twitter as well.
	The list has, like, some very funny names, including, I think there was, like, a name on there that, like, this person was not a celebrity when Jeffrey Epstein was alive, but they're a celebrity now.
	Like, that kind of stuff.
	Like, it's a really well-curated list.
	But yeah, Jimmy Kimmel's name was on that list, so people were like, ah, look at this.
	This proves that you're a pedophile.
	So this has, like, been going on for a little bit.
	I find the whole thing strange.
	People keep claiming that those in power or those in mainstream media deny the existence of a client list.
	I've never seen anyone deny the existence of a client list.
	The obsession over the client list is a bit odd, and the way people interact with the potential existence of a client list is kooky.
	But conspiracy theorists are, like, using this moment Again, a moment where a deposition or a set of depositions was released to try and dunk on everyone else by claiming that they were right all along now that the existence of such a list is essentially confirmed despite no one saying, as far as I can recall, no one saying that it never existed.
	Have you seen, like, I don't, I don't know, have you seen people say that the list doesn't exist?
	No, I mean... Not really.
	Yeah, so I don't really know where that comes from, but sure.
	So anyway, as we got closer to the release of more documentation on the Epstein trial, including some depositions, like I said, Rogers couldn't help but, like, bubble over in excitement.
	Has something to do with the Epstein list that came out?
	Feels like it.
	Feels like it.
	That's supposed to be coming out soon.
	That's supposed to be coming out soon.
	Look, this guy's been waiting in his wine cellar.
	I've been waiting in my wine cellar for this segment.
	A lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are really hoping that doesn't happen.
	Alright, obviously a clip from this particular program was run on Jimmy Kimmel's show whenever Aaron brought up the list and then Jimmy mocked him for it.
	Aaron has not forgotten about that, but here we are sitting right in front of that nice bottle of scotch.
	What do you say I'm waiting to celebrate something?
	Oh yeah, something awesome.
	He's been waiting for that.
	I'll tell you what, if that list comes out I definitely will be popping some sort of bottle.
	McAfee is more and more red and sounding more and more like an old mob smoker.
	He has so many toys piled on the table that when he's sitting in his chair it looks like he's sitting on the floor of a playroom.
	Yeah, I used to do this thing when I was a kid with my brother and sister.
	We would lay out little McDonald's toys or whatever in front of our bedroom, and then each of us would visit each other's stores.
	And I feel like every time you tune in now to McAfee, you're visiting his little store of trinkets.
	Hey, I'll trade you that man.
	Well, this is fascinating too because McAfee, you can see he's trying to kind of dismiss, you know, what Rogers is saying is not an accusation, which I actually think is, is probably more probable is that when he brought up, he, he, he was making fun of Aaron Rogers.
	They use the clip where he talks about the thing.
	Now that these documents are coming out, you know, Aaron's using it as, you know, a way to sort of like clap back at him.
	Yeah.
	And to like the, the toy thing, like if you watched like the McAfee show, he like knocks over those toys, like accidentally all the time.
	Of course.
	How could he not?
	Right.
	It's incredible.
	Like it'll happen like during interviews.
	He's like, Oh my God, my pickleball racket.
	I'm sorry.
	You know, like pick it up and then he'll kiss it.
	It's like a whole performance, but like also you clearly did not intend to like knock over a bunch of these things.
	It's chaotic.
	So yeah, this whole thing escalated, right?
	So Kimmel thought that Rogers was accusing him of being a pedophile, which if you view that clip in isolation, I think is a pretty fair interpretation of what was said.
	Yeah.
	Rogers probably believes it because of the fake list.
	Yeah!
	Yeah, right!
	Yes!
	Yeah, 100%, that's entirely on the table.
	So, Kimmel then threatened legal action, right?
	Because, you know, he says that his family was threatened, he said that, you know, just even without that, like, being smeared as a pedophile is, like, awful, it's, like, one of the worst things a human can do, right?
	So, sure, he threatened legal action, and McAfee sort of, like, apologized for his role in the whole affair, but it was mostly, he was, like, playing it off as boys being boys, jokes being jokes, shit-talking being shit-talking, And then he said he wants the show to be a positive, uplifting place, and that he couldn't wait to hear what Rogers said about it.
