Aaron Rodgers’ 3 hour podcast with Joe Rogan, recapped

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers continued his summer podcast tour when he joined podcast host and UFC commentator Joe Rogan on the August 27th edition of The Joe Rogan Experience. The list of topics over their three hours of audio ranged from The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross — a book that claims that Christianity was influenced by psychedelics — to Leon Edwards’ win over Kamaru Usman in the octagon last weekend.

If you’re skipping the three-hour endeavor but want to know the cliff notes about what Rodgers said about his on-field career or his time with the Packers, we’ve got you covered.

Early on in the show, Rodgers claimed that he is allergic to polyethylene glycol — also known as PEG — which is why he was suggested not to take the mRNA vaccines, as is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. Many had speculated that PEG was the ingredient that Rodgers referenced being allergic to when he first made claims he could not take the mRNA Covid vaccines last season following a positive Covid test that held him out of action against the Kansas City Chiefs.

PEG is one of few ingredients that are in both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines but is not present in the J&J vaccine, which was temporarily pulled for a time due to blood clot issues that appeared in the cases of six women. In all likelihood, Rodgers’ “immunized” appeal to the NFL in 2021 probably came down to the league stating that even though he was allergic to PEG that he could still safely take the J&J vaccine, which had its pause lifted on April 23rd of that year.

Rodgers stated at different points in the podcast that seven to ten of his teammates were unvaccinated last season, though, he claims that his teammates and the team overall were “coerced” into increasing their number of vaccinations by the league and the league’s general managers. The only other player who was alleged to be unvaccinated on the team in 2021 was receiver Allen Lazard, who like Rodgers was fined by the league for attending a Halloween party that broke the NFL’s Covid protocol and led to Rodgers contracting the virus.

The reigning Most Valuable Player of the NFL didn’t talk about his teammates or the Green Bay Packers much during the interview but did speak a lot about what his body has gone through playing professional football. When discussing pain management around the league, he said that he’s played games on Percocet before, which he later admitted was a bad idea. He then advocated for CBD as an alternative anti-inflammatory, with the logic being that it does not damage the liver in the way many of the pills players are taking do.

The quarterback seemed genuinely worried about the amount of medicine that players in the league end up taking throughout their careers, going as far as to say that a former teammate of his had to be put under anesthesia to take pain medicine because of his addiction to painkillers.

Rodgers said that he has dealt with knee issues since 1999, with a significant status to his knees changing following an ACL reconstruction surgery that he had during his college days. Since then, he dealt with nerve issues, arthritic issues and bursa issues in his knee. Beginning in January of 2016, he claimed that he “cut” a lot of dairy and gluten from his diet, which has helped him stay healthy and keep inflammation down.

As far as concussions go, the ten-time Pro Bowler states that his three concussions on record have been his only concussions from his playing days. His last concussion, which happened in 2018, was the most impactful as Rodgers initially thought he had taken a normal hit before he slowly started to lose vision once returning to the sideline. He said that he has not noticed any deterioration of his cognition, which “would be it” for his playing career.

As a final note, Rodgers told a story about how he was nearly expelled from the University of California for a beef he had with a professor who taught a food appreciation class. The jokes write themselves. The professor apparently treated Rodgers unfairly, which he reported to his team’s liaison with the school. This led to a “kangaroo court” hearing, according to Rodgers, that ended with him being given two options: write an apology to the professor or be expelled from the school. Rodgers wrote the apology but used the professor’s words as motivation to chase his NFL dream.