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Jan. 9, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:12:50

Joe Rogan Experience #1592 - Bryan Fogel

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bryan fogel

01:53:01

joe rogan

14:06

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jamie vernon

00:00

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		The Joe Rogan Experience.
		Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
		Hey, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good to see you again, buddy.
unidentified		Yeah, man.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		This is good to be in Austin.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was just here yesterday with Jordan Burroughs, Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, and we discussed Icarus, and he told me that he actually had to shut it off.
		Here, I'll let you do that, because it's very clunky.
		He told me he had to shut it off.
		He couldn't handle it, because he's an Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, and he has faced people that he believes were cheating, and particularly Russians, and it drove him crazy.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		So he was that pissed off that he literally...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's his livelihood?
		I mean, it's everything.
		He's an Olympic gold medalist, he's a four-time world champion, and he's convinced that he had to wrestle against people that were cheating, particularly Russians.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		You know, I've gotten a bunch of messages since that film came out from other Olympic athletes, and it's been either a mix of like, hey man, thank you so much, or it's just like, not mad at me, just like, what the fuck?
		And then I was actually invited.
		It was the bobsled team when they actually disqualified the Russian bobsled team.
		And the U.S. bobsled team was then going to get the third place medal.
		They invited me to the ceremony.
unidentified		I didn't go, but it was crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jordan said that, I guess, in 2020 and 2024, the Russians can't fly a flag.
		They can't be represented.
		They have to be individual athletes from Russia.
		At the Olympics in 2020 and Tokyo, it's 2021 now, and then 2024, those Olympics, you can't have a Russian flag.
		Because of what happened that you exposed in your documentary.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
		However, if you follow the story post-Icarus with Rychenkov, is Russia was supposed to turn over this LIMS data, which was this laboratory information management system data, in order to be reinstated into world sport.
		That was part of the WADA requirements.
		And they never basically turned it over.
		So WADA basically had to go after them, go after them, go after them.
		They reinstate them without turning over the data.
		Then they turn over the data.
		This is now...
		December of 2019, or January.
		It was not that long ago, about a year ago.
		And when they turn over the data, they had literally manipulated all the data.
		And they had already got a copy of it from Rychenkov and another guy in the lab.
		And they literally put notes into this LIMS data, basically trying to frame Rychenkov for like money laundering and taking bribes and all this shit.
		But WADA knew that this wasn't legitimate because they had the real databases already.
		So they go and they say, okay, now Russia's banned for another four years, right?
		And in the meantime, Russia is putting out in the media that Rechenkov has tried to commit suicide.
		Because of, like, the exposure that he was apparently, you know, taking bribes for money, which he wasn't, Russia denies it again, and then it goes to the court of arbitration for sport.
		This is literally just like a couple months ago.
		So they were supposed to be facing another four-year total ban.
		That's what WADA was recommending.
		The entire federation is gone.
		And the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which is corrupt as hell, basically knocks it down to two years instead of four years, and then basically does what they did in the 2018 Olympics, which is, okay, any Russian athlete who hasn't tested positive can compete, but they can't compete under their country's flag.
		But if you saw Icarus, how would you know whether or not they were positive or not?
		Because they were swapping out the urine.
		They were breaking into the bottles.
unidentified		So it's like, yeah, they're kind of banned.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And at the same time, they're all going to be there.
		And this was looked at like a huge win for Russia.
		In the meantime, Rechenkov literally sits in isolation, in hiding, under protection.
		But the guy just got asylum.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He got Asylum here, right?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		He got Asylum here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't have to wear the headphones.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Are they uncomfortable?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		No, they just kind of were like echoing a lot.
unidentified		If there's a way to maybe take down the reverb on them or something, I like them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Echoing?
		Really?
		Do you hear echo?
		There's a volume control.
		Is that better?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that's better.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So Rechenkov has got Asylum here in America?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so he's got asylum here in America, and that story is crazy, too.
		So, you know, in Icarus, you see this scene where basically, like, I see him off at the airport.
		And that was July of 2016. So we keep, you know, making the film.
		The film comes out August 2017. And then five months later, essentially because of the film, the IOC and their reasoned decision comes forward and bans Russia.
		And they cite Icarus as one of their main reasons for doing that.
		In the meantime, Rechenkov is literally trying to get political asylum.
		And on the day of his asylum hearing, this was now a year and a half, two years ago.
		I need to get with his lawyers to get the exact date.
		Russia files drug trafficking charges against him in Russia on the actual day that he's supposed to go in for his asylum hearing.
		So what this means is that Russia had a mole Within the U.S. immigration system, knowing that this was the day that Rechenko was supposed to get his asylum.
		And under international law, anybody who's been charged with drug trafficking, right, is basically immediately ineligible for asylum.
		So there's like a couple of like, you know, things that you can be charged for that basically makes it you can't get asylum.
		So they charge them with drug trafficking.
		And the court then gets kicked out, and it takes him another year and a half, two years to get his asylum.
		And he finally just got his asylum like four months ago, something like that.
unidentified		Wow.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But he's still in hiding, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because he's got to worry about being assassinated.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		I mean, he's still in hiding.
		I mean, I've been able to keep in touch with a guy here and there through, like, basically through the lawyers, and then they'll arrange through the security, and then we'll, you know, find an encrypted way to, like, have a conversation.
		And last time I spoke to him was about Two months ago, and, you know, the conversation always goes like, hey, Gregory, how are you?
unidentified		And he goes, I'm alive.
unidentified		And I go, wow, that's great, you know?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And he goes, I'm like, so how are you doing?
		He's like, Brian, Brian, I have to tell you.
		He's like, you know, you saved my life.
		And, I mean, it's heavy.
		It's really heavy.
		I mean, we've tried for three years now to try to get him a dog because, you know, he loves dogs and he lives by himself and, you know, he really doesn't have communication with the outside world.
		My understanding is that he'll go out, you know, for like an hour a day for a walk with like I don't know where he lives.
		I don't have his phone number.
		But his security doesn't want him to have a dog because if he has a dog that means he has to go outside and he's got to walk the dog.
		He's not really able to communicate with his family.
		He hasn't seen his family for four years now.
		His wife and his kids are back in Russia.
		So this has been a crazy cost for blowing the whistle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Didn't they take his wife and his children, didn't they take their family home away?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, after he got here and then all this started to unfold, what I was told is that they basically like froze the assets of the family.
		He had a dacha, which is like a summer home.
		And apparently they seized that and they seized bank accounts and they brought in the family to interrogate him and they took their passports.
		From what I've heard is that his kids have their passports back.
		And the wife does too.
		But, you know, you can make the logical conclusion that they're hoping that they travel, because if they then go and see Gregory, right, they're going to be able to find him.
		But, you know, to my knowledge, the family has been pretty much left alone.
		It was bad for a little bit, but over the last few years, I've heard that they're okay.
		None of the family wants to come, because even if they do, then that means that their lives are now in isolation, in hiding.
		So for them to come and basically visit Gregory or to come and move to be with him, because he could technically get his wife here now that he has asylum, But then her life is going to be in isolation, and she's got family back in Russia, so it's complicated.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And this goes on for the rest of his life.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, arguably for the rest of his life.
		I mean, when you look at, you know, Michael Sherwitz of the New York Times did a story, I don't remember, it was probably about a year ago, and he was looking at all these kind of like murders that...
		That were tied to Putin and Russia.
		And one of the stories that he came out with was basically this guy who was living in the Ukraine.
		He was working for the gas company, right?
		And he, I can't remember if he, it was an attempted murder or no, the guy gets killed and they catch the guy, the assassin who goes to kill him.
		And they pulled him up on trial.
		And when they catch this assassin, apparently he's got a piece of paper on him.
		It's got a list of names, right?
		Of like, basically like, you know, like, kill names.
		And this guy who they arrest, and I know I'm botching the story a little bit, and you can go back.
		It was in, you know, part of the New York Times Daily.
		And this guy that they go and arrest basically goes, yes, I've been hired.
		I don't know why, but my job is basically to kill these people.
		So they start going through the list, and none of these people are really known.
		It turns out that the guy that he had been hired to kill in the Ukraine, who was now living like a normal life in the Ukraine, He had apparently helped broker weapons deal to the Chechens, right?
		And this was like, whatever, 15 years ago.
		And here, this guy's living this quiet life in the Ukraine, working for the power company.
		And 12 years later, they come and get him.
		I mean, you look at the case of Skirpel, you know, the guy that they poisoned with Novichok a few years in Salisbury.
		That was another case where, you know, the guy had...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was in England, right?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was in England.
		The guy had been, you know, out of sight, out of mind for 15 years.
		You look at even the poisoning of Alexander Lithonanko in 2006.
		Well, at the time that they actually poisoned Lithonanko with polonium, he had already been living in London for like seven or eight years.
		He had fled to the UK that long ago.
		So the whole piece that the Michael Schuritz had wrote and put forward in the New York Times was essentially that, you know, they don't forget and there's just, you know, a list.
		And when they feel that they can strike, they do.
