Bryan Fogel

00:08alright well live you cold that uh yet that barn your teeth are you good they stick those green belly meal bars so first of all man your documentary yeah Icarus is I I say that wrong all the time I say a chorus but it's a caress right Icarus yeah that's the guy with the wings that flew too close to the Sun exactly it's amazing it's an amazing documentary I'm I contacted you we'd gone back and forth a little bit on Twitter and then I finally sat down and watched it the other day and I was like holy the extent of the the cover-up and the the first of all for folks who don't know what it's about the documentary started off just kind of about doping right and then it became about the state-sponsored Russian doping program and then it all imploded while you were doing the documentary night the documentary how long did it take you to put this together three and a half years

01:10and so what was the initial idea behind it so the initial idea I guess I'll say it's a streaming on Netflix right now there yeah released it a month ago and the initial idea had come to me essentially when Armstrong confessed and I'd been a lifelong cycling fan and I had followed him for you know my whole you know journey with him and and what struck me the most about his confession was that if you talk to anybody outside of the sport they all thought that he got caught but the reality is is he actually never got caught I mean to this day this guy is past 500 anti doping controls cleaned so I'm going wait not what's wrong with Armstrong what's wrong with this global anti-doping system that they can't catch the most tested athlete on planet earth and I'm going wait he's tested clean five hundred times who should we be mad at should we be mad at Armstrong or should we be up

02:13said at this system that is essentially making an athlete not have a choice as to what they do or not do if they actually want to have a possibility of winning if the system itself is not able to catch them well that's a big factor right I mean that is a really an important thing to talk about the it in the high level world of cycling when they took away Armstrong's victories in the Tour de France I think that's the person who got who did not test positive in any tests before that I think was like 18th place is that correct someone I don't remember exactly but yeah but there was there was no one and then even after his confession if you remember how they get him to confess is essentially the the feds come in on a criminal investigation and they basically go to all of his teammates over the years that he had race and basically you know point guns of their head and say hey did you dope

03:09or did you not dope now if you tell us that you doped and that Armstrong doped you go free and we weren't going to punish you but if you lie to us there's gonna be a price to pay and in doing that all of his teammates who did the exact same thing that he did ratted him out in exchange for their own immunity and then the rest is history well there's a little more to it too right like he was actually suing people that were saying that he was doping and he was going after them and threatening them with lawsuits and which you know that's and that's you know why before I ever picked up a camera I had named the film Icarus and I had named it Icarus because of what I deemed the Armstrong story which was a story of a guy who just kept pushing the boundaries and pushing the boundaries and pushing the boundaries until he flew too close to the Sun and his you know wings burn and

04:09he plummeted to the earth and that to me was the story of you know ambition that wouldn't stop and having no filter on how far you went to win and what you were willing to do when who you were willing to destroy in that process to win and to me you know when you take the doping out of it that's you know the problem that you know I would have on a on a on a personal kind of level with the Lance of it that you know it's one thing if you're doing something that everybody else is doing but it's another thing when you literally you're going out and destroying other people's lives to to try to protect your own lies yeah I mean I kind of see his position I see how he got caught up in it and the momentum of it all just sort of brought him to this place where it was almost no there's no way to do it either you know you go after these people and try to silence them or you come clean and

05:08eventually was forced to come clean you knew though and most people did that he was doing something yeah I mean I had always felt that he was doing something but I also having been kind of deeply involved in the sport believed that everybody else was doing something also so his confession to me wasn't really the shocker what was what was the shocker and what set me out on this journey was like in the public court of opinion and what you saw going on in the news was it was essentially like you know we've got Gaudi we've got down a pone we've got the ringleader we've got the you know the biggest criminal in the history of sport essentially and we finally got him and to me it was like getting out Capone on tax evasion you didn't get him because the system didn't work to get him and so I started looking at forget about cycling I was looking at well what does this mean in all sports

06:12what does this mean in terms of the Olympics what does this mean in terms of basketball and football and baseball and all these other sports if the most tested athlete on planet earth can't be caught and and that's what set me out on to make the film initially was to explore using kind of just the Armstrong story as the framework but to explore what was what was wrong with the anti-doping system in sport and essentially use myself as a human guinea pig to explore that and then along that way kind of show whether or not this system worked and then essentially present hypotheticals about what could be done or what couldn't be done and whether or not we as a society care about you know drug use in sport and and that was the original concept and construct of the film well drug use in sport is very complicated because it's it's so prevalent and and it's almost impossible

07:19to separate the two when you think about it particularly the Tour de France right and professional cycling I mean it is just a dirty sport well I think that from what I know is over the last several years it's really cleaned up quite a bit quite a lot and if you start looking at the times also they've they've started to come down and slow down but I think that we're probably in a what I would call it I don't know a a glory period between the science kind of catching up to the cheaters in some way and then the cheaters basically figuring out how to out science the science again so they're in like a holding pattern I feel like in the world of cycling at least that's going on to some extent since I just get caught just a couple days ago with a an engine and his bike oh that's the new thing yeah they're yeah they're putting engines and bikes I've read that they're now figuring out

08:21how to replicate a EPO óró Eaton at the genetic level basically how to make your cells naturally create more with rope Oh Eaton so there's always going to be something on that cusp of of medical technology and human evolution trying to outsmart the system and the testing so when you contacted the the Russian gentlemen what was his name again Gregory retching cough and Gregory is the guy he's right now in the witness protection program protective custody protective custody now how did you get ahold of him and how did you set that up because it was fascinating watch you shoot your ass full with like a hundred different kinds of steroids I mean it was just how much how many different things did you take I took a lot over how much of a period about nine months about nine months and and what had what had happened is is so I decided that I was gonna go on this super-sized

09:27Mia's journey into the world of performance-enhancing drugs and I spend about a year doing all this research shortly after Armstrong confesses which is 2013 early 2013 and actually picked up a camera in May of 2014 and and over this year I start talking to all these scientists and I'm contacting people on a global level in Switzerland and Germany and the UK and all over the US and essentially each one of these scientists I'm asking essentially the same questions I'm saying hey do you believe the anti-doping system in sport works and every single one of them said no and I said do you believe that you can catch an athlete who is doping and every single one of them told me no I said do you believe that you could still essentially do what Lance Armstrong did and get away with it with the proper advisers and every one of them said to me yes and then I would pose the

10:33question to each one of these guys I said are you able would you have this knowledge to advise me how to essentially evade positive detection and the vast majority of them said yes and I said but will you do that and they said no and they said the biggest variable is that you've got to get your samples into a water lab a world anti-doping agency lab and that becomes very difficult because if you can just get your samples in to Waddle lab amateur professional anybody right well you can start figuring out all the you know loopholes and what you can do and what you can't do if you can essentially know how to be tested so the variable was how is gonna get my samples into a water lab and I start talking to a scientist here by the name of Don Catlin in Los Angeles and he's considered the grandfather of Anti Doping he created all the tests for the first tests for

11:39steroid detection and sport and he actually is the first guy who did the testing for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles which was the first time they ever did anti-doping testing in sport so Catlin has developed all these tests and and I get in touch with Catlin and he's retired he's still alive I think he's about 80 years old and he retired I don't know five six years ago and I quickly realized and talking to Catlin that he's he's very frustrated he basically is felt that he spent his entire life and career in a system that he was never gonna win at and that no matter what he did and he would develop one methodology to catch somebody the very next day there'd be another way around it and then he would develop another methodology and then the very next day there'd be someone around it or he would propose that the league or the NFL or you know baseball or wherever you

12:40want to say should use this test to catch you know this sort of substance abuse and the league's would not use that test intentionally or he would find positives and report the positives and then be told basically to you know pretend that there wasn't the positive because his job was simply to report not to police and he had spent an entire career with this and and so he has you know I think a lot of frustrations with the anti-doping system and he said that he wouldn't help me because a he would have had to prescribe me drugs and he didn't want to be liable for that B he didn't know how he was gonna get my samples into a water lab because he doesn't have access to that anymore and he was worried about his legacy he didn't want to as much as he felt all the fallacies in the system he didn't want to be out there you know basically almost in a way making a

13:41mockery of of all of his work and he says hey I know this scientists in Russia Gregory were chenkov he runs the waffle lab the world anti-doping agency lab for all of Russia and I think he might help you and you know essentially he said that because he knew that the Russians had you know always been kind of trying to to to figure out ways to game the system and and he had met Gregory in like 1983 and that's a whole other story because Gregory had basically come to the United States as a spy to figure out what the Americans were gonna beat him against in the 1984 Olympics which I can talk about later but I get in touch with Gregory connects us through email and I start emailing Gregory and we spend about eight months back and forth on emails halls at the time he had just done the Sochi Olympics so he was doing all the testing for the Sochi Olympics and he invites me out to

14:47Oregon and this is July of 2014 to go meet him he's lecturing at this symposium and he doesn't know at the time that I want a dope he just thinks that I'm a American filmmaker making a documentary exploring the anti-doping system it's poor so I go out to Oregon and I make a decision that I'm not going to bring my camera crews I'm not going to you know do anything other than to just meet him and we start talking and I say to Gregory and he had just finished the Sochi games I said do you believe that a medal in the Olympics can be won without performance-enhancing drugs and he goes no and I say why and he says well I should believe I tried to believe but I don't believe medal in the Olympics can be won without performance-enhancing drugs and then he takes this pause I'll never forget this and he goes I don't know maybe I'm a bad man and he says this to

15:53me and and that you know was this moment where I went okay clearly there is a deeper story here that the the head of the anti-doping laboratory in Russia's telling me that a he doesn't think you can win an Olympic medal cleanly and B he doesn't know whether or not he's a bad man and what was going through your head it was like I think I just hit the mother lode for her for for what will be a riveting film and not just a really hit film and the changes noble story and and and I say to him and we had really bonded him and I really like the guy like just which is he's as you see in the film I mean he's impossible not to like yeah and I like him I liken him kind of like Bryan Cranston and Breaking Bad I mean he's his guy who's living this you know he's you love him and at the same time he's doing things that he shouldn't be doing and he'd been living this double life his

17:03entire life was living a double life which is which is insane and he agrees that he's going to help me dope and avoid detection but before this he agrees but he's not admitting to anything no not admitting Danny so he's just showing you how it he just says buddy buddy but he says look you know you're an amateur cyclists you're not a professional and in his mind even though I was quote-unquote cheating I wasn't cheating anyone out of anything right and you were doing it very openly yeah and I was doing it very openly and and so he viewed it as kind of like hey this is this is a cool project to get involved in and in his mind I think he also looked at it is hey what's the big deal if I expose the fallacies in the anti-doping system because maybe they'll actually do something about it if I show you know essentially how it doesn't work so he agrees that he's

18:04gonna be my doping adviser and this is now July 2014 but I had to do the race clean first I then had to go and you know through this whole thing and I wasn't gonna actually start doping until essentially the beginning of the next year and beginning of 2015 so you had to do the race clean to get a base yeah to do and because my whole premise was hey I'm gonna do this race twice I mean right go on it in doing cleaned see how good I do and then the next year I'm gonna go in just dope to the gills with the hope that I'm gonna win it now how much cycling had you done before this a lot a lot I grew up racing when I was 13 I'd raced seriously ties nineteen but then I moved out to LA I wasn't huge like a horrific bike crash and I was 19 in a race and that essentially I guess I didn't have the balls after that I went back and raced and no happier I lost eight teeth

19:03all of these were shattered this one was knocked out entirely and and it was like it was a bad wreck and I was 19 I just my freshman year in college and some went through college basically with plastic teeth in my mouth as I was going through essentially like reconstructive dental work and it made me really think twice about being a professional athlete or pursuing cycling and I came back to it the following year and as you know you know you in any sort of competitive realm of sport you can't be thinking about whether or not you're gonna get injured you can't be thinking about what those risks are you have to you know be fully committed or you're gonna lose or you're gonna get dropped and and I found myself you know not following the wheel close enough I found myself holding back on descent I found myself like in my mind of oh my god what if this crash happened

19:58again and so I decided to stop racing and moved out to LA I got into the entertainment business now I was doing stand-up comedy originally and but cycling remained like my passion in life so it's just like my life's therapy like you know stressed out I go on the bike and and so I've always rode but I stopped racing but to go back and do this it was like okay there's a part of me where I'm gonna kind of go relive my my youth or the idea of how good I could possibly be and and the bigger element was that is I thought it was going to be a compelling film and something that would be very interesting not for cycling you know people that were into cycling but into sports and curious about you know drug use and sport and performance-enhancing drugs and what they do and what they don't do so the first run at it you had been off cycling for how long I'd been I had

21:00still been training and riding and riding but the first run at it I mean I like radically amped up my training program for like six months ahead of time because I was going to do this thousand mile race through the French Alps and in Europe without the race cold called the Haute Route so you get ready for this now when you say clean are you taking any supplements multivitamins or you do anything I've taken vitamins I was taken the creatine but I was always doing protein shakes I was doing you know all sorts of recovery drains and you know essentially training you know getting my blood monitored and eating super super healthy and you know essentially training is as you know as scientifically as I could without using any sort of illegal substances and so what kind of results did you get the first race I got 14 out of 440 guys that's pretty damn good it's pretty good