	Yeah, in a just world, that would have been the case, that he was just trash tossing and clapping back.
	But like, we now live in a reality where Aaron Rogers does probably believe that, you know, Jimmy Kimmel is actually, you know, on the list, part of the cabal.
	Yeah, 100%.
	It's all on the table, right?
	So Rogers argues that what he said was not an accusation that Kimmel was on the client list.
	He says he's not a huge dumbass, right?
	He says he's not such a dumbass that he would accuse someone of that without concrete evidence, right?
	Which is also, like, why you would suggest it instead of accuse it, but fine.
	So, it was not an accusation that Kimmel was on the client list, and therefore it was not a proxy accusation that Kimmel's a pedophile, despite everyone interpreting it as that.
	Instead, he argues that the release of the list would prove that Kimmel was wrong because the list existed, and that it means that he, Aaron Rodgers, is not a tinfoil hatter.
	Which, okay.
	So, whatever.
	Interestingly, McAfee and Kimmel both have the same employer, Disney.
	The late night show that Jimmy Kimmel's on is on ABC.
	McAfee is employed by ESPN.
	There has been talk that Disney or ESPN pressed on McAfee to tone down Rogers, who, by the way, Rogers is not an ESPN employee.
	McAfee pays Rogers out of his own pocket to appear on the show, and McAfee has a full license to book guests and stuff like that.
	But there was some, you know, talk that Disney put pressure on him.
	An ESPN executive condemned the joke, and Rogers took exception to the fact that the ESPN executive condemned the joke and named the ESPN executive in, like, in public, like, very strange behavior.
	And then McAfee posted a very long tweet saying that Aaron Rodgers Tuesday was over, something he essentially reiterated on the show the next day on Wednesday, and he said that our fans know that Aaron Rodgers Tuesday ends shortly after Aaron's team's season ends.
	That's how it's been.
	Which is a convenient cover, but it's not the case.
	Yeah, the Jets season ended right before the final Aaron Rodgers Tuesday appearance.
	But if you remember from the drama involving his trade to the Jets, it extended well past the Super Bowl.
	He was on every Tuesday, that offseason, heading well into free agency.
	And historically, in the four years that Aaron Rodgers has been a guest on the show, the segment called Aaron Rodgers Tuesday has extended well past the time when Aaron Rodgers' team's season ends.
	So this is a convenient cover, but it's just historically it's not been the case.
	CNN reported that his appearances ended early precisely because of his comments, though ESPN stated that it was McAfee's decision and that it had nothing to do with the comments.
	I don't know.
	Rodgers appeared on the program the very next day.
	Which, not a Tuesday, so it wasn't Aaron Rodgers' Tuesday, I guess.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Oh, God.
	Yeah.
	So, he said that Aaron Rodgers' Tuesday was over, but also said that Rodgers may make poppin' appearances from time to time, like he did on Wednesday when he commented on the end of legendary head coach Bill Belichick's tenure in New England.
	So, that's where we are.
	This is that horrible moment in a friendship where your other pilled buddy realizes that he's about to get a huge bag and he's got to cut ties with his even more pilled buddy despite promising him that he would have a platform every week to gently pill the ESPN watching audience.
	Yeah, they're like, listen, we're going to take Tuesday from you.
	You can still come on, though, because we do love you.
	But if you do come on, we need to stick to the fucking topic, because how the fuck are we supposed to say it's about the season if you're just talking about the Epstein client list and accusing Jimmy Kimmel?
	There's, like, there's so much that, like, I, because I ended up having to, like, watch a lot of Pat McAfee's show, which is also not a pleasant experience.
	There's, like, so much, like, and they'll talk about, like, everything, but there's, like, other conspiracies, right?
	So, like, AJ Hawke was the one who asked, is this about the Epstein client list, right?
	Like, that's where that clip comes from.
	It's the first time on the show that we've heard AJ Hawke's voice.
	Like, the lead-in to that, by the way, they were talking about a Super Bowl conspiracy.
