#1019 - Bryan Fogel

Joe Rogan (0:08)

All right, we're live. You cool with that, you got that bar in your teeth, are you good?

Those things stick. They stick, those green belly meal bars. So first of all, man, your documentary, Icarus, I say that wrong all the time. I say Icarus, but it's Icarus, right?

Bryan Fogel (0:28)

Icarus.

Joe Rogan (0:28)

Yeah, that's the guy with the wings that flew too close to the sun.

Bryan Fogel (0:32)

Exactly.

Joe Rogan (0:33)

It's fucking amazing, it's an amazing documentary. 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 shit.

The extent of the cover-up and 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.

Bryan Fogel (1:05)

That's right.

Joe Rogan (1:05)

I mean, the documentary, how long did it take you to put this together?

Bryan Fogel (1:09)

Three and a half years.

Joe Rogan (1:11)

And so what was the initial idea behind it?

Bryan Fogel (1:13)

So the initial idea, I guess I'll say it's streaming on Netflix right now, they released it a month ago. And the initial idea had come to me essentially when Armstrong confessed, and I had been a lifelong cycling fan, and I had followed him for my whole journey with him.

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 clean. 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 500 times, who should we be mad at? Should we be mad at Armstrong? Or should we be upset 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.

Joe Rogan (2:26)

Well, that's a big factor, right? I mean, that is really an important thing to talk about.

In the high level world of cycling, when they took away Armstrong's victories in the Tour de France, I think the person who did not test positive in any tests before that, I think was like 18th place, is that correct? Somewhere along?

Bryan Fogel (2:47)

I don't remember exactly, but yeah, but there was no one. And then even after his confession, if you remember how they get them to confess is essentially the feds come in on a criminal investigation and they basically go to all of his teammates over the years that he had raced and basically point guns to their head and say, hey, did you dope or did you not dope?

Now, if you tell us that you doped and that Armstrong doped, you go free and we aren't gonna 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 the rest is history.

Joe Rogan (3:32)

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.

Bryan Fogel (3:43)

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 burned and he plummeted to the earth. And that to me was a 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 and 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 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 are going out and destroying other people's lives to try to protect your own lives.