		One of the guys I've spoke to a lot who have become a good friend is Bill Browder, you know, who wrote Red Notice.
		Have you read Bill's book?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		So, crazy.
		So, Bill was running this thing called the Hermitage Fund in Russia.
		And he was American, but his parents were actually members of a Communist Party.
		And he sets up an investment fund in Russia during the, you know, as everything's kind of becoming whatever it is, open, right?
		And the fund is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Russia.
		And his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, basically uncovers this Russian money laundering fraud of something like 200 to 300 million dollars that the government, that basically Putin, you know, was behind, that had stolen this money.
		And so Magnitsky basically tries to bring this forward.
		They murder Magnitsky.
		And Bill Browder has now spent the last, you know, 10 years of his life fighting for justice for Magnitsky's death, and the way that he's done it is he formed this Magnitsky Act, and the United States has it, Canada has it, countries all over Europe has it, and they've now frozen hundreds and hundreds of millions of Russian, basically, assets tied to, like, you know, It's illegal, this, that, and the other.
		And Browder apparently is the number one on the kill list, and he lives in London, but what is at dispute is whether or not it's Browder or whether it's Gregory Rechenkov.
		And according to intelligence agencies, these guys kind of flip places depending on the moment.
		But Rechenkov is certainly a high-value asset.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The stress on that guy must be incredible.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I don't really know how he does it because he's such a...
		I mean, the guy that you see in the movie, that is who this guy is.
		He's so lighthearted.
		He's always singing like Donna Summer.
		I mean, he's a goof.
		And yet, through all this, he remains this incredible optimist.
		I've got to see him Two times in, I guess, the last three, four years.
		One was he had a 60th birthday, and his security and lawyers and all this stuff arranged this secret birthday party for him.
		And I went to go visit him, and everybody who had helped and worked with him were there in this, you know, undisclosed location.
		I mean, they literally like blindfolded me.
		I mean, it was absurd.
		And he was so just happy.
		I think he is this guy who goes that every day that he is alive, in his mind, is another day that he was going to be dead.
		And so I think it's hard to understand, but he just has a different way of looking at life, I think, than I do, than you do, than like 99.9% of people on the planet do.
		He wakes up in the morning and goes...
		I should be dead.
		And so I think he just lives with a different gratitude set.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But what does a guy do?
		What does he do?
		He just hangs around.
		So I guess the government takes care of him?
		They give him food?
		And he's just protected by guards all the time?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's become a little bit complicated because, you know, there's a combination of private security and government, but, you know, government only will...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We should stop right here and I should explain to people that don't know what we're talking about.
		That Gregory was the guy who, in your documentary, you did a race.
		You tried to do an Icarus, which is an amazing documentary if you haven't seen it.
		I recommend it highly.
		You did a race clean and then you were going to do a race all juiced up.
		And you went to him and he was the head of the Russian Anti-Doping Federation.
		Is that what it is?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so Gregory Rechenkov, basically the premise was I felt that the entire doping system in sport was a fraud.
		And the reason why I had this belief was I had followed Lance Armstrong my whole life.
		The guy confesses in 2013, but if you had actually followed that story, it's kind of like what you're saying about Russia's ban from the Olympics, but they're not really banned and they just can't wear their outfit.
		Well, in the case of Lance, well, yeah, he confessed to doping, but the guy to this day never was actually caught in And here's this guy who passed like, I don't know, five, six hundred tests.
		So as he confesses, and I'd been a cycling fan, a lifelong cyclist, I'm going, wait, wait, wait.
		You caught the guy based on a criminal investigation, but you didn't catch him based on the science.
		And if you can't catch the most tested athlete on planet Earth, well, what does this mean for every other athlete on planet Earth?
		And so the idea was that I was going to do like a supersize me in the world of sports.
		I was going to race clean, and then the next year I was going to dope the hell out of myself, take testosterone, HGH, EPO, I mean, HCG. I was up to do anything.
unidentified		I mean, I was literally like injecting myself with like, you know, it was like 10 syringes a day.
unidentified		It was just so stupid.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And then literally like I'm going to get a blood test to like build my biological passport.
		To, like, test my hematocrit.
		So, like, every other week, I'm literally going to get my blood drawn.
		I'm pissing to, like, you know, build, like, my whole steroid profile to basically try to evade testing.
		So, I get connected to this guy, Gregory Rutchenkov.
		And at the time, he's running RUSADA, which is the—I'm sorry, the WADA lab, the World Anti-Doping Lab— For Moscow, which is like the third largest, you know, anti-doping lab in the world at the time.
		This is now 2014, 2015. And Gregory basically is like, yes, I'll help you dope, and I'll help you evade testing, and I'll basically show you how you can game the system.
unidentified		And I'm like...
unidentified		This is nuts!
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Like, the guy who just did all the testing for the Sochi Olympics and is running the entire anti-doping lab in Russia is basically gonna, like, test my samples and show me how to cheat?
		Like, what's going on here?
		So the two of us start working.
		He comes to the United States.
		He comes to Los Angeles.
		We have a great time.
		I then go do this next race completely doped out of my mind.
		And I'm like taking blood samples.
		I'm taking urine.
		And right after this race, I hop on a plane.
		I go to Moscow and I'm like hanging out with Gregory for like a month.
		And he takes all my samples into the lab.
		And there was this investigation already going on and I was like, okay, something's off here.
		And so I spend this month in Russia and I come back.
		What was the investigation that was already going on so in in the in 2015 water releases in the I can't remember exactly when it was.
		It was like early...
		March of 2015, something like that.
		The World Anti-Doping Agency had already been investigating the Moscow Laboratory.
		And they come out with this...
		Report that they believe that Gregory Rechenkov is like the mastermind of this state-sponsored doping operation.
		And they've got a bunch of evidence, but they had no idea.
		It was like, I mean, they had like, literally like the tip of a pinky.
		And the size of the scandal was basically, you know, like an entire body.
		I mean, they literally just had the tip of the pinky.
		But the tip of the pinky was so bad that they shut down the Moscow lab.
		Gregory is now the fall guy.
		He's forced to resign.
		And Putin's basically on television going like, look, look, whatever you want to believe, none of this is true.
		We've never doped.
		We don't cheat.
		These are all lies.
		Oh, and by the way, he says, anybody who is responsible for this crime We'll be punished.
		So, basically, Putin is literally on television going, Gregory Rechenkov is going under the bus.
		And Gregory is in Moscow, and we had, you know, been working together.
		He calls me up, and he's like, Brian, Brian, I need to escape.
		And I'm like, okay, when?
		He's like, now.
		I need to leave now.
		And I'm like, now, like, as in now?
		He's like, yes, yes, I need a flight now.
		And I'm literally sitting there on Skype and I start doing a search for Moscow, Los Angeles.
		And I'm like, well, there's a flight in like 12 hours.
		And he's like, okay.
		I'm like, you want me to book that flight?
		He's like, yes, book the flight.
		If I put it on my credit card, well, no, you'll have to put it on your credit card.
		So I literally booked this flight, put it on my credit card, and a day later, here's Gregory in Los Angeles, and about a month into him being in L.A., and, you know, shit's going down in Russia, I'm like, look, man, you gotta tell me what happened.
		And he opens up, and...
		You know, and that was Icarus.
		I mean, it was...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's amazing.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		It was crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The way it unfolded in the documentary, it couldn't have been written better.
		Like, if it was a drama, if it was a scripted drama, it could not have been written better.
		And the fact that it was all just...
		Circumstance.
		Just all happened.
		All happened at the right time.
		It's an amazing documentary.
		And for a person like Jordan Burroughs, who was here yesterday, it was too much.
		He literally had to shut it off.
		I convinced him to watch the rest of it.
		I go, you have to.
		I go, it's so good.
		It's so crazy.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		It's one of these things where I think if you were a professional athlete or a lover of sport...
		It changes your whole perception because I think we were able to accept whatever.
		Lance Armstrong cheated, but we can still look at Lance and go, okay, the guy did win seven Tour de France's.
		The guy, everybody else was cheating.
		They were all cheating.
		And so in my mind, you know, I might catch shit for this.
		In my mind, Lance won fair and square.
		Everybody was cheating.
		All of his teammates were cheating.
		Everybody that I talked to admitted to cheating.
		And the funny thing is, all the guys who raced with Lance during that generation, and I mean basically all of them, you go and talk to them, and this is what half of Icarus was before I pivoted, was like, did Lance win fairly?
		And they're like...
		Yes.
		Did he win seven Tour de France's?
		Yes.
		Was he a cheater?
		Yes.
		Were you a cheater?
		Yes.
		Is Lance the greatest cyclist to ever live?
		Yes.
unidentified		And I went, alright, that's enough for me.
unidentified		I mean, you know, the guy, you got second place, third place, fourth place, fifth place, tenth place, it was all going like, hey, the guy won?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And he won fair and square?
unidentified		I go, alright, Lance is redeemed.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		You know?
unidentified		But...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Not to validate any of the other stuff that he did and lawsuits and all that stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's where it all went sideways for most people.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		That's where it went sideways.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because everybody knows that everybody cheated.