	Where the teams that appeared in the Super Bowl, their team colors matched the Super Bowl logos' two colors for the past two years.
	This is not a very long-running conspiracy, by the way.
	The past two years, the team's logos and the Super Bowl colors matched.
	So they were talking about that, and Aaron was like, he wasn't saying it outright, because he never says anything outright.
	He's like, yeah, just take a look at the logos and take a look at which teams played in Super Bowl 58.
	And then take a look at the logos and which teams played in Super Bowl 58.
	You just wouldn't say it.
	And so AJ Hawk goes, is this about the Epstein-Klein list?
	This show goes everywhere.
	There's just no, it's never going to end.
	That's where we are, Arif, is that it's not going to end.
	If you want to hear a podcast or, you know, read content about football that isn't explicitly pilled or from somebody that doesn't have a lot of sort of plastic statues, you know, gathered around them, you should listen to Arif Hasan and check out his work wherever you can find it.
	That's a great plug.
	Yeah, where can you find it?
	Yeah, you can find my work at YLeftPost.substack.com.
	I have a couple of podcasts, the Minnesota Football Party and Norse Code.
	That's Morse Code, but with an N. It's a podcast covering the Vikings, so check that out.
	Also, I have the YLeft podcast.
	That one's basically a politics podcast, and that one's pretty occasional.
	Yeah.
	We don't, we don't talk a lot about it.
	So yeah, if you're somebody who likes football and politics, this is a perfect place.
	And you're probably not going to be hearing about lizard people or, uh, you know, the symbols on the helmets of, uh, the Chicago bears and what that means.
	You can also go follow him on Twitter at ArifHassanNFL.
	But you're not off the hook, buddy, because Jake has concocted some sort of insane story.
	I wanted to get all the business out of the way before we delve into probably my worst.
	I think it's definitely my worst story because I know really nothing about Aaron Rodgers.
	In fact, I should have done this podcast, gone back in time, and then written the story because it would probably make more sense.
	And I certainly don't know anything about football, really, besides, like, a handful of Sega Genesis games played, you know, potentially 30 years ago.
	Perfect.
	So, you know, if you're gonna write into the show or comment on Twitter that I've fallen off and, you know, the stories aren't as good as they used to be, I know that, okay?
	I'm well aware.
	I'm well aware that I have fallen off and that these are getting, you know, really bad.
	Well, stop trying to preemptively protect yourself and let's get this thing going.
	I think this story is called, um, the day that Aaron Rodgers got drafted to the cabal.
	Aaron Rodgers clicked disconnect from the Zoom call and let out a heavy sigh of relief.
	It was his 17th podcast appearance of the day, and Aaron was gassed.
	He was grateful that he was able to do it all from the comfort of his wine cellar, and that the setup was fairly minimal.
	He had a green screen, but he sort of liked the way it looked in its natural state.
	It made Aaron feel like he was in the midst of shooting a scene from a Marvel movie, or, as he liked to joke, shooting a scene from the moon landing.
	Aaron leaned forward and hoisted himself up from the couch.
	It was late.
	He had been on so many podcasts that his entire day had slipped away from him.
	Podcast, podcast, podcast.
	The Pat McAfee Show.
	The Truff Guys Show.
	Second Pod on the right.
	And even the Straight On Til Morning Boys, who he didn't agree with.
	Aaron loved appearing on podcasts almost as much as he liked playing football, mostly because as a 40-year-old with a torn Achilles tendon, Aaron was looking forward to the future, and the future was podcasts.
	Sure, most of them couldn't throw a spiral if their life depended on it, but their life didn't depend on it.
	It depended on yapping it up with the ladies and fellas, doing bits, and remembering to sync their audio.
	Rogers already had a Super Bowl ring and enough money to last him four lifetimes.
	With his graying hair and off and on facial hair, Rogers already looked the part, and his proclivity for wearing toques already placed him at a better advantage than most.
	His imagination swirled excitedly as he tucked himself into his giant fire truck bed.
	Goodnight, bed.
	Goodnight, room.
