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#22_ The Darkest Doping Scandal in Olympic History · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Cool man. You're ready to go? Yeah, sure, thanks for
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: coming up here? Were you were you followed on your
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: way up here?
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Not to my nis?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Are you sure?
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I guess I guess I was being followed. I wouldn't
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: you probably right about well.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It's like say that and Jess, but I was reading
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: an article. I don't know which one it was, but
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you were doing an interview I like a New York hotel,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure this was This wasn't recent. It was
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: probably right around Sundance, I would imagine. But according to
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the reporter, you know, it looked like you were a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: little bit concerned that certain people were kind of keeping
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: an eye on you.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: It might have been when I was in London where
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: they had some extra security around me. But I guess
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I feel relatively safe.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, has it been? I mean, is that something that
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: you think about or you feel pretty okay with everything?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I think I felt about it a lot more when
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Gregory had first arrived to Los Angeles in that period
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: between understanding the information that he had and the evidence
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: that he had and and are going to to the
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: New York Times with the story, which for me and
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: for Gregory and and my team really felt aside from
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the need to do that, but that it would also
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: make it a lot more public and also in many ways,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: UH make Gregory safe by bringing that information forward. So
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: that seven month period I felt a lot of stress.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: But recently and since the release of the film, you know,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I feel like that the story's public, so I don't
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: know what would be gained to come after myself. Ultimately,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: I'm a filmmaker and worked in a journalistic capacity to
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: bring the story forward with Gregory, but I personally am
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: not the person who did.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: This would be in the cross airs of course. Well,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: let's unpack it. I mean, the movie is extraordinary. You
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: did an unbelievable job. I was deeply impacted by it,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and it's really quite something like it is. It is
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: quite a piece of work. Like you should be very proud.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you are, and it's an exciting time for you.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I would not be surprised if you got
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: an Academy Award nomination for this movie. In fact, I
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: would expect that to occur. So congratulations, very cool, and
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: it's a really powerful story. So before we kind of
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: launch into it, maybe we can create a little context
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: for it. I mean, it's really birthed out of your
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: your passion for cycling, which has been you know, a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: huge part of your life for a long time. Living
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: here in Malibu. You're a fixture in the Malibu cycling scene,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and we have lots of mutual friends. And it's funny,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: right before the pocast, you should you've been in my
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: house before I wasn't here. You were riding with some
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: mutual friends of ours, and that's that's funny. That's like,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: you know, that's what it's like to ride a bike
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: around here. So tell me a little bit about your
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: history with cycling.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks a lot for the for the warm accolades,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: and for me and the film. It's it's just important
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: for me that that people see the movie because I
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: think the the story in the film is is something
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: that people need to see to understand the geopolitics of
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: what's going on in our country and in Russia and
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: you know, far beyond the boundaries of sport. What the
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: film is essentially shines a flashlight into which is, you know,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: what Russia is willing to do to win, and that
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: transcends sport. It goes into you know, winning at all
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: costs and and essentially without without a moral compass and
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: what those stakes are involved in what you're willing to
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: do to win. So you know, so that I am
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: hoping that any accolades that get presented to the film
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: will will be exciting for me. The bigger thing for
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: me is that it will make people see the film
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and hopefully open up a much deeper and broader conversation
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: in this country and internationally on the subject matter that's
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: in the film. And really, uh, the bottom line is
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Russian Russia's meddling not just in sports, but in geopolitics.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: As far as my cycling background, yeah, I mean I
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: kind of started when I was thirteen years old. I
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: grew up racing in Colorado and it's just has been
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: in my DNA and I and I got into cycling
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: really because I'm five foot eight, I'm skinny guy, and
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: the reality was I wasn't going to be a football
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: player or a baseball player or a basketball player. And
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: when I briefly tried those sports, I quickly found myself
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: ill equipped to compete. And cycling is really such an
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: individual sport and a very mental sport as far as
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the kind of pain threshold that you that you put
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: yourself through and so I think cycling for me has
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: really been my therapy through life. It's it has been something
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: that has kind of I've always went back to and
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: grounded me. And and it's really my passion for cycling
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  Speaker 2: that started me on this journey that became Icarus and
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: that ultimately became this this film.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And so you you end up racing in college right
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: in Boulder, or and then at some point you have
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: like a big kind of career ending crash.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had raced. I started. My first races were
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: like thirteen fourteen fifteen they had in uh in Colorado,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: these seems called the Red Singer Mini Classics, and it
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: was literally Jonathan Vaughters and Bobby Julik and and all
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: the heink Cappy eventually because he was over at the
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Olympic Training Center and trying to remember all the guys
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: who were in those races, Chris Weary and yeah, and
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: so it was all those kind of guys of that generation.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: And I grew up, you know, and I was racing
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: for about seven years really really seriously. And when I
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: was nineteen, I was racing KAT two and racing junior.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: It was my like I was technically no longer junior,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: but my racing age was still juniors. I was racing both.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And I go and I do this race called the
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Tour d'aba to be up in northern Quebec, and it's
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: this very prestigious junior race. Most of the best guys
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: in the world have did it were when they were
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: juniors international field and I did pretty well there. And
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: the following weekend, I'm staying in Canada to do this
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: race called the Festival International Hole and it's pouring rain
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to break with about ten guys and
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: there's about five k to go, and I'm doing the
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: math and I'm going, wow, the worst place. I'm going
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: to get his tenth and who knows, perhaps maybe I
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: could get top three or something. And the guy too
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: two bike claims in front of me clips a wheel
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: because it's like pouring rain and people's brakes aren't working,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: so he starts going over the handlebars and the guy
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: in front of me hits him and is going over
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: his handlebars, and I'm watching this in slow motion and
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: I eat his wheel in my mouth, literally literally going yeah,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: literally in my mouth. And I was probably going, you know,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: thirty miles an hour or something like that at that time,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: and the next thing I know, I'm just in the
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: middle of like a bush and my immediate masochistic thought
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: is to get on the bike and finish the race,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: which I think all cyclists are endurance athletes can understand,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: like somehow, even though you're totally mangled, you're going to
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: finish the race.
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  Speaker 1: And well there's that rush of adrenaline too that clouds
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: you know, logic.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And and so I just remember I'm in this
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: and then I quickly realized that one of my I'm
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: stuck in one of my pedals hasn't released, and so
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: I'm like going, wait, did I break my leg? And
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: then I'm thinking that maybe I like broken arm, And
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: then I'm feeling my mouth and I rubbed my tongue
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: across my teeth and basically realize that that my teeth
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: are either gone or in pieces and shattered. And I'm
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: in French Quebec no less so needless to say that
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: that crash was traumatic enough for me that I came
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: back that put me out for the rest of the season.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: I think came back the next year to try to race,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: and I just found it my mindset that that difference
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: between taking those chances to be competitive, as anybody who's
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: into the sport understands, we're no longer there. And so
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: I found myself constantly chasing wheels or opening up gaps
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: that I shouldn't have opened up, or not willing to
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: take the chances on the descent that you need to take.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: And so I gave racing a break, put down the
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: bike for a few years, and then as I was
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: probably about twenty three, I picked it up again and
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: I still ride right.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And once that switches flicked and you have that
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: fear like it's kind of game over to be able
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: to compete at that level, right, Like, if you don't
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: have that balls out instinct to just gun it on
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the descent, you know, rain or no rain, then it's
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: going to be pretty difficult to be able to be
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: in the mix.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. And for Icarus, when I came
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: up with this idea that I was going to go
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: do this the Hote route in Europe, and I had
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: read about in Vella News. They had this article a
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: couple of years ago talking about like the hardest amateur
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: events on the planet, and one of them was like
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the Cape epic, and another one was I can't even
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember there's there's another one in Europe.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: But the one that they rated the hardest is this
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  Speaker 2: Whole Root and it's you can do seven days, fourteen days,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: or twenty one days if you're totally off your rocker,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: but everybody's basically doing seven days. And I read about
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: this race and it's through the French apps, and it's
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: every climb that I've ever read about, alp Duez and
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Mont von tu and Gallibyer and Madeline, and it's like
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: the seven hardest days of like the Tour de France,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: if you were to put it all together into one week.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: And when I get obsessed with this idea that I'm
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: going to do this race, and part of that is
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: going to be that I'm an a dope. But the
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: interesting thing about that is is that in the back
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: of my mind there was always that that fear of
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: what am I doing Because to me, taking the drugs
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: or performance enhancing drugs, whatever, the hormones, I wasn't scared about.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: I was scared about flying off my bike going seventy
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: miles an hour, and that was I think the biggest
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: variable and in coming back to kind of just do
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: these two races contexts. Yeah, where I was like, I'm
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: really just what am I doing? I'm too old to
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: have an injury like this city?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I get it, well you do. I mean
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the first time you do hate root is was that
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: two thousand and nine?
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: No, that was twenty fourteen and then fourteenth.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, so you did, well, like how many how
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: many guys are are are in it?
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: There's four hundred and forty guys that year.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're like, you know, you're right in there.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: And then you have this idea. I want to talk
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: about the genesis of the idea. You're going to go
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: back the following year, but you're going to be you're
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: going to compete after under going like a full protocol
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: of performance enhancing drugs, and you're going to document all
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of this in a film. So what was the catalyst
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: for that idea?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Well, that that that catalyst and which was a whole
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: reason in the beginning as I as I set off
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: to make Icarus and and actually named the film Charus
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: before I ever even picked up a camera. And the
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: reason why is because I was looking at Lance Armstrong's
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: journey and I likened him to Icarus. Essentially, this guy
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: who just kept flying too close to the sun, and
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: too close to the sun, and too close to the sun,
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: and he finally just essentially got his wings burnt and
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: plummeted to the Earth. And the concept for me was
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I was looking at that story and going in the
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: popular media, if you talk to anybody, they all believe
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: that arms had been caught, but he actually hadn't been caught.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: It was like getting al Capone on tax evasion. And
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: behind the he's been caught was actually a program in
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: anti doping that really hadn't worked. And so I'm going, wait,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: it's the beginning of twenty thirteen, and here he is
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: confessing on oprah. But as he's confessing, he still to
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: this day has passed five hundred tests.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Right, He never failed to test.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Never never failed to test. Now scientists can go back
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: now and they can go, well, you see this anomaly
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: in his blood past board, and here he would be
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: suspicious for you know, for with thropoete and use or
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: whatever they want to look at. But the bottom line
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: is that he had not failed to test. So I'm
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: going forget about Armstrong. What does this mean for the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: world of sport, that if a most tested athlete on
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: planet Earth isn't being caught by the science that's in
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: place to catch him, and ultimately, as a society, we're
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: mad at Armstrong, But in flipping that on its head,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: should we be mad at the system that clearly is
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: ineffective and leaves the athlete with the choice to make,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: rather than being so upset at the individual athlete for
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: making that choice when ultimately the athlete wants to win
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: and what is involved in winning. So I was exploring
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: that and I saw as I started, long before I
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: picked up a camera. I started talking to all these scientists,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: and one after the other would tell me that essentially
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: you can get around the testing. Essentially you can still
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: get around the testing regardless of armstrong confession, and that
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: it was essentially this constant cat and mouse game. And
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: many of these guys that I was encountering and speaking
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: to said to me, yeah, we could help get you
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: around it, but we don't want to be involved in it.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: But it was based on this kind of hypothesis that
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I had that set me out on this journey because
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I thought it would be really interesting because we you know,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: I had never seen on camera, And I think it
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: came from both a personal curiosity but also in looking
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: at a a in a journalistic fashion of how to
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: kind of tell this bigger story that everybody's curious about
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: what these drugs do or don't do. Anybody who's an
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: athlete or an armchair quarterback, they all it's always a
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: topic of conversation. And I was very curious a to
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: see what the drugs did and be to explore whether
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: or not this system worked and if it didn't work,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: and assuming that it didn't work, essentially presenting to society
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: or anybody who's watch this film the larger question of
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the hey, what do we want to do about this?