		The general public is aware that cycling is a dirty sport.
		And they're also aware that if you take...
		Most people know that if you take away the gold medals or any medal from Lance and you try to find someone down the line who didn't test positive, you have to get to 18th place.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Or a hundredth place.
unidentified		It's crazy.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And that was kind of Lance's argument all along.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The lawsuits were the fucked up part.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Which is, yeah, that he basically became the scapegoat for a broken system.
		But it was, and I think Lance would tell you the same thing, I mean, it was the way that he handled it.
		That got him in trouble and that he never knew when to say when.
		And that breaking point was when Floyd Landis, the guy who had been his teammate in 2000 through many years of his career, wins the tour in 2006 and he gets caught for doping.
		Denies it, denies it, denies it, and then he serves his suspension, comes back, and Lance has come out of retirement.
		You know, the great hope, you know, because the cycling ratings, nobody gave two shits about cycling this second.
		Lance retired, so he comes back, and Floyd is like, hey, man, I've been silent.
		I never ratted you out.
		I served my time.
		Shit's really fucked up.
		I'm broke.
		Dude, let me on your team.
		And Lance was like, no, bro, you're a doper.
		And that is, I think, what was the start of the downfall.
		But I think what's so shocking about About Icarus and the Russian doping scandal, and probably for your buddy who was a wrestler, is when you go, wait, wait.
		Every sport?
		Every Olympic medal?
unidentified		Wait, they were...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		What were they not doping in?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And Gregory's like, oh, well, we didn't dope the figure skaters.
unidentified		I'm like, well, why not the figure skaters?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Because, you know, the testosterone and this, it makes the girls too big, too muscular.
		And, you know, we found the fine motor skills were not as good with the steroids.
		I'm like, well, okay, what else didn't you dope?
		It's like, you know, just pretty much all of them, just the figure skaters.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it was only figure skaters they didn't dope.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And apparently, um, I would have to go back and do my fact checking.
		There was a few other, like, you know, like, um, I mean, I think, I mean, they were like even doping like the curdling team.
		I mean, you know, it was.
unidentified		It's like, you know, it was – I mean, you know, and he said, you know, how are you going to out-cheat us with Russian?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		We're the best cheaters in the world.
		But the way that they looked at it and the way that, you know, I think it's just that kind of Russian mentality is he never really saw it as really doing something wrong.
		He saw it as that everybody else was cheating too.
		And so this was just a game to out-cheat everyone else who was cheating.
		And I think that that probably comes from the mentality of Russia before the fall of communism, which is this survival mechanism.
		And even if you look at modern Russia...
		Which, you know, I love Russians.
		I love Russia.
		Unfortunately, I don't think I can go back there, but I mean, I just love the culture.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you imagine going back there, how paranoid you'd be?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I heard a crazy story a couple years ago.
		I'm not going to tell you who, so a buddy of mine who's Russian.
		And he lives there, a well-known guy.
		And he calls me up and he goes...
		Brother, so I just got back to Moscow and I leave the airport and I'm in my car and I get pulled over by like an unmarked police car.
		And I'm sitting there going, okay, what's the problem?
		And the officer says, wait right here.
		And he comes back to the car and he shows me a photo of you.
		And he goes, do you know Brian Fogel?
		And I said, well, yeah, I mean, I know him.
		I mean, we're acquaintances.
		We don't really know him that well.
		We're Facebook friends.
		And the guy gave me his card and told me that the next day that I had to show up for, like, basically a meeting, which I guess, you know, arguably was like the FSB. And my buddy told me that he, essentially because he's a pretty well-known, successful guy there, basically made some calls and was like, what the fuck is going on?
		And he didn't go in.
		And they let it go.
		But what was nuts is that it took him a year after that happened to tell me that that happened and I've been working on some other projects and it's interesting the story in Russia like if you speak Russian and you're like pulling archival news footage I mean there's been so much on like me and there's like
		Crazy animations they've done with Rechenkov as they paint him as like this crazy person living in an asylum, working for the CIA. I mean, Putin himself, like a year, year and a half ago at his State of the Union address, you know, said that Rechenkov was basically working for the CIA and that they had drugged him to get confessions from him and that the entire doping operation was a ploy.
		To basically try to stop him from getting elected and basically played the election playbook that this was U.S. intelligence agencies trying to disparage Russia and that Rechenkov was a pawn.
		I mean, it's that crazy.
		That crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you're not going to Russia.
		I mean, obviously your documentary put more light on it than the initial investigation obviously your documentary put more light on it than the initial investigation I mean, without your documentary, it never would have...
		The amount of people that watch that documentary, I know it's in the millions.
		And it was a huge hit for Netflix.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I was told that it's had 700 million views.
unidentified		What?!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so crazy!
		Well, it makes sense.
		I mean, it's an international story.
		When you're talking about sports and the Olympics, it's one of the biggest sources of national pride for these countries to win the Olympics, to win a gold medal in the Olympics, to have their team or their athlete win a gold medal in the Olympics, and to find out that Russia had rigged the entire Olympic Games for their athletes.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		For decades!
unidentified		Not just one or two Olympics, but all of them.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		There's a story that when Russia went to the Olympics in Korea, I think it was 1988 Korean Games, they basically took a passenger cruise ship And they had all these wealthy Russians on the ship.
		I mean, this is before the fall of Russia.
		And Rechenkov was on the ship because all the athletes were on the ship, too.
		And they had the whole doping lab set up on the ship.
		And they literally, there was a coffee bar on the ship, and they were able to put their Hewlett-Packard, basically, steroid detection devices, they look like espresso machines, in the coffee bar, so that Rechenkov could basically test the athletes.
		And because the athletes were basically with all the other Russians, and they basically argued that it wasn't safe for the athletes living on, you know, in the Olympic Village, that the athletes were able to live on this ship during the 88 Korean Games.
		And Russia, like, swept the games, the United States came third, and this was another one of Gregory's very, very...
		very proud moments in his life.
unidentified		Oh my god.
unidentified		These stories just go on and on and on and on and on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jordan Burroughs thinks they're still doing it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He lost to a Russian in 2016 in Rio and he said on the podcast yesterday he believes a Russian was on some shit.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's plausible because in the film there's this guy, Nikita Kamayev, who was running RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency.
		He's murdered...
		In February of 2016. This was Gregory's best friend.
		And this was basically two months before we go to the New York Times with this story.
		And that decision for us to ultimately go...
		To the New York Times, which we had planned to do.
		But once Nikita was dead, and we were going, okay, we got to protect our guy.
		We got to bring this public.
		We got to get him into protection.
		You know, this is really, really dangerous.
		And so Nikita was running Rusada.
		And as Russia gets reinstated into sport, they bring on this new guy.
		His name's Yuri Ghanos.
		And Ghanos is like...
		I don't work for the state.
		I'm independent.
		I'm not corrupt.
		Nobody's going to corrupt me.
		I'm going to say it how it is.
		So over the last two years, Ghanos has been running Rusada.
		And Russia's kept pulling their tricks.
		And Ghanos has come out publicly going, this is what's going on.
		So about three months ago, Ghanos was forced to resign.
		They tried to frame him with money laundering and bribery.
		You can go and follow this story because Ghanos was basically coming out and going, hey guys, things are still fucked up.
		So who's running Rusada now?
		Who knows?
		The game continues.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If they're not doing what they did in Sochi, where they're taking the dirty urine out and replacing it with clean urine, how are they manipulating the testing results?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know, and I certainly wouldn't want to be, you know, leveling false accusations.
		All that I know is that in, like, the two years that they shut down the laboratory, right, well, who was doing the testing then?
		Like, you know, according to Gregory, it's like, you know, that there's been a, because it's been in total disarray, It's actually, you know, become easier in some ways.
		On the other hand, I view it as just kind of a continual cat-and-mouse game.
		You know, that, okay, great.
		You know, you figure out how to test for one substance.
		Well, there's another substance.
		If it's not that, it's going to be, you know, genetic engineering and doping.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I talked to Jordan about that yesterday.
		I said, I'm really concerned about that.
		I think that's the future.
		And I think the United States is not going to do it, but I think China and Russia and some other places are going to do it.
		They're going to do some genetic engineering on their athletes, and we're going to have a fucking giant team of LeBron Jameses, perfect athletes.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		That'll be something to watch.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I would watch that.
unidentified		I mean...
		Who wouldn't?
		I mean, that actually sounds pretty cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It does sound pretty cool.
unidentified		I mean, that sounds like Gladiator games or something.
unidentified		I mean, I gotta tell you, I mean, you know, the flip side of that is, I mean...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		That'd be amazing, you know, just a team of just perfect specimens, all genetically engineered to like battle each other.
unidentified		That's like Terminator stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's the future.
		I really do.
		I mean, with CRISPR and the upcoming iterations of it, whatever, you know, future innovation comes forth with genetic manipulation, I think they're going to be able to turn on genes, turn off genes, edit things, make it so that...
		You really have the best of all worlds and including intelligence and I mean even maybe possibly discipline.
		I mean they might be able to engineer discipline into people.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		They already are.