	Rogers glanced out his window, staring into the brilliant night sky.
	Good night, Nazi base on the moon.
	[Laughter]
	Good night to God and the angels in heaven.
	He then scrunched up his face, kind of angry.
	Goodnight to the people who really did 9-11.
	Crack!
	The sound of splintering wood stopped Aaron midnight night poem.
	And he sprung up in horror as four soldiers in shiny black body armor burst through his door, blinding him with their flashlights.
	Aaron quickly reached for a switch on the left side of the bed frame.
	The lights on the fire engine bed came to life and a siren began to wail.
	But alas, no one came to help.
	Rogers jolted out of bed and took a defensive stance in the middle of his bedroom floor.
	He wasn't going to go down without a proper fight, but he was no match for the agents.
	One of them produced a full-size military jet, and with the flick of a switch, ejected a strong stream of chemtrails straight into Aaron's face.
	Aaron staggered back, his legs growing weak.
	He struggled to maintain consciousness as a thick black hood was placed over his head.
	Within seconds, the elite task force had Rogers in restraints.
	As his consciousness faded, he could feel himself being carried out of the room.
	When he awoke, Rodgers found himself in the center of a roaring stadium.
	The stands were packed with thousands of ghouls and goblins, flesh rotting off of their bones.
	They were screeching and thrusting their hands into the air, clapping wildly.
	On one end of the stadium, a large statue of an owl presided over the match.
	Where the hell was he?
	Rogers blinked and tried to stare downfield.
	On the other side of the stadium, he began to recognize people he sort of liked.
	On the sidelines, Rogers noticed less than 10 intelligence veterans whispering quietly into their headsets.
	These guys were calling the plays.
	Rogers spied a confident Donald Trump huddled with his team on the far side of the stadium.
	Their uniforms were striped red, white, and blue.
	Their mascot, A giant white hat was hyping up the crowd.
	But if this... But if this was the opposing team in whatever chemtrail-induced hallucination Rogers had been poisoned with, whose team was he playing for?
	Rogers grew nervous as he glanced around at his teammates.
	His entire side was filled with orcs and skeletons.
	Even a handful of demon dogs.
	They were wearing massive hulking shoulder pads with iron spikes jutting out of them.
	Roger spied an older woman with short blonde hair kicking dirt off of her cleats.
	He instantly recognized her as Hillary Clinton.
	She seemed out of place amidst the ogres and swamp beasts, but the moment they locked eyes,
	she quickly transformed into a large reptile and slithered off to join the rest of the team.
	Eh, that makes sense.
	A voice boomed over the arena speakers.
	"Welcome to the 82nd annual Bohemian Grove football match."
	This year we're hoping to settle a centuries-old rivalry between the White Hats.
	All of the skeletons and zombies in the crowd began to boo and hiss loudly.
	Some were even detaching their bones from their bodies and throwing them onto the field.
	The announcer continued.
	Versus the Cabal!
	The crowd exploded in rapturous applause.
	Rogers watched in horror as a very dehydrated group of children in chains and potato sacks attempted to throw t-shirts into the audience.
	That was enough for Aaron.
	This team represented everything he hated.
	He fell to his knee, refusing to play.
	The crowd exploded again, believing that Rogers was using his platform to make a political statement.
	Rogers stood up quickly, embarrassed.
	He could see Trump in his white hats, pointing and laughing, judging him.
	A large war horn sounded, and each team piled over to the sidelines to prepare for the kickoff.
	Rogers found himself in a tight huddle.
	The stench from his mutated teammates was awful, their breath glowing green in the cold Bohemian Grove air.
	Break!
	The team broke the huddle and strolled out onto the field to face their opponents.
	Armed landmines were strewn haphazardly across the football field, and spinning saw blades would periodically appear from beneath the grass.
	This is a specific video game, and I know... I can't remember the title, but this is... Oh, that's right!
	Oh my god, I remember this game!
	Yeah, League Football.
	They still make it!
	They still make, like, sequels to it.
	I can't remember the name of it.
	Do they really?
	Do they really?
	I only remember playing it on, like, the SNES.