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: What can be done about this? Should we care? Should
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: we not care? And that was kind of the blueprint
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: that I had set out and initially going to make Icarus.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Right, So the inquiry from the outset is bifurcated. On
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the one hand, it's like, what's it like to do
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: all these drugs? And what's going to happen if I
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: do it and go compete? Like how well I feel?
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: How is that going to impact my performance? Like, let's
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: document it and show the world what this is really
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: all about and the second prong being all right, we
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: know that the system's broken. Lance Armstrong got through, we
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: know many other athletes have but how broken is it?
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And how easy would it be or difficult would it
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: be for somebody like you to undergo the protocol that
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: you know some of these other people have done and
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: try to gain it and get by right. So the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: idea was that you wanted to have your blood tested
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and see if you too could be somebody who could
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: pass these tests correct. Right. So then it becomes like
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: is it so broken that this is easy? Or is
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: it do you have to be somebody like Armstrong who
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: has a tremendous amount of resources at his fingertips in
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: order to do it?
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Well? I think what I when I quickly started to
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: discover was that there are so many variables, so it's
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: it's not one versus the other, which is ultimately what
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: leads me to Gregory Rachenkov, who's running the at the time,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: is running the Russian Moscow Anti Doping Laboratory, which is
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: really the anti anti doping laboratory disguised as the anti
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: doping laboratory. And and what I found was that you know,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: any kind of chink in the armor, one thing out
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: of place could essentially disrupt the whole system. So that
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: you know, if you look at it from like the
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Armstrong perspective of it, well, that game was always about
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: how do you essentially keep one step ahead of the
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: science and going okay. We know that the tests that
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: they're using for HGH essentially can only detect HGH within
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: about a twelve hour period. So we know if we
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: if I take HGH at this time in the day
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: and I can you know, and even if they show
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: up for a test, I can you know, I'm going
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: to be I'm going to be okay as long as
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: I have this timeframe. We know that if I take
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: this much of erythropoeton, but I set these different values
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: and take this this amount, that I'm not going to
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: test positive. And so you know, the the Armstrong of
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: it was always trying to stay one step ahead of
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: the science. And in his case, you know, he had
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: a a lot of advisors, as did you know, his team,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: as did other writers of that generation. I mean, the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: I think the amazing thing that when they catch them.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: We learned that Leipheimer and hin Kappy and all of
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: his other teammates had been doing the exact same thing
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: as that he had been doing his entire career, and
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: these guys had never been caught. So that is the
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: one side of it. And then there's and then there's
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: the the chinks in the armor, and that's the Chenkov's
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: of it, the Gregory Rachenkovs of it. Meaning if you've
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: got somebody within the lab who's altering your samples or
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: who's working for the Russian ministry or who is, you
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: don't even need to worry about the science. You're controlling
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: the science because you're you're controlling exactly.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you kind of launch into this, uh you know,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: on this mission to explore these two prongs, and and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: it's there's a certain levity to it, like I wouldn't
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: go so far, like it's sort of been compared to
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Morgan Spurlock and supersized me. Like it's not like a
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: comedy in that regard, Like I feel like you approach
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: it with a little more seriousness than maybe, you know,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: someone like Morgan would have. But that was really the
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: exploration and the focus. And then you meet Gregory Rachenkov,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: and we're going to get into who he is and
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: the impact that he had on this story, and the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: whole documentary shifts focus away from that narrative and into
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: what really becomes like a John lecar A novel, like
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: this crazy spy novel, you know, born supremacy type situation
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: with gigantic geopolitical implications and this firestorm, this maelstrom of
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: a scandal that suddenly you find yourself in the center of,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I mean as a documentary filmmaker in certain respects, like
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: looking at it completely objectively, Like that's a gift. And
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: it's also so that's what makes documentaries great when you
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: go on this journey and you're open to whatever is
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: going to happen, and these magical things sort of occur,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and then you can follow that story and it becomes
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: something else altogether.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it certainly. You know, the film once
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: we got into the creative filmmaking process of it, after
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: you know, shooting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: of footage and aside from what the story was, it
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: became on a filmmaking level with my team of how
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: to shape and craft the narrative into a thriller and
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: to make you feel that you were simply in a
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: you know, a narrative thriller that happens to all be true.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And so it is a documentary and that came from
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: what I was truly experiencing during that time on a
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: daily basis in an otional level. And so as we
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: went back to kind of shape the film as looking
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: at Paul Greengrass movies and Doug Lyman film Yeah and uh,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: and and you know, and Errol Morris on the documentary side,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: and Laura Poetrous was citizen for and uh and Man
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: on Wire and and so thinking about how to kind
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: of like blend these worlds of of this true story
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: which is a documentary and the thriller aspect of of
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: what was really going on in my life and and
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: in Gregory's life and the stakes that were involved. But
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: to but to craft kind of the narrative to bring
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: you into that story and keep you engaged. And that
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: was uh, that was a very long process with my
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: team from you know, the music and the sound and
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: the editing and how we and how we put that
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: together to have that hopefully that emotional effect.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: And it changed from Dance to the release on Netflix
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: right quite a bit after that.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Quite a bit we had the film was acquired at
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: sun Dance and Netflix came to the table, and for me,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the Netflix of it was the best option for people
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: to see the film because we're in a kind of
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: a an error where it doesn't matter what your documentary
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: might be. People are conditioned now that they're going to
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: see documentary essentially on Netflix or they're going to go
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: see it on HBO et cetera. Where the days of
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: literally going to a movie theater when your option is
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: is do I go see whatever it is the new
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Star Wars and that's going to be my one hundred
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: dollars evening at the movie theaters? Or am I going
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: to go see a documentary? The majority of population is
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: going to go choose to see Star Wars. And so
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: with that in mind, you know, the Netflix of it
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: to go into one hundred and ninety countries at the
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: push of a button and have your film translated into
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: every language that Netflix is their platform, is operating in.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: To me was was a no brainer because ultimately I
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: wanted to see to it that the film was seen.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: So they acquired it Sundance and creatively we had raced
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: to get ready to Sundance when they when they let
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: you know that your movie is into Sundance, you basically
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: have like seven weeks, you know, and so we hadn't
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: you know, we hadn't we hadn't slept for the months
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: and months leading up to Sundance to submit you know,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: a cut to them and then shoot total oh it
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: was hundreds, hundreds, and but then bringing in the you know,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: the thousands of archival clips and how to basically craft
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: you know, the narrative around the footage that we shot,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: but then the archiveal plus bringing in CGI and motion
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: graphics and recreating that lab et cetera. But so Netflix
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: acquires and sit down with them and just say, hey, look,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: we think this film can be better. These are the
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: things that I want to keep working on. And and
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Netflix said, okay, sounds good to us, and so we
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: kept working for for four months after Sundance. It was
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: like Sundance. It was like the editing had never stopped.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: We just went you know, we were sleepless up until Sundance.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Sundance happens. That's two weeks, Sundance ends, and the very
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: next week we're just back at it like it never happened.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: But that four months a allowed two things. One allowed
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: for me and my team to have an audience already
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: have seen the film, and as you see it over
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: and over again, you become more and more critical as
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: a filmmaker of going, wait, that that can be better,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: that can be better, we can do this, we can
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: do that. And two, when you're able to then go
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: back and work already knowing what is really working and
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: where you feel like the movie can be better refined.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: And so that was an amazing opportunity that a lot
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: of filmmakers don't have to come out of sundance and
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: then continue to be able to work on their film.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And Netflix was incredibly supportive and an amazing company to work.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: It's the best portal for you to be on by far.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I mean the number of eyeballs that you can reach
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: there versus any other platform, it's not even you know, comparable.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very amazing.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: So all right, so you're you're launching into this adventure
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and you have this idea, but you're going to have
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: to find the guy who's going to walk you through
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: how you're going to do this performance enhancing protocol, right,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: like who you know, who you call and what leads
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: you to this guy? Gregory?
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, we don't get into a lot of
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: the detail in the film. We dangle the carrot without
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: getting into the real backstory, because you know, you only
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: have so much time in a feature. But essentially, as
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I started out, before i even picked up a camera
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: in this thing, and I'm talking to scientists, I get
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: put into touch with Don Catlin, and I went after
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Actually Don Catlin, I actually sought him out because I
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: knew that he was a essentially the foremost scientist in
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: US history in the development of the anti doping system.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: He ran the first lab or.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: The first lab, the UCLA lab, and he did the
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: first ever testing for the eighty four Olympics in Los Angeles.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: He went on to do the testing for the Atlantic,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: the Atlanta Olympics. He went on to do the testing
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: for the Salt Lake City Olympics. This guy is widely
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: considered one of the most knowledgeable and foremost scientists in
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: the world on anti doping and also laboratory operations. So
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: in the early days of coming up with kind of
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: the thesis for the film, I reached out to Don
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Catlin and we started having lunches, and he's in Los
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Angeles and talking by phone, and I told him essentially
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to do, which was, hey, Don, do
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: you believe that the anti doping system in sports works?
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: And he said no. I said do you think you know,
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: what are the probabilities of it ever really working? And
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: he basically said, well, I think it's very difficult. And
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: he went on and listed a million different reasons. And
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: at the time, Richard Pound, the head of Water, had
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: actually just released a report. And this report, which Pound authored,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: also got into huge detail as to all the different
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: fallacies of the anti doping system and what it was
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: facing in its reality to succeed on a global level.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: And so Don did you also?
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Sorry to interject, but didn't you also ask Don, like,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: how many athletes do you think at this level are doping?
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Yes? And so I had asked don you know how many?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: What percentage of the athletes do you think are doping?