		I actually developed this docu-series that I just...
		We went out and sold it and I just haven't had the time to go and put the time into it.
		But the whole concept behind the show was really that, like this exploring firsthand these frontiers in, you know, performance enhancing, but it's really more human evolution.
		Which is, you know, you've got so many guys out there, whether it's, what's a guy, Dave Ospreay or whatever, Bulletproof Coffee, or who's the guy who just got under all that trouble?
		He was living in Bermuda.
		Peter, what was his, what's his name?
		It's a crazy story.
		He's like this, Peter Nygaard.
		Who is now caught up in all this Me Too stuff and all this stuff.
		But he has like an island in the Caribbean.
		It's basically like genetic mutation island where he spent hundreds of millions of dollars basically to get himself to live forever.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Jesus.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		How old is he?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		79?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What does he look like?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		79. What does he look like?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Look at this guy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Give me a picture of him.
		I want to see a jacked 79-year-old.
		Did you?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Let's see.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		There he is!
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		There he is!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is he 79?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I guess he's spending Christmas in jail.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is he?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is he going to jail for?
		Jesus Christ.
		He's odd looking.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		But this guy literally has spent like hundreds of millions of dollars.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Fashion mogul Peter Nygaard pleads for bail citing allergy to sugar.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		One day ago.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		How would you do sugar?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sex trafficking.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		But now do a search on Peter Nygaard, basically.
		Oh my god, he's worth $900 million.
		Look at that.
		79 years old.
		Wow.
		Basically, I don't know, human longevity or something.
		Genetic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Put human longevity.
unidentified		I want to see what we got.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Human Longevity.
		Here we go.
		Longevity Project.
		Yeah, there it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Give me some images.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Fighting Aging Lifespan I.O. There it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So he's got a website.
		So this is his thing.
		He looks pretty goddamn good for a 79-year-old.
unidentified		For a 79, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the dude's six years older than my mom, and he looks...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Nygaard Biotech.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Here it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Log in.
		Oh, I gotta log in.
		Damn.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Anti-agent reverse.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can I see some more images of him?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let me see some more images.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		If you look at the guy without a shirt, he looks good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want to see him without a shirt.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm not ashamed to admit it.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Look at the Navajo outfit there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, he's got one of those?
		Pull up shirtless.
		Give me shirtless, Jamie.
unidentified		I was hoping I would just be there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Come on, buddy.
		Well, he looks like shit there.
		Is that him?
		I mean, like, for a 79-year-old, not bad, but...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Oh, jeez!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		That one, I mean...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which one?
		Where's the party?
		Oh, that right there?
		Is that him?
		Well, that's what everybody wants to do.
		They want to party with a bunch of hot women.
		Yeah, he doesn't look that good.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But he looks like he's got some energy.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		That looks great.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I mean, look, I mean, come on.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It looks photoshopped, though, too.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Like, he's for, like, a...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		No photoshopping there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		...replacing Fabio on the front of a romance novel.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, right, right.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		That's the Nygaard building.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, okay, so they're juicing it up a little bit there.
		Who's that beautiful girl in the lower right-hand corner?
		Right there, lower?
		Lower?
		Right below that?
		Right below that?
		Yeah.
		Who's that?
		His ex-girlfriend.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Pretty fucking hot for a creepy looking old dude.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Congratulations, Peter.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess time will tell whether or not Peter lives forever, but...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In jail?
unidentified		Citing allergy to sugar is fucking hilarious.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he doesn't have his blood boy or anything.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Oh, yeah, he gets off the sauce.
		What, what, what, Jamie?
		What?
unidentified		What is the accusation?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, accused of hiring sex worker to rape his teen sons.
		Um, well, that's not good.
		Okay.
		Anyway.
		So this guy's spending a lot of money trying to stay alive.
		I think the real thing is fetuses, though.
		The real thing is, like, taking, like, in utero, like, in an actual embryo, and doing something to it and developing a fully grown human being with, like, myostatin inhibitors and all sorts of other...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, that is the whole...
		Future of this, which is basically going into the embryo before you're born and going, hey, I want to have blue eyes.
		I want to be six foot three.
		I want to have blonde hair.
		I never want to have Parkinson's.
		I never want to have Alzheimer's.
		I want to, you know, have 150 IQ. I want to have lean muscle mass.
		I, you know, I don't want fat cells.
		I don't want to have breast cancer.
		I mean, on and on and on.
		And a lot of those technologies...
		Are available.
		I mean, just like you can go clone your dog.
		A lot of these things are there if you've got enough money and willing to go to some subversive lab.
		I mean, there was that story a few years ago.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there really a lab that can do that right now?
		Like, say if your wife is pregnant, you really can go and have the body manipulated to the point where you can make something like that?
		That's really possible?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know that there's a lot of things, if you go and do the research for, I don't know what the cost is, but I know that you can see to it that your kids have got blue eyes and that you're going to be taller.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You really can do that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You can manipulate eye color in the womb.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And that you're not going to, like, lose your hair.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They can do that right now?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		They're starting to do all that.
		That's like...
		Because they understand the gene sequencing and the properties in your DNA that cause you to grow, that cause you to have lean muscle mass.
		So I don't know exactly how much of it's available, but...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's on the way.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		It's on the way, and I'm guessing that China's already, like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's going to be 20 years from now.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		They're already planning the Olympics 20, you know.
unidentified		2040. Right, 2040. They're, like, literally going, like...
		Super athletes.
		Yeah, they're just going, like, ha-ha.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a concern, that long game, you know?
		What is that thing the Afghanistan people used to say during the war?
		The Americans have all the watches, but we have all the time.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I'm thinking about that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Playing the long game.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, China...
		I mean, one thing you...
		I mean, China does play the long game.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		They play the long game.
		Russia plays the long game.
		Putin plays the long game.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He obviously does with these assassinations.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or somebody.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Maybe not him.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Whoever's doing it.
unidentified		Yeah.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it was interesting.
		So, Novani, right, the guy that he poisoned a few months ago in Germany, with Novichok, right?
		This is the guy who was the, you know, like his top guy to threaten his presidency, you know, the opposition leader.
		Young guy, he's like 40, 42, something like that.
		And so he's in Germany and he gets poisoned.
		Well, it turns out that they put the poison in his underwear.
		And, you know, this story has been going on and on.
		And not only that, they know who poisoned him, what Russian agents poisoned him.
		And he set up a whole call.
		It's a whole crazy story.
		But the bottom line of this Novani thing is, so Putin's interviewed about...
		Did you poison Novani?
		And he goes, absolutely not.
		And they go, well, but what would you have to say to him?
		And he goes, well, you know, he is a traitor.
		And treason is the most serious crime and should be punishable.
		I mean, there it is.
		I mean, it's literally right there.
unidentified		So, I didn't poison him, but...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Traitors should be punished.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, that clearly...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sketchy place to live.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And with that, we transition to the dissident.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's transition, because it's a terrifying documentary.
		And maybe...
		Equally disturbing was the difficulty in distributing it.
		Icarus won Academy Award, right?
		Multiple awards.
		More than one award, not just the Academy Award.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Won the Academy Award in 2018. Won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Journalism.
		Was nominated for three Emmys.
		I was nominated for the Directors Guild Award.
unidentified		Nominated for the BAFTA. It's jaw-dropping.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you would think that another documentary coming from Brian Fogle would be well received, especially one that's as good as The Dissident.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But you're having a really hard time distributing this.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, The Dissident actually releases today, January 8th, on video on demand.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		So it's, oh yeah, you can enter the site there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In theaters and at home on demand.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it on iTunes?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		It's on iTunes, Comcast, Charter, Vudu, Xbox.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But not Netflix.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there it is.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Fandango, Amazon Prime.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it is on Amazon Prime.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but you have to...
		Well, not Amazon Prime.
		Amazon, you have to rent it.
		So basically, it came out today for rental or for sale, but it's not on any of the streaming platforms.
		It's not on anywhere where you would have...
		You know, a subscription.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But iTunes, you can get it on a streaming platform.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can rent it today for, I think it's $19.99.
		There it is.
		Redbox, Microsoft, Vudu, Fandango.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it says Prime Video.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but if you click on it, it's a rental.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, but you can still stream it then.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there it is, rent.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But you can still stream it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it says buy.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can buy it for $25, you can stream it or rent it for $19.99, but it's not on Netflix or on Amazon Prime as part of their subscription base.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you don't get it for free.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Like if you go on Netflix, everything is part of your subscription.
		Or if you go on, let's say, Apple, right?
		And you have that $5 a month subscription to Apple, right?
		You have all of Apple's content and original programming.
		Or same with Amazon.
		If you have an Amazon Prime membership, you get all of those Amazon series.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
		Fleabag, 000. Right, but they do that a lot with films, where you have to pay for the film.
		I mean, particularly with Apple, right?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, what happened with The Dissident is, you know, the film is kind of the untold story behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
		You know, the Washington Post journalist walks into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 and is murdered.
		I mean, just the most horrific, ghastly murder.
		He walks into the consulate.