	Oh, I wanna... Yeah, I played on Sega Genesis.
	No, they're still making this.
	The last, like... I mean, actually, that's a lie.
	When Madden first became Polygons, I played that a lot with my brother.
	Well, Madden's a type of ogre.
	Roger started to panic.
	He began to protest.
	Hey man, I'm not supposed to be here, okay?
	You got the wrong guy.
	I think my ankle is still bothering me anyways.
	One of the assistant coaches approached Aaron and tried to calm him down.
	He was a young man with bright golden locks of hair and a well-defined beard.
	Look, man, it's not ideal for us either.
	Travis Kelsey was supposed to be our QB, but... Travis looked at the ground, shaking his head.
	He took too much of the vaccine.
	Travis pointed high above the stadium where Rodgers could just make out Travis Kelsey.
	He had blown up to the size of a Macy's Day Parade balloon and was floating around the arena like a blimp.
	A loud whistle signaled the start of the game.
	Aaron heard the familiar thud of boot on Pigskin, and the ball was flying through the air, right towards him.
	Rogers opened his arms and DWACK!
	The ball landed right in his hands.
	He looked down and nearly had a heart attack.
	The game day ball wasn't actually a ball at all, but rather a startled looking baby that
	had been clearly stitched together with dark cabal magic.
	Before Rogers could recover from the shock, he felt the full weight of Sebastian Gorka
	tackling him to the ground.
	It was almost a safety, but Rogers was glad it wasn't as he now noticed the end zone was
	was a molten pit of lava. Off in the bushes, a boisterous man with thinning hair and a beard
	was holding up a small camcorder as he narrated the action on the field. "Rogers takes a hard
	hit on the two-yard line. It's a strong opening for Trump and his white hats."
	Rogers clamored to his feet as the offense lined up in front of him.
	He glanced down at the play card on his wrist, but all of the text was written in ancient satanic symbols.
	A lightbulb went off under Roger's helmet.
	He was going to throw the game.
	Hike!
	He cried out, receiving the snap from a large troll.
	Roger scanned the field, looking for any place his team wasn't.
	Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Milo Yiannopoulos falling into an endless black pit.
	Rogers had to think quickly.
	He hurtled the ball towards a vacant area of the field, but to his total surprise, just as the ball was about to hit the ground for an incompletion, it stopped, floated back off the ground, and into the hands of a large bone warrior.
	I can't believe it.
	They're using telekinesis, folks.
	We always suspected they had these capabilities.
	No matter what Rogers did, the ball always seemed to end up in the hands of the cabal.
	Hillary's got it.
	She's shifting in and out of our dimension.
	Here comes Watkins.
	Oh no!
	Ron Watkins made a diving tackle, but Hillary Clinton had sidestepped him at the last second, and he plunged headfirst into one of the landmines jutting out of the field.
	His body exploded into a million pieces, and the crowd went wild.
	Hillary danced into the end zone, spiking the baby while hissing loudly at the crowd.
	The White Hats have the ball.
	Trump shouted something to his team.
	They're switching formations.
	The White Hats were pulling out all the stops.
	They were running crazy plays like the fake news 5-out where a player would get the ball but then pretend like he didn't have it.
	Other players would then spread misinformation claiming someone else was carrying the ball when they actually weren't.
	Even the Cabal's most effective play, the grassy knoll, where four players attempted to protect their star receiver Resulted in an interception.
	Rogers watched in awe as the White Hats formed what looked like three crop circles at the scrimmage line.
	The snapper gripped the ball and shouted loudly to his team.
	Area 51!
	Red 45!
	Hike!
	He snapped the ball back to Trump, who skipped a couple steps backwards looking for a receiver.
	Alex Jones was shouting wildly from the bushes.
	Trump takes the snap.
	Bosso's open downfield.
	Oh no, it's even close to his area code.
	Oh no!
	The crowd howled as Jack Posobiec tripped over one of the spinning blades, sawing him completely in half.
	Bozo's down.
	He's fuckin' dead, brother.
	What are we gonna do now?
	Game over, man.
	Game over.
