ICARUS: How Bryan Fogel Exposed The Biggest Doping Scandal In Olympic History

Last week I sat down with Lance Armstrong to explore his competitive drive for greatness, precipitous fall from grace, and path forward. Irrespective of your opinion on Lance or that conversation, his story leaves us all with an indelible question: Just how far will we go to be considered the best? Obsessed with this inquiry, Bryan Fogel decided to answer it for himself. Struck by the fact that Lance never once failed a single drug test, the avid cyclist, playwright, and filmmaker decided to make a documentary with one goal in mind: to prove the system in place to detect doping athletes was bullshit. Because what the world watches on its sports fields should not be taken for granted as truth. Icarus was premised on an audacious idea: Bryan would undertake an aggressive doping protocol, experimenting with a wide variety of performance enhancing drugs. He would observe the changes in his athletic performance. He would attempt to evade detection. And finally, he would extensively and transparently document the entire experience, sharing the whole endeavor on film. To guide him through the mysterious and byzantine process of doping, Bryan enlists the professional aid of Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, a renegade Russian scientist and then pillar of his country's “anti-doping” program. As they grow closer, it becomes clear that Rodchenkov is in fact the central figure in what we soon discover is Russia's vast and elaborate state-sponsored Olympic doping program – a program that can be traced to Russia’s highest chains of command, all the way up to Vladamir Putin. When the two realize they hold the power to reveal the biggest international sports scandal in living memory, Bryan's academic exercise in self-experimentation quickly pivots into spy thriller territory — a high-stakes and quite spectacular collision of politics, sports, espionage and danger more John LeCarré than Morgan Spurlock. Icarus premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where it won “The Orwell” Special Jury Award and the first ever Audience Choice Award at Sundance Film Festival London. It’s been called a “game-changing documentary” by Variety and “The Best Non-Fiction film of 2017″ by the Financial Times and was acquired by Netflix in a historic sale. Bryan and the story behind the film have been profiled in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Variety , USA Today, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. Bryan has also discussed the film on NPR's All Things Considered, NBC's Meet The Press, ABC Dateline, Charlie Rose, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Breakfast with the BBC. An extraordinary portrait of self sacrifice in the interest of truth, Icarus is a gripping exposé that will forever color your perception of Olympic sport. But more than that, it's a palpable glimpse into the dark realpolitik of the global sports arena and the staggering implications it has on our already strained geo-political landscape. One of the best documentaries I have seen in recent memory, Icarus exemplifies the power of film to rewrite history. Today, Bryan joins me to share his fascinating tale. For the visually inclined, watch the podcast on YouTube. I sincerely hope you enjoy this exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  What the film shows is what George Orwell clearly said, is that sport is war without the weapons. And these Olympic Games, or World Cup Soccer, et cetera, are essentially just a place for a country to go to war with each other and assert its geopolitical power through sport. And these athletes are, in essence, gladiators for their country. In the case of Russia, and this program that went for 40 years, in the case of Sochi Olympics, Russia has been using its sport program to assert itself geopolitically and show dominance and power. And if they can win in sport, and they can win in Olympics, what does this say about business?

• 1:50Speaker 01

  What does this say about war? What does this say about military strength, et cetera, et cetera? And you look at that, and then you draw the analogy to Sochi. The 1936 Games in Berlin was one of the pivotal moments in the rise of the Third Reich and of German nationalism and pride. And Hitler used those games to consolidate his power. And so we're seeing the replicating that in each one of these games, where a country is using these games to basically assert itself on a geopolitical level.

• 2:23Rich Roll?

  That's Brian Fogel and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:37Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:41Rich Roll?

  Hey people, happy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whenever, wherever you happen to be listening to this program. Hope you're good, doing well, feeling fine. As always, my name is Rich Roll. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. The show where each week I dive deep with a wide variety of intriguing, inspiring, compelling characters to talk health, wellness, entrepreneurship, mindfulness, spirituality, and in the case of today's guest, documentary filmmaking, sport, and the wide-ranging implications of state-sponsored doping at the Olympic level. Before I get into it, a couple of quick words about last week. Last week was a big one. My conversation with Lance Armstrong received more listens, more comments, discussion,

• 3:24Rich Roll?

  and controversy in the first week of posting than any other podcast I have ever done. And opinions are divided. I predicted that. That's fine. I guess I would say that it wasn't my intention to be controversial, but of course, as I pointed out in the intro to that conversation, emotions run high with Lance. He is inherently a divisive character. I'm not sure I was really prepared to be personally attacked or criticized for simply having a conversation with the guy, particularly as my approach was really to just better understand him, the situation he finds himself in, and to just get a glimpse of what makes

• 4:04Rich Roll?

  him tick, what it must be like to be Lance Armstrong. But I get it. Nonetheless, I stand behind the conversation. It's fine. I'd do it again. Because no matter how you come down on Lance, it is irrefutable that he is one of the most prominent figures in not just sport, but of our time. And the story that swirls around him is one that has not just impacted cycling, but really impacted culture in the most massive way, including the impact that he had on this week's guest, Brian Fogel. If you ride bikes in Malibu, where I live, then chances are you know Brian. He's a former competitive cyclist. He's one of the strongest riders in the area.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  You can find him out on the hills all the time. And Brian is a guy who was personally quite impacted by the Lance story. His admiration of Lance Armstrong is in fact what led him to what he calls an investigative obsession. Just how far will we go to be considered the best? And as a filmmaker, Brian had this audacious idea to transparently document the process of experimenting with performance enhancing drugs in sort of a Morgan Spurlock kind of way. The idea was that he would dope himself, he would observe the changes in his performance, and see if he could evade detection and capture this whole endeavor on film as a documentary.

• 5:33Rich Roll?

  And the idea behind it all was really to help shed light on this belief that what the world watches on its sports fields should not necessarily be taken for granted as truth. And so to embark on this endeavor, he needed to find a doctor, somebody that could guide him through this process, this ordeal of doping. And he ended up hooking up with this renegade Russian scientist by the name of Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who at the time was a pillar of his country's anti-doping program. But as they start to grow closer, it suddenly becomes clear that Rodchenkov is something

• 6:14Rich Roll?

  different altogether, that he is in fact the central figure in what can only be described as Russia's state-sponsored Olympic doping program. A program that runs to Russia's highest chain of command, all the way up to Vladimir Putin. And so what begins as this personal... Firsthand experience of experimenting with performance enhancing drugs ultimately pivots in terms of narrative towards what can only be described as this really gripping, almost unimaginable John le Carré, Jason Bourne-like thriller.

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  This quite rare and rather spectacular collision of politics and sports. And when these two guys realize that they hold the power to reveal the biggest international sports scandal in living memory, kind of like all hell breaks loose. And what plays out is this amazing portrait of self-sacrifice in the interest of truth. It's an expose that will not only forever color how you perceive Olympic sport, but ultimately has staggering implications on our world at the highest level of geopolitics. It's an amazing piece of filmmaking. It's one of the best documentaries I've seen in recent memory that demonstrates the power of this medium to literally rewrite history.

• 7:37Rich Roll?

  And I'm thrilled to have Brian on the show today to walk us through what I think you guys are going to discover is an unbelievably mind-blowing story.

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  Okay, Icarus, Brian Fogel. So Icarus premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past year, where it won the Orwell Special Jury Award, and it was also the first ever Audience Choice Award at the Sundance Film Festival, London. It's been called a game-changing documentary by Variety and the best nonfiction film of 2017 by the Financial Times. It was acquired by Netflix, that's where you can see it. Brian and the story behind the making of the film has been written about basically everywhere: The New York Times, The LA Times, Financial Times, Variety, USA Today, Newsweek, The Atlantic, The Guardian. And Brian has appeared everywhere as well: NPR's All Things Considered, NBC's Meet the

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  Press, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Late Night with Seth Meyers, the BBC, on and on and on. Today, I have the honor of sharing Brian's fascinating story, the gripping tale of Icarus, and...

• 8:49Rich Roll?

  The implications that it lays bare regarding how we think about sport, how we think about self-sacrifice, and perhaps most importantly, the broader implications of sport on the geopolitical stage, including, as amazing as it may sound, our most recent presidential election and this current crisis of truth in which we find ourselves mired in. So, without further ado, this is me and my conversation with Brian Vogel.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  Thanks for coming up here. Were you followed on your way up here?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Not to my knowledge.

• 9:28Rich Roll?

  You were? Are you sure?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I guess if I was being followed, I wouldn't probably wouldn't know about it.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  You wouldn't know, right? You would know. Well, it's like, you say that in jest, but I was reading an article, I don't know which one it was, but you were doing an interview at like a New York hotel, and I'm sure this wasn't recent, it was probably right around Sundance, I would imagine. But according to the reporter, you know, it looked like you were a little bit concerned that certain people were kind of keeping an eye on you.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  It might have been when I was in London, where they had some extra security around me. But I guess I feel relatively safe.

• 10:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Has it been? I mean, is that something that you think about? Or you feel pretty okay with everything?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I think I felt about it a lot more

• 10:23Speaker 01

  when Gregory had first arrived to Los Angeles in that period between

• 10:32Speaker 01

  understanding the information that he had and the evidence that he had and are going to The New York Times with the story, which for me and for Gregory and my team really felt, aside from the need to do that, but that it would also make it a lot more public and also in many ways,

• 10:59Speaker 01

  make Gregory safe

• 11:02Speaker 01

  by bringing that information forward. So that seven-month period, I felt a lot of stress.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  But... Recently and since the release of the film, you know, I feel like that the story's public, so I don't know what would be gained to come after myself. Ultimately, I'm a filmmaker and worked in a journalistic capacity to bring the story forward with Gregory, but I personally am not the person who did this.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  We'd be in the crosshairs, yeah, of course. Well, let's unpack it. I mean, the movie is extraordinary. You did an unbelievable job. I was deeply impacted by it, and it's really quite something. Like, it is quite a piece of work. Like, you should be very proud. I'm sure you are. And it's an exciting time for you. I mean, I would not be surprised if you got an Academy Award nomination for this movie. In fact, I would expect that to occur. So, congratulations. It's very cool. And it's a really powerful story. So, before we kind of launch into it, maybe we can create a little context for it. I mean, it's really birthed out of your passion for cycling, which has been, you know, a huge part of