		They basically strangle him, start embalming him as he's alive, and kill him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They were embalming him while he was alive?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Because they wanted the blood to coagulate because they then dismembered him and cut him into pieces to get him out of the consulate.
		And, you know, this was ordered by Mohammed bin Salman, you know, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's proven that he ordered it?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I think we had to go and say, do we believe the CIA? Do we believe British intelligence, French intelligence?
		Do we believe Turkish intelligence?
		Yeah.
		Turkey, there was a listening device in the consulate.
		We don't know how the consulate was bugged, but it was bugged.
		And so the entire audio of Khashoggi's murder, and even the planning of his murder, was captured by the Turks and I obtained the transcript as part of making this film and there were independent investigations conducted Agnes Calamard of the UN of course the Turks CIA and all of them concluded with a very
		very high level of confidence That MBS ordered the murder.
		And if you understand how Saudi Arabia works, right?
		I mean, this is considered an absolute monarchy.
		This is an authoritarian regime, right?
		And you have probably 90%, you know, and I'm making up this statistic, but something of the entire wealth of a country controlled by one family.
		So the idea that you could send 15 people on private jets, owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, traveling on diplomatic passports, people in the kill team.
		One of the guys was Moutreb, who was Mohammed bin Salman's, you know, personal security, head of security.
		Other guy was Al-Tubaji, who is the state forensic examiner and coroner who came with a bone saw.
		Another guy, Al-Asiri, is one of the top-ranking generals.
		And the list goes on and on.
		And so the idea that you could have this carried out without the approval of the crown prince...
		Would be staggering to believe.
		I mean, it's next to impossible because who else would order this crime?
		And especially when you're dealing with an absolute monarchy...
		Anybody who did this without that sort of permission, right?
		I mean, this is, you know, Saudi Arabia carried out 800 beheadings last year.
		So talk about off with your head.
		It's unfathomable to think.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		800 beheadings?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and most of these beheadings were of essentially dissidents or activists.
		I mean, you have a society that on the outside, Mohammed bin Salman has spent hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, to promote this image as a great reformer.
		And on one hand, he is a reformer.
		He's a young, I think he's 33 years old now, prince, and he's starting to open up the country for tourism.
		There's concerts.
		He's been trying to get big musical acts there, Formula One racing, movie theaters.
		All of this was never in Saudi Arabia before.
		On the other hand, this guy, as part of his...
		I don't know what you want to call it, consolidation of power, has cracked down on dissent and freedom of speech and freedom of opinion and freedom of journalism, unlike any other, you know, previous monarch.
		And Jamal Khashoggi spent most of his life working for the Saudi royal family as a journalist, right?
		And he was going back and forth from Washington to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia to London, and basically helping facilitate, you know, U.S.-Saudi relations, writing about the kingdom, writing about policy.
		He was fluent in English.
		He was educated at Ohio State University, had an apartment, a condo in Virginia, right outside of Washington, D.C., And he essentially spent his life working for the royal family.
		And so Mohammed bin Salman comes into power, and Khashoggi is essentially writing, I love the crown prince, I love my country, but I'm seeing that what is happening in this country is, on one hand, there's a lot of positivity, And a lot of good things are happening.
		And on the other hand, his friends are being arrested for simply having a freedom of opinion.
		Activists and anybody who literally was not supporting Mohammed bin Salman.
		And when I say not supporting, there are multiple stories of just a celebrity, a well-known journalist, a well-known person who had a huge Twitter follower.
		And if he wasn't willing to Consistently post how great Mohammed bin Salman, you know, is or was, this guy was literally arrested.
		So the government basically, you know, went to all of their known figures and said, you have to support the Crown Prince.
		And if you don't, you're basically going to go to go to prison.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean they have to support them, meaning they would tell them when to post things?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Through social media.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Because Twitter in Saudi Arabia, 8 out of 10 people are on Twitter.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		So what we think of as Twitter now is essentially the platform for Trump.
		Not anymore.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think they locked him out of his account.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think they opened him back up today.
		Oh, good idea.
		Shame on Jack Dorsey.
		But, you know, he's back at it, I think, today.
		So it'll be interesting to see what comes.
		I mean, God, that's so, so nutty.
		But so the Arab Spring in 2013, right, happened because of Twitter, which what we don't think about in this country is we think, oh, hey, we have freedom of speech.
		We have freedom of opinion.
		We can write what we want.
		And if I write, you know, Joe Biden's the worst man on planet Earth.
		Nobody's coming to arrest me.
		Or if I write, Donald Trump should go to jail.
		Nobody's coming to arrest me, right?
		Well, in Saudi Arabia, Anything having to do with the government or taking an opinion against the government is essentially a crime.
		So the entire country is on Twitter because on Twitter you can create 20 accounts.
		You can create 30 accounts.
		And if you have a VPN or whatever like that, you can be whoever you want to be.
		You can be, you know...
		Joseph, Mohammed, Sultan, Abdulaziz the 15th, and you can just create that as your Twitter handle, and you can have 20 accounts.
		And so Twitter is the last bastion for essentially free speech and for, you know, basically opinion.
		And this is why the Arab Spring happened, because Millions and millions of youths and activists around the Middle East in 2013 took to Twitter and were able to activate.
		They were able to organize.
		They were able to plan their demonstrations and ultimately their revolution.
		Well, Saudi Arabia realized this, that this was a huge danger to basically the monarchies in the Middle East.
		This is a huge danger to the Emiratis.
		This is a huge danger to Saudi Arabia, a huge danger to, you know, whatever you want to call it, Oman, Buran, you know, where you have these monarchies in place.
		And so Saudi Arabia started to develop a policy under Mohammed bin Salman To basically take control of the public sphere, basically take control of the messaging on Twitter.
		So they hire thousands of trolls, basically people to work for the government, sit in a room, and we have photos of these rooms.
		Actually, their main room that they do this was the room that when Trump visited Saudi Arabia and you see that photo of him with his hands on the orb, that really weird photo next to the king and they're looking up.
		That's actually like the main room where they're manipulating Twitter.
		Crazy.
		And so they hire thousands of these employees basically to go onto Twitter, create thousands of false accounts, And basically push forward Mohammed bin Salman's narrative.
		MBS is the greatest thing to ever happen to the country.
		We love MBS's policy.
		Vision 2030. MBS is changing the country.
		And so while they're doing this, They're also monitoring the accounts of anybody who is speaking poorly of MBS and arresting these people and tracking them down and throwing them in jails.
		So Khashoggi essentially was criticizing Mohammed bin Salman, at the same time liking him.
		And he gets this order from...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		At the same time liking him...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I like the royal family.
		A lot of things that this guy's doing is good.
		However, the opinion of one man and the leadership of one man and only one man is never good for our country.
		And what he had seen in the previous, you know, kings or princes...
		Right?
		Was that, yes, they were the monarch, but they would listen to other opinions.
		There was more of a form of, you know, a parliament.
		And what he saw with Mohammed bin Salman was not only, you know, the crackdown at the Ritz-Carlton where MBS, you know, literally in a mob operation, rounds up All of his cousins and half-brothers and family members and all of the wealthy people in Saudi Arabia and basically holds them in prison at the Ritz-Carlton.
		Stories have emerged of many of these people being tortured and basically shook them down for tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and basically went, I'm the Crown Prince.
		You're going to give me half, you're going to give me your money, or you're not leaving the Ritz-Carlton.
		And that was one of his major ways to consolidate his power, and so that nobody would go against him.
		So Khashoggi is seeing this, and he's ordered By the henchmen, Mohammed bin Salman's cyber henchmen, Saad al-Qahtani, to remain quiet, to shut up, stop tweeting, stop writing, stop posting, shut up.
		And it gets so serious.
		He realizes that he's going to be rounded up and thrown in a jail.
		And he flees the country.
		He goes into self-exile.
		He takes a job at the Washington Post, writing as a global opinions columnist for the Washington Post.
		This is now basically the end of...
		I'm going to mess up the dates, but this is sometime in the...
		The fall of 2017. And starts publishing columns in the Washington Post where he is critical of the Trump-Saudi relationship.
		And he's writing critically of Mohammed bin Salman of what's going on in the country because so many of his friends are being arrested.
		So many of the people that he knows are all of a sudden being silenced.
		And at the same time, he starts working with this Saudi dissident to Montreal, Omar Abdul Aziz.
		He's 27 years old.
		He went to school when he was 19 in Canada because Saudi Arabia, their way into the future is to educate, essentially, their people so that they're not going to be 100% reliant on oil.
		And because they have trillions and trillions of dollars, they can pay for the educations of, you know, any of their good students to go outside of the country to be educated under the promise that if we pay for your education, you're going to come back to Saudi Arabia, right, and take your education and help our country, you know, grow.
		So, Omar Abdulaziz is one of these guys.
		He goes to Montreal at 19. He's studying at McGill.
		And He literally goes on a foreign exchange program, and the first family that he goes to live with is a Jewish family in Montreal.
		And Omar goes, you know, obviously from what he had been thought to believe, you know, growing up in Saudi Arabia and, you know, Israel and Jews and stuff, and all of a sudden Omar's in Montreal, and he goes, wait, this...