	The White Hats were dropping like flies, falling into pits, blown up by mines, sucked into black holes, dotting the field.
	It wasn't looking good.
	Trump tossed up a prayer.
	As the ball hurled across the field, it slowed down and stopped mid-air.
	Rogers looked up in shock to see a large flying disc hovering over the stadium, the football frozen in its tractor beam.
	Trump took off jogging.
	He meandered slowly along the sidelines, shaking hands and signing hats for a small number of White Hat fans in the audience.
	As he neared the opposite end of the field, the alien craft beamed the ball directly into his hands for an end zone pass.
	Touchdown!
	Touchdown!
	Trump beamed as his body sunk slowly into the molten lava end zone,
	clasping his hands together in celebration as the molten rock quickly melted him into a ripple of goo.
	One of the horned referees blew sharply on their whistle, and a voice echoed through the arena speakers.
	"Incomplete!"
	The audience roared. Aaron Rodgers let his head slump into his chest.
	The game was rigged, of course it was.
	The crowd burst onto the field in celebration, mauling what little remained of the White Hat team.
	Before he could protest, Aaron Rodgers was hoisted onto the shoulders of two large ogres and carried to the center of
	the field.
	There, he and his team were presented a large upside-down cross by George Soros, the CFL commissioner.
	"CFL!"
	Rodgers' vision began to blur as the deafening crowd blocked out what was left of his senses.
	It blacked out.
	When he woke back in his bed, he had hundreds of missed calls from his agent, book deals, a first-look agreement with Netflix, and even an invitation to the White House.
	ESPN had offered to give Rogers his own nightly talk show, replacing Jimmy Kimmel.
	Rogers glanced nervously at the large upside-down cross encased in museum glass and mounted in his bedroom.
	Things were clearly going to be smooth sailing from here on out.
	But at what cost?
	The End.
	Wow, another real masterpiece.
	Incredible stuff, Jake.
	Thank you so much, as usual.
	No problem.
	Can I ask you something about your creative process, if you don't mind?
	Yeah, sure.
	Did you come up with the Goodnight Moon poem and then write the story around that?
	No, but that is how I work.
	I come up with one bit and then write everything around it to make it fit.
	And in this And in this case, I was like, I know nothing about football.
	I was like, what if somehow I could get Aaron Rodgers to play in a Mutant League football
	game where he has to watch all of the political pundits that he likes, you know, just get
	mauled horribly.
	And then I was like, oh, okay, maybe it's a cabal game and they play annually at, you
	know, annually at Bohemia Grove, kind of like the Army Navy game.
	And then I just sort of went from there.
	Inspired, honestly.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	Mutant League was kind of, I think, like picked up by Blood Bowl.
	Oh, I've seen ads for Blood Bowl.
	Which, yeah, continues to this day, if I'm not wrong.
	Anyways, wow, great stuff.
	We appreciate you, Jake.
	You really, you know, you downplayed yourself, but I think you've still got it.
	People should go check out Arif's stuff, which we plugged earlier.
	It's definitely worth it.
	Check out all his different NFL-related podcasts and also, of course, his newsletter.
	We, on our side, have a Patreon, patreon.com slash QAA, where you can go and sign up to get access to our entire catalog of premium episodes.
	We put out a premium episode for every normal one we do.
	And we put up mini-series.
	Currently, we are running two at the same time.
	Perverts by Liv Agar and myself, as well as Trickle Down by Travis View.
	We will be resuming the premium episodes after we, you know, get through this period of having two different concurrent series running at the same time.
	But yeah, go sign up.
	Patreon.com slash QAA.
	Also go to Instagram.com slash Julian Field.
	I need people on that.
	I need it.
	I'm trying to throw a night.
	I'm trying to throw a night.
	I'm going to throw a fucking dance night here in L.A.
	So I just thought I would stick that in there.
	And no one can do anything about it.
	Listener, until next week, may this... What is it called?
	May the snapper... How does it... Long snapper?
	Long snapper.
	May the long snapper long snap you and keep you.
	It's not a conspiracy.
	It's a fact.

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