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  your life for a long time, living here in Malibu. You're a fixture in the Malibu cycling scene, and we have lots of mutual friends. And it's funny, right before the podcast, you showed you've been to my house before. I wasn't here, but you were riding with some mutual friends of ours. And that's funny. That's like, you know, that's what it's like to ride a bike around here. So, tell me a little bit about your history with cycling.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Well, thanks a lot for the warm accolades. And for me and the film, it's just important for me that people see the movie, because I think the story in the film is something that people need to see to understand the geopolitics of what's going on in our country and in Russia, and, you know, far beyond the boundaries of sport. What the film essentially shines a flash Slide into which is, you know, what Russia is willing to do to win and that transcends sport.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  It goes into, you know, winning at all costs and essentially without a moral compass in what those stakes are involved and what you're willing to do to win. So, you know, so that I am hoping that any accolades that get presented to the film will be exciting for me. The bigger thing for me is that it will make people see the film and hopefully open up a much deeper and broader conversation in this country and internationally on the subject matter that's in the film.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  And really, the bottom line is Russia's meddling, not just in sports, but in geopolitics. As far as my cycling background, yeah, I mean, I kind of started when I was 13 years old. I grew up racing in Colorado and it's just has been in my DNA and I got into cycling really because I'm five foot eight, I'm a skinny guy and the reality was is I wasn't going to be a football player or a baseball player or a basketball player. And when I briefly tried those sports, I quickly found myself ill-equipped to compete.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And cycling is really such an individual sport and a very mental sport as far as the kind of pain threshold that you put yourself through. And so I think cycling for me has really been my therapy through life. It's just been something that has kind of, I've always went back to and grounded me. And it's really my passion for cycling that started me on this journey that became Icarus and that ultimately became this film.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  And so you, you end up racing in college, right? At Boulder, or you, and then at some point you have like a big kind of career ending crash?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had raced, I started, my, my first races were like 13, 14, 15. They had in, in Colorado, these things called the Red Zinger Mini Classics. And it was literally Jonathan Vauders and Bobby Julick and, and all the, Hank Cappy eventually, because he was over at the Olympic Training Center. And I'm trying to remember all the guys who were in those races. Chris Weary.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And yeah, so it was all those kind of guys of, of that generation. And I, and I grew up, you know, and I was racing for about seven years, really, really seriously. And when I was 19, I was racing Cat Two and racing Junior. It was my, like, I was technically no longer a junior, but my racing age was still a junior. So I was racing both. And, and I go and I do this race called the Tour de Abitibi up in northern Quebec. And it's this very prestigious junior race. Most of the best guys in the world have, did it when they were, when they were juniors. International field. And I did pretty well there. And the following weekend, I'm staying in Canada to do this race called the Festival Internacional de Hol. And it's pouring rain.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  And I'm in a break with about 10 guys. And there's about 5K to go. And I'm doing the math and I'm going, wow, the worst place I'm going to get is 10th. And who knows, perhaps maybe I could get top three or something. And, and the guy, two, two bike lanes in front of me clips a wheel because it's like pouring rain and people's brakes aren't working. So he starts going over the handlebars and the guy in front of me hits him and is going over his handlebars. And I'm watching this in slow motion and I, and I eat his wheel in my mouth, literally.

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  Literally the wheel goes in your mouth?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Literally going, yeah, literally in my mouth. And I was probably going.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  You know, 30 miles an hour, something like that at that time. And the next thing I know, I'm just in the middle of like a bush. And my immediate masochistic thought is to get on the bike and finish the race, which I think all cyclists or endurance athletes can understand. Like somehow, even though you're totally mangled, you're going to finish the race.

• 18:05Rich Roll?

  Well, there's that rush of adrenaline too that clouds, you know, logic.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I just remember I'm in this bush and then I quickly realized that one of my, I'm stuck in one of my pedals hasn't released. And so I'm like going, wait, did I break my leg? And then I'm thinking that maybe I like broke an arm. And then I'm feeling my mouth and I rub my tongue across my teeth and basically realize that that my teeth are either gone or in pieces and shattered. And I'm in French Quebec, no less. So needless to say, that crash was traumatic enough for me that I came back. That put me out for the rest of the season. Then came back the next year to try to race.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  And I just found that my mindset, that that difference between taking those chances to be competitive is anybody who's into the sport understands, were no longer there. And so I found myself constantly chasing wheels or opening up gaps that I shouldn't have opened up or not willing to take the chances on a descent that you need to take. And so I gave racing a break, put down the bike for a few years. And then as I was probably about 23, I picked it up again and I still ride.

• 19:28Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah. And once that that switch is flicked and you have that fear, like it's kind of game over to be able to compete at that level, right? Like if you don't have that balls out instinct to just gun it on the descent, you know, rain or no rain, then it's going to be pretty difficult to be able to be in the mix.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really is. And for Icarus, when I came up with this idea that I was gonna go do this, the Hoet Route in Europe, and I had read about, in Velo News, they had this article a couple of years ago, talking about like the hardest amateur events on the planet. And one of them was like, the Cape Epic, and another one was, I can't even, I'm trying to remember, there's another one in Europe, but the one that they rated the hardest is this Hoet Route. And it's, you can do seven days, 14 days, or 21 days if you're totally off your rocker. But everybody's basically doing seven days. And I read about this race,

• 20:36Speaker 01

  and it's through the French Alps, and it's every climb that I've ever read about, Alpe d'Oz, and Mont Ventoux, and Gallibier, and Madeleine. And it's like the seven hardest days of like the Tour de France.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  Right, condensed into one week.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Into one week. And when I get obsessed with this idea that I'm going to do this race, and part of that is gonna be that I'm gonna dope. But the interesting thing about that is, is that in the back of my mind, there was always that fear of, what am I doing? Because to me, taking the drugs, or performance enhancing drugs, whatever the hormones, I wasn't scared about. I was scared about flying off my bike going 70 miles an hour. And that was, I think, the biggest variable in coming back to kind of just do these two races.

• 21:33Rich Roll?

  In a competitive context.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, where I was like, I'm really just, what am I doing? I'm too old to have an injury like this.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I get it. Well, you do, I mean, the first time you do Hoet Route is, was that 2009?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  No, that was 2014.

• 21:53Rich Roll?

  2014, okay. And you got like 14th, right? So you did well. Like, how many, how many guys are in it?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  There's 440 guys that year.

• 22:02Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, so you're like, you know, you're right in there. And then you have this idea... I want to talk about the genesis of the idea that you're going to go back the following year, but you're going to be, you're going to compete after undergoing like a full protocol of performance enhancing drugs. And you're going to document all of this in a film. So what was the catalyst for that idea?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Well, that catalyst, and which was a whole reason in the beginning, as I set off to make Icarus, and I'd actually named the film Icarus before I ever even picked up a camera. And the reason why is because I was looking at Lance Armstrong's journey, and I likened him to Icarus. Essentially, this guy who just kept flying too close to the sun, and too close to the sun, and too close to the sun, and he finally just essentially got his wings burnt and plummeted to the earth.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  And the concept for me was, I was looking at that story and going, in the popular media, if you talk to anybody, they all believed that Armstrong had been caught. But he actually hadn't been caught. It was like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. And behind the "he's been caught" was actually a program in anti-doping that really hadn't worked. And so I'm going, wait, it's the beginning of 2013, and here he is confessing on Oprah. But as he's confessing, he still to this day has passed 500 tests.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  Right, he never failed a test.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Never, never failed a test. Now, scientists can go back now, and they can go, well, you see this anomaly in his blood passport, and here he would be suspicious for, you know, for erythropoietin use, or whatever they want to look at. But the bottom line is that he had not failed a test. So I'm going, forget about Armstrong. What does this mean for the world of sport? That if the most tested athlete on planet Earth... Isn't being caught by the science that's in place to catch him. And ultimately, as a society, we're mad at Armstrong.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  But in flipping that on its head, should we be mad at the system that clearly is ineffective and leaves the athlete with the choice to make, rather than being so upset at the individual athlete for making that choice when ultimately the athlete wants to win and what is involved in winning. So I was exploring that. And I saw, as I started, long before I picked up a camera, I started talking to all these scientists. And one after the other would tell me that essentially you can get around the testing.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Essentially, you can still get around the testing regardless of Armstrong's confession. And that it was essentially this constant cat and mouse game. And many of these guys that I was encountering and speaking to said to me, yeah, we could help get you around it, but we don't want to be involved in it. But it was based on this kind of hypothesis that I had that set me out on this journey because I thought it would be really interesting because we had never seen on camera. And I think it came from both a personal curiosity, but also in looking at a journalistic

• 25:45Speaker 01

  fashion of how to kind of tell this bigger story, that everybody's curious about what these drugs do or don't do. Anybody who's an athlete or an armchair quarterback, it's always a topic of conversation. And I was very curious, A, to see what the drugs did, and B, to explore whether or not this system worked. And if it didn't work, and assuming that it didn't work, essentially presenting to society or anybody who's going to watch this film, the larger question of, hey, what do we want to do about this? What can be done about this? Should we care? Should we not care?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  And that was kind of the blueprint that I'd set out and initially going to make Icarus.

• 26:35Rich Roll?

  Right. So the inquiry from the outset is bifurcated. On the one hand, it's like... What's it like to do all these drugs? And what's going to happen if I do it and go compete? Like, how will I feel? How is that going to impact my performance? Like, let's document it and show the world what this is really all about. And the second prong being, alright, we know that the system's broken. Lance Armstrong got through. We know many other athletes have. But how broken is it? And how easy would it be, or difficult would it be, for somebody like you to undergo the protocol that, you know, some of these other people have done and try to game it and get by? Right? So the idea was that you wanted to have your blood tested and see if you too could

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  be somebody who could pass these tests.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 27:23Rich Roll?

  Right? So then it becomes, like, is it so broken that this is easy? Or is it, do you have to be somebody like Armstrong, who has a tremendous amount of resources at his fingertips in order to do it?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think what I, when I quickly started to discover was that there are so many variables. So it's not, it's not one versus the other, which is ultimately what leads me to Gregory Rachankov, who's running the, at the time is running the Russian Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, which is really the anti, anti-doping laboratory, disguised as the anti-doping laboratory. And, and, and what I found was that, you know, any kind of chink in the armor, one thing out of place, could essentially disrupt the whole system.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  So that, you know, if you look at it from like the Armstrong perspective of it, well, that game was always about, how do you essentially keep one step ahead of the science? And going, okay, we know that the tests that they're using for HGH essentially can only detect HGH within about a 12-hour period. So we know if we, if I take HGH at this time in the day, and I can, you know, and even if they show up for a test, I can, you know... I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be okay as long as I have this timeframe. We know that if I take this much of erythropoetin, but I set these different values and take this, this amount, that I'm not gonna test positive.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  And so, you know, the, the Armstrong of it was always trying to stay one step ahead of the science. And in his case, you know, he had a, a lot of advisors, as did, you know, his team, as did other writers of that generation. I mean, the, I think the amazing thing that, um, when they catch him, we learned that Lipeimer and Hincapi and all of his other teammates had been doing the exact same thing as, that he had been doing his entire career. And these guys had never been caught. So that is the, the one side of it. And then there's, and then there's the, the chinks in the armor. And that's the Rychenkovs of it, the Gregory Rychenkovs of it.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Meaning if you've got somebody within the lab who's altering your samples, or who's working for the Russian ministry, or who is-

• 29:57Rich Roll?

  You don't have to be one step ahead of the science.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  You don't even need to worry about the science.

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  You're controlling the science.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Because you're, you're controlling, exactly.

• 30:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And you kind of launch into this, uh, you know, on this mission to explore these two prongs and, and it's, it's, there's a certain levity to it. Like, I wouldn't go so far, like, it's sort of been compared to Morgan Spurlock and supersized me. Like, it's not a, it's not like a comedy in that regard. Like, I feel like you approached it with a little more seriousness than, than maybe, you know, someone like Morgan would have. But that was really the exploration and the focus. And then you meet Gregory Rychenkov, and we're gonna get into who he is and, and the impact that he had on, on this story. And the whole documentary shifts focus away from that narrative and into what really

• 30:47Rich Roll?

  becomes like a John le Carré novel, like this crazy spy novel, you know, born supremacy type situation with gigantic geopolitical implications and this firestorm, this maelstrom of a scandal that suddenly you find yourself in the center of. I mean, as a documentary filmmaker, in certain respects, like, looking at it completely objectively, like, that's a gift and it's also- That's what makes documentaries great, when you go on this journey and you're open to whatever's gonna happen and these magical things sort of occur and then you can follow that story and it becomes something else altogether.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it certainly, you know, the film, once we got into the creative filmmaking process of it, after, you know, shooting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage and aside from what the story was, it became, on a filmmaking level with my team, of how to shape and craft the narrative into a thriller and to make you feel that you were simply in a, you know, a narrative thriller that happens to all be true and so it is a documentary.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  And that came from what I was truly experiencing during that time on a daily basis, an emotional level. And so, as we went back to kind of shape the film, I was looking at Paul Greengrass movies and Doug Liman films.