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: And and and he said all of them? And I said,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: well why do you believe that, Don? He goes, well,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: prove it to me otherwise, And I said, well, how
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: can I prove it to you? Don? He goes, well,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: you can't. So so he was looking at it from
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: a perspective of not that everybody is taking performance enhancing
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: drugs not that everybody is cheating, but.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Anyone who's adequately motivated to circumvent.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: The check but can do so exactly. But but he
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: was looking at the in his personal experience and going, hey,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I caught I tested arms from fifty times. I never
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: got him. I ran the lab and I saw, you know.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: So he was looking at it on a personal perspective
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: of going, hey, every time I thought somebody was cleaned,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: then something would come come down the line that they
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: weren't clean. And so I can't prove to you that
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: they are clean unless essentially you're going to put an
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: athlete into like a biodome system and have them under
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: twenty four to seven surveillance where they're where you know,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: you're you're monitoring them every eight to twelve hours. So
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: so Don was very candid in his beliefs. And is
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: he still professionally involved in Well, No, he's retired. He's retired,
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: And I think his willingness to speak to me also
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: had to do with the fact that he was retired,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: meaning while he was still in the system on a
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: day to day basis, it's very hard to kind of
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: speak about the problems within the system. Well, at the
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: same time. That's your livelihood and that's your job, which
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: I think is also part of the yin and yang
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: and the and the two sided nature of this issue
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: or problem is that a lot of people involved in it,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: that even understand it, are not going to go and
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: speak against it because it's there, because it's their livelihoods.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: So should we wait to see.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: WA's all right? Yes, this is life?
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: So so I so down originally says to me that
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: he'll help me essentially design a protocol and and advise
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: me on how to essentially get around the system, and
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: in so doing.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And think he was willing to help you.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I think, I think in the beginning, and that changed.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I think he was. I think he was interested to
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: show firsthand the fallacies in the system that he himself
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: couldn't expose. But as a retired scientist, as somebody who
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: had kind of spent his life, his life's work trying
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: to do something about it, I think he was interested
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: in exposing Also.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: You can shine a spotlight on this. Then it's the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: narrative shifts from oh, there's a few outliers like Armstrong
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: who can get around this too. You know, there's a wide,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: gaping hole here that anybody can walk through exactly.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: And I and I and when I was approaching the film,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I was approaching it that Armstrong was the haystack and
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: not I'm sorry that Armstrong was, you know, uh, not
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: the the needle in the haystack. That he was the haystack.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: He just happened to be the best of his generation
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: but ultimately doing the same thing that most of the
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: athletes of his generation were doing as well. So I
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: was interested in exploring that story but on a global
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: sport level. And Catlan thought that was an interesting idea.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: But along that came all these variables, which is, first
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: of all, how are you going to get your samples
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: into a WADA accredited lab? And that's easier said than done,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: because technically it doesn't matter if you're a professional athlete
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: or an amateur athlete. You can't just get your samples
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: into a water lab. Because if you can get a
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: water lab to test your samples, well, then anybody can
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: essentially figure out how they can gain the system if
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: they're sending in their samples every day and going okay,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: am I positive?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Now?
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Am I positive? Now that's positive?
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: No? I don't want that happening.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so so there was a huge variable there
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: of how you're going to get your samples into a lab.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: And as Don got further into kind of.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: All labs are registered with water, so's you just can't
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: do it. That's law that you can go to.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: That's right. Well, I guess there was a lab you
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: could go to.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Does exist.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: So so Don says, look, I I ultimately can't help you.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be advising you. I can't prescribe
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: you what you need, and I don't want the liability
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: of that if something were to go wrong or you
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: were to be get you know, injured or hurt or
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: have a heart attack, whatever that is. And third of all,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: I can't get your samples into a water lab. But
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: there's a there's a scientist who I know that I
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: think might find this interesting. Yeah, I got the and
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: he connects me to doctor Gregory Rachenkov. And Gregory at
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: the time is running Russia's anti doping laboratory. And this
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: is now right about the time of Sochi, and we
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: don't get into this into the film. So this is
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: March of twenty fourteen. Basically he was just finishing or
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: you know, it was like he was actually at Sochi
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: as we first started corresponding, and I approached him and
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: I just said, Hey, I'm a documentary filmmaker. I'm interested
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: in discussing with you the fallacies and the anti doping system.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Don Catlin referred me to you. Would you be willing
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: to kind of like talk to me? And I didn't
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: tell him what I wanted to do at the time.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: It wasn't like, Hey, this is what I'm going to do.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Will you help me dope and evade detection? But we
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: go back and forth on an email exchange and he
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: invites me. After a couple months of corresponding and we'd
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: actually spoke on the phone a few times, he invites
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: me to go meet him in Oregon. And this is
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: July of twenty fourteen. He's lecturing at this symposium in Oregon.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: And I make this decision that I'm not going to
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: go up there with a film crew. I'm not going
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: to spook him. I just want to go up there
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: and meet him because I don't know at the time,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: is this the right guy. Is he going to help me?
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: You know what am I really getting into? Other than
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: this is a Russian scientist who just did all the
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: testing for Sochi. He's clearly a man of interest and
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: could clearly advise if he wanted to. So I go
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: up there and meet him. We spend a couple days
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: together and we end up drinking even though I'm training.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: But you know, it's just what you do when you're
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: around a Russian scientist. And I asked Gregory, I say,
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: do you believe that an Olympic medal? A medal in
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: the Olympics can be won without performance hancing drugs? And
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: he looks at me and he goes, I should believe.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: I try to believe, but I do not believe that
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: an Olympic medal can be won without performance enhancing drugs.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Across the board any sport.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: And then he pauses and he goes, I don't know,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: maybe I'm a bad man.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: And what do you make of that?
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: And I and literally it was okay, what do I
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: make of this? And and he agrees to help me
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: on this journey. After this conversation, I tell him what
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I want to do, and he says, I like challenges.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: This sounds interesting, you know.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: And you told him you were making a film.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and which you know, of course, was kind of
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: surprising in the Wow, this guy should not be doing this.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: This is against his his job, this is against water code,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the World Anti Doping agency code, and who should keep
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: doing this?
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like, Callan, he's gainfully employed. He's exactly employed.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And unlike Catlin, you're still in the system.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: This is still your job. But he agrees to help
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: me because we kind of form this this trust, this relationship,
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: and I say, and at the time I even said, hey, look,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: you know anything we film when the movie's done, I'll
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: show it to you. And we just kind of just
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: hit it off. And so he agrees to help me.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: And about six months later, this is July twenty fourteen,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: I then start speaking to him, and this is where
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: the film picks up. And this is the first time
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: we see him in the film on Skype, and it's
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: a first skype conversation I've ever had with him as well.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: And there he is and I'm ready to start doping.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: And literally as I'm getting ready to start doping, this
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: German television special kind of like a sixty minutes comes out,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: and this German reporter who had been investigating Gregory in
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: the lab comes out with this scathing TV program alleging
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: that Russia has a state sponsored doping program and that
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Gregory Chenkov is essentially one of the very, very key
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: key figures in this program. And so this news piece
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: comes out right as I'm literally starting my doping program,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: and so Gregory is under investigation the entire year that
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: he's advising me how to dope. So he's under investigation. Well,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: at the same time, he's coming to Los Angeles and
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: helping me smuggle my urine back to Moscow. I'm in
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: myriads of skype calls with him where he's advising me
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: on my protocol. And what happens is over this year
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: we truly truly form a friendship. And as this investigation
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: is going on, I'm quietly behind the scenes, which I
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: don't get into in the detail of the film, but
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: I'm going and interviewing all these guys that are investigating
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Gregory and asking them. None of them realize that I
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: know Gregory, none of them realize that I'm doping, but
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: I'm just asking them as a documentary filmmaker. So, with
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: these allegations against Russia proved to be true, what does
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: this mean? Do you think you know that this happened
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: what do you think is Gregory's involvement in this? What
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: you know? So I'm coming out there as a documentary,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: but what I'm doing is I'm and my team is
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: that we are essentially planting kind of all the seeds.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: Should the other part of this story turn into something
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: a lot larger, I see.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Already aware that this pivot might be a play.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Myself and my producing partner Dan Cogan, with Impact Partners
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: and my editorial team and everything, we were very we
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: didn't know how big it was going to be. But
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: clearly as I come out of Oregon and then I'm
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: doping and this investigation is going on, I mean I was.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: I was very mindful of the fact that there was
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: an investigation going on, but from a narrative focus in
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: the film, I couldn't rely on that. I had set
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: out with a hypothesis that the anti doping system has
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: lots of problems. I'm going to show firsthand, you know
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: what it is to dope, how to evade detection, how
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: much better I get. And I have this Russian scientist
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: doing this and he shouldn't be doing that to begin with,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: and that to me would make a decent or a
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: compelling documentary in and of itself, I mean that that
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: worked for Morgan Spurlock and supersized me, and in and
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: of itself, I thought that that was going to be compelling.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: But I also knew that there was another story unfolding,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: and there was an investigation going and that Gregory was
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: being focused on. And so when you watch that film,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: every time we see those skypes, I'm always then talking
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: about the investigation, what do you think will happen? And
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: then you know, we cut to somebody maybe commenting on it.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: So we were very aware that there could be a
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: much bigger story there, but I wasn't going to put
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: all my eggs into that basket, so I said, during
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: that time, I was essentially continuing to make the movie
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: that I was setting out to make, that my producing
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: team and my investors had had come in based on
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: that hypothesis, while at the same time I'm investigating and
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: making sure that I'm prepared should yeah, should develop this
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: other thing developed with Gregory that turns out to be
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: as it turned out to be a one hundred times
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: bigger than I think any of us could have imagined
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: at the time.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: The fact that he was under investigation and this sixty
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: minutes type show airs right. It essentially the outset of
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: your involvement with him in terms of him helping you
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: figure out how to dope makes it all the more
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: amazing that he would agree to do this. And I know,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: you know you've thought a lot about this, and it's
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: not sort of expressly addressed in the movie, but looking back, like,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: why do you think that he jumped on board to
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: do this with you? Because in the movie, I mean,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: the guy's like a gift because for a filmmaker, I
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: mean he's so he's got charisma, he's funny, he's gleeful,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: like there's an enthusiasm, and you know, the bond between
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: you guys is really palpable, and I think that really
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: anchors the emotional core of the story, which you know
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: is great for you as a filmmaker, But it still
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: begs the question like why is he doing this?