22:02I was destroyed after it but it was pretty good so then the race is over how long after that do you start doping six months so you wait six months six months I wait six months are you training at all during that or yes right yeah I'm training I'm training but I'm filming I'm filming interviews cuz I was filming I probably had 5060 interviews that never made it into the film because the film took this pivot have you thought about releasing those in some way I think or something like that you know I've thought about you know it's it's Netflix technically would have the rights to that or you know at least the first right to it so you know perhaps I would do like a side series behind decorous really good right you know roll out all these various interviews because I interviewed so many interesting people yeah because I was so compelled by the end of it I you know it could have been

22:59a series I could have could have kept going with it so six months after then you you get back together with Gregory yeah and I get back to him exactly so I get back to grit Gregory and in the film you see this Skype call and so you know is in a creative filmmaking process at at orally you're always faced with decisions of okay do I spend ten minutes of this film on all these emails back and forth to Gregory before we see him on skype well that's not as dynamic as boom you see him on skype so so that very first call which was the very first time I had had him on skype and and it was the first time that I had seen him since Oregon in July 2014 and now I'm beginning my protocol and there he is shirtless and willing to help me and at almost that very moment this German television show comes out like a 60 minutes piece called ard as the station and this German

24:05investigative report Ohio CeBIT who unbeknownst to me at the time had been following the story of essentially the possibility of Russia having a state-sponsored doping program had already interviewed Gregory and he puts together this like 30-minute explosive like 60 minutes show alleging that Russia has a state-sponsored doping program and that he's working with these two whistleblowers that are basically fled of Russia to go work with him in Germany and tell their story and these two whistleblowers are now like enemies of the state and they're worried about their lives and there's threats to their lives and they essentially start bringing forward information about a state-sponsored program and the information is so compelling that water the world anti-doping agency launches an investigation into the claims behind this German television show and there's

25:04a backstory to that which is the wada had had this information for four years and they sat on it because they're essentially in bed with the IOC in the Olympics so the only reason why they finally acted on this information out of Russia was they were forced to because it was now in public and this German show had done kind of the equivalent of putting it on a front page of a New York Times and so they had to take action so wada launches this investigation it's now January 2015 and I'm just working with Gregory and Gregory shows me he says hey have you seen this television show on me and at the time I hadn't and I've watched this show and there it is areas being alleged as essentially the guy who is doping all the Russian athletes that he knows everything there's athletes on camera saying that dr. rich ankov is the guy you go to and and it was a major pivot point in the

26:10story but for me at the time I made a very very succinct decision which was I'm gonna continue behind the scenes to follow this story this investigation because I didn't know where it was going to go but in the meantime I have Gregory this Moscow scientist he's helping me to avoid detection and that's the movie that I set out to make and so I'm gonna stick on that journey wall while doubling down on the other side of the story should this side of the story end up truly being something and so this is essentially a year and so he's doping me this entire year while he's under investigation wall I'm literally going to guys like dick pound who founded wada and richard mclaren who's investigating him and and the guys within wada and different guys in global anti-doping and i'm saying hey what do you know about this russia investigation what do you think if this proves true mm

27:21do you think Gregory we're chenkov is involved and and none of these people that I'm interviewing know that I'm working with Gregory they have no idea that I'm doping they have no idea that I know Gregory and so I'm getting these very very candid honest responses and and we cut to November 2015 and this 335 page report breaks and it's alleging that he's the mastermind of a state-sponsored doping program in Russia but again it's all smoke and mirrors and it's mandated to track and field and and that's when things got incredibly serious Putin gets on state television it's a huge worldwide story denies that any of this is true but he makes a statement stating that if any of this is true that it will be the individuals that are held accountable and that punishment will be absolute and that was essentially Gregory's death sentence and we were skyping and we were

28:29talking during this entire period as this crisis is unfolding in Russia and he's forced to resign from the lab the lab is shut down everybody's let go Russia is suspended from world track-and-field Gregory tells me that the KGB the FSB have plotted a suicide plan to make it look like he's that he's killed himself and that he needs to get out of Russia and how did he know that they had planned that so Gregory had FSB clearance because he was essentially FSB he was part of a secret operation by Russia to essentially dope all of its athletes have them avoid detection swap urine etc and so Gregory was you know had high clearance and other people within the FSB that liked him basically said hey you got to get out and so I got him a plane ticket I put him put it on my credit card and he arrives in Los Angeles this is November 2015 just let him fly so this I am sure to Putin and

29:44the other Russian ministry officials this has probably been the behind closed closed doors screaming shouting matches I'm gonna cut your head off how did you allow this to happen conversation but he gets out of Russia five days after this 335 page report breaks and he had been working with the ministry so a they didn't consider him a flight with B he was still going to the lab every day to clean up the mess and see he had a visa to come to the United States to lecture but they weren't thinking that he had a visa at that moment they weren't viewing him as a flight risk even though they put two FSB agents living in his home to guard him and it was and it was a blip it was a blip they they hadn't tagged his passport it happened so fast he had this visa and he and you bought the ticket so they didn't they knew they didn't know that he had it taken probably that's right Wow

30:48and he gets out and he gets out and I'm sure that I mean there's probably been endless you know people get in there you know jobs lost in Russia because this guy was able to get out at the least yeah now and that's at the least is a very important point because at least one guy wound up dead too - what what and what was their circumstances like very suspicious circumstance right so so Gregory arrives to Los Angeles and he brings with him three hard drives and on these hard drives essentially is the irrefutable evidence of essentially Russia's state-sponsored doping program and this system when I began to truly understand what this was I mean this up ends all of world sport this changes whether the Olympics want to acknowledge it or not this changes all of Olympic history it changes the last 40 years of the Olympics because it basically shows that pretty much every medal ever won by

32:06Russia an olympic competition was was was won through illicit means that Gregory was behind a state-sponsored doping program where essentially pretty much every athlete on the Russian national team was you know an employee of the Russian state and that Russia had you know went into each one of these Olympic Games and World competition cheating to use sport as a way to assert itself geopolitically and as a way to to show itself as a strong country and we forget I think in the u.s. I mean a I mean sport is what people care about on this planet but you know Orwell said it best that sport is war without the weapons and if you look at what these Olympic Games are every two years is it's every country on planet Earth coming together under the illusion of peace and goodwill and harmony while the governments are looking at this as a way to geopolitical power and strength so if

33:20your China coming into the Olympics like they did in those Beijing Olympics and they swept those Beijing Olympics and from the information that I have they essentially did the same thing that Russia did and the Sochi Olympics but if you're looking let's say at China in those 20 2008 Beijing Games they spend billions of dollars the world has never seen an Olympic Games like those Beijing Games opening ceremonies of closing terms what that was was that was China showing the world were first world power we can kick your ass we are having nukes we are a global economic force and look what we can do world because the entire world's eyes are on the Olympics being watched by billions of people you think that China is a great country look what we're able to do and on top of that they needed to win because it's not enough just to show this infrastructure that

34:17they can build it's also we can win we are superior and that is what countries have been doing for the last 40 years in the Olympic Games just like Hitler did in the 1936 games that helped unify his power and help you know bring Germany together and so this is what the history of the Olympic Games have been shrouding under this mask of peace and goodwill and unity and handshakes this is countries around the world going in and showing the rest of the world their strength and power and Russia certainly has viewed that every two years as a platform for Russia to assert itself geopolitically and and in so doing they put together a state-sponsored doping program to help you know advance Russia's geopolitical goals and and show itself as a world power is there any evidence that China has done the same thing or is just a pack ulation that they've got a state-sponsored program as well well I

35:20personally don't have the evidence according to Gregory and I have no reason to doubt Gregory especially in light of everything that he has said has proved to be true he was at the 2008 Beijing Games and according to him what would happen different than what Russia did in Sochi but according to him what would happen is that the Chinese athletes and if you look at the medal count out of Beijing China swept swept those Olympics just like Russia swept their own Olympics and and and according to Gregory what the Russian what the Chinese athletes would do is they would show up for their you know their doping tests and certain collectors meaning when the athlete shows up they have to be chaperoned and they're basically chaperoned and that chaperone watches them pee into you know a container and then they put the pee in these two different bottles and this is the whole

36:21safeguard system according to Gregory what was happening in China is that the the collectors were actually Chinese government agents essentially like you know Secret Service for China and that the athlete would go in to have his you know urine collected and this agent would give the athlete a bag of his clean urine and the athlete would put that urine under his armpit and then collect collect the urine and and that's apparently what China did in the Beijing Olympics according to Gregory and he had knowledge of that and that is where the idea started to come for how to put into place what they ultimately did in Sochi where they swapped out clean urine for dirty urine but they did it in a much more complicated manner because of the camera systems because of all the technology that was in place Russia took it to a whole other step further those lids that they had used those supposedly

37:22unbreakable lids or on unremovable lids yes had they been in place before Sochi yes yes so what we're talking about is in the in when an athlete reports for a drug test in sport they pee into one like like you know a cup and then they separate their urine between an a sample and a B sample and these two bottles are made by the Swiss company called bourlingueur and they are kind of the Fort Knox of urine collection bottles they've created this tamper proof top it seals like it's a vault and this has been considered the global standard there it is right there we could say yeah I'm screaming and these are considered the the global standard and world sport and they're unpenetrated to be open by the lab right so they have a machine that's this special machine it cracks the top and then you can test it the B sample is sealed forever it's only to be opened if

38:36the a sample turns positive and that B sample is put into long-term storage for ten years basically should testing evolve or whatever or something come up they have this B sample to go back and test that athlete's urine up to ten years in the Olympic vault in the Olympic you know labs where they've holding these samples so basically what Russia figured out is that they need it to swap out both the a urine and the B urine but in order to get into those B samples they had to break into these bottles so through a couple years of testing and the FSB got involved in a program where they figured out using these tools how to essentially break into these bottles undetected dump out the dirty dirty piss put in clean piss and reseal these bottles so both the a sample would be negative because that was swapped and the B sample had been swapped and it was in long-term storage so does every sample

39:41cuz if so if they removed the top of the beast when they swap that out what do they do with the a sample well the a sample they they were they were legally able to open it for testing but it was supposed to be tested under you know a bunch of other people watching so what they would do and this gets into into detail into the film is that they would take basically the a sample that was already in this room they'd smuggle in the B sample the B sample shouldn't even been there and they would crack open the a sample like they were allowed to crack open for testing but they would do this at like two o'clock in the morning and they would bring this a sample and the B sample through a secret hole in the wall of the room where there where they were Alec quadding the urine there's there's the holes in the wall and they would pass these vowels through the hole in the wall and once they got

40:34through the hole in the wall on the other side in this makeshift room which was a look like a storage closet but there were no cameras in there and they had designed the whole lab for this I mean this was there was a lot of thinking that went into this blueprints I mean Gregory showed me the blueprints I mean this was this was thought out years ahead of time how to do this and they would swamp they'd bring the bottles into this storage room they would dump out the dirty urine of the a sample because that was open they would put in the clean urine of that same athlete that they had collected about a year earlier they would they took all the athletes off the drug and would have them collect clean samples and then the B bottle would go out secretly to a KGB building an FSB building that was about a hundred yards across the street from where the lab was a secret building and there they would

41:26open up this B sample they would dump out the urine bring it back to Gregory sitting in this room and Gregory would then put that same clean urine into that B bottle reseal the B bottle put the two bottles through the hole in the lap they then take the B sample smuggle it into a into where it was supposed to be the long-term storage container and all the athletes that's a negative Wow know what they do in the past if they did that in Sochi what did they do in Beijing what do they do in all the previous Olympics well so that's where it's it's it's interesting because and this is kind of the the Lance Armstrong of it or you want to call it the anti-doping system evasion of it where in the past it was always about the science right which is okay what can you take what can you not take how long will you wash out how long will you you know what can you know and and at

42:24what time would you be positive and negative and that goes into the weeds like you know HGH is hard to detect after 12 hours if you take micro doses of EPO there's all these you know different ways around it and they were essentially doing that but they were doing it on a higher level Gregory and this is just again the incredible two lives that he was leading is so he's the head of the anti-doping lab in Russia so he's responsible for testing all of Russian athletes and international athletes coming into Russia for competition at the same time he is developing tests to catch these athletes and he develops a test called the long term metabolite test and what this test does is it increases the detection window to detect steroids in the blood of athletes so prior they could essentially detect steroid use about it was about a six week window something about that right and once you you hadn't

43:30been taking steroids for about six weeks you work in the test positive he develops this test that is able to detect steroid use up to like seven or eight months in the system and this is different types of steroids correct because some steroids have a long life right inside the body they're fat soluble exactly so he's able to determine it to develop a test that's the long term metabolites to basically see that you took these drugs you know even if you hadn't taken him for six months but at the same time that he develops his test and this has now been adopted on a global level and specifically at the like the London Olympics of 2012 and and I think don't quote me on this I think this test really got approved in like 2011 somewhere around there and so he puts out this long term metabolite test that's catching all these athletes from all over the world