• 32:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it has that handheld.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  And, you know, and Errol Morris on the documentary side and Laura Poitras with Citizen Four and Man on Wire. And so, thinking about how to kind of like blend these worlds of this true story, which is a documentary, and the thriller aspect of what was really going on in my life and in Gregory's life and the stakes that were involved, but to craft kind of the narrative to bring you into that story and keep you engaged. And that was, that was a very long process with my team from, you know, the music and the sound and the editing and how we, and how we put that together to have that, hopefully

• 33:09Speaker 01

  that emotional effect.

• 33:11Rich Roll?

  And it changed from Sundance to the release on Netflix, right?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Quite a bit.

• 33:17Rich Roll?

  You edited it after that.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Quite a bit. We, we had a, the film was acquired at Sundance.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  And Netflix came to the table and for me, the Netflix of it was the best option for people to see the film. Because we're in a kind of a, an era where it doesn't matter what your documentary might be. People are conditioned now that they're gonna see documentary essentially on Netflix or they're gonna go see it on HBO, et cetera. Where the days of literally going to a movie theater, when your option is, is do I go see whatever it is, the new Star Wars and that's gonna be my hundred dollar evening at the movie theaters?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Or am I gonna go see a documentary? The majority of the population is gonna go choose to see Star Wars. And so with that in mind, you know, the Netflix of it, to go into 190 countries at the push of a button and have your film translated into every language that Netflix is, their platform is operating in, to me was, was a no-brainer. Because ultimately, I wanted to see to it that the film was seen. So, they acquired it at Sundance and creatively, we had raced to get ready to Sundance when they, when they let you know that your movie is into Sundance, you basically have like seven weeks.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you don't sleep.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, and so we hadn't, you know, we hadn't, we hadn't slept for the months and months leading up to Sundance to submit, you know, a cut to them.

• 35:01Rich Roll?

  How many hours of footage did you shoot total?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Oh, it was hundreds, hundreds. And, but then, bringing in the, you know, the thousands of archival clips and how to basically craft, you know, the narrative around the footage that we shot, but then the archival, plus bringing in CGI and motion graphics and, and recreating that lab, et cetera. But, so Netflix acquires and, and sit down with them and just say, hey, look, um... We think this film can be better. Um, these are the things that I want to keep working on. And Netflix said, okay, sounds good to us. And so we kept working for, for four months after Sundance.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  It was like Sundance, it was like the editing had never stopped. We just went, you know, we were sleepless up until Sundance. Sundance happens, that's two weeks. Sundance ends and the very next week, we're just back at it like it never happened. Um, but that four months, um, A allowed two things. One allowed for, um, uh, me and my team to have an audience already have seen the film. And as you see it over and over again, you become more and more critical as a filmmaker of going, wait, that, that can be better. That can be better. We can do this, we can do that. And two, and you're able to then go back and, and work already knowing what is really

• 36:28Speaker 01

  working and where you feel like the movie can be, um, better refined. And so it was, that was an amazing opportunity that a lot of filmmakers don't have to come out of Sundance and then continue to be able to work on their film. And, uh, and Netflix was incredibly supportive and an amazing company to, to work with.

• 36:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's the best portal for you to be on by far. I mean, the, the number of eyeballs that you can reach there versus any other platform, it's not even, you know, comparable.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're amazing.

• 37:06Rich Roll?

  So you're, you're launching into this adventure and, uh, and you have this idea, but you're going to have to find the guy who's going to walk you through how you're going to do this performance enhancing protocol, right? Like who, you know, who do you call and, and what leads you to this guy Gregory?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Well, um, you know, we don't get into a lot of the detail in the film. We dangle the carrot without getting into the real backstory because, you know, you only have so much time in a feature. But essentially, as I started out, before I even picked up a camera in this thing, and I'm talking to scientists, I get put into touch with Don Catlin. And I went after, actually, Don Catlin, I actually sought him out because I knew that he was a, essentially, the foremost scientist in US history in the development of the anti-doping system.

• 38:03Rich Roll?

  Right, he ran the first lab or something like that.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  The first lab, the UCLA lab, and he did the first ever testing for the 84 Olympics in Los Angeles. He went on to do the testing for the Atlantic, the Atlanta Olympics. He went on to do the testing for the Salt Lake City Olympics. So this guy is widely considered one of the most knowledgeable and foremost scientists in the world on anti-doping and also laboratory operations. So in the early days of coming up with kind of the thesis for the film, I reached out to Don Catlin and we started having lunches and he's in Los Angeles and talking by phone. And I, you know, told him essentially what I wanted to do, which was, hey, Don, do

• 38:49Speaker 01

  you believe that the anti-doping system in sports works? And he said, no. I said, do you think, you know, what are the probabilities of it ever really working? And he basically said, well, I think it's very difficult. And he went on and listed a million different reasons. And at the time, Richard Pound, the head of WADA, had actually just released a report. And this report, which Dick Pound authored, also got into huge detail as to all the different fallacies of the anti-doping system and what it was facing in its reality to succeed on a global level. And so, Don...

• 39:34Rich Roll?

  Didn't you also, sorry to interject, but didn't you also ask Don, like, how many athletes do you think at this highest level are doping?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Yes. And so I'd asked Don, you know, how many, what percentage of the athletes do you think are doping? And he said...

• 39:52Speaker 01

  All of them. And I said, well, why do you believe that, Don? He goes, well, prove it to me otherwise. And I said, well, how can I prove it to you, Don? He goes, well, you can't.

• 40:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  So, so he was looking at it from a perspective of not that everybody is taking performance enhancing drugs, not that everybody is cheating.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  But anyone who's adequately motivated to circumvent the checks and balances can do so.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. But, but, but he was looking at it in, in his personal experience and going, hey, I, I caught, I tested Armstrong 50 times. I never got him. I ran the lab and I saw, you know? So he was looking at it on a personal perspective going, hey, every time I thought somebody was clean, then something would come, come down the line that they weren't clean. And so I can't prove to you that they are clean unless essentially you're going to put an athlete into like a biodome system and have them under 24/7 surveillance where they're, where, you know, you're, you're monitoring them every eight

• 40:58Speaker 01

  to 12 hours. So, so Don was very candid in his beliefs and...

• 41:06Rich Roll?

  Is he still professionally involved in...

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Well, no, he's retired. He's retired. And I think his willingness to speak to me also had to do with the fact that he was retired, meaning while he was still in the system on a day-to-day basis, it's very hard to kind of speak about the problems within the system while at the same time, that's your livelihood and that's your job, which I think is also part of the yin and yang and the, and the two-sided nature of this issue or problem is that a lot of people involved in it that even understand it are not going to go and speak against it because it's their, because it's their livelihood.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  So I, so Don originally says to me that he'll help me essentially design a protocol and, and advise me on how to essentially get around the system. And in so doing...

• 42:07Rich Roll?

  And why do you think he was willing to help you? Just curious?

• 42:10Speaker 01

  I, I think in the beginning, and that changed, I think he was, I think he was...

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Interested to show firsthand the fallacies in the system that he himself couldn't expose. But as a retired scientist, as somebody who had kind of spent his life, his life's work, trying to do something about it, I think he was interested in exposing also the...

• 42:40Rich Roll?

  Right, if you can shine a spotlight on this, then it's the narrative shifts from, "Oh, there's a few outliers like Armstrong who can get around this," to, "No, there's a wide gaping hole here that anybody can walk through."

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Exactly, and I, and I, and when I was approaching the film, I was approaching it that Armstrong was the haystack and not, I'm sorry, that Armstrong was, you know, not the, the, the needle in the haystack, that he was the haystack. He just, he just happened to be the best of his generation, but ultimately doing the same thing that, that most of the athletes of his generation were doing as well. So, so I was interested in, in, in exploring that story, but on a global sport level, and, and Catlin thought that was an interesting

• 43:36Speaker 01

  idea. But along that came all these variables, which is, first of all, how are you going to get your samples into a WADA accredited lab? And that's easier said than done, because technically, it doesn't matter if you're a professional athlete or an amateur athlete, you can't just get your samples into a WADA lab, because if you can get a WADA lab to test your samples, well, then, anybody can essentially figure out how they can game the system if they're sending in their samples every day and going, "Okay, am I positive now? Am I positive now? Do I test positive now? Do I test positive now?"

• 44:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they don't want that happening.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, so there was a huge variable there of, of how you're going to get your samples into a lab. And as Don got further into kind of the...

• 44:22Rich Roll?

  And all labs, sorry to interrupt you, all labs are registered with WADA, so there's just, you just can't do it. Like, there's no lab that you can go to.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, I guess there was a lab you could go to.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  Well, you had to go to Russia to find it, but that lab does exist.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  But, uh, so, so Don, um, says, "Look, I, I ultimately can't help you. I, I don't want to be advising you. Um, I can't prescribe you what you need and I don't want the liability of that if something were to go wrong or you were to be, get, you know, injured or hurt or have a heart attack, whatever that is. And third of all, I can't get your samples into a WADA lab. Um, but there's a, there's a scientist who I know that I think, um, might find this interesting."

• 45:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I got the guy.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  And he connects me to, to Dr. Gregory Rychenko. And Gregory, at the time, is running Russia's, uh, anti-doping laboratory. And this is now right about the time of Sochi, and we don't get into this into the film. So this is, uh, March of 2014. Basically, he was just finishing, or, you know, it was like he was actually at Sochi as we first started corresponding. And I approached him and I just said, "Hey, I'm a, I'm a documentary filmmaker. I'm interested in discussing with you the fallacies in the anti-doping system. Uh, Don Catlin referred me to you. Um, would you be willing to kind of like

• 45:54Speaker 01

  talk to me?" And I didn't tell him what I wanted to do at the time. It wasn't like, "Hey, this is what I'm gonna do. Will you help me dope and evade detection?" But we go back and forth on an email exchange. And he invites me, after a couple of months of corresponding, and we'd actually spoke on the phone a few times, he invites me to go meet him in Oregon. And this is July of 2014. He's lecturing at this symposium in Oregon. And I make this decision that I'm not gonna go up there with the film crew. I'm not gonna spook them. I just wanna go up there and, and meet him. Because I don't know, at the time, is this the right guy? Is he gonna help me? What, you know, what am I really getting into, other than this is a Russian-

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Scientist who just did all the testing for Sochi. He's clearly a man of interest and could clearly advise if he wanted to. So I go up there and meet him. We spend a couple of days together and we, we end up drinking even though I'm training. But you know, it's just what you do when you're around a Russian scientist. And, and I asked Gregory, I say, um, do you believe that an Olympic medal, a medal in the Olympics can be won without performance enhancing drugs? And he looks at me and he goes, I should believe, I tried to believe, but I do not believe that an Olympic medal can be won without performance enhancing drugs.

• 47:23Rich Roll?

  Across the board, any sport.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  And then he pauses and he goes, I don't know, maybe I'm a bad man. And.

• 47:32Rich Roll?

  What do you make of that?

• 47:33Speaker 01

  And I, and literally it was okay. Uh, what do I make of this? And, and, and he agrees, um, to help me, uh, on this journey after this conversation. I tell him what I want to do and he says, I like challenges. This sounds interesting, you know?

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  And you told him you were making a film.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, which, you know, of course was kind of surprising in the wow, this guy should not be doing this. This is against his, his job. This is against WADA code, the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. Um, you shouldn't be doing this.