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Well, I he had a bigger story to tell, and
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: I think is as our trust developed, he knew that,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: unlike like this German reporter that had essentially broke the
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: first piece of the story, that we had a friendship,
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: and that I was not going to stab him in
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: the back. I wasn't out there to to exploit a story,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: and he had went through a lot of kind of
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: moral conundrums. You know, first of all, I think we
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: have to look at how the sports system in Russia works,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: which is unlike the US or most Western European countries
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: where sport is kind of privatized. Or let's say you're
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: playing on the basketball team. Well, here you're playing for
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: the Los Angeles Lakers and you're being paid a salary
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: for the Lakers. In Russia, you're playing for the ministry.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: You're playing for the Russian government, and the Russian government
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: is writing your check. And essentially every single professional athlete
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: in Russia, like it was during Communism and as it
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: is today, are essentially government employees. You're essentially an athlete
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: for the Russian government. And Gregory was an employee of
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: a government, and he came up in that system that
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: that is essentially the Russian government is in charge of
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: sports and the ministry, the sports ministry is a part
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: of the Russian government. So you know, he had grown
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: up in this system. But this is how it was done.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: And I think that that as the years went by
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: and the ass got bigger and bigger, he saw himself
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: as as a disposable cog in that wheel and his career,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: which we don't get into and in the film and
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: detail as there were many times where he was forced
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: to sacrifice an athlete essentially you know, where the athlete
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: would be reported positive because you know, if nobody tested positive, well,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: that looks like Russia's up to something.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: It doesn't. Yeah, it's not kosher. So they're going to
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: have to throw somebody under the bus program.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: So he's dealing with this this ethical conundrum that he's
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: constantly having to throw athletes under the bus, that that
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: you know, that that believe it.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: He's protecting them that trust him and that are under
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: the belief that that they're going to undergo these protocols
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and they're going to be taken care.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Of and and there's so there's that going on the
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: development of the bottle swapping system. I think he came
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: out of soci and his willingness to start working with
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: me was that he had he had believed that this
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: system had reached its logical conclusion.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: And maybe explain the system a little bit about what
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: happened in Sochi. So people.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: Prior to Sochi, the Sochi Olympics. The game for him,
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: uh and the recipe anti doping world, I guess you
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: could call it was always the cat and mouse game
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: of the science. So in Gregory's case, he's a scientist
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: and a brilliant scientist, and he's developing tests to catch
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: doper's cheaters in sport. Well at the same time he's
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: developing the anti venom to his own tests, so that
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: the Russian athletes are getting away while other athletes around
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: the world are being caught through the methodology that he created.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: And that's you know, full you know, which we get
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: into the film of orwell and double think of essentially,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: you know, being both sides of the same coin.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: But the anti doping establishment in Russia is a doping.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Establishment exactly, And it's and it's and the and the
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: and it's only a front for a doping operation to
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: pretend to be an anti doping operation. Now that to
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: him was the world that he knew and what was
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: always that world. But what began to happen, it was
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: no longer about the science. It was just purely about fraud.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: And what Russia had figured out how to do was
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: how to break into the urine collection bottles that are
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: the benchmark, hallmark whatever you want to call it, of
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the anti doping system. Meaning the athletes give a yeurine sample,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: they divide their sample between these two collection bottles and
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: a bottle b bolllets this glass bottle, and they have
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: this top on it. And this top is kind of
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: like Fort Knox. You cannot get into it. You can
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: only break the top for the testing and the b
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: sample stays in storage for the next ten years should
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: they ever need to go back and retest it. So Russia,
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: with the help of the KGB, the FSB figures out
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: how to break into these collection bottles and in so
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: doing they are able to defraud the entire anti doping
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: system because now they don't need to worry about gaming
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: the science. They don't need to worry about, hey, did
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: this runner stop taking X drug seven days before competition?
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: And what amount that they are going to take and
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: how to mask the steroids within the within you know
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: that athlete. Now it was, hey, you can take anything
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: you want, and we're going to just swap out your
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: dirty urine and put in clean urine in its place.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: So then the links that they went to to the
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: machinations behind how they actually executed on that planet's soci
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: as demonstrated by this incredible motion graphic that you guys created,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: is unbelievable. It truly is out of a spinal.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Hol it is it's like an Ocean eleven's Ocean eleven heist.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: And they had figured out, even in the construction of
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: building this laboratory in Sochi, how they were going to
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: game the system. And so this was no longer about
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: science or the doping or the antidoping. This now his
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: career was essentially, as he said, he was their doggie bag.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: He was the guy that was out there to pick
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: up the poop and you know, and and clean up
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: the mess. But it wasn't about him really being the
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: scientists anymore. And he viewed that this system had reached
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: its logical conclusion that you couldn't continue in such a
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: brazen manner, and that it had just gotten out of control.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: And the bigger thing about that is is out of
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: the Sochi Olympics, as Russia wins thirty three medals, the
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: highest medal count, and they win thirteen gold, the most
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: gold of any country. National pride sores Putin's approval rating
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: sores and he two weeks later, goes into Ukraine and fell.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: By those approval ratings and brazen, you know, in his
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: in his right to do so.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: Right and goes in to try to you know, take
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: back a part of Ukraine and uh and and Gregory
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: felt personally responsible for this. He felt that his success
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: in Sochi, to which he had been awarded the Medal
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: of Friendship by Vladimir Putin, that's the highest honor that
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: you can get. And he literally got a Medal of
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: Friendship from Vladimir Putin congratulating him on his success at Sochi.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Meaning if there's ever any doubt, despite the Russian denials
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: to this day that they knew nothing about this, here
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: Gregory is awarded the Medal of Friendship.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Says that he doesn't even know who the guy is,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: doesn't know his name. Of course, that's that's not true.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's there's a couple sort of
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: observations on that. I mean, the first is, you know,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: it's I think it's important for people to understand that
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: like Gregory, you know, he'd been violating what we would
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: perceive as a moral ethical, you know, code all along.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: But his sort of dividing line or his line in
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: the sand was just a little bit further down, right,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Like he was okay, Like he grew up as an
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: elite track and field athlete. His mother wasn't checking it
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: with steroids when he was fifteen. Like this is his reality, right,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: and that's just the reality of sport in Russia. There
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: was no dilemma for him until it reached that point
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: where the fraud became so pervasive and he actually wasn't
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: performing work as a scientist anymore and more as like
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: an errand boy of like you know, like three card monte,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: you know, almost to just hide these samples and stay
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: one step ahead of Wada and the IOC.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: That's right. And you know, I think the amazing thing is,
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: regardless of the of the conversation that might want to
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: be had on on Gregory in the sense of, well
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: he perpetrated this fraud, he's complete said et cetera. He
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: had to look at the extraordinary risks that he ultimately
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: took to bring this story public. You know, how he
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: stayed in Russia. There is no doubt that he would
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: not be alive today, is witnessed by the two other
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: guys that that perished with this information.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: One of which was in conversations with David Walsh.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: That's correct, on the eve.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Of having a quote unquote heart attack, right, that's right.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: That was Nikita Kamiov who was running Russada, the Russian
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: Anti doping agency, and he was involved in the conspiracy.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: And when this report comes out that Gregory flees Moscow
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: and essentially escapes to Los Angeles, Nikita decides that he's
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: going to tell his sided story and what happened to
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: David Walsh. Because all these guys have been forced to resign,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: they've been pushed under the bus, they're already being labeled
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: as the bad guys by the ministry even though they
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: were essentially the employees and following orders. Snakita decides that
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: he's going to do that and makes a plan to
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: meet up with David Walsh.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: And for people that are listening, he's the journalist to
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: basically chase Lance around forever.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, he's the guy who wrote What was It La?
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: He wrote multiple books on basically trying to expose Armstrong.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: And he's the journalist the Sunday Times journalists who the
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: Stephen Frears film. The program is ultimately about basically his
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: hunt for Armstrong and how he essentially gets Armstrong And anyway,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: so Nikita had been speaking to David Walsh and before
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: they were able to meet, he dies at age fifty
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: two of a heart attack. And in Gregory's mind, this
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: was not a heart attack at all, that this was
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: a purposeful death. This was essentially a murder. So yeah,
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: I mean the stakes were very high. But but Gregory's
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: decision ultimately to come out and be a whistleblower and
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: the extent that he went to do that I think
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: are pretty extraordinary. Because he could have come to Los
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: Angeles and kept his mouth shut, or he could have
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: just said a little bit, or he had multiple options
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: but this, or he could have disappeared, right, He could
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: have came here, you know, got here, you know, and vanished.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: But the fact is that he wanted to tell his
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: story and he wanted to blow the whistle. He wanted
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: to bring this evidence forward, and I became the guy
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: that he entrusted to help do that, and myself and
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: the team essentially brought on you know, Russian translators, people
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: that could help us archive all the evidence, people that
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: could help us create spreadsheets and documents because everything was
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: in Russian and get this to a place that we
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: could bring this story forward and at the time that
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: the story breaks and we bring it to the New
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: York Times, which is in May of twenty fifteen, I
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: couldn't have imagined the current political climate. I couldn't imagine that,
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: you know, the current US administration, that there would be
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: charges of Russian meddling and interference in our election, all
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: these kind of political events that have transpired in the
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: last year that was deep into editorial on the film
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: and with this story that shows what Russia is willing
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: to do on a on a global level.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: And how intertwined all of these things are. I mean,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: when you see when you understand that the context around
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Putin going into into the Ukraine, the idea that Olympic
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: medals are just sport gets thrown out the window, and
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: you understand the geopolitical implications of what it means to
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: as a country to be successful with the Olympics, and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: how that can embolden and empower a leader of that
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: of that kind of that stature as Putin, and where
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: does it go from there? You know, and I want
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: to get into, you know, the election medaling and all
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: that we're jumping all over the timeline I want to
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: get into. I think we should should we go back
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: and just talk about what the doping protocol was like
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: and what happened through that.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, in regards to Russia.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Or just I want to sort of track your experience
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: on this doping protocol and then like what happened to
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: you personally, and then and then get back into like
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Gregory and the larger story.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I had been on a protocol for about nine
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: months leading up to this hot route, and Gregory was
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: advising me what to take and when to take it
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: and how much. He came to Los Angeles, he smuggles
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: back all my frozen urine basically so he can test
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: in his laboratory. My wash out period essentially, you know,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: at what point will I be clean? How much can
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I take? What exactly can I take? Can I not
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: take to avoid detection? And I go. When I do
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: this second race and the film, I don't get into
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: the specifics because I I technically don't do as well.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: But there were a lot of variables. I'd had a crash,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: I had a flat tire, my electronic shifting broke on
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: a day and I lost an hour but I truly
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: had was recovering, which was pretty amazing in regards to
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: all these hormones that I was taking. That on a
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: performance enhancing level, this stuff works. I mean I was,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: I was recovering. I wasn't faster, I wasn't you know,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: a different athlete, but I was able to go out
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: and put in a an extraordinary effort and beat myself,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: you know, uh to a pulp. But the next day
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I was recovering a lot better than I had without
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: the peds. And so I.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: Was basically e p O hdh in testosterone.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, E P O HGH testosterone hCG to supplement the testosterone.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: We're goen to go off of that thyroid to increase
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: my metabolism DHA, all sorts of different vitamin injections, follic
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: acid B twelve, combination of different different vitamins that I
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: were doing. I'm trying to think what else I took. Yeah,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: that was And that went on for how long? For
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: about nine months? Nine months? And you know, we off
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: and on and then we taper and figure out kind
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: of how to do that. And I was getting my
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: blood tested to build a biological passport for myself and
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: so it was kind of trying to do everything that
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: I could to create kind of what this would be
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: like had I been being tested by WATA.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: And Gregory is basically saying, I'm going to figure out
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: the testing. We're going to get these vials of blood
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: back to my lab in Russia, and that's what we're
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: going to do the testing.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we're going to get my urine back to
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: Russia and then and then I'm going to bring him
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: all my urine from the second race the Hote route too,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: which I did bring to him in Russia after the
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: second race, and he was then going to test to
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: see if in fact I was cleaned or not, if
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: I was positive or not, And in everything that he
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: was building before, he basically is forced to resign from
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: the lab and this whole investigation breaks. It was looking
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: like I was would have feasibly evaded positive detection.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: And your experience of being on, you know, being on
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: the protocol, was that like was it what you expected
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: or was it different than what you expected? Why? Clearly
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: it works, but it didn't make you feel like Superman
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: when you were out training and it didn't work. It
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: wasn't like a magic bullet. In this race. You had
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: all these other challenges, I think, setting aside the mechanicals
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: and all of that. Though they were like you. I
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: think you said your last day you were just crushing it.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: You were people to like just feel great every single day.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Had the race gone on another week or two, maybe
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: you should have done the twenty one day for that.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's funny because I as I finished
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: that race the second time, and in the first year
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: that I had done it, I was pretty I was
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: blown apart. I mean I couldn't I couldn't walk for
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks after that race. I mean I
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: had developed some pretty severe achilles tendonitis that had hip displacia.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: I I was just blown apart going into that race
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: in seven days, and even though I'd been training, you
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: know before that it's not nobody's walking into that thing,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: nless you've put in a lot of time on the bike.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: But physically I was blown apart. In the second year.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: By the time the last day comes around, I actually
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: finish with the leaders, like I'm in like the group
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: the guy wins and one other guys a few minutes ahead.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: But then I'm just right in the chase. Group on
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: the last day, and it was and I came out
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: of that going, wow, if there was a day eight,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: a day nine, a day ten. I was starting to
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: make up this a lot of this time that I lost.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: I certainly would have never won the race, but I
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: think I probably would have ended up, you know, had
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: nothing happened, I probably would have been tenth, and had
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: the race continued for another week, who knows, maybe I
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: would have jumped up to like eighth or something like that.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: And knowing what you know now, having immersed yourself in
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: this world, do you I mean, do you think any
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: of the other guys that were racing against were doping?