44:22because now they can catch him up to six seven months he figures out the anti-venom to his own tests and what he develops is a three-drug cocktail where he is able to dissolve the steroids in in a solution of either vermouth martini for the women shivers for the men whiskey for the men and he would give the athletes basically the steroids in like a shot and a solution of alcohol and what he figured out through the science is that if the steroids were taking with alcohol they wouldn't actually go into the blood system so you would get all the benefits of a steroid but your body would pass it out in a very very quick time and so you were undetectable what yeah Wow how'd he figure that out because he's a genius so Wow so so so this guy is you know essentially you know at one time you know so he's figuring out so all the Russian athletes are basically knowing

45:27you know they're on his system and so there's taken steroids while the other athletes if they were doing the same thing on a global level or getting caught and the world system is using the methodology that Gregory developed too and so so this was the cat-and-mouse game going on for a very long time and and you know before that it's you know it's the micro dosing it's the Lance of it it's all the the howdy how do you get away with it but what they did for Sochi is they just said well hey screw that you know we don't want to take any chances we're gonna have our athlete's dope Full Tilt so they can be at their very very best and they're gonna be dirty as hell but we're gonna swap out their urine so there's no and because in sochi russia controlled the lab they basically owned the keys to the vault they were the policemen they they were the judge the jurors

46:31the execution had full control and they had a record number of golds right they had a record number that they won 13 Gold's in Sochi 33 overall medals which was the highest of any country and and for them for Putin and Russia I think when you go into you know what's going on in the US and Russia is there's the the cold war's never really ended it's the illusion of a cold war ending and what you're seeing is is you know a country where economically it's always been you know you have a lot of wealth and a very very small number of hands but the rest of the country is pretty much living in second world conditions you know once you get out of Moscow st. Petersburg and where them where the main money is but Russia on a global level is always wanting to exert itself as a you know as a world geopolitical power they have nukes they have a lot of you know resources natural resources and in the

47:31case of of Sochi this was a way for essentially Putin to show like China did on a global level look what we're able to pull off in these Olympics they spent fifty billion dollars on those Olympics nobody had ever done that his approval rating had been on the decline but if he could win the Olympics he could unify Russia just like Germany winning the World Cup or any you know this is because this is what sports is on a global level or you know the Denver Broncos winning the Superbowl the Patriots winning the Superbowl and every single person and New England shows up for a parade people care and so the Olympics were Putin's way to basically show the world that Russia was an economic power a super power geopolitical power and if those Russian athletes could win that's the same thing of going to war that's showing that that they are you know that Russia is strong

48:25and so the mandate was win at all costs Gregory was the mastermind behind that program and right after they win those Sochi Olympics Putin's approval rating soars to 95% and he uses that approval rating to go into the Ukraine and to and to go into war with Ukraine I had never connected those together until your documentary when you were talking about them invading Crimea Minh sent aeneas li made me reconsider the the impact of sports like geopolitically like I really didn't think about it that way before that movie and after the movie with stuck with me the most and one of the most disturbing things is I remember the news where they were talking about taking them out of Brazil where they were saying that the International Olympic Committee was going to remove all the Russian athletes from competing in Brazil and I saw the story and I think probably even talked

49:24about it on the podcast I was like this is insane like I've never this is unprecedented and then it went away then it went away and and what you see in the film and what's going on right now which is so upsetting in the state of the world that we're in right now is is first is in in the film from this investigation that gets launched from Gregory going to the New York Times and us presenting all this evidence they launched this three months investigation and I'm essentially behind the scenes kind of as a puppet master because Gregory can't talk he's in protective custody and so I'm the guy with his lawyers helping facilitate all the evidence helping to decipher all the documents and we had hired on a whole team of people to do this and that's that scene in the movie where you see where I'm sitting at the table with the leaders of wada basically you know

50:24telling them that the Easter Bunny's and Santa Claus and the tooth fairy don't exist at all at the same time and and and so this investigation goes on for two and a half months and during this investigation richard mclaren gets the samples the the sochi samples out of the long-term storage from b Olympics the IOC and Luzon they do forensics on these bottles and they see the scratches on the bottles they see how the bottles were open they bring in Interpol and other agencies and they figure out the tools how Russia gets into the bottles and they see all the evidence on the bottles and then they also find an extraordinary amount of salt content in the urine because what Gregory was doing which we don't get into the film is in order to make the clean urine match he also had to adjust the gravity of the urine and he would use human table salt to do that and so

51:24when they went back a TV yeah when you when you when you when you pee depending on how hydrated you are dehydrated you are what you ate that day the gravity essentially the weight of your urine changes basically what the content of what what's what what your body is that while are dehydrated people have dark your exact is that a thicker urine is actually it's like a heavier urine ah right so so every athlete when they would give their sample part of the doping control forms they mark the specific gravity essentially the weight the biologic of the airport is that a part of it different because the biological passport is blood and that's and that's measuring blood but so so they're just measuring the weight of the urine well they're they're measuring part of when they do the intake form on the urine they weigh oh aliquot and so that so that it's also another thing

52:16against fraud because okay so your specific gravity is I'm making this up point o2 oh and that's in that sample well so if they were to go back and retest that sample and the specific gravity was wrong well they'd know that something was that something was up right so part of swapping the urine is he would also adjust the specific gravity with with table salt he figured out that salt salt would would change the gravity of urine so because he's trying to match on the doping control forms exactly you know what's in these bottles he puts in table salt and when they go back and test these samples sure enough in 100% of the samples they test they find evidence of the scratches they find evidence of tampering and they find the table salt in the urine so this is this is like I mean this is beyond a reasonable doubt that this is slam-dunk this is a slam dunk and it's now the Rio

53:18Olympic Games and we're sitting there and going well every country in the world is calling for Russia to be banned every anti-doping agency around the world is calling for Russia to be banned every op-ed and New York Times and paper from around the world is saying you have to ban Russia from Rio and Thomas Bach the president of the Olympics essentially has the audacity to call these findings and all this evidence allegations and does not ban Russia from the Rio Olympics allows them in so 281 I think of their 390 athletes go to Rio and the only athletes that are banned are the world Track and Field team because he kicked the buck down to the sports federations to decide what to do and because this investigation had started in track and field track and field and Sebastian Coe upheld the ban for the Rio games and here we are now a year and a couple months later and now

54:27the Olympics are trying to decide whether or not to allow Russia into the next Winter Olympic Games and not only have they essentially removed richard mclaren from this investigation and he was able to continue the work through december and in december of of last year 2016 he is able to release his full findings and these full findings have 1,200 documents of evidence of emails between gregory and the ministry emails between you know on and on that have been forensic ly proven using metadata where these emails were coming from the spreadsheets of what every single athlete was taking when they were taking it the bottle collection numbers i mean you're talking because i've seen the evidence i mean it is it's a graveyard it's it's mind boggling em richer McLaren concludes that over 1,000 athletes across all sports were involved in this state-sponsored doping operation and the

55:36Olympics until a couple weeks ago had done essentially nothing with this information they have only trying to figure out essentially how to push it under the carpet and pretend that this didn't happen how to allow Russia into the next Winter Olympics by finding loopholes by saying that you can't you know that it should be the individual athletes right etc etc and they have an investigation going on right now which is the investigation to investigate Richard MacLaren's investigation which was already forensic ly proven everything was already shown ball and a reasonable doubt but to essentially figure out whether or not they are going to allow Russia into the Winter Olympics and they are finally reaching out to Gregory even though he has been available for a year and three months to speak to them they are finally reaching out to him to have him provide the same

56:46evidence that he provided to Richard McClaren and the investigators on that team so they're very reluctantly pursuing this are very reluctantly even contemplating banning Russia I think what we're seeing is we're seeing you know III set out making a movie exploring the anti-doping system in sport and and I uncovered essentially the biggest scandal in sport history but behind that scandal is I'm seeing essentially the geopolitics and the business interests of all these organizations that basically stand for one thing they say that they're for something and that they're doing everything to protect their own business interests and do the act opposite of what they say that they stand for and it calls into question that if the Olympics are up there going play cleaned be true be fair don't do this play by the rules come into this to these competitions you know and and

57:51respect fellow athletes and then they're presented with a scandal on epic proportions a scandal that changes its entire history that has been forensically proven beyond a reasonable doubt and then they don't uphold their own rules and they don't act or have a punishment for this I mean you had to ask what's the point of the Olympics why even had the Olympics well why why should any athlete on planet earth who is competing cleanly whose training their whole lives to go into these games with the belief that they are on at least a level playing field theoretically and then you have the organization itself not protecting the rights of clean athletes you have to call into question white why why have the Olympics white what's what's the point of it if if this kind of behavior is allowed and it's and it's unpunished what do you think is going on I think that you have billions and billions and

58:55billions of dollars at stake you know look I mean Russia is hosting the World Cup this summer Vitaly Mutko who was a sports minister who was elevated to essentially the vice president of Russia the the Deputy Prime Minister after this doping scandal to basically because Putin took him out of harm's way you know he was sitting on the board of FIFA he helped Russia get the World Cup bid you know so that they were hosting the World Cup next year this is billions of dollars you know Putin and Bach are known to be very good friends I mean Bach and the Olympics you know brought in billions and billions of dollars from Russia hosting those Sochi games you know this is this is business there is no there's no interest in essentially just you know knocking over the applecart in the protection of a fair sport or athletes rights or fair play and you know and the athletes are

59:59essentially the victim of a country's geopolitical interests and and business interests and I mean we see this across all sports but this is a case where it's night and day and and you're literally sitting at at at evidence that is so staggering in its scope and scale and an organization that is basically like unable to to act in any sort of ethical or moral capacity to to implement any sort of justice against what has been thousands and thousands and thousands of athletes stolen I'm thousands and thousands and thousands of medals stolen from clean athletes all over the world not just American athletes but I mean any athlete and went into those games clean and a Russian beat them they basically got their medals stolen from them are they hoping that this is just going to be swept under the rug and that there's going to be more news that sort of drowns us out in my personal opinion

61:10that's how I see it you know Gregory retching cough he wrote a op-ed to the New York Times it was published last week and the op-ed his attorneys because he's in protective custody were able to facilitate this op-ed to the New York Times and and in the op-ed if you read it he goes into detail about the evidence that he's provided the IOC s lack of interest in doing anything and essentially you know his opinion on Russia's cover-up and and here we are not one says Russia accepted any responsibility for this in fact they've denied that this ever happened they're continuing to blame Gregory that this is like a solo act how could this man have pulled off this system this huge elaborate system by himself and then in so doing after the New York Times op-ed Russia issues an arrest warrant for Gregory and there's already been criminal charges against him in Russia they've seized all of his

62:29property and assets in Russia they've taken in the process of taking a home that he bought for his daughter they're trying to take his wife's property they took his Dasha and this is all a man who was working for the Russian ministry who had the backbone to become a whistleblower and we're still in this cycle of fake news and denial and I'm witnessing this on a on a daily basis and it's and it's unbelievable because when you look at this story and then you draw a line which is so easy to draw into the current US political climate and what is going on with Russian meddling into our election you go well if Russia was willing to do this for the last 40 years and we have all the evidence now that they actually did this and they have denied it and continued to deny it and don't take any responsibility and not only that anybody who is who has spoke out against them

63:31ends up dead or you know or they end up in jail or they end up you know in a fake news cycle I think it's pretty you know I think there can be a straight analogy into you know if there's any question as to whether or not our election was meddled with or whether or not Russia is able to to assert its power geopolitically I think that this film answers that question and that I'm hoping that that that our country is gonna wake up and go hey we're not going to tolerate this this is not acceptable we're not going to allow a foreign power to meddle into into our election or into the potential leadership of this country I mean it's it's pretty it's pretty scary when you think of the bigger implications of of what this scandal is and was on a global level and then looking at what that means you know even for America well it's essentially highlighting the intentions and what the

64:37Russians are willing to do in sport the the evidence though of doping is so far and beyond the evidence that we have so far about election tampering right we have evidence of election tampering but what you're telling me is just so ridiculously undeniable and what your documentary shows is so ridiculously undeniable it's just stunning that they're allowing the Russians to compete I mean it's it's really scary when you really think about that way I mean like what is are they being threatened I mean what is it just a simply a money thing as you're saying I mean we're talking about thousands and thousands of athletes and over who knows I mean there was recently a couple Russian wrestlers had their medals taken away after the fact because they had new detection methods I believe it was from I want to say 2008 or 2012 yeah right yeah they're finding a lot of positives you know in

65:382012 2008 there's been a little bit harder because of statute of limitations on the retesting of samples and for for a lot of reasons the IOC does really want to go in there and get all the samples to retest and well there's been so much that it then it proves that you know in the Olympics are fraud but there's been so much in the past there's been so many allegations of deception and fraud when it came to the Olympics in the first place there's always been some brewing behind the scenes but you must have been stunned in the process of making this documentary about one thing and then while this is happening oh you know just completely I mean it seems like like synchronicity or something like you just tapped into it of the very moment that this this stream was becoming a raging river publicly it was a weird moment because I like I like Russia I love Russians have tons of Russian me