		These people are nice.
		I like these people.
		And he also is being ingrained into Western philosophy, into a democracy, into a free way of being.
		And he starts taking to Twitter, basically, why isn't Saudi Arabia like this?
		Why isn't my country like this?
		Why don't we have freedom of speech?
		Why don't we have freedom of opinion?
		Why does our country have to be like this?
		And he starts growing his Twitter following.
		He goes back to Saudi Arabia because his mother has cancer.
		And while he's there, he's continuing to tweet.
		And his father, who's working for Saudi Arabian intelligence, gets a call and goes, you need to bring Omar in.
		In to meet with us.
		And his father, knowing what this is, knows that they're basically going to arrest his son or silence his son or basically make it that his son can never leave the country.
		And Omar decides to head back to Canada.
		This was now six years ago, seven years ago.
		And he returns back to Canada.
		He's grown his Twitter following to, I think he has 600, 700,000 followers, and starts tweeting against, essentially, Saudi Arabia, the kingdom, freedom of speech.
		And Jamal Khashoggi, as he now is living in self-exile, Reaches out to Omar Abdul Aziz because Omar is now this voice of the youth and Jamal wants to basically, you know, see how he can change his country.
		And what Omar tells him is that because what had been happening is every single time that Jamal would send out a tweet, And Jamal has 1.75 million Twitter followers.
		Hundreds and hundreds of responses come onto his Twitter feed.
		You know, go to hell.
		You should burn in hell.
		You should die.
		You're a traitor.
		And Jamal is thinking that his whole country has turned on him.
		What he doesn't realize is that this isn't real.
		These are the Saudi flies, the trolls that the government has hired to basically quash his Twitter account and basically have their own hashtags trending.
		So Omar understands this and he tells Jamal, he goes, no, no, no, no, no.
		This isn't real, Jamal.
		This isn't real.
		This is what the government's doing.
		We know this.
		Let me show you.
	So Omar and Jamal start working together.
	And Jamal agrees to fund Omar Abdulaziz's money to basically start buying thousands and thousands of SIM cards, Canadian and U.S. SIM cards, that they can send to Saudi Arabia, right, so that you can't track where the phone is coming from because it'll look like a U.S. or Canadian SIM card.
	And also distribute among dissidents all over that are not living in Saudi Arabia to start fighting the government trolls on Twitter, that they can send out basically their tweets and go, this is what's really happening, and basically fight fire with fire.
	Well, they hack Omar's phone, the Saudis, with Pegasus, which is Israeli cybersecurity software, which Israel is basically selling through this company, NSO, to any government that essentially wants it because it gives Israel spying technology because now they know who Saudi Arabia is interested in.
	And they hack Omar's phone with Pegasus.
	They hack Jamal's phone with Pegasus.
	Now the Saudis know what Jamal and Omar are working on, on top of anything else that Jamal is doing.
	And arguably, this leads to Jamal's murder.
	And they actually come to Canada a few months before murdering Jamal and try to rendition Omar back to Saudi Arabia.
	And this is all, you know, in the movie The Dissident and just a crazy, devastating story.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, did they ever contact Jamal and tell him to stop?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, they did.
		Saad al-Qahtani had reached out to Jamal, and they reached out to him again when he was in the United States, basically threatening him and saying, you need to stop.
		But Jamal...
		You know, I think having worked for the kingdom for so many years, I think he viewed there would maybe be a threat of rendition.
		There would be a threat of, you know, you were going to, I don't know, try to bring you back.
		But I don't think he ever could imagine that they were going to murder him in his own country's consulate.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think they did that with him?
		Why did they treat it as such a hostile act?
		That they were willing to be so brazen?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think you have to look beyond just this specific murder and you have to look at what has been happening in our global landscape, which is essentially that what we have learned essentially from Russia and Putin.
		Here's the poisoning in 2006 of Alexander Lithunenko with polonium, basically nuclear poisoning.
		And while Britain determines 100% that it's Russia, they know it's Putin, they don't do anything about it.
		It's a smack on the wrist, right?
		Because you go, okay, well, what is really Britain or the UK or the US really going to do about this?
		Are we going to go to war with Russia?
		No.
		Are we going to cut off all business relationships?
		No.
		Are you going to impose spectacular sanctions and this, that, and the other?
		Probably not.
		And so, basically, Putin gets away with this crime.
		He gets away with all the other crimes.
		You know, the poisoning of Kim Jong Il's brother.
		You know, at the Malaysian airport a few years ago, right?
		Gets away with it.
		And so if you look at this authoritarian playbook over the last, whatever you call it, you know, 15, 20 years where everything is kind of reported and everybody's filming with their phone and everybody's on, you know, the internet, is that...
		MBS believed that he could get away with this, right?
		Meaning, what are you going to do against Saudi Arabia?
		We have trillions of dollars.
		We invest trillions of dollars.
		And really, what are you going to do against us?
		Now, at the same time, You know, the Trump administration and Kushner are very close with the royal family.
		Whether you like or dislike Trump, this is just a flat-out fact.
		I mean, Trump basically, in the fallout of Khashoggi's murder, not only protected Mohammed bin Salman, he vetoed both the House of Representatives and the Senate passing legislation that was going to block Arm sales to Saudi Arabia because they buy hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons from us.
		Saudi Arabia is the single biggest purchaser of weapons from the United States.
		Okay?
		So they block hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons from us, and Trump vetoes it.
		At the same time they're trying to pass legislation to sanction Saudi Arabia against the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Trump vetoes it.
		And on top of that, in Bob Woodard's book that came out a few months ago, there's audio tapes of Trump going, I saved Mohammed bin Salman's ass.
		And if you've followed the news over the last few weeks, the Trump administration has put forward to the Justice Department A request for immunity against prosecution for Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudis,
		you know, whatever else, when he leaves office, that Biden would not be able to go try and be able to prosecute Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Khashoggi or other crimes.
		And this is pending right now with the Justice Department.
		So these are facts.
		And, you know, in the film, the admonishing of Trump comes from Bob Corker, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham.
		So you have essentially our country and, you know, bipartisan support across Congress to basically reassess this U.S.-Saudi relationship, which our government is viewing toxic.
		And you've had the Trump administration basically going, no, no, no, we're going to protect this guy.
		And the reason why I tell this story is I believe that they believed, Mohammed bin Salman, that they could kill Khashoggi and get away with it.
		And the biggest thing that they would have been worried about is that the United States would have taken action and they knew that they had safety with the Trump administration.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did Trump make any statements, any public statements about what he thought happened or what he was going to do about it?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, many.
		I mean, you know, after he obtained the CIA findings of this murder, and the CIA basically said, I don't remember what it was, with certainty, you know, with a high level of certainty, which apparently if the CIA says that, that's like basically going, It happened.
		They will never say it's 100%.
		It was a high level of certainty that Mohammed bin Salman ordered this murder.
		And Trump dismissed intelligence findings, as he has again.
		And here you have, you know, Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker and Mitch McConnell.
		I mean, all of his...
		What's the word?
		Supporters, you know, basically going, how can the president dismiss the CIA's findings in this crime?
		I mean, there was the audio, there were the transcripts, there was the surveillance footage, and then apparently there are tons of intercepted phone calls that U.S. intelligence has that Khashoggi's fiancée, Hattija Jenghis, has just submitted to the incoming Biden administration to release these files on Khashoggi's murder that apparently were intercepted communications that show without a shadow of a doubt that Mohammed bin Salman ordered this murder.
		There's also a shocking part that When Turkey, after a year of working on this film, they give me the 37-page transcript to Khashoggi's murder.
		And, I mean, it's stunning.
		I mean, the guys who murder him are literally making jokes and laughing ahead of killing him, talking about basically Cutting him up like a horse.
		Talking about how it'll be easy to cut up his body because you're just going to basically hang him and quarter him.
		And they're laughing about it.
		And in this 37-page transcript that I receive, it cuts out.
		Right after Khashoggi has been murdered and they take off his clothes, basically strip him.
		And they strip him because they're going to put his clothes on a body double who puts on a fake beard and walks out the back of the consulate.
		And the Turks found this in surveillance footage of this body double trying to pretend to be Khashoggi leaving the consulate.
		And the transcript then cuts out for about two hours and then picks back up, meaning the actual dismembering of Khashoggi I don't have in the transcript.
		And I asked my sources, Why the transcript cut out?
		What I've heard, and I certainly wouldn't have any way to verify this, is that the room that they killed him in was the only room in the consulate where they could securely communicate with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
		In the film, you'll see these footage and photos which To this day, it's still not been released to the world.
		The Turks gave me this footage and photos for the film, which is staggering.
		And you'll see this media room where there's the camera set up basically to do a secure call.
		And this was the only room in the consulate that was bugged, but it was the only room in the consulate that had a secure video communication system with Riyadh.
		And what I was told is that after they murdered Khashoggi, they made a call back to Riyadh to arguably show MBS or Saud al-Qahtani that Khashoggi was in fact dead and dismembered.