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, unlike Catlin, he's gainfully employed, he's still employed by this. He's not retired.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. And unlike Catlin, you're still in the system. This is still your job. Um, but he agrees to help me because we kind of formed this, this trust, this relationship. And I say, and at the time I even said, hey, look, you know, anything we film, when the movie's done, I'll show it to you. And we just kinda just hit it off. And so he agrees to help me. And about six months later, this is July 2014, I then start speaking to him. And this is where the film picks up. And this is the first time we see him in the film on Skype. And it's the first Skype conversation I've ever had with him as well.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  And there he is, and I'm ready to start doping. And literally, as I'm getting ready to start doping, this German television special, kinda like a 60 Minutes, comes out. And this German reporter, who had been investigating Gregory in the lab, comes out with this scathing TV program alleging that Russia has a state-sponsored doping program. And that Gregory Wuchankov is essentially one of the very, very key, key figures in this program. And so this news piece comes out, right as I'm literally starting my doping program.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  And so Gregory is under investigation. The entire year that he's advising me how to dope. So he's under investigation while at the same time, he's coming to Los Angeles and helping me smuggle my urine back to Moscow. I'm in myriads of Skype calls with him where he's advising me on my protocol. And what happens is, over this year, we truly, truly form a friendship. And as this investigation is going on, I'm quietly behind the scenes, which I don't get into in the detail of the film.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  But I'm going and interviewing all these guys that are investigating Gregory and asking them, none of them realize that I know Gregory. None of them realize that I'm doping. But I'm just asking them as a documentary filmmaker. So if these allegations against Russia prove to be true, what does this mean? Do you think, you know, that this happened? What do you think is Gregory's involvement in this? What, you know, so I'm coming at them as a documentary. But what I'm doing is I'm, and my team, is that we are essentially...

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Planting kind of all the seeds should the other part of this story turn into something a lot larger.

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  I see, so you're already aware that this pivot might be a play?

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Um, myself and my producing partner, Dan Kogan with Impact Partners, and my editorial team and everything, we were, we were very, we didn't know how big it was going to be. But clearly, as I come out of Oregon, and I'm doping, and this investigation is going on, I mean, I was, I was very mindful of the fact that there was an investigation going on. But from a narrative focus in the film, I couldn't rely on that. I had set out with a hypothesis that the anti-doping system has lots of problems.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  I'm going to show firsthand, you know, what it is to dope, how to evade detection, how much better I get, and, and I have this Russian scientist doing this, and he shouldn't be doing that to begin with. And that, to me, would make a decent or compelling documentary in and of itself. I mean, that, that worked for Morgan Spurlock and Super Size Me, and in and of itself, I thought that that was going to be compelling. But I also knew that there was another story unfolding, and there was an investigation going, and that Gregory was, was being focused on. And so when you watch that film, every time we see those Skypes, I'm always then talking

• 52:42Speaker 01

  about the investigation. What do you think will happen? And then, you know, we, we cut to somebody maybe commenting on it. So we were, we were very aware that there could be a much bigger story there. But I wasn't going to put all my eggs into that basket. So I, so during that time, I was essentially continuing to make the movie that I was setting out to make, that, that my producing team and my investors

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Had come in based on that hypothesis while at the same time I'm investigating and making sure that I'm prepared should

• 53:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, should this develop.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  This other thing develop with Gregory that turns out to be, as it turned out to be a hundred times bigger than I think any of us could have imagined at the time.

• 53:36Rich Roll?

  The fact that he was under investigation and this 60 Minutes type show airs right at essentially the outset of your involvement with him in terms of him helping you figure out how to dope makes it all the more amazing that he would agree to do this. And I know, you've thought a lot about this and it's not sort of expressly addressed in the movie, but looking back, like, why do you think that he jumped on board to do this with you? Because in the movie, I mean, the guy's like a gift for a filmmaker. I mean, he's so, he's got charisma, he's funny, he's gleeful, like, there's an enthusiasm and, you know,

• 54:16Rich Roll?

  the bond between you guys is really palpable. And I think that really anchors the emotional, you know, core of the story, which, you know, is great for you as a filmmaker, but it still begs the question, like, why is he doing this?

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Well, I, he had a bigger story to tell. And I think as our trust developed, he knew that unlike, like, this German reporter that had essentially broke the first piece of the story, that we had a friendship and that I was not going to stab him in the back. I wasn't out there to exploit a story. And he had went through a lot of kind of moral

• 55:08Speaker 01

  conundrums. You know, first of all, I think we had to look at how the sports system in Russia works, which is unlike the US or most Western European countries where sport is kind of privatized. Or let's say you're playing on the basketball team. Well, here, you're playing for the Los Angeles Lakers and you're being paid a salary for the Lakers. In Russia... You're playing for the ministry, you're playing for the Russian government, and the Russian government is writing your check. And essentially, every single professional athlete in Russia, like it was during communism and as it is today, are essentially government employees.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  You're essentially an athlete for the Russian government. And Gregory was an employee of the government. And he came up in that system that that is essentially the Russian government is in charge of sports. And the ministry, the sports ministry, is a part of the Russian government. So, you know, he had grown up in this system, but this is how it was done. And I think that, that as the years went by and the ass got bigger and bigger,

• 56:26Speaker 01

  he saw himself as, um, as a disposable cog in that wheel. And his career, which we don't get into in the film in detail, is there were many times where he was forced to sacrifice an athlete. Essentially, you know, where the athlete would be reported positive.

• 56:46Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Because, you know, if nobody tested positive, well, that looks like Russia's up to something.

• 56:54Rich Roll?

  Right, it doesn't, yeah, it's not kosher. So they're gonna have to throw somebody under the bus every once in a while.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 56:59Rich Roll?

  That's a huge part of that whole program.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  So he's dealing with this, this ethical conundrum that he's constantly having to throw athletes under the bus that, that, you know, that, that believe that he's protecting them.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  That trusted him, too. And that are under the belief that, that they're gonna undergo these protocols and they're gonna be taken care of.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  That's right. And, and there's, so there's that going on. The development of the bottle swapping system, I think he came out of Sochi and his willingness to start working with me, was that He had, he had believed that this system had reached its logical conclusion.

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  And maybe explain the system a little bit about what happened in Sochi, so people understand.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  So, what, prior to Sochi, the Sochi Olympics, the game for him, and the rest of the anti-doping world, I guess you could call it, was always the cat and mouse game of the science. So, in Gregory's case, he's a scientist, and a brilliant scientist, and he's developing tests to catch dopers, cheaters in sport. Well, at the same time, he's developing the anti-venom to his own tests, so that the Russian athletes are getting away, while other athletes around the world are being caught through the methodology that he created. And that's, you know, full,

• 58:25Speaker 01

  you know, which we get into the film of Orwell and Doublethink, of essentially, you know, being both sides of the same coin.

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  Right. The anti-doping establishment in Russia is a doping establishment.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it's, and it's, and the, and the, and it's only a front for a doping operation, to pretend to be an anti-doping operation. Now, that to him, was the world that he knew, and what was always that world. But what began to happen, it was no longer about the science, it was just purely about fraud. And what Russia had figured out how to do, was how to break into the urine collection bottles, that are the benchmark, hallmark, whatever you want to call it, of the anti-doping system. Meaning, the athletes give a urine sample, they divide their sample between these two collection bottles, an A bottle,

• 59:23Speaker 01

  B bottle, it's this glass bottle, and they have this top on it. And this top is kind of like Fort Knox, you cannot get into it, you can only break the top for the testing, and the B sample stays in storage for the next 10 years, should they ever need to go back and retest it. So Russia, with the help of the KGB, the FSB, figures out how to break into these collection bottles. And in so doing, they're able to defraud the entire anti-doping system, because now... They don't need to worry about gaming the science. They don't need to worry about,

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  "Hey, did this runner, you know, stop taking X drug seven days before competition?" And what amount that they were gonna take and how to mask the steroids within the, within, you know, that athlete. Um, now it was, "Hey, you can take anything you want, and we're gonna just swap out your dirty urine and put in clean urine in its place."

• 1:00:26Rich Roll?

  And the lengths that they went to, to the machinations behind how they actually executed on that plan at Sochi, as demonstrated by this incredible motion graphic that you guys created, is unbelievable. Like, that truly is out of a spy novel.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  It is. It's like, it's like an Ocean 11's, uh, Ocean 11, uh, heist. And they had figured out, even in the construction of building this laboratory in Sochi, how they were going to game the system. And so this was no longer about science or the doping or the antidoping. This, now his career was essentially, as he said, he was their doggy bag. He was the guy that was out there to, to pick up the poop and, you know, and, and, and clean up the mess. But it wasn't about him really being the scientist anymore. And he viewed that this system had reached its logical conclusion,

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  that you couldn't continue in such a brazen manner. And that, and that it had just gotten out of control. And, and the bigger thing about that is, is out of the Sochi Olympics is Russia wins 33 medals, the highest medal count. And they win 13 gold, the most gold of any country. National pride soars, Putin's approval rating soars, and he, two weeks later, goes, uh, into Ukraine.

• 1:01:56Rich Roll?

  Fueled by those approval ratings and brazen in his right to do so.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Right, and goes in to try to, you know, take back a part of Ukraine. And Gregory felt personally responsible for this. He felt that his success in Sochi, to which he had been awarded the Medal of Friendship by Vladimir Putin. That's the highest honor that you can get. And he literally got a Medal of Friendship from Vladimir Putin congratulating him on his success at Sochi.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Meaning if there's ever any doubt, despite the Russian denials to this day, that they knew nothing about this. Here Gregory is awarded the Medal of Friendship.

• 1:02:52Rich Roll?

  Putin later says that he doesn't even know who the guy is, doesn't know his name. Of course, that's not true.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:02:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, I think there's a couple sort of observations on that. I mean, the first is, you know, I think it's important for people to understand that Gregory, you know, he'd been violating what we would perceive as a moral, ethical, you know, code all along. But his sort of dividing line, or his line in the sand, was just a little bit further down, right? Like, he was okay, like, he grew up as an elite track and field athlete. His mother was injecting him with steroids when he was 15. Like, this is his reality, right? And this is the reality of sport in Russia. There was no dilemma for him until it reached that point where the fraud became so pervasive. And he actually wasn't performing work as a scientist anymore, and more as like an errand boy of like,

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  you know, like three-card monte, you know, almost, to just hide these samples and stay one step ahead of WADA and the IOC.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  That's right. And, you know, I think the amazing thing is regardless of the conversation that might want to be had on Gregory in the sense of, well, he perpetrated this fraud.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  He's complicit, etc. He had to look at the extraordinary risks that he ultimately took to bring this story public. You know, had he stayed in Russia, there is no doubt that he would not be alive today, as witnessed by the two other guys that perished with this information.

• 1:04:33Rich Roll?

  One of which was in conversations with David Walsh.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:04:37Rich Roll?

  On the eve of having a quote-unquote "heart attack," right?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  That's right. That was Nikita Kamayev, who was running Rusada, the Russian anti-doping agency, and he was involved in the conspiracy. And when this report comes out that Gregory flees Moscow and essentially escapes to Los Angeles, Nikita decides that he's going to tell his side of the story and what happened to David Walsh, because all these guys have been forced to resign, they've been pushed under the bus, they're already being labeled as the bad guys by the ministry, even though they were essentially the employees and following orders.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  So Nikita decides that he's going to do that and makes a plan to meet up with David Walsh.

• 1:05:27Rich Roll?

  Who's the, for people that are listening, he's the journalist who basically, you know, chased Lance around forever.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yes, he's the guy who wrote, what was it, LA? He wrote multiple books on basically trying to expose Armstrong, and he's the journalist, the Sunday Times journalist who, the Stephen Frears film, the program, is ultimately about basically his hunt for Armstrong and how he essentially gets Armstrong. And...