66:42to love Russia I really did guys I really do I mean you know I mean it's god of you guys I mean I just did its if for anybody's been to Russia I mean it's it's pretty awesome I mean Moscow st. Petersburg or world-class cities I have so many Russian friends so you know so we're caught back up in these Cold War politics where essentially all of us individuals you know on an individual level go hey I I love Russia I love Russian side and Russians go I love Americans and yet we're caught up into the geopolitics like we were in the Cold War Between our leaders and the government workings in the ministry that we have nothing to do with it and and what was shocking to me is you know I think over the last 20 years we've viewed Russia as our friend that they're you know that they're our friend and what we're learning now is that it's been hey it's a been a pretend pat on

67:46the back while we're seeing the government do things and we're learning things of Russian tampering and involvement that I think that Americans a year or two ago couldn't couldn't have imagined and and the fact that this story that I uncovered then collides with the election meddling and hacking and and Russia involvement and Syria etc etc and that those things were all coming together at the same time I mean I I couldn't have imagined because even as I uncovered this scandal and worked to expose this and bring it forward I had no idea at the time that there would be claims of that that our election was hacked yeah that was never even a discussion before this cycle that was never even a discussion I can't imagine that now where when you when this all came out and you put this all together I mean you had to think to yourself like what I've just made is going to change sports

69:02there's what you I think your documentary is the most powerful anti-doping documentary ever made I really do and I think what you've done fortuitously for you to be involved in this and be involved with Gregory as this was all going down I mean it's really crazy how the two coincided together and produce this staggering result when you're sitting there at the table with all these water guys and you're discussing everything it's almost like they didn't want to hear it it's all it's almost like what you were doing was exposing incompetence and corruption an indefensible way that's right that's right they they didn't want to hear it because it basically showed that their system had been utterly ineffective at catching cheaters it showed that that that they it caught them with their pants down and and and as I got into the weeds on this you know you realize that

70:10that wada essentially is co-funded by the olympics so 50% of water's budget is through the Olympics so they're they're in bed together they are they don't want to do anything that's going to hurt the other you also realize that there are many board members of wada or part of the IOC so like Craig Reedy who is the president of water is also the vice president of the IOC dick pound who founded wada was running for the presidency of the IOC and was a vice president of the IOC so so the Olympics and water are totally interconnected to each other and and in my opinion or at least what what Gregory has told me is that wada was essentially established as an arm of the IOC to help protect its sponsorship dollar and to and to make the Olympics appear as clean as you know as up to their very limp ik ideals so you know what you're seeing within these organizations is is wada

71:20has no power to actually do anything so all that they can do is observe and report so in the case of this this scandal gets uncovered they then do an investigation they corroborate everything as truth and then they advise the Olympics wada bless their heart advise the Olympics that they should ban Russia from the Summer Games in Rio and that they should ban Russia from the Winter Games coming up in Pyeongchang wada that was wadis recommendation to which the Olympics did not take that recommendation and wada doesn't have any power to actually enforce punishment so in case of in the case of Russia in talking to people inside of wada that we're dealing with this over those four years as they're getting all this information from russia but ultimately what is going we don't have the budget we don't really have the money to do this they have like a twenty five

72:17million dollar year global budget for the entire world so we don't have the budget to do this we don't have the manpower to do this and ultimately we don't have the power to do anything anyway and how are we going to go take on Russia so they sat on the information realizing that they were ultimately going to be powerless to to do anything so you know it's a it's a it's a very complicated system because you know at least from what I've seen is there's so much politics and geopolitics around it that that keeps these operations essentially you know ineffective and actually really doing something and the anti-doping sport and almost becomes an ethical and moral decision if the organizations and leaders themselves are not really trying to do anything about it now do you think the banning of the track and field team was just a slap on the wrist or was a compromise that was reached where they

73:21just said look we have to do something what should we do what what had happened is is so the first report was all track and field mandated and and there was so much evidence in regards to track and field more than other sport more than other sport because there was an individual investigation that only focused on track and field and even after they released this investigation all these athletes are saying wait you got to go investigate biathlon you couldn't go investigate bobsled you can't go investigate speed skating and wrestling and wrestling and soccer and basketball and you know honor you know everything but but they didn't do that and so there was so much in the track and field investigation the Athletics investigation that the I double AF the international Athletics Federation dealing with her own scandal if you remember this a few years ago the head

74:16of the iwf was arrested on bribery and lent lomani deaq and his son i mean it's a whole thing and Sebastian Coe became president and there was all this proof that the IDF had been taking bribes for years and years and years to cover up positive results and but it's that's a whole other story yeah so the so the I double AF upholds the ban and they uphold the ban because of Gregory's evidence so they were trying to figure out whether or not to uphold the ban and it was on the eve of the Rio Olympics and Gregory through the authorities that he was been working with was able to get that evidence and information to the I double AF the I double AF was able to see that and they upheld the ban for Russia's track and field team which you know is a pretty pretty big you know punishment at least it's at least it's taking a stance of you know this kind of behavior is not going to be tolerated

75:20sum-sum yeah now Gregory what a courageous and bold move on his part and what a sacrifice to come forth with all this evidence to risk his life and to I mean essentially blow the lid off all of us I mean if it wasn't for him what do you have nothing you know it's been a you know I worry about him every day I'm sure I don't I'm not able to talk to him I'm not in contact with them can you get any messages from anyone else to him or to him to you I've been told by his attorneys that he's healthy that he's in good spirits I know he's continued to work and provide information to water apparently the IOC he will be providing information to the Olympics as part of their investigation I've been told that he's worked with global authorities and global police agencies to help provide information because he has so much information not just about Russia but of all sorts of other things that were

76:31going on of bribes and payments being made and you know not you know I don't know what evidence in that regards that he has but he at least has the you know you know he knows so much yeah and I know that he has been working effortlessly through his legal counsel to provide this information and to work with global authorities to work with wada now hopefully the IOC the Olympics US authorities but you know I I don't know what his life's gonna be like yeah that's what I was gonna say and I don't know if and one he'll ever be able to see his his family we launched a month or so ago if anybody's interested on my my Twitter page we launched a GoFundMe for Gregory through an organization called fair sport that fair sport was launched by one of the producers on my film and and I gotta Bend the name of Johann Koz who's been a huge advocate and anti-doping and and spare fair sport was

77:44basically launched to help other whistleblowers and sport come forward with information but also to help Gregory in this ongoing battle we're being told that we need to get that he needs to get money to his wife or for an attorney for legal help and she's stuck in Russia she took her passport away they won't let her leave that's what we're being told were you know so he has you know incredible legal bills and other help that he needs and so we've launched this GoFundMe to try to to try to provide him a lifeline over the next year's years because you know his his future is so uncertain I mean where where is he gonna live how is he gonna live how's he gonna pay his bills and and he wants to continue to you know be you know kind of Frank Abagnale you know a guy who had you know committed wrongdoings but he was under the orders of the ministry but he has a lot of

79:00information that he has risked his life to bring forward to the world because he felt a huge burden to do this and he wanted to do this this was his this was his doing and ultimately he entrusted me as his conduit to bring this story forward and also Gregory has attempted suicide in the past I mean so your and under much less dire circumstances yeah he's essentially a wanted man right now yep with no freedom I mean he is in hiding and the Russians most likely one of dead absolutely you know you see in this response to his New York Times op-ed that they would there had been a lot of if you followed the news in Russia they had already taken lots and lots of action against him to you know kind of silence him to to make him irrelevant in the film I think one of the most shocking moments and was as at the end of every year Putin gives a huge press conference with

80:15hundreds of journalists and and the doping scandal gets brought up of course and he goes and this is just you know six months ago goes oh the the guy who defected the citizen who defected the scientists I don't even remember his name and you're literally going there are you kidding me Putin just says he doesn't remember Gregory's name yet yet Gregory dominated Russian news for the past year he has been front-page story for first solid year this has been the single biggest scandal in sport and in in Russian history he's arguably the biggest whistle blow in the history of Russia and you have the president of a country saying he doesn't even remember his name and what that is is that George Orwell that's 1984 that's double think that's essentially fake news that's pretending that by not acknowledging you know him is not to acknowledge the truth and that is what is going on in this

81:22world again so here you see that Putin looks straight to the camera and say I don't even remember Gregory's name I mean that would be the equivalent of asking an American who's our president right now and somebody saying I don't I don't remember his name I mean that is that is the level of lies and deception and then you see their reaction to the New York Times op-ed by issuing an arrest warrant for Gregory to again paint him as a criminal to again pretend that this didn't happen to again try to obstruct the truth and shift the focus away from the truth and the punishment and what all this evidence is and his bravery of coming forward and instead tried to turn him into into a criminal so it's it's it's startling and it's and it's incredibly upsetting it was one of the reasons why we you know we latched on to 1984 and Orwell in the film because everything

82:24that is that his Gregory's life was doublethink but everything that's going on and our and our geopolitical cycle and with Russia and Putin it's it's doublethink it's it's the the truth is no longer the truth and you don't know what what news to believe or what not to believe this is obviously very unexpected for you I mean you set out to do one documentary and another thing reveals itself in the middle of it and something incredibly serious well what is the impact of this been like for you I mean the weight of this all carrying this around with you it's been a lot from the from November of last year when Gregory came to Los Angeles to us ultimately going to the New York Times and in May of last year in May 2016 there was about a seven month period where myself and my my producing partner Dan Cogan with impact partners and my other producers Jim Swartz and David

83:29Falco we had this information in this evidence and we knew what this was and we knew how big it was and so there was this period of about seven months of a daily crisis navigation of a how do we keep this information protected we moved our production offices three times we moved Gregory into different safehouse production offices Co we didn't know if we were under surveillance did you feel like you under surveillance I felt like we were under surveillance yeah what was giving you an indication it was you know we'd see like a car Gregory who was not in protective custody at the time was getting information from his people out of Russia that they were you know that they were looking for him that they were you know concerned and and we knew the gravity of what this was like I I I understood once I dove into this evidence with Gregory how big this was like what what this truly meant and and

84:39and that I felt that you know Russia and the Olympics but Russia would probably do anything at all costs to try to you know not have this come forward because what this meant and it meant that their Olympic Games were fraud and that they had been cheating global sport for the entire modern history and and that it showed the extent to which Russia and the Ministry was willing to you know to to tamper in international affairs not just sport and so I understood that and Gregory understood that and so it was the daily crisis management we went through about five months where we couldn't even get him a lawyer because every law firm that we would go to would have some sort of conflict of interest with Russia we couldn't it was it was really really intense and that during that time two of his friends died within two weeks of each other of heart attacks at age 52 and 59 and Nikita Kamiya of

85:44who's 52 years old he's running he had resigned from running the Russian anti-doping agency so so technically the Russian anti-doping agency shouldn't be working with Gregory's lab the wada the world anti-doping agency lab those should be two independent things but these two were working together because there was never any Anti Doping Russia was the anti anti-doping system posing as anti-doping so Nikita is still in Russia he's been forced to resign and Gregory and him are still talking via via skype and Nikita tells Gregory that he's gonna go that he's writing a book and that he's been in contact with David Walsh and David Walsh's The Sunday Times journalist that chased Armstrong for ten years he's probably one of the most renowned famous sports journalists in the world that Stephen Frears filmed the programs based on David Walsh and send Nikita had reached out to David Walsh

86:45and him and David Walsh were making a plan to meet and Nikita had told Gregory that you know he was gonna meet what David Walsh Gregory was like this is you can't do this you're still in Russian Nikita you're still in Russia what are you doing and a day later Nikita dies of a heart attack this was a guy who was healthy had never had a heart problem in his life was a was a lifelong athlete never he was 52 52 and apparently he died over about three and a half hours while Nikita's wife was on the phone - Gregory crying this is really have any suspicion of how they did it you know Gregory goes that they just you just died of a heart attack they poison you or whatever they you know I don't I don't know how they do it but you know Russia isn't like Isis they don't do something and then take responsibility you know there's been so many stories like in BuzzFeed last year that of the

87:4114 deaths in London all tied to you know various had the series of Russia there's been multiple books written on it even you know which was not widely reported the Russian agent the Co offered apparently the Trump dossier with the mi6 the former mi6 agent he was found dead in the back of a Lexus about five months ago outside of Moscow so you know clearly they they they play by a different set of rules and so this is all going on as we're figuring out how to bring this story to the world and the our government the US government gets involved the Department of Justice and FBI they start investigating and we realized that that we have to bring this story public and that it's the best way for Gregory to hopefully be protected and and that once it's public its it'll be in the world and so we brought it to the New York Times with Gregory and sat with them for three days

88:51and then they broke the story and then as a film we then followed that story as it as it unraveled but yeah it's been it's been very it's been very heavy and very worried about Gregory and also incredibly frustrating to see that what what you kind of read about in conspiracy novels and you read about and you know all these guys who believe that you know everybody you know of how the system works and then getting to witnesses firsthand and also I think as an athlete having kind of my Olympic ideal of what the Olympics is being shattered and seeing that this organization really has no regard for for anything other than their own business interests now how much time does Gregory have in protective custody do they have a determined time period where they're willing to protect him means the US government that's protecting him I assume to my understanding you know that is that that