		And I guess Turkey has decided to, you know, save this piece or whatever of information.
		Save it.
		Well, for whatever reason, they haven't wanted to come forward with this part of the transcript.
		And there's another thing, that as they're removing these bags that contain Khashoggi's body, that they're then going to go bring over to the Consul General's home.
		And the Turks believe they burned his body in the tandoori oven.
		They ordered 70 pounds of meat from a very well-known restaurant right after he was murdered and so the Turks believed that they burned his body in this tandoor oven which they had checked that could burn it over a thousand degrees a couple days before the murder so that there'd be no DNA evidence and that you'd burn it with the meat and so it would smell like there was, you know, meat burning rather than a body.
		That there's a bag that apparently contained his hands.
		And Moutreb basically says, no, no, no.
		You leave that bag for me.
		Fingerprints.
		So it's believed that they brought back his hands and his head to Saudi Arabia.
		Yeah, unbelievable.
		possible.
		Yeah, there it is.
		U.S. considers granting immunity to Saudi prince and suspects it's assassination attempt.
		So this was an assassination attempt of another Saudi national who's living in the United States.
		And they had basically sent this whole kill team in through Canada to come kill this guy.
		Who is a dissenter living in the U.S. But that case is pending right now, and so the Trump administration is looking to grant Mohammed bin Salman immunity from any sort of prosecution.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What kind of weird backroom deals are they making?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's one.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		If you pull up, there's a story on the New York Times.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		500 million dollar arms sale to Riyadh.
		Critics Slam reported munitions deal in final weeks of Donald Trump's presidency as outrageous and a moral outrage.
		Wow.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's a better one.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Look up the New York Times reported...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's going to move there.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Two days.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what's going to happen.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he's going to move there.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		He's going to have a huge palace.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's going to take off.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		He's going to set up in Riyadh.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're going to say that we're going to prosecute him in America, and he's going to be like, no, you're not.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Mohammed bin Laden's like, no, no, no.
		Come over here.
		Come over here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Imagine if he did move there.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Can you imagine?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want a beautiful, the most beautiful palace.
		Trump, Trump, Saudi Arabia.
		Right here, Trump Palace.
		Sets up a golf course.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I mean, God, you could see it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I could see it.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		But here's another layer to this story, which is even crazier.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's more layers?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
		So, as you know, Saudi Arabia...
		Over the last, I don't know how long it's been going on, two, three years, whatever, it's had a blockade on Qatar, right?
		And Qatar is, you know, this small, very, very rich country, but it is landlocked, you know.
		It's the only way to in and out of Qatar without traveling through Saudi Arabia is by sea.
		So Saudi Arabia basically tried to invade Qatar and take it over.
		The Turks basically saved Qatar by helping them, you know, with their military.
		And the Saudis and the Qatar's have been, you know, basically hated each other for a long time.
		So Saudi Arabia creates this blockade that no plane or no car, truck, anything can travel over Saudi airspace or through Saudi land to go into Qatar.
		So, you know, creating some really serious economic damage to Qatar, right?
		So, if you've read the story about the Kushner building on Park Avenue, that apparently they owe hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on, and the Kushner family is, you know, like on the verge of, you know, whatever it is if you read this, bankruptcy over all these real estate debts.
		So, there was a deal just brokered.
		Where Qatar bailed out the Kushner Building on Park Avenue.
		And right after this bailout, it was announced that Saudi Arabia has lifted their embargo, their isolation of Qatar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's how you say it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I always thought it was Qatar.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I've been told Qatar, but Qatar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Qatar.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Q-A-T-A-R. And so the back story of this is the bailout of the Kushner building by Qatar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they made a backroom bail.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Saudi Arabia end feud with Qatar and Jared Kushner broker deal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		January 4th, 2021. During the same time they're brokering the arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the final weeks of the presidency, it's all so dark.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		It's so dark.
		And so when you say, you know...
		Did he think he could get away with it?
		Well, I mean...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is it like for you to put together a documentary like this?
		I mean, while you're going over all this information, while you're reading the transcripts and piecing together the crime...
		What is this like for you as a human being, just to realize that this is happening in the same era as what we're dealing with here in America?
		Here we are in the United States, a completely different way of living, much freer access to communication.
		Free speech is one of our core tenets.
		To see this and to go...
		How disturbing is this for you?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, coming out of the experience of Icarus, and I tell this story because it leads to your question.
		As I began making Icarus, I was going through a really, really hard time in my life.
		Ten years previous, I had a play and a book and a movie that had done well.
		And I had paid my bills off this thing called Jutopia, which was a play that ran for three and a half years off-Broadway.
		It was about a A gentile who wanted to marry a Jewish girl so he'd never have to make another decision.
		So my background was in comedy.
		I was acting, I was starring in this show that I wrote, that I was producing.
		I performed in this show 2,000 times.
		I mean, I was going crazy.
		I'd basically become, you know, I was the Jewtopia guy.
		And I was like pigeonholed into this because it was like a be careful of what you wish for because all of a sudden I have this hit show.
		I've got a book and people just saw me as like it was like you know Jason Alexander you know it's like Costanza or Ross on Friends.
		They were never going to see me as something else.
		And during this time, I decided that I want to direct.
		I didn't want to act anymore.
		I didn't want to do comedy anymore, really.
		I wanted to direct and produce because I didn't want to go seek that validation that you need as an actor, where you're auditioning and you're always seeking the validation from others.
		And this play, you know, having starring in it and producing it and co-wrote it and, you know, I said, wait, I don't want to go back to needing validation from others.
		I just want to be the guy who can make those decisions and pull those strings and create things and put myself in them or not.
		And so I really got started to focus just that I wanted to direct and produce.
		So I get to make, over the next four years, I cobbled together a million and a half dollars to go direct the film adaptation of Jutopia.
		And long story short, the money I took into it was just not friendly money.
		It was a real estate guy and he didn't understand the movie business.
		A 26-day shoot turned into a 19-day shoot.
		They didn't want to sell the film.
		Instead, they just wanted to release it for rental with no marketing or advertising behind it.
		It got bad reviews.
		It was a flop.
		And I had put my savings into this movie as well.
		And so here I am in 2012 and I'm broke.
		And I literally don't know what I'm going to do with my life.
		I'm what I would call in director's jail.
		I no longer had my agency at the time.
		I was at CAA, so I lost my agency.
		Nobody was sending me out for projects.
		The movie was looked at as a failure.
		And I'm basically in a midlife crisis.
		I'm literally renting out my apartment as an Airbnb to pay my bills.
		And I'm literally debating moving back to Denver in with my family until I can figure things out.
		And here I was a couple years earlier starring in a show.
		This depression leads me to start writing.
		I start on Icarus.
		And three years later, I'm standing on stage at the Academy Awards winning an Oscar.
		A complete 180. Of my life.
		I mean, a totally surreal moment.
		But with that came this huge kind of burden, this feeling that, okay, well, I just basically helped save a man's life.
		I helped expose the biggest doping scandal in sport history.
		I was working with U.S. intelligence agencies, bringing a guy into protection.
		And all of those really, really serious stakes around Icarus.
		And then I'm given this incredible accolade and I go, well, I can't go make my next movie a Disney movie.
		I can't go do something that's, you know, not going to have stakes.
		And so I'm trying to figure out what that next project is going to be.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you feel like that was forced upon you or was that your instincts?
		Like, it was just how you felt about your future?
		Because Icarus was so rewarding?
		Because it was so impactful?
		Like, why did you decide that that had to be the case for the future?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I felt that it would be...
		Disingenuous.
		It felt that it wouldn't be operating with integrity to go through a journey that spoke truth to power, that brought forward a story that I felt that the world needed and wanted to see, which clearly they did.
		And that Gregory Rechenkov is still living under the fear of his life every single day in protection, in isolation, for basically bringing to me his truth and trusting me with his life and his truth.
		So to then go jump in and go do whatever you want to call it didn't feel It felt like I had been bestowed this gift, this privilege, and that I wanted to see to it that the next project that I did, that I would stay that course.
		And in Jamal's murder, it ticked all these boxes for me.
		It was the story of human rights.
		It was the story of freedom of speech.
		It was the story of freedom of journalism.
		You know, cyber hacking.
		But then there was this personal story.
		And this is where I get to your question.
		Right after Jamal is murdered, in my mind I go, hey, this seems like this could be the next story.
		This could be the next film I make.
		But there were three variables to me as to whether or not I could take this story on.
		At least that I saw it.
		Because I didn't want to tell an archival film.
		I didn't want to go piece together a bunch of news footage and, you know, here's my documentary.
		I wanted to...
		Do like what I did in Icarus, where I'm embedding, where I really, really go deep into it, where I craft a story and a film that the world doesn't know.
		And if they think they know about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and they watch The Dissident, they realize they don't.
		And for me to do that, it depended on three things.
		One, Hattisha Jenga's, Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée.
		Whether or not she would participate with me and whether or not she would work with me exclusively to tell her story and that story of their love together.
		Because that to me was going to be the emotional connection of the film.
		That was the human connection.