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Anyway, so Nikita had been speaking to David Walsh and before they were able to meet, he dies at age 52 of a heart attack. And in Gregory's mind, this was not a heart attack at all, that this was a purposeful death. This was essentially a murder. So, yeah, I mean, the stakes were very high, but Gregory's decision ultimately to come out and be a whistleblower, and the extent that he went to do that, I think are pretty extraordinary. Because he could have come to Los Angeles and kept his mouth shut, or he could have

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  just said a little bit, or he had multiple options. Or he could have disappeared on you. Or he could have disappeared, right. He could have came here, you know, got here, you know, and vanished. But the fact is that he wanted to tell his story and he wanted to blow the whistle, he wanted to bring this evidence forward, and I became the guy that he entrusted to help do that. Tell the story. And myself and the team essentially brought on, you know, Russian translators, people

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  that could help us archive all the evidence, people that could help us create spreadsheets and documents, because everything was in Russian, and get this to a place that we could bring this story forward. And at the time that the story breaks and we bring it to the New York Times, which is in May of 2015, I couldn't have imagined the current political climate. I couldn't imagine that, you know, the current US administration, that there would be charges of Russian meddling and interference in our election, all these kind of political events

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  that have transpired in the last year, that as I was deep into editorial on the film with this story that shows...

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  What Russia is willing to do on a global level.

• 1:08:26Rich Roll?

  And how intertwined all of these things are.

• 1:08:35Rich Roll?

  When you understand the context around Putin going into the Ukraine, the idea that Olympic medals are just sport gets thrown out the window and you understand the geopolitical implications of what it means to, as a country, to be successful at the Olympics? And how that can embolden and empower a leader of that kind, of that stature as Putin? And where does it go from there? And I want to get into the election meddling and all of that. We're jumping all over the timeline now. I want to get into, I think we should, should we go back and just talk about what the doping protocol was like and what happened through that?

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:09:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  In regards to Russia?

• 1:09:23Rich Roll?

  Or just in, I want to sort of track your experience on this doping protocol and then like what happened to you personally and then get back into like Gregory and the larger story.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Well, I had been on a protocol for about nine months leading up to this hot route. And Gregory was advising me what to take and when to take it and how much. He came to Los Angeles. He smuggles back all my frozen urine, basically, so he can test in his laboratory my washout period, essentially. You know, at what point will I be clean? How much can I take? What exactly can I take? Can I not take to avoid detection? And I go and I do this second race. In the film, I don't get into the specifics because I technically don't do as well.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  But there were a lot of variables. I had had a crash. I had a flat tire. My electronic shifting broke on a day and I lost an hour. But I truly was recovering, which was pretty amazing in regards to all these hormones that I was taking that on a performance enhancing level.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  This stuff works. I mean, I was, I was recovering. I wasn't faster. I wasn't, you know, a different athlete, but I was able to go out and put in a, an extraordinary effort and beat myself, you know, to a pulp. But the next day, I was recovering a lot better than I had without the PEDs. And so I-

• 1:11:12Rich Roll?

  And it was basically EPO, HGH, and testosterone?

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, EPO, HGH, testosterone, HCG to supplement the testosterone, I'm going to go off of that, thyroid to increase my metabolism, DHEA, all sorts of different vitamin injections, folic acid, B12, combination of different, different vitamins that I were doing. I'm trying to think what else I took. Yeah, that was-

• 1:11:51Rich Roll?

  And that went on for how long?

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  For about nine months.

• 1:11:56Rich Roll?

  Nine months.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Nine months. And, you know, we'd off and on, and then we'd taper and figure out kind of how to do that. And I was getting my blood tested to build a biological passport for myself. And so it was kind of trying to do everything that I could to create kind of what this would be like, had I been being tested by, by WADA.

• 1:12:20Rich Roll?

  And Gregory is, is basically saying, I'm going to figure out the testing. We're going to get these vials of blood back to my lab in Russia. And that's where we're going to do the testing.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. We're going to get my, my urine back to Russia. And then, and then I'm going to bring him all my urine from the second race, the Hope Route 2, which I did bring to him in, in Russia after the second race. And he was then going to test to see if in fact I was clean or not, if I was positive or not. And in everything that he was building before, he basically is forced to resign from the lab and this whole investigation breaks, it was looking like I was, would have feasibly evaded positive detection.

• 1:13:08Rich Roll?

  And your experience of being on, you know, being on the protocol, was that like, was it what you expected? Or was it different than what you expected? Like, clearly it works, but it didn't make you feel like Superman when you were out training and it didn't work. It wasn't like a magic bullet in this Hoetroot race. You had all these other challenges. I think, setting aside the mechanicals and all of that, though, there were like, I think you said your last day, you were just crushing it. You weren't able to like, just feel great every single day. Had the race gone on another week or two, maybe you should have done the 21 day for that.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's funny because as I, as I finished that race the second time and, and in the first year that I had done it, I was pretty, I was blown apart. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't walk for a couple of weeks after that race. I mean, I had, I had developed some pretty severe Achilles tendonitis. I'd had hip dysplasia. I was just blown apart going into that race in seven days. And even though I'd been training, you know, before that, it's not, nobody's walking into that thing unless you've put in a lot of time on the bike. And, but physically, I was blown apart. And the second year, by the time the

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  last day comes around, I actually finished with the leaders. Like, I'm in like, the, the group, the guy wins and one other guy's a few minutes ahead, but then I'm just right in the chase group on the last day. And it was, and I came out of that going, wow, if there was a day eight, a day nine, a day 10, I was, I was starting to make up this, a lot of this time that I lost. I certainly would have never won the race, but I think I probably would have ended up, you know, had nothing happened, I probably would have been 10th. And had the race continued for another week, who knows? Maybe I would have jumped up to like, eighth or something like that.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  And, and knowing what you know now, having immersed yourself in this world, do you, I mean, do you think any of the other guys that you were racing against were, were doping? I mean, this is an amateur race.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  In that race, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because they're amateur and because the system was not well monitored there. And the strange thing about sport is, I think so much of it is just for the personal glory. You know, it's hard to understand, but you know, as a Amateur athletes at that level are incredibly competitive and very serious. And especially anybody who's going over to Europe to go do a seven day race through the French Alps and leave their families and go train hundreds of hours on their bike, I think is a lot the same mentality of guys who will want to win at all costs.

• 1:15:59Rich Roll?

  It is weird though, like, you know, it's not your profession, you're not making, you know, it's, it's just, I can't fathom doing that and yet I'm not naive and I know that there are a lot of people who are doing that. And wasn't there one guy who holds all kinds of Strava records all over the Alps and the Pyrenees?

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  So the guy who had, uh, uh, who actually won the Hoetroot, and I think he's won it five years in a row or something. Um, his name's Peter Pooley, nice guy. Um, and if you look on Strava, I don't know with the e-bikes and stuff, what may or may have not changed, but this guy essentially holds the KOM up every single major climb in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Dolomites. And if you scratch into his background, he was actually, he's French, he was in a couple Tour de France's, got caught for doping. And instead of serving his sentence, he retires and goes become, becomes a cycling ambassador for Thailand

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  and lives in Thailand and is like sponsored by Singa Beer and by the, and by the government of Thailand to be their cycling ambassador. Um, and this guy has been killing the, the Hoetroot.

• 1:17:12Rich Roll?

  And these are all the climbs that are on all the grand tours.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  Like every great rider in the world.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. This guy, this guy, this guy's got times up these climbs to rival.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  Froome and whoever.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Close to it, yeah. He's, he's of that caliber. Um, and, uh, but I mean, what a gifted athlete. I think he won again this year. I mean, and that's the thing that I think a lot of people, um, forget in this argument is, um, I don't know whether or not, uh, Peter Pooley, uh, was or was not taking substances, even though, you know, if I look at his past, you could certainly make an argument, um, that he was, um, or is. But on the other hand, it certainly doesn't negate that this guy's an extraordinary athlete. All the drugs in the world were still not going to make me Peter Pooley.

• 1:18:01Rich Roll?

  And having, and having experienced that firsthand, having gone through the protocol, like, does that, does it change how you look at someone like Lance Armstrong and, you know, the seven tours?

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  I think, I think, look, first of all, I think that, um, that cheating is wrong if you're going in and subscribing to a set of rules. So, these rules are put in place, um, because it's trying to create, um, a level playing field, at least in the regards of, hey, um, you're not going to take something that I'm not going to take, uh, that can give you an edge over me if all things are considered equal. And, you know, and that is kind of the, the, the ongoing battle of, of clean sport, where,

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  um, on an ethical or moral level, um, I, I very much support clean sport. I think that if you're going into, to race in the Tour de France, I'd like to believe that everybody is, is clean, and may the best man win, or the best genetic mutant, uh, win. And then, the flip side of that is you have the constant game of science and, and, and human evolution, and medical evolution, and technology, which, which is never going to change. There's always going to be, you know, another, another substance out there. There's always going to be, um, another experiment, and all you gotta do is pick up any science

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  journal every day, and there's been countless articles written about the athletes of the future, and, and, and it's the same kind of, you know, reality that we're facing, that my iPhone 7 is now obsolete because there's an iPhone 8.

• 1:19:50Rich Roll?

  Things are going to get really weird, pretty soon. You know, we're on the cusp of all kinds of insane breakthroughs, and this gestalt of technology, you know, is only speeding up. And so, you know, when you look through the lens of, you know, genetic engineering, and being able to, you know, select the expression of certain genes, um, you know, where are we going to draw the line in terms of what's kosher and what's not? And what does it mean to be on an even playing field?

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Well, this, this conversation, um, is going to continue. Um, it's, it's never going to stop.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Is so long as there's hundreds of billions of dollars at stake in the world of professional sports and I think that the conversation is is gonna have to continually evolve because it's the reality of it. I mean, right now, if you've got a couple hundred thousand dollars and in the embryo stage, you can change the eye color of your kid. You can see to it that that your child is gonna be six feet instead of five, five eight.

• 1:21:00Rich Roll?

  And so why not?

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  You can go in and change the sex of your baby, essentially.

• 1:21:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and why not create a child who's gonna naturally produce more EPO in their system than the ordinary kid, or whose lungs are gonna be more efficient at at up taking oxygen, or what have you. You can create this athlete. And is that okay? Is that not okay?

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  And if you read in medical science journals, that technology is is is either there right now, or it's on the cusp of being there. And so, you know, we're heading into a whole other future that is really outside of kind of, I think, what the the creators of the anti-doping system in sport and WADA could have ever predicted, because we're heading into a land of

• 1:21:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  of unknowns, far beyond the pharmacology of it. We're going into, you know, actually going in and being able to to modify your genetic makeup. And that's gonna present a whole other set of problems, conundrums, whatever you want to call it, as as sport continues to evolve.

• 1:22:17Rich Roll?

  It is weird that

• 1:22:21Rich Roll?