90:07is the case but I am NOT being given updates and and I don't you know I I don't want to have that information right but you know I I'm very optimistic that he'll continue to be okay and and that also if if something were to go wrong we'll be able to help him with that you know through his counsel and team but it's it's certainly very concerning you know I think he you know he clearly understood the risks before coming forward we had tried to get his family out of Russia and they didn't understand the gravity of the situation which I'm sure they do now and you know I don't I don't know I mean he's you know in the film you fall in love with him you just fall in love with this guy and you see him for who he is which was incredibly important for me um as the filmmaker and as his friend was I knew that it would be very easy to paint him into an illusion of somebody that he

91:21wasn't some despicable guy who doped all the Russians and then what you see in the film is truly this loving kind character who essentially is caught up in in a system that he helped perpetuate but he certainly didn't create and that he is ultimately an employee of the Russian government and and he was doing his job and that was his job it's a it's such a complex issue and when you put all the pieces out on a table and you just you take into account all the different variables with doping and trying to catch these people and what the future holds and and then what you were talking about with EPO with some sort of a biological way to get your body a genetic way to get your body to reproduce the same sort of chemicals it it seems like there's no real solution like you you lay it all out and you look at what happened Sochi you look at what's going on right now with the

92:23Olympics allowing the Russians to still compete in the Brazilian games even after all this and just it just nuts it doesn't seem like oh this has to happen or oh you just put this over there you just look at this big mess and you go where where does this go you know III think that that is a valid question and because when you when you start to look at where it goes first of all I really believe in you know the the concept behind clean sport like I really I really believe in that and I believe that that that athletes should go and and compete clean because those those are the rules I mean you know you know you know you you you come from the MMA world and I mean you know you're going into a fight you at least it's enough of a fight that it's a fight that it hit at least you know you you want to believe that you're shaking the guy's hand and that and that if he kicks

93:23you out if he kicks your ass he kicks your ass but he did it through hard work and through hard work and playing by the rules you know and and that's the the the concept I think that fans go into watching sports and that athletes in general go won't go into go into sport and and but we have the flip side of that which is you know human beings are in a constant we're not done evolving there's a great philosopher futurist but he's also investors name's Juan Enriquez if you've seen his TED talks and stuff and know him and really interesting any and he gets into how and he makes this whole scientific argument about how human beings are not done evolving that we're just not done evolving we believe that we've done welding but he shows through history how we're not done evolving just like we went from you know from Neanderthals and humans and done it you know and and he goes through the

94:25whole history of enemy shows how basically humans are not done evolving and part of that not being done evolving is we're constantly figuring out how to live longer we're i sat with the guy yesterday who said the problem isn't whether or not human beings are gonna start living to a hundred and ten or 120 years old the problem is is that we're figuring out how to how to keep our body you know healthy but we haven't figured out how to keep our minds healthy and that all these people that are gonna be living longer lives there's the problem with Alzheimer's now and dementia that you know even though you live the longer life your your brain is still deteriorating the point being is that we're in it we're in an age of medical and scientific technology that every single day is another invention another advance and you know for $200,000 or whatever it is right now in the embryo

95:16you can change your kids eye color you can go in and and decide that your kid's gonna be six-foot and I'm 5/8 you know I mean wow I would've loved my parents to have to have to have seen to it but that I was six feet tall you know on all these kind of things that are going on right now in the medical science and technological advancement world there are also things that the world is gonna have to start figuring out what they do on the fields of play and athletic because the humans of the future are going to be better versions of of what we have right now just through science just through technology and then the question again goes into the world of what's clean what's not cleaned what's you know what's anti-doping how do you police sport and those are very hard questions to answer yeah they really are and you don't on one hand you don't want to stop medical technological progress

96:17right you don't want to stop people from being able to cure diseases and it's almost like some of the technology that they use for aerospace makes its way and everyday use well some of the technology that they're going to use for all these different medical innovations all these different ways to cure diseases and increase human performance they're going to make their way into athletics and it's going to be a very blurry line between what is natural what's not natural I mean if your parents decide to genetically alter you in the womb and change you to a super athlete is that your fault and if it's not your choice or your fault should you be allowed to compete that was always the argument about Karelin you know Alexander Karelin his parents were like five five and five six they were these tiny people and he a giant and a gorilla and they used to call him and rush all these to

97:11call him the experiment and if you look at Karelin you look at him physically I mean there's very few athletes you're ever gonna see that look like that guy I mean he was close to 300 pounds move like a cat and would literally launch grown men through the air they were so terrified of his physical prowess that grown men used to flatten out on their stomach and literally try to cling to the earth to avoid being thrown by him are you aware of him no look at this yeah he was undefeated in in the olympic games up until Rulon Gardner beat him who was an American and to go to that picture which shows his full body which shows his legs in that image there's a the black and white that you have up there no yes several I forget when he took this is all no no go that there's a full full image of that Jaime try to find that image on the right but there's a full

98:08one when you get to see his entire build I mean he was a freak and so his thing was throwing these men in he's a heavy weights these guys are 300 plus pounds he would throw them through the air like in a way that very few people could do look at that picture of him with his arm raised right below that the black and white he was monstrous Wow and without a doubt juice to the tits I mean no question about especially given the information that was disclosed in your documentary I mean this was all I believed I believed he was through the 80s and the 90s and into the early 2000s when he retired but I mean he was the freak of all freaks and the most terrifying man and all of Russian amateur wrestling for sure everybody was afraid of him there's him standing above the greatest mixed martial arts heavyweight of all time phaidor Emelianenko and you'd see how much bigger he is in Fedor he was a

99:12giant but the see if you could find a picture of him with his parents because I said the story was always that he was basically a genin mutant well that they did something I mean no one no I mean it was so long ago it's very difficult to ascertain what was capable what was possible back then but his performance in wrestling was just stunning I'm obviously trained hard obviously very skilled I mean one of the things about Russian wrestlers is not just the the fact their physical prowess but their incredibly technical some of the most technically advanced wrestlers in the world in terms of their tactics and the way they would drill I mean they really had it down to a science and there was so much gravity to it all it was so it was so important and on top of that Jews to the tits so there was like so many factors that came into play and when you're talking about this

100:06state-sponsored Russian you know doping program I mean you have to really think and include Karelin in that because he was just a massive massive part of it yeah I'm sure I mean you know and people have always speculated for for many years like phaidor who's arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time was competing and pride which was an openly dirty League when pride was opposite the UFC the UFC had very rudimentary testing at the time what they would essentially do is do urine testing at the weigh-ins which Victor Conte famously said is just an intelligence test yeah I know I know that Victor yeah well I got to meet him I got to know him pretty well through this yeah directory to the podcast a few years back and was talking about and this is pre asada now the UFC has hired you sada and Nowitzki and Jeff Novitzky has done a fantastic job and unfortunately just

100:57caught John Jones who won re won the title knocking out Daniel Cormier they stripped him of his title and now Cormier is gonna be the champion again it's it's so confusing and distorted because in mixed martial arts as opposed to even any other sport even wrestling wrestling your health is on the line but nowhere near as much as it is in mixed martial arts so the cheating it's not a matter of a guy getting across the finish line fast in you it's a matter of a guy landing blows or a woman landing blows that they would not have been able to land had they not been cheating and it gets very very tricky because you talk essentially about not just illegal activity not just cheating but potentially assault and what if someone dies like what if someone is doping and it's proven that they're doping and the beating they give their opponent leads to that opponent dying you can make a

101:47real argument that manslaughter charges at the very least should be filed well if not murder yeah I mean I mean it's certainly you know the implications race you can certainly make that implication yeah and you know and and in this story even the the idea where you have thousands of athletes essentially waking up and going wait maybe I would have gone to one yeah I would have got a medal and had I got a medal what would be different in my life today would change their whole world it changed the whole world it's it's it's and and that is why you know this this problem is so I think hard and difficult to combat because when you look at what is at stake the the economics at stake what you know the the box of Wheaties essentially is it that you know going in and nobody would remember second place doesn't know anything that mean anything means nothing it's all one win or you don't

102:45yeah you win or you lose and if you win comes all the you know spoils and if you're not the winner you might as well almost never been there well indifferent than any other athletic endeavor no endeavor because essentially it is their life but it's not professional which is a really weird thing because you have so much money involved the Olympics billions and billions of dollars are going into the hands of people who don't even compete which is insane it's unlike any other athletic pursuit if you look at professional sports I mean whether it's the NBA or boxing or what-have-you the vast majority the money goes to the athletes themselves all right now not in the Olympics in the Olympics zero no it's like it's like it's like college basketball yeah it since you know it's purely an honor to be in the Olympics you go to the Olympics and the athletes themselves you know and this is

103:42why it's actually you're able to understand a state-sponsored system which I think the American mentality is hard to understand because here we're looking at 205 million dollar NBA contracts and sport is privatized and the athletes get paid and that even when you go to the Olympics as an American athlete you might be competing for America but America is not paying your way yeah to the Olympics you're not on the US payroll Michael Phelps is not being paid by the US government to go compete in the Olympics right but in China and Russia in an any essentially you know post communist communist any sort of country like that the athletes are employees of the government and they're essentially state employees and their job is to go and compete for their country and they're being paid to do so and the the the spoils are so incredibly large for the athletes even in America

104:41that people are still going to be willing to put it on the line and compete because you could be that Michael Phelps guy that winds up getting incredibly rich and famous from winning the Olympics so people are willing to compete and essentially risk their physical body risk all of their time their effort their dedication to try to accomplish something that all the world's gonna be watching massive profits being made and they don't see a penny of it unless they win that's right you know that when they it's a consequence of them winning that they see them exactly but if they win if you're Simone biles if you're Phelps if you're any one of these athletes and basically sport that people don't really watch and there's money behind any other any other time of the year other than the Olympics every four years people care about gymnastics right they don't care about gymnastics any other time but

105:36once every four years everybody cares about Jim now who's watching swimming - exactly nobody gives a nobody cares about swimming but once every four years they care about swimming and if you can go in and capitalize on that you have a life it's just so an afraid if you don't you don't I mean that's the whole kind of Armstrong was a basketball player for the Australia he's actually an NBA player putting together a shower curtain for his uh where he was staying and on the side here describes the 196 cabin nine deck super ship that the men and women's US basketball teams were staying on and had 250 police officers watching them yeah and I doesn't say who paid for that either yeah who knows but the point being that the Olympics are essentially a professional endeavor where the athletes the ones who people are watching are not getting any of that money and it's it's a dirty organization

106:38in that regard because it's not amateur it was amateur the world would see it for free I mean it's not you know I made money I don't know how many billions and billions and billions of dollars well I can't remember the contract its staggering what NBC paid for the Olympic rights for the next however many games it is yeah and what they get paid from the advertiser and that's just the u.s. yeah that's just us so on a global level this is the most watched sporting this is the most watch event on planet earth yeah nobody you roll Cup soccer in the Olympics but the Olympics even more yeah it's the most watched event on planet earth and it's there it is seven point seven five billion through 2032 that's what NBC paid Wow well it's stunning I mean it's I don't know what the solution is but it never have never sent set right with me I always felt like it was gross I mean it just didn't make any

107:31sense that everyone is getting paid but the athletes it's a it's essentially they've they've managed to keep it this way they had this situation in place a long long time ago and then it became this massive global business this huge empire and they managed to keep the athletes out of the pay loop it's it's really it's really a mess and and not only that there were so many people that have profited to the tunes of millions and millions of dollars through the essentially bribery of other countries into you know all the politics behind that to protect their athletes so that the athletes can continue to to win medals Gregory told me a story which I wonder when this will come true because I certainly can't verify it but he told me a story of the former Olympic medical director and the guy apparently was the head medical director of the Olympics for like 15 years or something and

108:34according to gregory this guy lives in an incredible chateau somewhere in in switzerland it's like a mind-boggling house and and he's like a orthopedic doctor but he's a head medical director v olympics and according to gregory he's accepted millions and millions millions of dollars in bribes through different countries to conceal positives over all these various olympic games that whatever it was you know it's a slovakia or whatever there'd be a positive and this guy would get you know half a million dollars to conceal it there's a positive here and he'd take the money and conceal it and and i wouldn't be surprised if that's I'm sure it's just the tip of the iceberg because this is huge money in these countries are willing to pay this big money because for a country like Russia or China or you know even Jamaica right to win medals what that does for its country on

109:42a world level all of a sudden when Jamaica's winning medals everybody's going wait we want to go to Jamaica I mean right just what that Jamaican team did probably did for tourism dollars to Jamaica if you could amuse staggering right it made Jamaica and Victor Conti will talk about this you know in detail how the fastest five fastest runners on planet earth are Jamaican and Conti Wilco yeah right yeah and Don Catlin goes yeah right but but look at the money that that had to have brought Jamaica of tourism of advertising of interest if everybody's going wait I want to go to Jamaica oh I should go to Jamaica I should go see Jimmy you know mm-hmm where did these people come from you know where did they come from yeah you know when phaidor was the king of the world as far as the the heavyweights in mixed martial arts Putin was regularly at his fights and it was