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: I mean it's an amateur.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: In that race, Yes, absolutely absolutely, because they're amateur and
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: because the system was not well monitored there. And the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: strange thing about sport is I think so much of
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: it is just for the personal glory. You know, it's
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: hard to understand, but you know it's a amateur. Athletes
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: at that level are incredibly competitive and very serious, and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: especially anybody who's going over to Europe to go do
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: a seven day race through the French Alps and leave
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: their families and go train hundreds of hours on their bike.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: I think is a lot the same mentality of guys
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: who will want to win at all costs.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: It is weird though, like you know, it's not your profession,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: you're not making you know, It's just I can't fathom
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: doing that. And yet I'm not naive, and I know
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: that there are a lot of people who are doing that.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't there one guy who holds all kinds
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: of Strava references over.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: So the guy who had who actually won the Hote
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: Route and I think he's won it five years in
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: a row or something. His name's Peter Pooley. Nice guy
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: and if you look on Strava, I don't know what
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: the e bikes and stuff, what may or may have
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: not changed. This guy essentially holds the kom up every
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: single major climb in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Dolomites,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: And if you scratch into his background, he was actually French.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: He was in a couple of Tour de Frances, got
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: caught for doping and instead of serving his sentence, he
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: retires and goes become becomes a cycling ambassador for Thailand
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: and lives in Thailand and is like sponsored by Singa
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: beer and by the and by the government of Thailand
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: to be their cycling ambassador. And this guy has been
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: killing the hot route.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: That's all the climbs that are on all the grands.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah great, Oh yeah, this this guy, this guy,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: this guy's got times up these climbs to rival room
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: and whoever close to it. Yeah, he's that caliber. And
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: uh but I mean, what a gifted halflete. I think
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: he won again this year. I mean, and that's the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: thing that I think a lot of people forget in
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: this argument is I don't know whether or not Peter
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: Pooley was or was not taking substances, even though you know,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: if I look at his past, you could certainly make
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: an argument that he was or is. But on the
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: other hand, it certainly doesn't negate that this guy is
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: an extraordinary athlete. All the drugs in the world were
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: still not going to make me Peter Pooley. And having and.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Having experienced that firsthand, having gone through the protocol, like,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: does that does it change how you look at someone
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: like Lance Armstrong and you know, the Seven Tours?
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: I think I think, look, first of all, I think
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: that that cheating is wrong. If you're going in and
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: subscribing to a set of rules. So these rules are
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: put in place because it's trying to create a level
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: playing field, at least in the regards of, hey, you're
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: not going to take something that I'm not going to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: take that can give you an edge over me if
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: all things are considered equal, and you know, and that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: is kind of the ongoing battle of clean sport, where
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: on an ethical and moral level, I very much support
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: clean sport. I think that if you're going into to
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: race in the Tour de France, I'd like to believe
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: that everybody is clean, and may the best man win
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: or the best genetic mutant win. And then the flip
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: side of that is you have the content stant game
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: of science and human evolution and medical evolution and technology,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: which which is never going to change. There's always going
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: to be, you know, another another substance out there. There's
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: always going to be another experiment. And all you got
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: to do is pick up any science journal every day,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: and there's been countless articles written about the athletes of
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: the future and and it's the same kind of you know,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: reality that we're facing that my iPhone seven is now
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: obsolete because there's an iPhone eight.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: Things are going to get really weird pretty soon. You know,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: we're on the cusp of all kinds of insane breakthroughs
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: and this gestalt of technology, you know, is only speeding up.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: And so you know, when you look through the lens
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: of you know, genetic engineering and being able to you know,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: select the expression of certain genes, you know, where are
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: we going to draw the line in terms of what's
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: kosher and what's not and what is it need to
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: be on an even playing field.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: Well, this, this conversation is going to continue. It's it's
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: never going to stop. Is so long as there's hundreds
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: of billions of dollars at stake in the world of
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: professional sports. And I think that the conversation is is
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: going to have to continually evolve because it's the reality
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: of it. I mean, right now, if you've got a
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: couple hundred thousand dollars in the embryo stage, you can
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: change the eye color of your kid. You can see
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: to it that that your child is going to be
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: six feet instead of five five eight. You can go
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: in and change this the sex of your baby. Assentially, Yeah, there's.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: And why not create a child who's going to naturally
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: produce more EPO in their system than the ordinary kit,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: or whose lungs are going to be more efficient at
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: uptaking oxygen or what have you. You and create this athlete
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: and is that okay? Is that not okay?
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: And if you read in medical science journals and all,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: that technology is either there right now or it's on
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: the cusp of being there. And so you know, we're
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: heading into a whole other future that is really outside
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: of kind of I think what the creators of the
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: anti doping system in sport and WATA could have ever predicted,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: because we're heading into.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: A land of.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: Unknowns far beyond the pharmacology of it. We're going into
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: you know, actually going in and being able to modify
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: your genetic makeup, and that's going to present a whole
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: other set of problems, conundrums, whatever you want to call it.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: As sport can continues to evolve, it.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: Is weird that you know, understandably there's a role that
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: you cannot take testosterone exogenously like that would be a
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: violation of this protocol. But if you were to take
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: some kind of hiervetic herb that stimulates your body's ability
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: to naturally produce that that's.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, well right, I mean you're dealing in a world
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: of gray areas, which was under the original film that
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: I set out to make. I was going to explore
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: these gray areas, these ideas of Okay, you can have
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: a if you've got fifteen thousand dollars, you can be
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber ten essentially where your body
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: is going to naturally create more erythropoetn but you can't
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: inject erythropoeaton, you know. And I could go on for
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: hours about all these kind of gray air but ultimately
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: it's it's I think just human nature that we want
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: to be the best at things. And if you're competitive
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: in anything that you do, whether you're a real estate
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: developer or you know, the list goes on and on
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: and on. You're you know, you're a businessman, you're a
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: software programmer, you're always trying to figure out how to
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: be the best at that. And along with that in
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: sports comes you know, trying to figure out how to
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: to have that extra advantage. And it's not always about
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: taking drugs. It's all sorts of other variables that come
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: into place.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that it extends beyond like if
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: you presume the testing agencies are well intentioned and that
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: the system is it's just inherently flawed because it can't
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: keep up and technology is moving too fast. That's one thing,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: but you also have to kind of take a look
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: at the interplay between one and you, SADA and the
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: IOC and you know, the FBI and the DJ Like
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: there's this cabal, this sort of like you know, relationship
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: that exists between all of these that you know, it's
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: just not on the on the level right like, and
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: how like I'm always confused between you Sada and WADA
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: and IOC and who has authority and who's in charge
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: of this? And how does all of this work? And
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: how do they communicate with each other? But it just
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: seems like a gigantic clusterfuck.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: Well, that was as I got into this system and
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: the exploring of this, that is what became not only clear,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: it was just being beaten over the head by it
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: on a daily basis of all the conflicts of interest
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: and all the you know, all these organizations are intertwined
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: and the finances are intertwined, and you know, and it's
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: increasingly complex because you realize at the end of the
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: day it is about the business and the athlete. The
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: individual athlete isn't necessarily the person who's going to be protected.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: It's really about what is in the best interests of
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: the Olympic Organization. And despite let's say, what they're putting
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: forward as a public message of integrity and fair play
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: and clean sport and following the rules and unity and
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: all this stuff, at the end of the day, it's
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: about business. It's about what city is going to bid
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: on the Olympics, the billions of dollars that go into it,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: and they're not looking out for the individual interest of
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: the athlete. They're looking out for their business model, and
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: their business model punishing Russia doesn't work, and their business
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: model catching athletes doesn't work, and their business model truly
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: fighting for clean sport doesn't work. Those are all counterproductive
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: to to the business model of the actual Olympics.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Right. So the IOC is, you know, arguably their mission
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: statement is promoting you know, the these ideals of the
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: Olympics and fair sport, et cetera. But it is a
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: gigantic business and you know, this gets played out in
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: the film and we're jumping ahead a little bit, but
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: there's that there's that thing that occurs, and it's not
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: really completely fleshed out in the movie, but in the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: wake of of you know, all of this evidence that
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: you're on the receiving end of from Gregory and turning
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: it over to a WATA and having them investigate, it
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: becomes clear that there's like a thousand athletes it's Sochi
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: that were complicit and arguably positive, and.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: A thousand athletes on not just not so Chi, but
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: a two thousand Russians across all sport, across all the sport.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: And then okay, so what is the what is going
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: to be the punishment for that and their fate? You know,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: Rush is facing not being able to participate in Rio, right.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: Was all the Rio Games, and now the question is
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: the Winter Games in pyeong Chang in South Korea.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: But there was a moment where it looks like rushes
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: out and then suddenly, like a couple months later, rushes
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: back in. So, yeah, what's going on in the back
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: channel there that that decision gets made the way that
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: it gets made.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: Well, we're seeing this go on, and and Gregory wrote
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: an op ed to The New York Times. We're able
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: through his lawyers that he was able to submit an
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: op ed to The New York Times because nobody's heard
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: from him since since he's brought into protective custody in
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: July of last year. And Gregory wrote the op ed
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: because essentially, all the work that he did to bring
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: this evidence forward, and this evidence was all proven beyond
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: a reasonable doubt, this was forensically proven by Richard McLaren,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: is essentially being disputed by the Olympic Committee itself, which
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: just wants to sweep this under the carpet. WATA, the
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: World Anti Doping Agency is literally questioning the veracity of
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: the findings of the man that they put in charge
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: to lead the investigation, who works with Interpol, who works
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: with all these outside agencies, who proves everything forensically, scientifically, etc. Etc.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: But they're trying to poke holes in his report. And
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: you have the Russian Ministry, no matter how much evidence
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: has been presented, still completely denying not only did any
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: of this happen, denying the existence of a state sponsored
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: do program, to denying what is thousands of documents of
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: evidence that Gregory put forward. And you're seeing that on
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: all sides of the equation from the World Anti Doping
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: Agency to the Olympics and of course Russia, that there
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: is really no resolve to take accountability for this spectacular
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: fraud that happened, that cheated every single clean athlete who
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: went into those Olympic Games over the last forty years
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: under the belief that the rules were being upheld, under
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: the belief that they were playing on a level playing field.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: And you're seeing that the actual organizations that are in
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: charge of enforcing the rules really are going to do