  You know understandably, there's a rule, you cannot take testosterone exogenously. Like that would be a violation of this protocol. But if you were to take some kind of Ayurvedic herb that stimulates your body's ability to naturally produce that, that's okay.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Well, right, I mean, you're dealing in a world of gray areas, which was, under the original film that I set out to make, I was gonna explore these gray areas, these ideas of, okay, you can have a, if you've got $15,000, you can be sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, tent essentially, where your body is going to naturally create more erythropoietin, but you can't inject erythropoietin. You know, and I could go on for hours about all these kind of gray areas.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  But ultimately, it's, I think, just human nature, that we want to be the best at things. And if you're competitive in anything that you do, whether you're a real estate developer, or, you know, the list goes on and on and on. You're a businessman, you're a software programmer, you're always trying to figure out how to be the best at that. And along with that, in sports, comes, you know, trying to figure out how to have that extra advantage. And it's not always about taking drugs, it's all sorts of other variables that come into place.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think that it extends beyond, like, if you presume the testing agencies are well-intentioned, and that this system is, it's just inherently flawed because it can't keep up and technology's moving too fast, that's one thing. But you also have to kind of take a look at the interplay between WADA and USADA and the IOC and, you know, the FBI and the DOJ, like, there's this cabal, this sort of like, you know... Relationship that exists between all of these that, you know, it's just not on the on the level, right? Like, and how, like, I'm always confused between USADA and WADA and IOC and who has authority and who's in charge of this and how does all of this

• 1:24:42Rich Roll?

  work and how do they communicate with each other? But it just seems like a gigantic clusterfuck.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Well, that was as I got into this system and the exploring of this, that is what became not only clear, it was just being beaten over the head by it on a daily basis of all the conflicts of interests and all the, you know, all these organizations are intertwined and the finances are intertwined. And, you know, and it's increasingly complex because you realize at the end of the day, it is about the business and the athlete,

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  the individual athlete, isn't necessarily the person who's going to be protected. It's really about what is in the best interests of the Olympic organization. And despite, let's say, what they're putting forward as a public message of integrity and fair play and clean sport and following the rules and unity and all this stuff, at the end of the day, it's about business. It's about what city's going to bid on the Olympics, the billions of dollars that go into it. And they're not looking out for the individual interest of the athlete. They're looking out for their business model. And their business

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  model punishing Russia doesn't work. And their business model catching athletes doesn't work. And their business model truly fighting for for clean sport doesn't work. Those are all counterproductive to to the business model of the actual Olympics.

• 1:26:22Rich Roll?

  Right. So the IOC is, you know, arguably their mission statement is promoting, you know, the these ideals of the Olympics and fair sport, et cetera. But it is a gigantic business and, you know, this gets played out in the We're jumping ahead a little bit, but there's that, there's that thing that occurs. And it's not really completely fleshed out in the movie, but in the wake of, of, you know, all of this evidence that you're on the receiving end of from Gregory and turning it over to WADA and having them investigate, it becomes clear that I think there's like a thousand athletes at Sochi that were complicit and arguably positive.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  Thousand athletes on, not just, not Sochi, but a thousand Russian athletes across, across all sport.

• 1:27:10Rich Roll?

  Across all the sport. And, and then, okay, so what is the, what is going to be the, the punishment for that? And they're, you know, Russia's facing not being able to participate in Rio, right? Was it, it was.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  All the Rio games, and now the question is, uh, the winter games in Pyeongchang in South Korea.

• 1:27:29Rich Roll?

  But there was a moment where it looks like Russia's out and then suddenly like a couple of months later, Russia's back in. So what's going on in the back channel there that that decision gets made the way that it gets made?

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Well, we're, we're seeing this go on and, and Gregory wrote an op-ed to the New York Times. We were able through his lawyers that he was able to submit an op-ed to the New York Times because nobody's heard from him since.

• 1:28:02Rich Roll?

  While he's in witness protection.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  He's brought into protective custody in July of last year. And Gregory wrote the op-ed because essentially all the, the work that he did to bring this evidence forward, and this evidence was all proven beyond a reasonable doubt. This was forensically proven by Richard McLaren, um, is essentially being disputed by the Olympic Committee itself, which just wants to sweep this under the carpet. WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, is literally, uh, questioning the veracity of the findings

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  of the man that they put in charge to lead the investigation, who works with Interpol, who works with all these outside agencies, who proves everything forensically, scientifically, et cetera, et cetera. But they're trying to poke holes. In his report, and you have the Russian ministry, no matter how much evidence has been presented, still completely denying, not only that any of this happened, denying the existence of a state-sponsored doping program, denying, you know, what is thousands of documents of evidence that Gregory put forward. And you're seeing that on all sides of the equation, from the World Anti-Doping Agency to the Olympics,

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  and of course, Russia, that there is really no resolve to take accountability for this spectacular fraud that happened, that cheated every single clean athlete who went into those Olympic Games over the last 40 years under the belief that the rules were being upheld, under the belief that they were playing on a level playing field. And you're seeing that the actual organizations that are in charge of enforcing the rules really are going to do nothing that is actually in the best interest

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  of the clean athletes and only protect their own business interests. And so it's been pretty... Very disheartening. Disheartening, because what it is doing is it's setting a message, it's sending a message to every athlete who grows up believing in the Olympic ideal, that, you know, as a kid, I know that I had this, or anybody who was really serious about sport, you grow up in believing in this Olympic dream, that you're going to somehow go to the Olympics and you're competing under peace and harmony. And it doesn't matter whether you're Russian or American, or from India, or from China, the world is coming together to compete.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  And it's all in the spirit of sport. And then what I've come to realize and what the film shows is what George Orwell clearly said is that sport is war without the weapons. And these Olympic Games, or World Cup Soccer, et cetera, are essentially just a place for a country to go to war with each other and assert its geopolitical and power through sport. Right. And these athletes are, in essence, gladiators for their country. And the case of Russia and this program that went for 40 years, and the case of the Sochi

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Olympics, Russia has been using its sport program to assert itself geopolitically and show dominance and power. So if you can go in and win the Olympics, you're actually showing that you're strong, that you're powerful. And those Olympic medals are almost in place of its of its nuclear warheads, or what it can do on a geopolitical level. And that is what countries are viewing the Olympic Games as. It's not about a country going in and competing peacefully and in harmony of sport. It's about hegemony. It's about it's about going in and you look at those Beijing Olympics in China.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  And Gregory has told me repeatedly that he got the idea to swap out the urine essentially from the Chinese at the Beijing Olympics. Now, these are allegations. I have no knowledge of this, but according to Gregory, according to what Gregory told me, is that the in China, the way that the system was set up is that the athletes who were reporting for the drug testing, the Chinese athletes would go and report to essentially Chinese agents, and these agents would give these athletes

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Clean urine, so when they went in to be tested and they, you know, and there's an inspector there watching them essentially pee, that that these athletes had been given clean urine and that's why none of the Chinese athletes tested positive. And if you look at the Beijing Olympics, China swept the Beijing Olympics. They won more medals than any other country. But you, again, you look at the geopolitics of that and what was on the line for China? It was China's coming out party to the world. It's 2008 and China is showing that not only can they pull off an Olympics, and those Olympic Games were incredible, what they did with the opening ceremonies and closing ceremonies, we've

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  never seen anything like that in Olympics history. Not only can they pull off the Olympics, not only are they a global superpower, but they can win. And if they can win in sport and they can win in Olympics, what does this say about business? What does this say about war? What does this say about military strength, et cetera, et cetera? And you look at that and then you draw the analogy to Sochi or all the other games, you know, of course, the, you know, the, the, the 1936 Games in, in Berlin was one of the pivotal moments in, in the rise of, of the Third Reich and, and of German nationalism and pride. And Hitler used those games to consolidate his power. And so we're seeing the, the, the

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  replicating that in each one of these games where a country is using these games to basically assert itself on a geopolitical level.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and there's no, there's no political will for the truth to come out because the stakes are too high and the ramifications of that would be too disruptive. But when you see a situation like you've presented in the film where the evidence is so overpowering and clear cut and you have to butt up against a lack of that will, you can't help but walk away from that feeling a little bit. hopeless about what the future may hold because these organizations that we've specifically vested with the authority and the responsibility of policing this if they're not even if they're showing disinterest or they're not going to actually you know act on it in the way that

• 1:35:12Rich Roll?

  you know seems to be the morally appropriate response then we're lost and we're only talking about the Olympics we're not even talking about tennis or the NBA or the NFL and you know the implications of you know unfair play on the professional level across the board.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  Well, I think that to me the bigger takeaway is sport is sport and sport is always going to be a game in the sense that it is sport I mean as so long as you're paying NBA players forty million dollars a year to shoot a basket with the bat you know and and so long as you're playing you know NFL athletes whatever twenty-five thirty million dollars a year to play football there is always going to be the pressures to win but but to me the the bigger issue that we have to look at and what I want people to take away from

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  this film is looking at are we as a country the United States or other countries willing to tolerate a foreign powers meddling in our process in our democracy in our in our political affairs and what you see in Icarus in this film beyond a reasonable doubt is a country meddling into the global affairs of a the Olympics and sport to cheat and to collude and to and to create a fraud and B the analogy can clearly be drawn into our

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  current US political climate and the and the meddling into our election of okay if a country like Russia was willing to do this to win medals what else are they willing to do how far are they willing to go and what we're seeing is no matter how much evidence is put forward which we see in the film where not only is this evidence been put forward it's all been proven and yet you still have The leaders of the Olympics and Putin and Russia and Wada, literally standing in the face of this evidence, trying to deny that this actually happened.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  And we're seeing the same thing happen in our, in the current US political situation, where no matter how much evidence is being put forward about, about election tampering and meddling, we're still getting naysayers, we're still getting people going, "This didn't happen." And I think we have to, as a country and a world, go, "Wait, what are we willing to tolerate?" Meaning, if we're willing to tolerate this in sport, well, I guess we're willing to tolerate this in terms of our own election, in terms of our own political process. We're willing to allow a foreign power to come in and meddle in our affairs and have that meddling go unpunished.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  And that, to me, is kind of the takeaway of Icarus that is incredibly upsetting, where all of this evidence is presented and you still have the president of Russia going, "Not only did this not happen, I don't even remember the guy's name who, who brought all this evidence forward. And not only do we know that this is not true, we just know it's an outright lie." And these are the, the takeaways for me from, from the film that, that are frightening.

• 1:38:54Rich Roll?

  And he's, and they're still permitted to send athletes in the Olympics.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:38:59Rich Roll?

  Right now, you know what I mean? You framed the, the film kind of using, you know, George Orwell in 1984 to kind of create an architecture around the themes, but permeating, you know, beneath that, in every frame of this movie, is the question of the, the validity of truth in our culture, right? And that's something that's being called into question in, in a very present and dangerous way at the moment, like, how valuable is truth? You present truth and what is, you know, what, what are the consequences of telling the truth? And, and what is our cultural response to being told the, the truth?

• 1:39:42Rich Roll?

  And what is our responsibility to do with that truth?

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's exactly right. And what, and what we see in the film is that... It appears that the consequences for truth are are are high. And in the case of Gregory, which is deeply concerning to me on a personal level and on a bigger level, is he wrote that op ed to the New York Times a week ago, which I encourage anyone listening to this podcast to to read his New York Times op ed stating about essentially the the crisis of truth and what is and and despite all the evidence that he's put forward, his concerns.

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  And and two days ago, Russia issues a warrant for his arrest on top of seizing his assets in Russia atop on of his criminal charges awaiting him in Russia, taking the home of his daughter, taking the passports of his family, taking they're now in a battle to take his wife's apartment. And you're sitting there going, wait, so the man who came forward with the truth is this is going to be the man who is punished for telling the truth. And that's really, really frightening.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  And that's something that we have to be worried about as as a planet because of the consequences of telling the truth are are your imprisonment, your punishment for trying to bring forward a story that needed to be told to the world. That's that's that's concerning. I mean, on a on a really, really big level and and, you know, and I'm and I'm really worried for him in that regard that that instead of.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Being exalted for telling the truth. He is being demonized for telling the truth. And we're in a news cycle and a world cycle that is allowing this. Literally, two weeks ago, Russia puts out a news statement through the RT and through Sputnik News that WADA was willing to drop all the charges against Russia, that Richard McLaren had found errors in his report, and that they believed that Russia should be reinstated to competition and allowed into the Winter Games. None of this was true. This was fake news, 100% fake news.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Yet it was picked up by all the global newspapers as truth. And so here is this crystal clear example. And we're, of course, seeing in regards to our own election and everything, we're reading these stories out of Twitter and Facebook, etc., etc. But here firsthand, I'm watching this story. I'm reading this report and going, not only is this not true, this is a fake news story. And it was picked up by newspapers all over the world. And the next day, Richard McLaren is out there making statements going, this is not true. And yet, that story was picked up.