110:37always like this big deal that you know Putin was there and phaidor would smash these people especially when phaidor fought in Russia and you know I mean it's a massive massive deal to have a top fighter or top athlete representing your country I mean it's just a huge deal for it for you to have the number-one guy oh I mean absolutely I mean you look at you know like Sharapova you know and you know and Gregory would would tell me stories of you know I mean he knew for years wood wood what she was taking what she was up to he was advising her family I mean just according according to him she even lied about her age I know that apparently the age that she was playing at that she was reported as a as a couple years younger that that was all part of but but Russia helped with that wasn't there a situation with Serena Williams where the testers came to her house and she locked

111:40herself in a safe room and called the police oh I didn't hear that one but yeah was it Serena or Venus this is Serena see we can find that story yeah the testers showed up at her house and she's like not now click lock yourself in a safe room right you got to think about the amount of money that's involved in these things and you know if you know that other people serena williams locks herself in panic room and drug tests mix up oh it's just a mix up ladies and gentlemen and her Los Angeles mansion no worries mansion the tennis legends assistant 106 a.m. local time last Wednesday and told the mercy operator that a prowler had been spotted at the luxurious property she retreated to her panic room and a bid to protect herself before that is uh why they are giving her every benefit of the doubt I mean it's it's hard it's really but the intruder Turner hold on turned out to be

112:38a random drug testers stopped by urine sample mmm well you know the cops responded down to one but call would quickly left the property when the misunderstanding was discovered it was not known whether or not William submitted to the drug test well that's yeah that means she didn't if it's not known that means she didn't hey potentially in the panic room with lots of saline solution I couldn't imagine if you're thinking about the amount of money that a certain person who is a world-renowned athlete and whatever sport is I mean the amount of money that's involved is staggering and if you have stringent drug testing now that's why the john jones thing was so disheartening because you know john jones who's arguably if not the greatest mixed martial arts fighter of all time he's number two you know maybe Mighty Mouse is number one but you would say that Mighty Mouse is not face this kind

113:33of competition that John has so that would put John into number one a lot of people's eyes but to have him test positive like that was so disheartening for people and just such a heartbreaker because people had just hoped and prayed that you know him coming back and winning that way like maybe he'll get his together you know when you see a guy with massive potential and he's been involved in all these fuck-ups in the past maybe finally he's got his together well maybe what happened is he is he came back and he realized that he was never gonna be what he was gonna be and that whole psychology yeah kicked in and and I think he you know you see that and and and so many guys I think that once you've been on that program or you understand that program I think it's probably very very hard psychologically to go off of it and also you know you're always gonna be pushing those limits

114:27it's always the the Icarus story there's a you know an Armstrong in 2009 when he staged that comeback you know I I believe that he was trying to do it clean and then all of a sudden realized he was going to get his ass kicked doing it clean and and you look at that comeback year which is so interesting that Contador who beat him set the all-time fastest times in that year and that was supposed to be the clean tour that was the Redemption tour that was the tour to prove that is clean and yet in that tour Contador set the all-time fastest times and funny enough that year where Armstrong got third had he been doing the tour any other year the watts per kilo that he had put up the power that he had put up it was actually his best tour ever ever so he came into that tour going I'm gonna win it and yet his teammate got the doors like or I'll doping them Wow and and it was the end and so had it

115:38been any other year he would have won that to her it's so crazy and now with CRISPR you know now with this new technology that allows people to essentially I mean it's it's on the table what the potential is going to completely play out but other countries are using it right now in embryos you know whether or not humans in the United States whether they're gonna use it and you're gonna see these chip it's not when or it's not if rather it's more like when as this technology progresses and it gets better and better if you find out that you're children of the genetic markers that could essentially lead to Alzheimer's down down the road why would you want your children to have Alzheimer's you wouldn't you wouldn't you would edit them you would say well they'll say well it's just a simple procedure it's a no more dangerous than you know other medical procedures that

116:26we do every day we're just going to do it be real simple by the way which you do have a height preference do you uh would you like your child to have a ridiculous vo2 max would you would you like your kid be one of the most ridiculous mesomorphs the world has ever known do you want a Herschel Walker type body for your child well they can do it yeah they can do it the technology's there right now it's well it's close I mean technology is there right now I mean a year and there's reading all these articles right now which is a you know it's funny Silicon Valley did a show with the blood bags but if you saw that episode where the Gavin Belson character shows right is is having his blood swapped out by like twenty-one-year-old friendly-looking all right kid Peter teal does that on a regular basis and that was the and that was the lampooning of it but they've

117:15been doing all this tests and mice that if you take an old mouse and give it the blood of a young mouse that the old mouse starts you know basically reverse aging and if you give the old mouse blood to the young mouse that the young mouse turns into an old mouse ja so I mean this is this is on the on the horizon I mean yes this is there so the question is what would it what do you do about it I mean you're you're like a you know your urine enthusiast and your and the sports that you care about or dangerous violent sports so what do you what do you do about it it's a real question you know and I it's like all those things we were talking about earlier you put all the pieces on the table and you try to imagine what's the solution I don't see the solution I don't know what it is because I don't think we were talking about this with some friends we were saying like if

118:06everybody decides to stay clean but yet the technology becomes viable for the average person you're gonna have a mailman that looks like the Incredible Hulk and you're gonna be watching these scrawny guys fight in the UFC no one's gonna tolerate that you know you we're just gonna have to assume at some point in time that all these people are enhanced we're just gonna assume that it's more than just dedication and hard work and honestly it's gonna be a sad day when that happens because when that does happen and we just accept the fact that we've created these genetic freaks they're not going to be special it's not gonna stand out like when you saw Mike Tyson it was a special thing because it was the 1980s and there was really nothing I mean who knows it's probably there was probably some steroids involved in that - there's steroids involved in a lot of different

118:52things that we've just assumed there weren't well let's just leave that on the table but wasn't genetics oh you mean which you saw as a guy who was born that way he was born with that freakish power and speed you didn't get it from a laboratory you didn't get it from somebody literally taking the embryo and altering the genetics in the embryo and making him a destruction machine making him a violent force of nature like Mike Tyson was in his prime the idea that you could take a regular person like young Jamie over there and turn them into some sort of crazy freak athlete it's just it's weird because when a freak athlete comes along you see them and you go wow that guy's a freak this is crazy no one can do that I've never seen anybody do that before but then you look at the money behind it yeah and then you look at as in this film you see all of a sudden the

119:42geopolitics behind it yeah that in the US or whatever we're we're looking at it on the you know the 40 million dollar year contract level of it and whether or not that's ethical and what do we do about that all of a sudden we have athletes as genetic mutants and what is that future but then when you look at it on the geopolitical level and what a country is willing to do to win and what it means for their athletes to win an assert power I mean like I remember when you know a couple years ago when Germany won the World Cup I mean it was I mean I mean German pride had to have been at a staggering level I mean you right I mean you probably could have went and went into any bar in Germany and said something you know and you would have got your face beaten I mean is because of the the emotion that people get connected to with with their athletes and their sports team and I think

120:39governments and in the case of Icarus and they're they you understand what that is that this is this is so far beyond you know it goes into into global power and how do you consolidate power and sport in many ways is that is that vehicle as I see it yeah certainly as I mean it's such a huge part of the recreation of the people and you know giving people something to be excited about now when you you do take any consideration this new technology that's on the horizon CRISPR and and who knows what's after CRISPR right and then you look at what Russia has been willing to do with their state-sponsored doping program you got to think they were already involved in that you gotta think they're ready well you know Gregory said something to me interesting and is he says well you know whatever they put on that water list meaning whatever banned substances they put on the list we've already got

121:35in Russia we've already got another ten or twenty that were messing with if you remember last year the whole meldonium yeah scandal with Sharapova and all these in the UFC kicked out for meldonium well that was a substance that Russia had been you know messing with for years knowing that it wasn't on the pan on the ban list and then they essentially put it on the banned list like that and then they started testing for it and they did it as a you know it was it was very intentional to go catch everybody on meldonium but you know according to two Gregory is there's you know they've already they're already figuring out the next thing the next thing the next thing the next thing was but especially when you have a state-sponsored program and there are no state sponsored programs that we know of like that in America I mean that would give them a massive advantage no we

122:27don't we don't know of any program where I mean when you think about what that is it would be like the equivalent of Obama or Trump you know going hey American athlete you need to be on this program if you're going to be on the national team and represent America you go on this program and if you don't want to be on this program well you're not on the team right and and and what Gregory was doing which was part of the whole ethical and moral conundrum which is an interesting thing which we never get into in the film is he was constantly being forced to sacrifice athletes so part of this system the only way that it would work is you had to have lambs if nobody ever tested positive right well it would look like there's something wrong with the system so they had to have positive tests and they would consistently have positive tests and the guys who would test positive what they

123:24would do is they were the guys who either were past champions that the ministry looked at and said hey you're not gonna go and win another gold medal you're not you know you're not who you are anymore or it was an athlete who they believed could be a champion never lived up to his potential and was on the state program so they would sacrifice athletes along the way to make it appear that the system was catching them and and and that was a whole conundrum for Gregory because he got to know well a lot of these guys and and these athletes would think that they were being protected because they thought that they were on the state state program so they think that they're being protected and all of a sudden they're positive and they're banned and they're going wait wait you told me you told me to take this and I'm and what do you mean I'm banned you told you told me

124:17I'd be negative be like you're positive Jesus well they were always positive so it was just a matter of of of who to sacrifice and whether or not they would they would swap the urine he had this we never get into into the end of the film but this is mind-blowing to think so he had developed right after the the London Olympics they figure out how to break into the bottles right so they figure out how they can break into these bottles and swap the urine but he personally was never doing that what he would do is the FSB these guys would come in they had this device and like once a week whenever they needed to do it they'd come in and swap out all these B samples that they would keep in storage you know just for safekeeping and the a sample was always swapped but the B sample they would like you know there wasn't gonna be a need to retest it right that moment so they'd keep it

125:16for a week or whatever and then the guys would come in and they would swap out all the samples so part of this system was as he kept a urine database so he had 16,000 matching urine samples that he was holding in the laboratory that they should have all been disposed of after three months according to the code so any international athlete that would come into Russia to compete in the games kids gymnast anybody competing in Russia and if they tested clean Russia would hold their urine put it down for the specific gravity the steroid profile keep it in a database know the urine is being kept frozen so they would always have samples to swap for any of the Russian athletes at any time even if they didn't have a clean sample for that athlete so because most of Russian athletes they were on the program in Sochi they took extraordinary precaution they collected clean urine of

126:15each of the athletes on the program but outside of that what they were doing was just going hey we have 16,000 samples to choose from so whatever is gonna best match the Russian athlete to swap with we can take the urine of another athlete you know a clean athlete and make it look you know pretty much identical to that Russian athletes because they could choose from 16,000 samples Wow so they had it all index as far as the weigh-in index everything they have a like color profile and everything it was crazy I got to see a spreadsheet and then on the eve of this investigation braking and and wada is gonna go raid this laboratory and there's thousands of missing samples and and then the report this this report this 335 page report trying to remember it was something like 1,400 samples are missing are 1,400 samples were destroyed well the real number was 8200 something it was truly

127:191618 eight thousand samples matching and two bottles 16,000 samples and they had to bring in these containers industrial trash containers and a dark of night operation emptying out the lab and bringing all these bottles to like some industrial trash where they dumped him and crushed him and incinerated him Wow and so it was I mean this was this was a pretty nutty operation going on and they did this for the collegiate competition so the so the world junior track championships were in Russia they did it for that they did it for the Swimming Championships they did it for everything so they were these were kids - any any of the any of the collegiate athletes it's amazing that all the athletes kept their mouths shut and no athlete got a bad conscience and just like I can't do this anymore and need to come clean well there's been athletes that have come forward yeah I mean there's been

128:14whistleblowers has been there's been multiple but I think you know what you start seeing in that system which is very hard I think for an American to understand and we talk very openly against our government you know what's going on the current administration you know people are very you know anti Trump or or pro Trump or anti Obama whatever that we mean that's what as Americans we we do that and we have that mentality well in China and in Russia and other countries like this that go through communism and everything that mentality never goes away the mentality is always that the state can take everything from you they can put you in jail they can take your passport they can seize your assets they can launch fake news against you they can put you in jail just like they did to Gregory just like they're doing and so everybody no matter how powerful they

129:10all have that fear of the government in their mind and what you see cuz I saw this firsthand in Russia where I have some very wealthy very powerful Russian friends and they will never talk bad about the government in public everywhere now off-camera or you know or whatever and closed doors one on one they'll be like yeah yeah yeah I don't you know they'll they'll tell you how it is but in public among their friends any social setting there's always this belief that somebody's watching you or somebody might rat you out or somehow you're going to lose your wealth or or you're gonna cross the paths of a wrong person and that's what we've what we've seen in all these stories year after year after year out of out of Russia and certainly you know other countries or you know the mysterious death of Kim Jong Il's brother etc yeah I mean they're operating under a system that's