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: nothing that is actually in the best interest of the
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: clean athletes and only protect their own business interests. And
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: so it's been.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Pretty very disheartening.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: Disheartening because what it is doing is it's setting a message.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: It's sending a message to every athlete who grows up
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: believing in the Olympic ideal that you know, as a kid,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: I know that I had this, or anybody who was
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: really serious about sport. You grow up in believing in
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: this Olympic dream that you're going to somehow go to
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: the Olympics and you're competing under peace and harmony, and
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter whether you're Russian or American, or from
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: India or from China. The world is coming together to
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: compete and it's all in the spirit of sport. And
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: then what I've come to realize on what the film
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: shows is what George Orwell clearly said is that sport
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: is war without the weapons, and these Olympic Games or
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: World Cup, Soccer, etc. Are essentially just a place for
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: a country to go to war with each other and
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: assert its geopolitical and power through sport. And these athletes
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: are in essence gladiators for their country. And the case
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: of Russia and this program that went for forty years,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: in the case of asoci Olympics, Russia has been using
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: its sport program to assert itself geopolitically and show dominance
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: and power. So if you can go in and win
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: the Olympics, you're actually showing that you're strong, that you're powerful,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: And those Olympic medals are almost in place of its
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: nuclear warheads or what it can do on a geopolitical level,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: And that is what countries are viewing the Olympic Games
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: as It's not about a country going in and competing
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: peacefully and in harmony of support. It's about going in
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: And you look at those Beijing Olympics in China, and
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: Gregory has told me repeatedly that he got the idea
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: to swap out the urine essentially from the Chinese at
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: the Beijing Olympics. Now these are allegations. I have no
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: knowledge of this, but according to Gregory, according to what
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: Gregory told me is that in China, the way that
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: the system was set up is that the athletes who
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: were reporting for the drug testing, the Chinese athletes would
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: go and report to essentially Chinese agents, and these agents
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: would give these athletes clean urine. So when they went
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: in to be tested and they you know, and there's
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: an inspector there watching them, essentially p that these athletes
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: have been given clean urine. And that's why none of
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: the Chinese athletes tested positive. And if you look at
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: the Beijing Olympics, China swept the Beijing Olympics. They won
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: more in any other country. But you again you look
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: at the geopolitics of that and what was on the
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: line for China. It was China's coming out party to
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: the world. It's two thousand and eight and China is
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: showing that not only can they pull off in Olympics,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: and those Olympic Games were incredible what they did with
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: the opening ceremonies and closing. We've never seen anything like
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: that in Olympics history. Not only can they pull off
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: the Olympics, not only are they a global superpower, but
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: they can win. And if they can win in sport
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: and they can win in Olympics, what does this say
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: about business? What does this say about war? What does
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: this say about military strength? Et cetera, et cetera. And
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: you look at that and then you draw the analogy
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: to Sochi or all the other games. You know, of course,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: the you know, the the nineteen thirty six games in
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: Berlin was one of the pivotal moments in the rise
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: of a Third Reich and of German nationalism and pride,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: and Hitler used those games to consult his power. And
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: so we're seeing the the replicating that in each one
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: of these games, where a country is using these games
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: to basically assert itself on a geopolitical level.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's no there's no political will for the
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: truth to come out because the stakes are too high
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: and the ramifications of that would be too disruptive. But
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: when you see a situation like you've presented in the film,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: where the evidence is so overpowering and clear, cut and
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: you have to butt up against a lack of that will.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: You can't help but walk away from that feeling a
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: little bit hopeless about what the future may hold because
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: these organizations that we've specifically vested with the authority and
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: the responsibility of policing this, if they're not even if
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: they're showing disinterest or they're not going to actually act
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: on it in the way that you know, seems to
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: be the morally appropriate response, then we're lost. And we're
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: only talking about the Olympics. We're not even talking about
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: tennis or the NBA or the NFL, and you know
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: the implications of you know, unfair play on the professional
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: level across the board.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: Well, well, I think that to me, the bigger takeaway
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: is sport is sport, and the sport is always going
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: to be a game in the sense that it is sport.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, is so long as you're paying NBA players
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: forty million dollars a year to shoot a basket with
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: the back you know, uh, and and so long as
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: you're playing, you know, NFL athletes whatever twenty five thirty
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: million dollars a year to play football, there is always
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: going to be the pressures to win. But to me,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: the bigger issue that we have to look at and
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: what I want people to take away from this film
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: is looking at are we as a country, the United
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: States or other countries willing to tolerate a foreign powers
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: meddling in our process, in our democracy, in our in
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: our political affairs. And what you see in Icarus in
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: this film, beyond a reasonable doubt is a country meddling
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: into the global affairs of a the Olympics in sport
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: to cheat and to collude and to and to create
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: a fraud and be the analogy can clearly be drawn
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: into our current US political climate and the and the
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: meddling into our election of Okay, if a country like
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: Russia was willing to do this to win medals, what
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: else are they willing to do? How far are they
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: willing to go? And what we're seeing is no matter
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: how much ever evidence is put forward, which we see
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: in the film, where not only has this evidence been
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: put forward, it's all been proven, and yet you still
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: have the leaders of the Olympics and Putin and Russia
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: and Wada literally standing in the face of this evidence
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: trying to deny that this actually happened. And we're seeing
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: the same thing happen, and are in the current US
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: political situation where no matter how much evidence is being
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: put forward about election tampering and meddling, we're still getting naysayers.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: We're still getting people going, this didn't happen. And I
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: think we have to as a country and a world, go, wait,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: what are we willing to tolerate? Meaning if we're willing
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: to tolerate this in sport, well, I guess we're willing
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: to tolerate this in terms of our own election, in
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: terms of our own political process, we're willing to allow
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: a foreign power to come in and medal in our
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: affairs and have that medaling go unpunished. And that, to
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: me is kind of the takeaway of Icarus that is
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: incredibly upsetting, where all of this evidence is presented and
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: you still have the president of Russia going, not only
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: did this not happen, I don't even remember the guy's
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: name who brought all this evidence forward, And not only
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: do we know that this is not true, we just
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: know it's an outright lie. And these are the takeaways
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: for me from the film that are frightening.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: He's and they're still permitted to send athletes in the Olympics.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, you know what I mean. You frame the
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: film kind of using you know, George Orwell in nineteen
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: eighty four to kind of create an architecture around the themes,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: but permeating, you know, beneath that in every frame of
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: this movie is the question of the validity of truth
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: in our culture, right, And that's something that's being called
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: into question in a very present and dangerous way at
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: the moment, Like how valuable is truth? You present truth?
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: And what is you know, what what are the consequences
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: of telling the truth? And and what is our cultural
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: response to being told the truth? And what is our
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: responsibility to do with that truth?
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: Well, that's that's exactly right. And what and what and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: what we see in the film is that it appears
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: that the consequences for truth are are are high. And
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: in the case of Gregory, which is deeply concerning to
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: me on a personal level and on a bigger level,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: is he wrote that op ed to The New York
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: Times a week ago, which I encourage anyone listening to
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: this podcast to to read his New York Times op
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: ed stating about essentially the crisis of truth and what
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: is and despite all the evidence that he's put forward
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: his concerns, and two days ago, Russia issues a warrant
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: for his arrest on top of seizing his assets in Russia,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: a top on of his criminal charges awaiting him in Russia,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: taking the home of his daughter, taking the passports of
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: his family. They're now in a battle to take his
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: wife's apartment. And you're sitting there going, wait, so the
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: man who came forward with the truth, this is going
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: to be the man who is punished for telling the truth.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: And that's really really frightening, And that's something that we
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: have to be worried about as as a planet because
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: of the consequences of telling the truth?
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: Are are.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: Your imprisonment your punishment for trying to bring forward a
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: story that needed to be told to the world. That's
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: that's that's concerning, I mean on a on a really
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: really big level. And and you know, and I'm and
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: I'm really worried uh for him in that regard that
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: that instead of being exalted for telling the truth, uh,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: he is being uh uh demonized for telling the truth.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: And we're in a we're in in a news cycle
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: and a world cycle that is that is allowing this
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: literally two weeks ago, Russia puts out a news statement
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: through the rt UH and through Sputnik News that WATA
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: willing to drop all the charges against Russia, that Richard
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: McLaren had found errors in his report, and that and that,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: and that they believed that Russia should be reinstated to
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: competition and allowed into the Winter Games. None of this
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: was true. This was fake news, one hundred percent fake news.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: Yet it was picked up by all the global newspapers
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: as truth. And so here was here is this crystal
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: clear example. And we're of course seeing in regards to
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: our own election and everything, we're reading these stories out
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: of Twitter and Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. But here, firsthand,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: I'm watching this story. I'm reading this report and going,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: not only is this true, not true, this is a
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: fake news story. And it was picked up by newspapers
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: all over the world. And the next day Richard McLaren
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: is out there making statements going this is not true,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: and yet that's your story.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: Was picked up. Yeah, the news has moved on exactly right.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: I mean we should point out for the listener just
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: so we're clear, Like Gregory comes to the United States
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: to work with you, and he brings and in the
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: wake of this McLaren report that comes out that's basically
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: indicating that there is all of this for odd going
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: on in Russia, he brings with him all of these
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: hard drives that you guys begin to you know, you
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: hide them in safety, in safe places, and you start
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: to get into all of this stuff and realize, like,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: this is all the evidence of what is happening, and
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: through a kind of a drawn out process, make this
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: decision to turn these materials over to the New York Times,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: hence turning Gregory into sort of a snowd and like
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: figure that then you know he's he's in danger, his
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: life is at risk, and ultimately he ends up in
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: protective custody, which is where he remains today. Do you
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: and and this New York Times article comes out, there's
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of news around this and a lot of
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: discussion and obviously blowback on Russia that they've survived, but
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: you know, it didn't look good for Putin for all
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: of this to come out. Do you when you look
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: at the last election cycle, how do you think about
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: the relationship between that scandal that you were, you know,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: at ground zero for and being involved in that New
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: York Times story. Do you see a relationship between that
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: and Putin deciding to roll up his sleeves and start
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: meddling in our election process, in our democratic process, Like,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: do you think there's any logic in saying, well, oh yeah,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: you're gonna screw with me this way? Like let me
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: show you how I how You know what I can do?