• 1:43:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the news has moved on, almost, right? And we should point out for the listener, just so we're clear, like Gregory comes to the United States to work with you, and in the wake of this McLaren report that comes out, that's basically indicating that there is all of this fraud going on in Russia. He brings with him all of these hard drives that you guys begin to, you know, you hide them in safe places, and you start to get into all of this stuff and realize like this is all the evidence of what is happening. And through a kind of a drawn out process, make this decision to turn these materials over to the New York Times, hence turning Gregory into sort of a Snowden-like figure,

• 1:43:57Rich Roll?

  that then, you know, he's in danger, his life is at risk, and ultimately, he ends up in protective custody, which is where he remains today.

• 1:44:08Rich Roll?

  And this New York Times article comes out, there's a lot of news around this. And a lot of discussion. And obviously, blowback on Russia that they've survived, but you know, it didn't look good for Putin for all of this to come out. Do you, when you look at the last election cycle, how do you think about the relationship between that scandal that you were, you know, at ground zero for and being involved in that New York Times story? Do you see a relationship between that and Putin deciding to roll up his sleeves and start meddling in our election process, in our democratic process?

• 1:44:50Rich Roll?

  Like, do you think there's any logic in saying, "Well, oh yeah, you're gonna screw with me this way? Like, let me show you how I, you know, what I can do."

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I don't know because I'm not a, I'm not privy to the knowledge that the FBI or CIA or NSA has. In January of this year, they, they released their declassified report into the election meddling, and they listed seven reasons as to why they believed our election was hacked. And reason three they listed was for what Putin or Russia viewed as the US involvement in the doping scandal and the Panama Papers. And what was meant by that is that because Rychenko essentially had come to the United States on a visa, because the story was brought to the New York Times, which is an

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  American paper, and because the Department of Justice and FBI launched an investigation, and because Rychenko was put into protective custody by American authorities, that, that Russia believed that the United States apparently was trying to embarrass Russia and was behind, essentially, the breaking of the scandal, which is not true, that's not what happened at all. But clearly, I think you can think within that mentality of that government, why you would perhaps believe that the United States might have been involved in that.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  But Gregory was certainly acting, not only on his own volition, but on his own ethical and moral compass of just... Having a desire, insatiable desire, that he had to bring this story public, that it was so important that this story was known and that the world knew that this had happened. But, you know, I think what we're seeing now, which is in the fallout of this election meddling, is that the film shows, without a question of a doubt, the extent to which

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Russia's willing to go, A, to conceal truth and to deny accountability, and B, of perpetrating a fraud to essentially advance their own geopolitical interests. And in this case, they were using sport to do that. And in the case, as it appears to be, in our election process, they were using, you know, fake news and ads and all sorts of other methods of infiltrating our society

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  to try to help assist, you know, the current administration to be elected, at least is what is being alleged. And if I'm looking at what I know, at least in regards to the Icarus story and the story behind the Olympic doping scandal and Russia's involvement in this the last 40 years, it's not that far of a leap to believe that this is happening.

• 1:48:28Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. There are so many strings to pull. I just, I can't imagine the job of trying to edit this movie because there's so many other stories that you could pursue. And I would imagine there were a lot of threads that you pulled that ended up on the cutting room floor. So, you know, if, if, if length and time was not a limitation on this project, on this movie, where would this exploration lead you next? I mean, does it lead you to USADA, to the IOC? Does it lead you directly to Putin? Like, where do you go?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  It's funny, you know, is we were going through editing, my, my editors, there was a time where I had four assistant editors and three main editors. I mean, we had seven editors because it was so much footage and so much. And then I had people just pulling archival footage. And, and it was just this, this team and all of us and, and my producing partner, Dan Cogan, and, and also my investors that became producers on the project. We were also emotionally invested and personally invested in the story that, and there were so many areas of essentially fraud and wrongdoing. You know, you, you could go down the rabbit

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  hole. And, and I remember through this process, I went, wow, we could, we could pick a hundred fights. And, and every single thing is, is compelling in and of itself. And I remember that, that, that we went through everything from in the beginning of the film where I was going to, as part of my journey, show how the National Football League, how the, how the testing system in the NFL is a joke, and how it's basically been put together by the players' union and the owners' union to essentially create a system that appears that there's anti-doping in the NFL, while essentially all these guys are just allowed to do whatever they want to do.

• 1:50:27Rich Roll?

  And no one cares.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:28Rich Roll?

  I don't think the public cares anyway.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  And I was, and I was going to explore how basketball essentially doesn't even have any anti-doping system. And anytime any basketball is questioned about that, they, they go to You know, the layers, the levels of abuse within the NBA and all these other, you know, social problems. So I was going to initially explore and how tennis and I could go on and on and on about all these different sports and federations, how their systems are highly inadequate. So there was that story that I realized essentially had to drop away because we didn't have time in the film to tell that story. There was the story of WADA where I

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  could have went deep into the rabbit hole of that where WADA had been receiving information for four years from the initial Russian whistleblowers, Vitalya and Yulia Stepanov, who had been going to WADA telling them, hey, there's a state-sponsored program in Russia, and WADA doesn't do anything about it for years.

• 1:51:35Rich Roll?

  I mean, even the scene in the movie, though, when you're there and you're like, here it all is, and they're kind of like, okay, like, what are we supposed to do?

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. You know, like, our, you know. And so I'm, so we had, you know, there could have been a whole film on that. And there were other Russians coming to WADA over the years and years. And even the fact that Don Catlin refers me to Gregory Rachankov, because Catlin knows that the Russians are up to no good.

• 1:52:04Rich Roll?

  Do you think that he knew, like, in the back of his mind, that, like, if he got you with Gregory, that you would start to get a glimpse of what was actually happening?

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  He had no idea. I don't think anybody could have imagined what they had done at Sochi, the bottle-swapping operation, I think, just was mind-boggling that it went to that level. But he certainly knew that Russia had not been playing by the rules, as well as, I think, pretty much any scientist in the world of anti-doping in the lab system. There was, they, they, they knew in theory that, you know, things were not being upheld because of how the system was structured. So, you know, I could have went on a multi-part series. ...on WADA and how the IOC co-funds WADA and all the conflicts of interest and

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  how the president of WADA sits on the board and is the vice president of the IOC. It's like Illuminati. And I could have done a huge exposé on the Olympics and all the politics within there and the stories that Gregory has told me and that he even has knowledge and information about of, I mean, all these various Olympic cover-ups and all these, you know, problems within that organization. I could have went down that rabbit hole. But ultimately, the story that needed to be told, and the film for me was not going to be a multi-part series.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  It wasn't going to be an exploratory exposé on all the injustices in the sporting world. But to me, the biggest story of the film and what had to be told was Gregory's journey and this journey that ultimately leads him to being a whistleblower, ultimately leads to exposing the single biggest scandal in sport history, the single biggest scandal in Olympic history, and ultimately, the takeaway of that, which in the film, we craft in the world of Orwell, which is the world of double think, which is essentially doing one thing

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  and saying the exact opposite. And that was essentially Gregory's life and everything that's been going on within the larger sporting world of saying that you're upholding integrity and values in clean sport while doing nothing about actually doing that, or presenting, you know, a test that is the anti-doping test while at the same time you've developed the anti-venom to the test. And these were the larger takeaways of the film that became important in that story that we needed to tell. And so we had to editorially...

• 1:55:08Speaker 01

  Lose anything in that process that wasn't going on that journey of Gregory's story and the exposing of this scandal to the world. And so there was so much that is on the cutting room floor that I guess could make myriads of series.

• 1:55:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. Well, I mean Gregory is the ultimate cipher because he's so likeable and you can connect with him and people, the audience, I think, can connect with your relationship with him. You know, it could have very easily turned out that this guy was unlikable or just completely unsympathetic. But the fact that he is so jocular, like you, you just, you want him to be okay despite the flaws and the actions that he's taken. And so it allows the audience member to open up to this story and receive it in a way that I think somebody other than Gregory would not have been able to deliver.

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he's, I mean, that's the, you know, I guess the conundrum of Gregory. On one hand, you love him and he is the most lovable, likeable character I think you're likely, you know, gonna encounter in a documentary in quite some time. He's just has this way about him that you love. And at the same time, he has spent his life being involved in a very complicated scandal

• 1:56:46Speaker 01

  and concealing what was a institutional conspiracy to cheat sport and the Olympics. And his redemption is breaking free of that system that he was a part of and bringing that story to the world. It doesn't change what happened. It doesn't change the history. It doesn't change that he was a part of these, I guess.

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  You know, what you would call sporting crimes or fraud. But his coming forward sets the record straight. And without him and without his willingness to to bring this story forward, the world would never know this. I mean, this this story lived and died ultimately in Gregory's hands. He was the only person on planet Earth to this day that had this evidence. Because even everybody else working in the laboratory, they had pieces and parts. They didn't have the actual evidence, and Gregory did. And the other two guys in Russia who both died of heart attacks, even they were not involved in a laboratory level.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  They knew of the system going on. They knew of how the system was operating. But they weren't in the lab level, the scientific level, where this story could be proven. So so the so this story lived and died with Gregory. And ultimately, Gregory made a spectacular sacrifice, not only to leave his family, but to have an unknown fate going forward into the world. And and the risks that he took to bring this story forward are pretty remarkable. And so I felt a huge burden on one hand and an honor on the other

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  to be able to to tell this story that and and bring this story forward, which is there was never a question in my mind or my team's mind as to whether or not we wanted to to help him tell this story.

• 1:59:11Rich Roll?

  Were you ever in a situation in which a conflict of interest presented itself? In other words, what's in the best interest of the firm or the firm, the film versus what's in Gregory's best interest? In terms of kind of navigating these decisions about The New York Times and the investigation and all of that?

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  You know,

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Because Gregory and I truly have a friendship, had a friendship,

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  there was a period of time for about seven months where he comes to Los Angeles between us breaking the story to the New York Times. Where it was, we were filming when we were making a movie still, but it was beside the point of the gravitas of what we were sitting on. And understanding that we were sitting on this evidence and this knowledge and this wealth of information that was, in my opinion, and Gregory's opinion, and my producer's opinion, incredibly important that the world needed to have this information.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

  And so it became, how do we navigate this in the best interest of Gregory and all the clean athletes who needed this information? And in the best interests of seeing to it that this story came forward and that the truth was told, rather than in the interests of the film or perhaps what could have been, you know, financial interests? And we had moments where we were going, okay, do we just bring this information forward in the film?

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  And we realized that if we did that, that it would maybe serving the film's purpose and the explosive nature of these allegations in the film. But it wasn't going to be serving Gregory's purpose. It wasn't going to be serving the greater good's purpose, because what would happen is we'd bring that story forward and then everybody would attack it. And then the film would be on the defensive as something explosive, and who knows whether or not that story could have been proven? So, you know, myself and my producing team and Gregory, we said, no, that's not the way to do it. And the way, the best way to do this, and we didn't have faith in the United States

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  government as that investigation heated up, because who knows what the US government was going to do with this information? And they didn't. What were they going to do with it? They don't have international jurisdiction to be able to go retest urine samples that are being held by the Olympics. So we made a collective series of decisions, but each one of those decisions that we made, at least in my opinion, we were looking at what is in the best interest of Gregory, of how to protect him, how to see to it that this story is truthfully told, and what is in the best interest of the sporting world to have this information and to have this

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  knowledge, and how can we see to it that this story is not covered up, that it can be proven. And so by going to the New York Times, we were essentially allowing this story that was a blessing and a burden to leave our control and to allow the authorities who could truly investigate this and prove this to take over. And we knew that if we went to the New York Times, that it was going to be impartial in its judgment, and that it wasn't going to be a story for the tabloids. It was now a news story.