130:07ancient I mean it's this is the way people have been dictators for thousands of years but they're just doing it in the age of information they're doing it right under everyone's nose fake news fear yeah they did a this was interesting about two weeks ago Russia's trying to get reinstated for the Winter Olympics or well not not reinstated they're trying to make sure that they can go to the winter so they release a story through Sputnik news and Artie the Russian you know times Russia today and they released this story that McClaren the investigator in the film behind all the Gregory's evidence that McClaren is willing to forgive Russia that he believes that there's errors in his report and that wada believes that Russia should be reinstated and allowed to go to the Winter Olympics none of this is true and this is picked up by worldwide media it's picked up by papers

131:00all over the world and Russia just put this out there basically to fuel the fuel the propaganda and then you know next day MacLaren's out there you know going that's not true but his press release was picked up by a handful of outlets where the were the Russia released because of how they're able to disseminate news went global I always watch a guide like that and I wonder like you look at the Russian administration it's in right now and what how long can they keep that going and you would look at it in terms of America like Americans would revolt but like you were saying in Russia I mean I remember the story about some Russian oligarch who spoke ill of Putin and I remember what the deal was that he was discussing but they stripped him of all his money took his company away and put him in jail wasn't that not met Aviva I know here talk what's his name is very

131:54famous is a very famous case he was the richest man in Russia and the month they just took his entire fortune locked him SL kept in there for years then eventually released him which is an even bolder move they like look we just just dismantled you and now we'll just let you go then you're not gonna do it's terrifying what do you what do you think and after seeing the film and what you're that's him in the brushes once richest man at his last hundred and seventy million his last so it was the same go back to the four at the top of the title Jaime how he hid his last hundred and seventy million hmm so we you know how do you say the other fourteen point eight billion it's only money just freed after ten years in jail told journalists at a press conference in Berlin two days ago that he didn't know how much money he had left Leonid BER Rashid ski columnist for the Russian

132:53editorial edition of edition of Forbes thinks he has an idea I don't know how to say his name Khodorkovsky Khodorkovsky birkhoff's grew rich in Russia freewheel in the 1990s by acquiring state oil assets due to do one point he was ranked 15th in the Forbes billionaire list with a personal net worth of fifteen billion dollars mm-hmm so yeah this is the guy and they they put him in jail for quite a long time ten years ten years in jail and just let him go yeah don't don't don't mess with Russia but even the letting him go thing it's just amazing that they just decided to let him go like they put him in jail took all his money and then going yeah the out of here yeah well once he was no longer a threat yeah but it's just and it's also learned it's lesson it's so let everybody know like this can happen to you yeah exactly and by freeing him but also like let's know

133:45like do you see what happens you want to mess with us you're gonna pay the price stunning but what do you what do you make of what's going on in the in the u.s. right now with all the allegations after seeing the film or where's your head at well I didn't put the two of them together because when I was watching the film essentially I was just thinking about the anti-doping ramifications but I mean it's pretty obvious that if they're doing this there and there's seems to be a lot of evidence that they've at least attempted I mean there's there was some new thing recently about Facebook ads yeah a Facebook Twitter ad yeah I mean there's definitely something going on but we're doing it too you know we're doing it to them they're doing it to us it's essentially been a part of global politics forever I mean we influence their elections and not just there as we

134:35influence the elections of countless countries all over the world it's look it's gross its disgusting and the only thing that I could think is that with the information age that we're currently experiencing I think I feel like we're in the adolescence of this and that what's what seems to highlight this age is that the distance between people and information just keeps getting shorter and shorter and the ability to hide things hide devious acts and hide money and hide influence and hide manipulation seems to be it seems to be able to people seem to be able to find out things quicker and quicker now and yeah I was having a conversation about this the other day where where if it's you know I mean look at the Instagram page and Facebook and everything everybody seems to know everything about everyone mm-hmm and that anything eventually comes out you know and I think again we're

135:33experiencing the adolescence of this I think there's going to come a point in time with and I believe it's going to be through technological innovation that we're gonna be able to read each other's minds I think it's inevitable I think the idea of the internet if you went to someone in the 1800's and told them one day you're gonna be able to talk to your phone and ask your phone you know bunch of different questions that will literally give you the answer they would go with the as a phone like what are you talking about man like what are you crazy this guy's a crazy person you're talking about witchcraft you know no no no I'm talking about all the world being connected you'll be able to share photos what's a photo we'll be able to capture time with a small device in your pocket and video as well with perfect sound and you'll be able to download hundreds of hours

136:14hundreds of hours of music and put it on your phone you'll be able to listen to that they'd be like recorded music the are you talking about this is just a couple of hundred years ago I mean what are we gonna experience a couple hundred years from now I think we're going to be able to read each other's minds I think the idea that we are way the way we operate now our operating system of language the way we communicate with each other through mouth noises and that you we have a dictionary we understand what the noises are and we are you say some things like the entire time you've been talking here I've referred to my database of information I said I know exactly saying and the O'Brien means this and he means and as you're talking all the people that are listening or doing the exact same thing I think it is entirely possible that in the future we will swap

136:59that out for some sort of universal system some sort of universal system that is neurologically connected that we're gonna have something that is either embedded into our minds embedded into into our brain itself embedded into our neurological system that's Minority Report yes I mean it's just inevitable if technology keeps going and we keep progressing and there's no reason to think other than some sort of a natural disaster or some sort of a human created disaster that it doesn't doesn't keep going the way it's going we're going we're going to get to someplace where we can see each other's minds we're going to be able to read each other's thoughts and for good or bad and I tend to think both both good and bad we're gonna long for the good old days and you have some privacy I've been along for the good old days you can keep a secret no I mean because

137:44right now we're already in an era where almost anything is discoverable anything you know nothing nothing is private anymore and there's always something to come out and then there's some sort of electronic trail of it right I mean even in the now which we don't which I you wouldn't know about the film but the way that that evidence was truly corroborated was the electronic trail and here's the amazing thing in which people probably don't realize is so like Gregory when he comes to the US he had erased all of his phones because he was under the ministry order to erase everything and and what was happening is the athletes were snapping a photo of their doping control forms so that's how Gregory would know what what number corresponding to what athlete I mean this was very intricate how this was going down because nobody in the lab you know which you know if you're the

138:37scientist and you're getting Armstrong sample you don't know it's Armstrong sample it's numbered it's got a seven eight digit number on it's just a random number but so what the Russians were doing they were snapping a photo of their doping control form which only they could do right and then they were sending this photo to an FSB agent who was also a coach and she would send the photo to Gregory and the KGB guy in the in the lab who was assisting him and so that they would know that that number number one one seven four four correspond to this athlete right the point that I'm getting at is that so he was erased all of that they told him to erase it all from his phone all of his computers everything and when he comes here he brings his old computer and he brings his old phones because this guy he just knows and when he turns over all the evidence to towada

139:33and the and the and the US authorities and Interpol what they're able to do is they're able to get all this erased information all this erase stuff that was on his phone and computer and retrieve it Wow and that's like a massive portion of this evidence well what they were also able to do is what we probably don't realize and and this goes into what you're saying is like when you send an email if you've got the the metadata behind it so like he was getting email sent through the Russian Ministry so you're sitting there going well how do you know where this came from they can go back in the actual through the metadata that is being sent in a computer and show exactly from what computer where date/time that email was sent and that's how they were able to corroborate all his evidence through through basically forensics of you know whatever whatever that study is of

140:38electronic forensic so when you talk about reading minds and that kind of stuff I mean half of that technologies is already there I mean any any photo you take on your phone even if you delete it they can get it back and they can figure out exactly where you were where it was sent how it was sent the spot that you sent it from where it's nuts and it's gonna get crazier just gonna get crazy I mean for sure there's gonna be some new technology just a couple of years from now that's gonna make it even easier to do than that it's and when you read about you know there's all these apps with encryption software and stuff and I may have given up the idea that that I you know that you can be essentially invisible or they rock and you know that if somebody wants to get your information they're gonna get your information yeah unquestionably and you know another

141:25thing that's really interesting is that we're looking at photos when we're looking at video and email and we're assuming that this gonna be in the future more access to photo more access to email more access to video but what what is coming down the pipe I mean what what is the new thing I mean there could be something that's even crazier than video I mean what we're just assuming that it's gonna stay video it's gonna stay photos like why those things didn't even exist a couple hundred years ago well everything that's going now is is going into this world of VR yes we're essentially you know the you know the idea is is that as you can see things and you can create your own reality I mean there's lots of discussion even in the in the world of sex that you know the sex of the future is why do you really need a another human you can essentially simulate that and

142:16program it and make it everything you wanted and more should never know the difference oh well I mean whether it's through augmented reality virtual reality or robots I mean we're we're just a few steps away from all this stuff and if it's not 10 years from now it's 50 if it's not 50 it's a hundred it's inevitable human beings don't destroy ourselves we stay alive long enough we're gonna see a complete dissolving of reality as we know it which I think even goes into like the whole Anti Doping world of it in sports where you know you actually just made me think about like terminator yeah where you're sitting there going well wait you think it's a real person and and then it's a terminator but you think of all the technologies that are going on right now and why won't there be a chip yeah in in your brain that basically takes away pain so that you can you know persevere

143:14in an MMA fight that takes away your you know yeah at all all these different technologies that are essentially create you know controlling your synapses controlling your reflexes all it's all there yeah and how is that not going to happen and then obviously in enhancing the human body itself I mean there was a technology that we've been talking about recently where they were trying to combine spider silk with human skin tissue to make an artificial skin a replacement skin that's bulletproof Wow let's just blew my mind yeah that just blew my mind yeah they're they're going to genetically engineer human skin so it'll look like human skin it'll have much of the same properties of human skin but it'll be bulletproof because you're wear it it'll be you it'll be you you will replace your skin and then how do they stop I mean that the power of that bullet would still

144:08like well yeah it did well sure you could do some some tissue trauma underneath the surface but the actual skin itself won't break it'd be like having a bulletproof vest all of your body I mean that's what Kevlar essentially is what Kevlar is is a material that is so dense and so it's so thick and so impenetrable that when you shoot a regular bullet into it the regular bullet hits it does not go through it and just spreads out and expands it's still very painful for the person who gets shot but it protects your life and we could easily see that happen with entire bodies made out of that stuff I mean you got to believe it's priority out there like in some secret lab they already like develop the skin and use it in like a and like a petri dish that's a bulletproof skin yeah if I'm reading it on a science website for sure I'm not the first one to get the information I mean this is

144:59getting to the highest level I mean where is the real money right it's the real question as I and I don't know this answer is the the top scientists in the world the top innovators in the world I mean when do they scoop those people up when does the government come in with some some black ops money and say hey you know we would like to hire you and give you X amount of money to create this and this is what we know so far about that and you know here we're gonna take you to groom Lake out in the middle of Nevada and show you some lab that you didn't even know existed yeah but you got to believe that that's already way into going on because there's nothing that we spend more money on than military should basically defense then that this is what we spend money on yeah that is actually you know I think as you probably know the I read that the single biggest export of the United States is

145:50our weapons yeah that's what we make and sell to the rest of the world yeah we sell them and stuff that's not as good as the stuff we're making right now right yeah we sell the world our weapons and that's and and that is what is employing like millions and millions of people in this country is basically the our military and our defense and ultimately you know developing spider skin yeah I mean this and this is what we're seeing right this is what we get to see and look at who knows how many different programs are going on right now as we're speaking that we have no knowledge of whatsoever I mean when they released stealth bomber and a couple other there's these like sort of experimental vehicles where they were putting together these things and once they they actually release them when they actually put you know had press conferences and showed people to they

146:38had been working on these things forever he was under wraps for like 20 years and all of a sudden you see the singer like whoa have you ever seen one a person a stealth you know no I was in Palmdale and that's near Edwards Air Force Base and we were filming fear factor out there and this is right after September 11th and so they were doing all these exercises and he seems were flying over the desert it was like being in Star Wars I mean once you see them in real life you're like holy that's a UFO this black thing not shaped like any plane you've ever seen before flying across the sky and you just look at it go what the is that thing yeah that's like 20 years old now yeah all the I think about what's out there oh yeah for sure I mean well what's out there now I mean they probably have some ridiculous stuff and and then there's some theoretical ideas you know there's some magnetic

147:26drives they're trying to put together there's some I mean there's there's a bunch of speculation about different types of weapons if they're trying to - antimatter weapons and some things that are just going to be able to just completely annihilate anything they touch and whether or not they're gonna go completely through the earth if you hit things I mean who knows who knows what's on on the horizon I mean they're just gonna keep getting better and better at blowing up you know I mean the the amount of power that we have of the nuclear arsenal today and the amount of power and the weapons in comparison to the weapons that we used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki it means it's insane it's not even close I mean they're they're hundreds and hundreds of times more powerful now it's staggering the to kind of understand what kind of destruction is impossible like nothing I