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I I don't know because I'm not, Ah,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not privy to the knowledge that the FBI or
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: CIA or NSA has. In January of this year, they
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: released a declassified report into the election meddling, and they
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: listed seven reasons as to why they believed our election
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: was hacked. And reason three they listed was for what
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: Putin or Russia viewed as the US involvement in the
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: doping scandal and the Panama papers. And what was meant
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: by that is that because Rachenkov essentially had come to
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: the United States on a visa, because the story was
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: brought to the New York Times, which is an American paper,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: and because the Department of Justice and FBI launched an investigation,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: and because Rachenkov was put into protective custody by American authorities,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: that Russia believed that the United States apparently was trying
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: to embarrass Russia and was behind essentially the breaking of
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: his scandal, which is not true. That's not what happened
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: at all. But clearly I think you can think within
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: that mentality about government, why you would perhaps believe that
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: the United States might have been involved in that. But
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: Gregory was certainly acting not only on his own volition,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: but on his own ethical and moral compass of just
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: having a desire and satiable desire that he had to
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: bring this story public, that it was so important that
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: this story was known and that and that the world
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: knew that this had happened. But you know, I think
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: I think what we're seeing now, which is in the
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: fallout of this election meddling, is that the film shows,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: without a question of a doubt, the extent to which
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: Russia's willing to go a to conceal truth and to
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: deny accountability and be of of of of perpetrating a
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: fraud to essentially advance their own geopolitical interests. And in
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: this case they were using sport to do that, and
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: in the case, as it appears to be in our
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: election process, they were using you know, uh, fake news
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: and ads and all sorts of other methods of infiltrating
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: our society to try to help assist you know, the
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: current administration UH to be elected at least is what
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: is being alleged and and if I'm looking at what
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: I know at least in regards to the Icarus story
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: and the story behind the Olympic doping scandal in Russia's
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: involvement of this in the last forty years, it's not
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: that far of a leap to believe that this is happening.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. There are so many strings to pull. I
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: just I can't imagine the job of trying to edit
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: this movie because there's so many other stories that you
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: could pursue, And I would imagine there were a lot
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: of threads that you pulled that ended up on the
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: cutting room floor. So, you know, if length and time
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: was not a limitation on this project, on this movie,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: where would this exploration lead you next? I mean, does
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: it lead you to you soada, to the IOC? Does
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: it lead you directly to putin like where do you go?
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: It's funny, you know, as we were going through editing,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: my editors, there was a time where I had four
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: assistant editors and three main editors. I mean we had
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: seven editors because it was so much footage and so
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: much and then I had people just pulling archival footage,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: and it was just this this team and all of us,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: and and my producing partner Dan Cogan, and and also
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: my investors that became producers on the project. We were
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: also emotionally invested and personally invested in the story that
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: and there were so many areas of essentially fraud and wrongdoing,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: you know, you could go down the rabbit hole. And
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: I remember through this process, I went, wow, we could.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: We could pick one hundred fights and and every single
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: thing is compelling in and of itself. And I remember
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: that that that we went through everything from in the
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: beginning of the film where I was going to as
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: part of my journey show how the National Football League,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: how the how the testing system in the NFL is
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: a joke, and how it's basically been put together by
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: the players union and the owners union to essentially create
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: a system that appears that there's anti doping in the NFL. Well, essentially,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: all these guys are just allowed to do whatever they
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: want to do. And I was, and I was going
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: to explore how basketball essentially doesn't even have any anti
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: doping system, and anytime any basketball is questioned about that,
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: they go to you know, the layers of the levels
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: of abuse within the NBA and all these other you know,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: social problems. So I was going to initially explore and
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: how tennis, and I could go on and on and
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: on about all these different sports and federations, how their
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: systems are highly inadequate. So there was that story that
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: I realized essentially had to drop away because we didn't
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: have time in the film to tell that story. There
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: was the story of WATA where I could have went
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: deep into the rabbit hole of that where where WATA
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: had been receiving information for four years from the initial
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: Russian whistleblowers, Vitalia and Yulia Stepanov, who had been going
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: to WATA telling him, hey, there's a state sponsor program
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: in Russia and WADA doesn't do anything about it for years.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: And the movie though, when you're there and you're like
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: here it all is, and they're kind of like, okay,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: like what are we supposed to do? Is that?
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: Like you know, and and and and so I'm so
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: we had you know, there could have been a whole
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: film on on on that, and and there were other
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: Russians coming to WADA over the years and years, and
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: and even the fact that Don Catlin refers me to
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: Gregory Richenkov because Catlan knows that that the Russians are
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: up to no good.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: And do you think that he knew, like in the
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: back of his mind that like if he got you
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: with Gregory, that you would start to get get a
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: glimpse of what was actually happening.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: He had no idea. I don't think anybody could have
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: imagined what they had done at SOCI the the bottle
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: swapping operation, I think just was mind boggling that it
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: went to that level. But he certainly knew that Russia
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: had not been playing by the rules as well as
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: I think pretty much any scientists in the world of
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: anti doping in the lab system there was they they
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: knew in theory that, you know, things were not being
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: upheld because of how the system was structured. So you know,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: I could have went on a multi part series on
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: WATA and how the ioc cofunds WATA and all the
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: conflicts of interest and how the president of WADA sits
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: on the board and is the vice president of the IOC.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: And I mean, I could go on. I could have
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: done a huge expos on the Olympics and all the
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: politics within there and the stories that Gregory has told
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: me that he even has knowledge and information about of
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, all these various Olympic cover ups and all
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: these you know, uh problems within that organization. I could
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: have I could have went down that rabbit hole. But ultimately,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: the story that needed to be told, and the film
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: for me, was not going to be a multi part series.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: It wasn't going to be an exploitative, exploratory expose on
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: all the injustices in the in the sporting world. But
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: to me, the biggest story of the film and what
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: had to be told was Gregory's journey, and this journey
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: that ultimately leads him to being a whistleblower, ultimately leads
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: to exposing the single biggest scandal in sport history, the
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: single biggest scandal in Olympic history, and ultimately the takeaway
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: of that which in the film we craft in the
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: world of Orwell, which is the world of double think,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: which is essentially doing one thing and saying the exact opposite,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: and that was essentially Gregory's life and everything that's been
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: going on within the larger sporting world of saying that
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: you're upholding integrity and values in clean sport while doing
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: nothing about actually doing that or presenting a test that is,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: the anti doping tests, while at the same time you've
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: developed the anti venom to the test. And these were
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: the larger takeaways of the film that became important in
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: that story that we needed to tell, and so we
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: had to editorially lose anything in that process that wasn't
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: going on that journey of Gregor's story and the exposing
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: of this scandal to the world, and so there was
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: so much that is on the cutting room floor that
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: I guess could make myriads of series.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: Of course, well, I mean, Gregory is the ultimate cipher
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: because he's so likable and you can connect with him
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: and people the audience I think can connect with your
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: relationship with him. You know, it could have very easily
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: turned out that this guy was unlikable or just completely unsympathetic,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: but the fact that he is so jocular, like you
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: just want you want him to be okay despite the
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: flaws and the actions that he's taken, and so It
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: allows the audience member to open up to this story
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: and receive it in a way that I think somebody
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: other than Gregory would not have been able to deliver.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he's I mean that's the you know,
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: I guess the conundrum of Gregory. On one hand, you
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: love him, and he is the most lovable, likable character
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: I think you're likely, you know, going to encounter in
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: a documentary in quite some time. He's just has this
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: way about him that you love. And at the same time,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: he has spent his life being involved in a very
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: complicated scandal and concealing what was a institutional conspiracy to
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: cheat sport and the Olympics, and his redemption is breaking
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: free of that system that he was a part of
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: and bringing that story to the world. It doesn't change
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: what happened, It doesn't change the history, doesn't change that
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: he was a part of these I guess, you know
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: what you would call sporting crimes or fraud. But his
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: coming forward sets the record straight. And without him, and
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: without his willingness to bring this story forward, the world
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: would never know this. I mean this, This story lived
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: and died ultimately in Gregory's hands. He was the only
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: person on planet to this day that had this evidence.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: Because even everybody else working in the laboratory they had
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: pieces and parts, they didn't have the actual evidence. And
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: Gregory did. And the other two guys in Russia both
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: died of heart attacks. Even they were not involved in
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: a laboratory level, they knew of the system going on,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: they knew of how the system was operating, but they
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: weren't in the lab level, the scientific level where this
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: story could be proven. So this story lived and died
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: with Gregory, And ultimately Gregory made a spectacular sacrifice, not
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: only to leave his family, but to have an unknown
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: fate going forward into the world. And and the risks
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: that he took to bring this story forward are pretty
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: pretty remarkable. And so I felt a huge burden on
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: one hand and an honor on the other to be
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: able to tell this story that and bring this story forward,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: which is there was never a question in my mind
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: or my team's mind as to whether or not we
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: wanted to help him tell this story.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: Were you ever in a situation in which conflict of
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: interests presented itself, In other words, what's in the best
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: interests of the firm or the firm the film versus
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: what's in Gregory's best interest in terms of kind of
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: navigating these decisions about the New York Times and the
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: investigation and all of that.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: You know, because Gregor and I truly have a friendship,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: had a friendship. There was a period of time for
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: about seven months where he comes to Los Angeles between
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 2: us breaking the story to the New York Times, where
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: it was we were filming, when we were making a
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: movie still, but it was beside the point of the
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: gravitass of what we were sitting on and understanding that
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: we were sitting on this evidence and this knowledge and
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: this wealth of information that was, in my opinion and
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: gregor his opinion, in my producer's opinion, incredibly important that
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: the world needed to have this information. And so it
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: became how do we navigate this in the best interest
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: of Gregory and all the clean athletes who needed this information,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: and then the best interests of seeing to it that
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: this story came forward and that the truth was told,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: rather than in the interests of the film or or
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: perhaps what could have been, you know, financial interests. And
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: we had moments where we were going, Okay, do we
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: just bring this information forward in the film, and we
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: realized that if we did that that it would maybe
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: serving the film's purpose and the explosive nature of these
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: allegations in the in the film, but it wasn't going
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: to be serving Gregory's purpose. It wasn't going to be
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: serving the greater goods purpose, because what would happen is
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: we'd bring that story forward and then everybody would attack it,
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: and then the film would be on the defensive. Is
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: something explosive and who knows whether or not that story
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: could have been proven. So, you know, myself and my
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: producing team and Gregory, we said, no, that's not the
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: way to do it, and that the best way to
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: do this. And we didn't have faith in the United
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: States government as that investigation heated up, because who knows
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: what the US government was going to do with this information,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: and they didn't what were they going to do with it.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: They didn't have international jurisdiction to be able to go
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: retest urine samples that are being held by the Olympics.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: So we made a collective series of decisions. But each
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: one of those decisions that we made, at least in
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: my opinion, we were looking at what is in the
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: interests of Gregory of how to protect him, how to
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: see to it that this story is truthfully told, and
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: what is in the best interest of the sporting world
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: to have this information and to have this knowledge, and
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: how can we see to it that this story is
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: not that this story is not covered up, that it
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: can be proven. And so by going to the New
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: York Times, we were essentially allowing this story that was
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: a blessing and a burden to leave our control and
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: to allow the authorities who could truly investigate this and
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: prove this to take over. And we knew that if
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: we went to the New York Times that it was
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: going to be impartial in its judgment and that it
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: wasn't going to be a story for the tabloids. It
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: was now a news story. If we could and if
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: we could navigate a news story, then there was there
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: was a chance that that everything that Gregory had brought forward,
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: which myself and my producing team really had no question
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: as to the veracity of it, whether or not it
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: was true, it was how do we bring it forward?