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  And if we could navigate a news story, then there was a chance that everything that Gregory had brought forward, which myself and my producing team really had no question as to the veracity of it, whether or not it was true. It was how do we bring it forward?

• 2:03:33Rich Roll?

  It had to be terrifying as soon as that was published, though. But Gregory seemed pretty chill about the whole thing, at least on film.

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  He was chill. And the interesting thing about Gregory is he's said to me many times, as I personally was in the middle of this crisis, and going, "Oh, my God, what have you gotten yourself into, Brian? What have you got your partners and your investors into?" And you're, you know, like, this is...

• 2:04:06Rich Roll?

  Safe houses and safe deposit boxes.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  What are you doing? You're in over your head. And I certainly felt that many times. And Gregory always felt that... And I think he does to this day, that every day he's alive is an extra day that he was not going to be alive should he have stayed in Russia. That's an excellent perspective. And he viewed himself that he was essentially dead man walking. And so every day that he's alive, and I think he has this belief right now today, that

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  every day that he's alive is another day that he wouldn't have been alive had he not made the choices he made. And so I think he's looking at it from a different perspective, that he, in many ways, got to live on borrowed time, where I think myself and my creative and producing team

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  had a consistent, you know, feeling of overwhelming gravity to what was being presented to us, because we were not the ones who were personally involved in the years of this conspiracy.

• 2:05:38Rich Roll?

  We have to land this plane, but before we do, is he okay? Like, what's the status of the investigation? What is the future prognosis for what's gonna happen to him?

• 2:05:52Speaker 01

  Well, the Department of Justice and FBI still have their ongoing investigation into the Doping scandal, into the, you know, his evidence. And I think they haven't decided yet if they're going to bring a case, and if they do, who they would bring that case against. He is okay right now. We launched fairsport.org. One of my...

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Producers in the film launched an organization called Fairsport.org, a nonprofit. Was essentially launched to help protect whistleblowers in sport and also to help continue to protect and navigate Gregory's well-being. And this organization is trying to, A, see to it that there is some justice that is done based on, you know, the evidence that is brought forward, and also help protect athletes' rights that were, that had medals taken from them, try to help athletes, you know, stand

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  up to authorities that are not, you know, operating in their best interests, but also really help other whistleblowers in sport, people like Gregory who might have a story to tell. And to that extent, we established a GoFundMe for Gregory that if any of your listeners are on the site can go and find. That's great. On GoFundMe. And the hope is, is that we can raise enough money to continue to assist Gregory in his well-being because the future right now for him is unknown and it's deeply concerning on a lot of levels.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  And we're hoping that he's okay now and he's gonna be okay in a year from now, he's gonna be okay in another year from now. And the question of how and when he'll ever be reunited with his family, if ever, is lingering. And as you see from Russia's response and that New York Times op-ed and what you see in the film is that this story is far from over. It was, we had a moment where we were capturing essentially...

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  History as it was unfolding and it's still unfolding and we're still seeing the unfolding of this in our daily news cycle in regards to Russia and in regards to what is going on and in our current political climate and so this story is not is not done. This is not this is not past history. It's it was unfolding history, current history, and now future history as to what will happen for sport in the Olympic and the Olympic movement, what it will happen to Gregory and his life and his livelihood and his family and his well-being and what our country and other countries of the world are going

• 2:09:12Speaker 01

  to essentially tolerate or not tolerate from our leaders and whether or not we're going to allow this continual cycle of fake news and Orwellian double think 1984 thinking to to perpetuate our society and to continue and whether or not we're going to take action against that.

• 2:09:34Rich Roll?

  On that note, you you went to Congress, right, and spoke. So what was that like? And how does that have you feeling in the wake of that? Does it make you optimistic that we can have that discussion and create change or no?

• 2:09:49Speaker 01

  Well, I I spent a few days in Washington about a month and a half ago, meeting with the chiefs of staff of a number of bipartisan Senate offices, and all of them were very interested in looking at the film and perhaps doing hearings, perhaps doing screenings. I don't know what's going to happen with that or not. That's that is hopefully in the works. But that experience was surreal and the one at least takeaway that I felt in speaking to Whether it was a Republican office or a Democrat office that I saw a mutual interest

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  from an American perspective to try to see to it that not only does what the evidence that is presented in the film as far as this spectacular conspiracy to cheat sport not continue, but also that the United States' interest to see to it that there is some sort of change in the system that what potentially happened in the last election doesn't repeat itself again. And there certainly seemed to be a very mutual shared interest in that,

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  and I guess history will determine whether or not something is ultimately done or not done. But it's a pretty scary story when you really start thinking about the bigger implications behind it.

• 2:11:29Rich Roll?

  It's strange times that we live in, and it truly is Orwellian in many ways, and truth is under attack. And I think it's never been more important for us to be discerning about the news that we consume and our responsibility to speak the truth and to speak truth to power. And that's certainly what you've done in this film, and it's quite amazing. So for people that have not seen it, I strongly suggest you check it out, even though this was basically a two-hour spoiler. It doesn't matter. It's really quite something, man.

• 2:12:10Rich Roll?

  So, thank you for making the movie, and I'm wishing Gregory well, and I'm wishing your journey well, and I hope that you make more movies in this vein.

• 2:12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate it. I hope the film Icarus is currently streaming on Netflix, so you can find it. And I'm looking at other projects right now in the documentary space to take this knowledge that I've had, this experience, and expand upon that into other subjects in the documentary space. Because what is really cool, I think, about documentary and amazing is that as a filmmaker, you can set out on a journey and you ultimately

• 2:13:03Speaker 01

  don't know where it's going to lead to. And creatively, you have the power to craft anything you want because it's an unscripted format, which opens up the world of possibilities. But you also don't know what you're going into. And in the case of this, I couldn't have imagined, as I set out on this journey, that I would end up where it led to and that I would end up with Gregory and my team exposing this gigantic conspiracy and scandal. But that I would also end up so much wiser in understanding of the world that we're

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  living in. And that is something very cool about documentary, that it can take you on a journey that is not only unexpected, but that can actually have impact and change in the world. So I'm hoping to continue to make projects that do that.

• 2:14:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine you feel some level of responsibility to do so, to continue this conversation in a variety of ways, extending the themes that you've introduced in this movie.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  That's what I'm looking to do. And hopefully, the more eyes on this film will allow me to continue on that journey.

• 2:14:24Rich Roll?

  Thanks, man.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  Thanks, Rich.

• 2:14:26Rich Roll?

  Appreciate you talking to me. If people want to connect with Brian, you're @BrianFogel on Twitter, right? Are there other places where people can reach you? Is that the main way?

• 2:14:33Speaker 01

  @BrianFogel on Twitter, Brian with a Y, B-R-Y-A-N-F-O-G-E-L on Twitter. I have a website, BrianFogel.com, and the movie is Icarus on Netflix.

• 2:14:49Rich Roll?

  And are you doing any screenings coming up? Are you traveling around with the movie, or what's going on?

• 2:14:54Speaker 01

  The film launched August 4th. Netflix is in the process of scheduling. They've scheduled a lot of screenings for various groups and critics and things like that. And I think they are planning some screenings coming up in the near future. But certainly, it being on the platform, it's globally available.

• 2:15:23Rich Roll?

  I just wondered if you're doing Q and As, or any kind of live events, that kind of thing? Because I'm sure people would love to see you get up and have a conversation with somebody relevant to the movie.

• 2:15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's in the works. And they're trying to get those planned right now as we kind of head into the next several months. So I don't have specifics on that, but I do know that there will be some screenings and talkbacks and Q and As.

• 2:15:54Rich Roll?

  Cool. Are there going to be any akin to the DVD extras? Like, there's so much footage you're sitting on. I would imagine there's all kinds of other stories that you could tell that are relevant. You could probably spend the next couple of years working on that, I would imagine. But I would love to see some of the stuff that you had to cut for time.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  Oh, there was so much. I mean, because I interviewed guys like Alex Gibney, the documentary filmmaker who did The Armstrong Lie, who's... Just brilliant and the interview that I shot with him was so compelling. I interviewed Victor Conti, I interviewed Tyler Hamilton and Timmy Duggan and I interviewed all these other scientists in Europe and sporting officials. And so, yeah, I mean, the amount of footage that I compiled is pretty vast and 97% of it didn't make it into the film.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that could, I guess, be an addendum that could be the ongoing docu-series.

• 2:17:04Rich Roll?

  All right, well, I'm gonna sit here and hold my breath until you do that. All right, Matt, good talking to you. Thank you.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  Thanks, Rich.

• 2:17:10Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  Go ahead.

• 2:17:12Rich Roll?

  Wild, right? Incredible. Please make a point of checking out Icarus. You will not be disappointed. I think we're gonna be hearing a lot more about this film, about the important issues and questions that it raises, especially as we head into Oscar season this spring. Until then, please check out the show notes for this week's show on the episode page at richroll.com. We have a full video version of the podcast available on YouTube, youtube.com/richroll. Make sure you subscribe on that page as well. If you would like to support this show and my work, share it with your friends and on social media, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, hit that subscribe button on iTunes, Apple Podcasts. We have a Patreon set up for people who would like to support my work financially.

• 2:17:57Rich Roll?

  Thank you so much to everybody who has done that. I did an AMA the other day, an Ask Me Anything live video conference. There was only two people that attended. I think there was some confusion about the links, et cetera. I did resolve the video problem, but apparently there is still a little bit of a gap. In terms of connecting with my Patreon community. So I'm going to continue to try to refine and resolve those issues. That video conference is archived and available for all Patreon supporters. I put a link up on my Patreon page for you guys to find that. And I will be scheduling another one soon. So if you're on Patreon, have an eye out for that. How's your plate doing? How's the plant-based diet? Are you struggling?

• 2:18:41Rich Roll?

  Do you have it dialed in? If you're having trouble making it work, well, I've got good news for you. We created this unbelievably powerful online resource, this toolbox that takes all the guesswork out of making that leap to a more plant-centric diet and making it stick. When you sign up, you get thousands of plant-based recipes, unlimited meal plans and grocery lists. We're metric system compliant. We have unbelievable customer support and everything is personalized and customized based on your goals and your food preferences and your allergies. We even have grocery delivery in, I think, up to 60 metropolitan areas at this point. It's called the Plant Power Meal Planner. Really proud of it. And it's super affordable, just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year.

• 2:19:25Rich Roll?

  So to check it out and learn more, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner at the top menu on any page on my website, richroll.com. And when you're on my site, make sure you provide your email address in any of those email capture windows. And in exchange, you will receive a free weekly newsletter from me. It's called Roll Call. It's got five or six things I came across over the course of the week that I found inspiring or interesting or thought-provoking. Essentially, a couple of articles, maybe a documentary or a video I watched or a product that I'm enjoying. No spam, no affiliate links, just good stuff. It's stuff that I would normally share on social media, but it kind of gets drowned out or lost. And this is just a way of communicating with you guys directly.

• 2:20:08Rich Roll?

  So again, you can sign up for that anywhere on my website and any of those email capture windows. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. J.C. Camiolo for audio engineering, production, interstitial music and help with the show notes. And the WordPress page, Shawn Patterson for help on graphics. David Zammatt for his portraits and his video work and theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple of days. Until then, have a great week and be well. Peace. Namaste.