148:13don't think on the level of what we're seeing a natural destruction of what nature can do alone but yeah but it's also fascinating when you think about the implications that your your your film is sort of brought to light is that a lot of this destruction like when you were talking about the Ukraine a lot of this destruction and a lot of this either the confidence that they have to go into these places and and use these weapons is kind of dependent upon public opinion that's dependent upon sport right and but dependent on basically kicking somebody else's ass yeah without the weapons yeah and then that allows you to almost like weaponize because you have the the power of the country behind you it was a it was interesting is is after Sochi and Putin's rating goes up to you know 95 percent or something like that that that everybody in Russia supported him going into Ukraine to it

149:08was this was a good idea you know we're strong were powerful let's go in and and take back at you know a part of territory that that that we lost let's go do it yeah and and and you see that that that that sort of nationalistic pride is real yeah I mean I I grew up in in Colorado which is you know Denver Bronco Territory and I mean people would paint and they still do I mean you know around football see you driving around the city you see thousands of houses painted in orange and blue people in orange and blue I mean it's it's literally it's a religion it's a cult it is it is an ethos it is and it's something to even fight about yeah like I mean you talk bad about the Broncos we're I mean that that's that's that's a that's a point a fight yeah and and I remember you know the few years ago when the Broncos won the Super Bowl and you're looking at like the statistic

150:05was something like eighty five percent of the city of Denver showed up for a parade on a Monday likes incredible whoa this is crazy and this is what and this is what people so if you don't believe that that the governor or whatever the governor of Colorado that day could have been like hey we're gonna go seize Montana Wyoming Arizona and Utah everybody in state of Colorado would have been like hell yeah go Broncos most yeah I mean and that is that is what what this is masking behind you know a playing field I mean look at it it's just people care about this because because you're basically beating somebody else without weapons you're manipulating their opinions you're manipulating the way people feel in public opinion what do you think should be done what out of you this is what I was saying before if you put all the pieces on the table I don't I feel like

151:06we're out of it simple I don't think you can stop technology right I don't I just don't think I think it's what we do I mean I think if you if you looked at human beings as a whole and you look at what we used to be versus what we are now if you were some sort of an objective life-form from another planet that didn't have any vested interest in you know understanding our culture and just tried to examine us as a superorganism what do we do we make better every year that's what we do and we're always gonna make better we're always gonna make better as long as we stay alive as long as we don't get hit by an asteroid killed by a hurricane swamped in an earthquake or tsunami we're gonna continue to make better we're gonna continue to become better humans technically technically technically not maybe from hey I think even from a moral standpoint I think we're better now than we were before

151:55which is why things like Putin are so disturbing which is what you know if you go back to like the Genghis Khan air it was the norm right that was how dictators ran that's how Kings ran and Emperor's ran they're their dynasties it's more uncommon now and more disturbing because the main superpower doesn't do it that way the United States of America that's one of the reasons why people are so patriotic about America because when you look back at human history we are the is up as we are and undeniably up as it is we are the shining example of what's possible in the future that we you can keep going and eventually create some sort of a system that's different some sort of a experiment and self-government that's different than has ever existed before where you can get to a point where a reality show president or a reality show host becomes the president of the United States of

152:47America for good or for bad it opens people's eyes to the possibility like wow like this this is a new thing like this in terms of human history this is a new thing this whole experiment this whole thing called the United States it's only a few hundred years old is a very new thing if you looked at us objectively if you were something from another planet you would say well what are they what's the endgame with these what are they trying to do well what they're trying to do is make better and better stuff and I think the real issue with that is artificial intelligence because we look at artificial intelligence we say the word artificial intelligence and we think of it as like a thing that we can turn on or turn off we think of it as a device a VCR or a television we think of it as a piece of equipment that a human is created that may be able to think for

153:36itself I think it's a life-form I think it's just a life-form that exists from parts and pieces that we're designed to put together I think our entire thing about being attached to materialism are a constant thirst for innovation we always want the iPhone 8 is out but iPhone tends around the corner do you hold out or to get the new one now you have two options no one's gonna stick with the iPhone 7 that man you know well you're gonna get the update the update is gonna make it slow or you know that happens right I mean we're were thirsty for this but what we're fueling is innovation and innovation will inevitably lead to a new life form it's gonna lead we're call it out artificial call it whatever you want it's real it's not artificial it's just a life form that's not based on blood and bones it's a life form that's based on circuits a life form is based on something that human beings

154:25have created and once it's sentient once it can think for itself it's gonna make better life forms it's gonna make something way way different than us it's gonna make something that doesn't have any emotions it's gonna make something that doesn't have any biological needs it doesn't have any your jealousy or weird issues that have been holding us back forever and what do you do with that exactly and what what is its motivation what why does it even exist why does it even want to do anything there's a lot of questions involved in this and you know maybe it can find some sort of motivation maybe you can figure out some reason to exist and to innovate and to keep going better and better but we're we're limited we're limited by the scope of our evolution you look at you talking about human beings haven't been we're not done that's what is getting into with with

155:08Juan Enriquez which is which is you know where his argument and I had actually interviewed him for the film and ended up not using it because of where the story went but his argument was not the moral ethical argument around Anti Doping and support it wasn't anything it was just purely the argument of hey look at evolution look at reality look at where we're going look at where human beings are essentially transcending - and then how do you ever have the basis of what is the concept behind like clean sport or you know even transcending sport whatever you want to call it is being a pure ethos because there are so many technological and really evolutionary variables that are that seem to make that fundamentally difficult and we're resisting the future I mean it's almost like resisting performance-enhancing drugs is is futile in the first place it's like foolish

156:11because these performance enhancing drugs represent technology they represent our ability to manipulate our body recover yeah and manipulate our biology biology to not just recover but also to grow at a rate that we've never been able to grow before it's not just recover if it was just about recovery some steroids allow you to grow at a rate like look at bodybuilders like look at like freaks like Lee Haney like when he was in his prime yeah there's this that's not just about recovery that's also about growth it's also about I mean the speed that Ben Johnson had when he won the gold medal you know when he tested positive but it turns out that Carl Lewis was on some too and they hid that I mean there's a cat Catlin 1984 there were nine samples that went missing to this day yes and the story behind that is that the USOC came to came to Don Catlin because Catlin had found the positives and

157:06basically those nine samples just vanished and you remember when Ben Johnson tried to compete clean after that it was hilarious yeah forget it it's like you're looking at a regular guy trying to race against superstars forget age but if I was running here's a here's an interesting story slightly off-topic but on the topic of Ben Johnson so dick pound Richard pound we're great yeah dick pound I mean how do you ever you cannot mess with the guy by the name of Dick Powell why did the did he ever go with dick when his name was Richard because I should pound I think you just what to it and just been like yeah hey I'm dick pound go through your life a video but you introduce yourself to a girl like hey what's your name dick pound but dick back in the 70s in the 60s I think yeah I mean Richard Nixon wasn't he dick you know I guess all of his friends called dick Nixon yeah yeah but that's not my

158:04point my point is was a penis called a dick I don't know when when it when a when a penis became a dick yeah exactly I don't know I wonder if dick pound adopted the name prior to penises being a dead girl for feet or if what he started calling himself dick pound right he knew that it was a dick and then or if he adopted it you know like posta care or at what point he basically said yeah I'm gonna be dick pound well Richard to dick is always a weird one too it's not not as weird as John to Jack Jack Jack is the weirdest one yeah you've had a do you get Richard should be rich yes rich rich from yeah how do you go from Richard dick how do you go from John - Jack Jack Kennedy is John F Kennedy it makes it a cent it doesn't make sense at all what about Jack Johnson is he John Johnson I think he was Jack I think his name was actually Jack like you can have

158:59a name Jack Johnson I'm not wearing it right now it's wearing it earlier today I was wearing a Jack Johnson teach this morning was funny when you said that I thought I still had it on so this guy says so dick pound Richard pound who actually founded wadda at the time he's basically within the IOC and he he talked about a crazy conflict of interest here so so Richard pound was an athlete a swimmer an Olympic swimmer actually and then he got into being in the IOC and he's a lawyer and his law firm has been representing the Olympics for the last I don't even know how many years thirty years in all of their sale of the Olympics to the entire world as Richard pounds Lawford law firm striking pound Wow right number of pounds also the vice-president of the IOC M Richard pound establishes wada he's the first head of wada in 1999 now interesting stories he's Canadian and he

160:03is essentially like the ambassador to Canada during the time that Ben Johnson tests positive and so Ben Johnson test positive and Canada sends Richard pound in there to basically see if they can do something to make this go away is this true can they is there some some way that basically Ben jobs and cannot be positive and dick pound as he will tell you was was was they're essentially trying to negotiate find a loophole on behalf of Canada that Ben Johnson would not be positive but that apparently he was just so radically positive and there was like there was just nothing that anybody could do about it it was just like a you know hey we'd really like to help you but this is really really bad there's like a lot of drugs I remember an article that described the whites of his eyes being yellow because his liver was overwhelmed trying to process the amount of steroids were his body I mean

161:10he argues that the coaches you know that he had no idea the you know I just kept telling them this you know it's fine your don't worry well I'd be true I wonder what they really did think was gonna happen or how they thought they would pull it off well I mean it was these kind of scandals that forced the IOC to create water the world anti-doping agency because they looked at a brand in crisis and how were they gonna regain public trust because what year was this this was well water gets established in 1999 if I remember Ben Johnson was that was the one that the 84 Olympics it might have been the first Olympia they tested yeah that was the 84 Olympics where Ben Johnson was was tested positive so maybe they just did all the Americans but according to everybody that I've talked to the entire American team was positive too way too far well he looked like a

162:12freak - he was so Jack he's so big watch that stuff I mean we had I think we have some footage of him in the in the film at the end I mean he is I mean he is a machine yeah he looks so different than the other track and field sprinter he is just a machine yeah he looked like like an MMA fighter I mean he was just Jeff Lewis is like I need a better doctor I mean he was J listen look at his shoulder there everything yeah shredded yeah I mean make it Carl Lewis yeah and look at Johnson and Carl Lewis is on some too that's what's really crazy it's like all these guys were on some I mean we have this idea like his eyes like why god I mean we have this idea that you'd be able to tell looking at someone whether or not they're on steroids that was always the idea like the sniff test well Gregory that the funny thing is I was working with him over time he'd run

163:13into guys and and he'd be like he's on the HGH she's on HGH he thought too much eh eh oh definitely I mean he could Gregory could just look at somebody and know whether or not they were like doping and there were a time you know because I was on this program for a year and he looks at me he's like Brian they're taking too much HGH really so he could tell looking do you know he is like looking at me and he's like you know and seeing like your Joel it's getting a little bigger your forehead he's like you need to cut down the dose voice is perfect I mean he would it was just you know he could just look at somebody and know like he just he just anybody he knew and we would meet people over that year there's a funny story when I was in Moscow when I go to to meet him after this Haute Route Haute Route race and I and I bring with me which again we don't get into in the

164:10film it's pretty crazy I'd I had figured out essentially because I wasn't gonna be tested every day that I was gonna simulate the protocol so during this this second race I'm peeing every single night into ziplock bags and basically the ceiling the ziploc bag and storing this frozen urine and like a little thermos and the idea is is I'm gonna bring all my frozen urine with me to Moscow and I had all these blood tests done two before after to build the biological passport Andy and the steroid profile so I bring him you know like all my all my frozen urine to Moscow and and he had went into the process of of literally you know testing this this this urine that I'd brought him in ziplock bags I had smuggled with me into into Russia and and the second part of the investigation comes out before he's able to covertly test all of my urine within his lab which he shouldn't have

165:09been doing but I go to this birthday party and it's the and in the film it's the it's I shot it on my iphone that scene of chaos with the birthday party and he's there and he's singing and he's introducing me and he's doing karaoke and he's dancing so that party was for like a a Russian gold medal like shot-putter and everybody at that party were like former gold medal shop-owners wrestling decathlon and these were human giants and Gregory was like yes said dopes team that dog everybody was on this I mean it was every single person at this party was like I can't remember the names this is whatever this is Maria da da da she won three Olympic gold medals she was on yes and we threw out their positive it was every single if we were at this party and there was like 30 of them and I have these pictures of me with like Giants I mean literally like this is the biggest human beings you've

166:16ever seen in your life and Gregory's like yes it was yes I helped him I helped him Wow and and they were all now part of the sports ministry yeah Wow listen man let's wrap this up your documentary is fantastic I've really enjoyed it and I really do think it's probably the most powerful anti-doping documentary ever made I think you nailed it it's really amazing and I really appreciate you coming on here and I want everybody to see it if you if you were interested in this stuff it's on Netflix Ikaros go check it out it is really really good thank you Brian yeah thanks Joe and said of your listeners anybody that wants to throw a bone to Gregory he's got a GoFundMe page and he could really really use that and that GoFundMe pages on your Twitter page it's on my Twitter feed right now I've posted a tweet today with the link to his GoFundMe and if you go on go fund me and

167:16search for Gregory Rodchenko you'll find it too but this is uh it's right there on my on my Twitter at Brian Fogle and yeah he's he's in some dire straits and really it's a it's a it's a story that hasn't it's still unfolding it is done it's history we captured history and the history involving the history is still unfolding in the news in a daily basis though it is but again you nailed it amazing work thanks for having me on my pleasure all right folks we'll see you tomorrow