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: It had to be terrifying as soon as that was published, though,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: but Gregory seemed pretty chill about the whole thing at
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: least on one Phil he was chill.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: And the interesting thing about Gregory is he's said to
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: me many times is as I personally was in the
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: middle of this crisis and going, oh my god, what
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: have you gotten yourself into, Brian, what have you got
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: your partners and your investors into? And you're, you know,
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: like this is insight, Like what are you doing? You're
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: in over your head? And I certainly felt that times,
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: and Gregory always felt that, and I think he does
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: to this day that every day he's alive is an
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: extra day that he was not going to be alive
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: should he have stayed in Russia, and he viewed himself
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: that he was essentially dead man walking, and so every
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: day that that that that he's alive. And I think
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: he has this belief right now today that every day
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: that he's alive is another day that he wouldn't have
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: been alive had had he not made the choices he made.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: And so I think he's looking at it from a
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: different perspective that he in many ways got to live
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: on borrowed time, where I think myself and my creative
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: and producing team UH had a consistent, you know, feeling
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: of overwhelming gravity to what was being presented to us
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: because we were not the ones who were personally involved
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: in the years of this conspiracy.
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: We have to land this plane. But before we do,
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: is he okay? Like, what's the status of the investigation,
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: what is the future prognosis for what's going to happen
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: to him?
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: Well, the Department of Justice and FBI still have their
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: ongoing investigation into the into the doping scandal, into the
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: you know, his his evidence, and I think they haven't
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: decided yet if we're going to bring a case and
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: if they do, who they would bring that case against.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: He is okay right now? We launched uh fairsport UH
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: dot org. UH, one of my UH producers UH in
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: the film, launched an organization called fairsport dot Org, a
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: nonprofit was essentially launched to help protect whistleblowers in sport
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: and also to help continue to protect and navigate Gregory's
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 2: well being. And and this organization is trying to a
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: see to it that there is some justice that is
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: done based on, you know, the evidence that is brought forward,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: and also help protect athletes rights that were that had
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: medals taken from them. UH, try to help athletes, you know,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: stand up to authorities that are not, you know, operating
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: in their best interests, but also really help other whistleblowers
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: in sport, people like Gregory who might have a story
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: to tell. And to that extent, we established to go
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: fund me for Gregory that if any of your listeners
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 2: are on the site can go and find on go fundme,
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: and the hope is that we can raise enough money
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: to continue to assist Gregory in his well being because
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: the future right now for him is unknown and it's
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: deeply concerned on a lot of levels. And we're hoping
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: that that he's okay now, and he's going to be
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: okay in a year from now, he's going to be
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: okay in another year from now, and the question of
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: how and when he'll ever be reunited with his family,
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: if ever, is lingering. And as you see from Russia's
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: response and that New York Times op and what you
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: see in the film is that this story is far
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: from over. It was we had a moment where we
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: were capturing essentially history as it was unfolding, and it's
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: still unfolding, and we're still seeing the unfolding of this
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: in our daily news cycle in regards to Russia and
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: in regards to what is going on in our current
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 2: political climate. And so this story is not is not done.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: This is not past history. It's it was unfolding history,
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: current history, and now future history as to what will
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: happen for sport in the Olympic and the Olympic movement,
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: what it will happen to Gregory and his life and
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: his livelihood and his family and his well being, And
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: what our country and other countries of the world are
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: going to essentially tolerate or not tolerate from our leaders,
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: And whether or not we're going to allow this continual
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: cycle of fake news and Orwellian double think nineteen eighty
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: four thinking to perpetuate our society and to continue, and
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: whether or not we're going to take action against that.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: On that note, you went to Congress right and spoke.
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: So what was that like and how does that have
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: you feeling in the wake of that? Does it make
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: you optimistic that we can have that discussion and create
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: change or no?
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I spent a few days in Washington about a
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: month and a half ago, meeting with the chiefs of
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: staff of a number of bipartisan Senate offices, and all
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: of them are very interested in looking at the film
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: and perhaps doing hearings, perhaps doing screenings. I don't know
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen with that or not. That is
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: hopefully in the works, but that experience was surreal and
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: the one at least takeaway that I felt, and speaking
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: to whether it was a Republican office or a Democrat office,
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: that I saw a mutual interest from an American perspective
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: to try to see to it that not only does
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: what the evidence that is presented in the film, as
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: far as this spectacular conspiracy to cheat sport not continue,
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: but also that the United States interest to see to
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: it that there is some sort of change in the
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: system that what potentially happened in the last election doesn't
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: repeat itself again. And there certainly seemed to be a
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 2: very mutual shared interest in that. And I guess history
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: will determine whether or not something is ultimately done or
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: not done. But it's a pretty a pretty scary story
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: when you really start thinking about the bigger implications behind it.
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: It's strange times that we live in, and it truly
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: is orwelly in in many ways, and truth is under attack,
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: and I think it's never been more important for us
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: to be discerning about the news that we consume and
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: our responsibility to speak the truth and to speak truth
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: to power, and that's certainly what you've done in this
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: film and it's quite amazing. So for people that have
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: not seen it, I strongly suggest you check it out.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: Even though this was basically a two hour spoiler, it
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter. It's really quite something, man. So thank you
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: for making the movie. And I'm wishing I agree well,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm wishing your journey well and I hope that
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: you make more movies in this vein.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: I hope.
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: I hope. The film Icarus is currently streaming on on
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: Netflix so you can find it. And uh, and I'm
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: looking at other projects right now in the documentary space
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 2: to take these this knowledge that that I've had and
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: this experience and and expand upon that into into other
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: subjects and in the documentary space, because I what is
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: really cool I think about documentary and amazing is that
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: as a filmmaker, you can set out on a journey
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: and you ultimately don't know where it's going to lead to,
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: and creatively you have the power to craft anything you
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: want because it's an unscripted format, which which opens up
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 2: the world of possibilities, but you also don't know what
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: you're going into. And in case of this, I couldn't
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 2: have imagined as I set out on this journey that
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 2: I would end up where it led to, and that
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: I would end up with Gregory and my team exposing
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 2: this gigantic conspiracy and scandal, but that I would also
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: end up so much wiser an understanding of the world
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 2: that we're living in. And that is something very cool
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: about documentary that it can take you on a journey
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: that is not only unexpected, but that can actually have
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 2: impact and change in the world. So I'm hoping to
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: continue to make projects that do that.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would imagine you feel some level of responsibility
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: to do so, to continue this conversation in a variety
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: of ways, you know, extending the themes that you've introduced
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: in this movie.
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm looking to do, and hopefully the more
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: eyes on this film will allow me to continue on
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 2: that journey. Cool.
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks man, Thanks Rich talking to me. If people want
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: to connect with Brian, you're at Brian Fogel on Twitter right.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: Are there other places where people can reach out the way.
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: At at Brian Fogel on Twitter Brian with the Y
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: b R y A N F O G E L
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: on Twitter. I have a website, Brianfogel dot com. And
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: the movie is Icarus on Netflix.
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: And are you doing any screenings coming up? Are you
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: traveling around with the movie or what's going on?
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 2: The film launched August fourth. Netflix is in the process
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 2: of scheduling They've scheduled a lot of screenings for for
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 2: various groups and uh and critics and things like that,
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: and I think they are planning some you know, screenings
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: coming up in uh uh in the near future, but
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 2: certainly it being on the platform, it's globally available, and uh, I.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: Just wondering if you're doing like Q and A's or
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: any kind of live events kind of thing, because I'm
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: sure people would love to see you get up and
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: have a conversation with somebody relevant to the movie.
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's uh, that's that's in the works and
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: they're there's we're they're trying to uh to get those
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: planned right now as we kind of head into the
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: next several months. So uh, I don't have specifics on that,
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 2: but I do know that there, uh, there will be
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 2: uh some screenings and talkbacks and Q and a's.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: Are there going to be any like you know, like
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: a can of the DVD extras like you have. There's
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: so many, so much footage you're sitting on. I would
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: imagine there's all kinds of other stories that you could
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: tell that are relevant. You could probably spend the next
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: couple of years working on that. Well yeah, but I
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: would love to see some of the stuff that you
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: had to cut for time.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 2: Oh was so much? I mean because in the in
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: the like, I interviewed guys like Alex Gibney, the documentary
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: filmmaker who did The Armstrong Lie, who's just brilliant and
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: the interview that I shot with him was so compelling.
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: I interviewed Victor Conti, I interviewed Tyler Hamilton and Timmy Duggan,
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: and I interviewed all these other scientists in Europe and
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 2: sporting officials and so yeah, I mean, the the amount
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: of the footage that I compiled is pretty pretty vast,
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 2: and ninety seven percent of it didn't make it into
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: the film. So yeah, that could I guess be an
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: addendum that it could be the ongoing docuseries.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: All right, I want to sit here and hold my
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: breath until you end that. All right man, good talking
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: to you, thank you, thanks rich piece. That's