		A woman who was in love with this man, who believed that she was going to marry this man, who walks into a consulate to go get marriage papers to marry this woman, to never return.
		I mean, just...
		Unfathomable.
		And so would Hattisha work with me?
		The second was Omar Abdelaziz.
		Here's this story emerging in the New York Times in the days following Khashoggi's murder of this young Saudi dissident who's claiming, who's saying that his brothers are sitting in a Saudi prison with no charges.
		23 of his friends are sitting in a Saudi jail with no charges.
		That he had been hacked with Pegasus, that the Saudis had come to rendition and kill him in Canada months before.
		And I saw in Omar, the protagonist, the young Khashoggi, the voice of, you know, who's still alive, fighting for his life under security of Canada.
		Would Omar work with me?
		And allow me his evidence and his audio and tell his story because through Omar, again, we come to understand what's really going on in Saudi Arabia, but also come to love Jamal.
		And the third element was the Turks, the Turkish.
		Would they provide me information, evidence, transcripts, interviews that was not on CNN, was not on BBC, that they had not given to anybody else other than intelligence agencies?
		So as I set out on this journey, I get connected to Hatice, and I go to Istanbul a month after Jamal's murder.
		And I didn't bring a cameraman.
		I'm sorry, I didn't bring a camera.
		I traveled there with Jake Swanko, my cinematographer, who also produced the film with me.
		And Hatice was just willing to meet with me.
		She didn't even speak English at the time, and we had a translator.
		And I spent five weeks there meeting with her every other day as she was going through the worst unimaginable grief telling her, Hatija, look, let me help you.
		Let me tell this story.
		Trust me.
		I promise you I'll protect you.
		I promise you.
		I promise you that I will protect Jamal.
		And I left Istanbul after five weeks and she was still deciding.
		And I then went to Montreal.
		And with Omar, it was the same thing.
		But Omar allowed me to start filming.
		But every time after we filmed with Omar, we would leave him all of the camera cards because Omar wasn't ready to participate either.
		He was in total shock.
		And this was this trust building with these people and Then Hatija basically says, hey, I'm ready.
		And I go and meet her in Brussels as she goes to speak in front of the European Parliament.
		First time basically leaving her country other than going to Oman.
		She had never been in Western Europe.
		And that scene where Hatija is introduced in the film was the very first time that I was able to film with her and she trusted me.
		And this began what's now been this two-year incredibly personal, emotional journey because you're with these people as they're going through this horrific loss, as they're fighting for justice.
		I mean, I was with Omar in Canada as he's learning that one of his brothers had been tortured and had his teeth knocked out, a 19-year-old brother.
	For doing nothing other than knowing Omar.
	I'm shooting with Omar in Canada as he's receiving death threats on his phone in Arabic coming from Canadian phone numbers.
	I'm with Hatija as we walk into what was going to be her and Jamal's home in Istanbul and we open the door and it's a crime scene and there's black dust everywhere because they had taken the whole place for fingerprints and she's in this place that she thought she was going to spend her life with Jamal going, where's Jamal's stuff?
	What happened here?
	And This has taken such a huge emotional toll on me because you really come to love these people.
	On the other hand, I'm so grateful.
	Like, had Icarus not happened, I wouldn't be able to go tell these stories.
	These people wouldn't have trusted me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think you'd even be compelled to tell a story like this if Icarus had not happened?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		No way.
		I get asked this question all the time.
		Like, are you scared of your life?
		You know, you're taking on Putin.
		You're taking on MBS. You're fighting these forces.
		And in this film...
		Here we go to Sundance.
		Hillary Clinton's at my premiere.
		Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, is at my premiere.
		Audiences are on their feet applauding.
		Hatija, his fiancee, is there.
		Agnes Calamar, the UN Special Repertoire that investigated his murders there.
		Standing ovations, tears going down people's eyes, and not a single major global streamer steps up to acquire the film.
		We arguably had the best reviews of any film out of Sundance.
		We were on all of the Hollywood Reporter, Variety, AP, their top ten films of all of Sundance, top films of 2020 lists, etc.
		The most incredible accolades.
		And we were not offered a single dollar for this film.
		And I'm going in there basically at this point as an Oscar winner.
		And so to go through that experience and go, wait, am I the only one that wants to speak truth to power?
		What happens when I go and spend two years of my life fighting for something like this?
		And the only way that people can go see it is to go rent it on VOD because all of these media companies are in business with the Saudis, are taking money from the Saudis, have stock owned by the Saudis, and are too scared or have too many ties to actually want to speak any sort of truth to power or even allow their subscribers to see this content.
		And here with Icarus, you know, every single time I turn on my Netflix, still, Icarus is at the top of my feed, three years later, with What I've been told, 700 million views.
		So I know that people want to see this film.
		I know people want to learn about this.
		And we craft it as a thriller.
		I mean, it's not crafted as a doc.
		It's crafted like The Bourne Identity.
		But instead, people are going to have to find the film instead of being able to go into their subscription services and have it just live there for people to discover and find.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you discuss it with Netflix?
		Did you have personal communication or do representatives talk to them?
		How do you do that?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, we have a sales agent.
		You go into Sundance.
		And ahead of Sundance, you would have thought that there would have been a lot of requests, knowing that this film was coming into Sundance, for these major buyers to get an advanced look at the film.
		There were none.
		And then we go on to Sundance.
		The heads of most of these companies were actually there, not just their buyers, like the bosses.
		And one after the other, after the other, passed with no explanation.
		Just, sorry, we can't take this.
		This is too dangerous for us.
		This is too This is scary for us.
		This is too much of a security risk for us.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They told you these things.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Told my sales agent.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Too much of a security risk.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Or they just would say, you know, sorry, our slate is full for the year, right?
		You know, and And what I got to see was that we are living right now in a world where big business and money and investment Take place over human rights, over freedom of speech, over freedom of journalism, over freedom of press.
		And it's okay that Omar's brothers sit in a Saudi jail tortured, 23 of his friends sit in jail, thousands and thousands and thousands of people are arrested or hundreds are beheaded simply for For speaking publicly, not in support of their government.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's why they were beheaded?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they were beheaded for speaking out against the government?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And this is okay as long as you can grow your subscribers.
		As long as you can do business with them.
		And this isn't just Netflix.
		This is all of them.
		Amazon just acquired Souk, which is the Saudi Arabia of Amazon.
		So even in the film, you see Jeff Bezos is hacked.
		By the Saudis.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		With the same Pegasus software.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Jamal Khashoggi is his employee because he owns the Washington Post.
		And yet, they don't acquire the film to distribute it.
		Well, arguably...
		This is about shareholder value.
		This is about growth in the region.
		This is about continued business interest.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But they do have it available on Amazon Prime to rent and to buy.
unidentified		To rent.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		But it's very different than having it as an original, right?
		When something is, let's say, an Amazon original, a Netflix original, an HBO original, A Disney original, a Hulu original, right?
		That streamer, that platform, is taking ownership of that content, labeling it with that original, and also doing the marketing and the support and the awards campaign behind it, and then that content will live on that platform and they'll market and support that content.
		So far beyond our rental that's set up, which is very different, meaning if you're just putting something up there to rent, not only is there no risk for the company, another company is doing that to put that up there, and it's not being labeled as an original, so it's not like a, wow, why did you do this?
		But as of right now, we don't have a secondary output window, meaning after Our video on demand window is kind of over.
		Right now we don't have a secondary output deal with a Netflix or an Amazon or an HBO. And do you know anyone at Netflix?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you know any of the executives?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Could you have a conversation with them about this?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I know a ton of them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And did you reach out?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Look, I love Netflix.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I do too.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And I'm grateful to Netflix because without Netflix, Icarus wouldn't have had that success.
		And that film changed my life.
		Without Netflix's support, it wouldn't have won the Academy Award.
		And I have a lot of friends at Netflix and I'm grateful to them.
		Netflix is not the same company that it was a couple years ago.
		When Icarus was acquired, there was 100 million subscribers.
		There's now 200 million subscribers.
		When Icarus was acquired, they had never won an Academy Award for a feature.
		Icarus was their first feature Academy Award win in 2018. And now everybody is willing to do films for them, whether that's Alfonso Cuaron or David Fincher or Martin Scorsese, plus all the biggest actors and stars in the world.
		Meaning, not only are they a different company, it's everybody is doing business with them.
		And the awards season this year, probably 40-50% of those top films, you know, will be Netflix films.
		And that's amazing that, you know, that they are getting behind content like that and also that, you know, everybody from George Clooney to Alfonso Cuaron, right?
		I mean, you name it.
		There's no disparity anymore other than maybe a handful of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Spielberg that have said, hey, they're not going to do Netflix films.
		They want to preserve theaters that won't work with Netflix.
		But that growth and their need to expand internationally because they're topped out in the United States.
		I think has changed the company as to the risks they're willing to take as to content.
		And that's unfortunate.
		You know, this isn't so shocking to me.
		You know, months before Sundance, they removed an episode of Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act.
		Hassan had done an episode making fun of Mohammed bin Salman and focused on the Khashoggi murder.
		And the Kingdom basically asked Netflix to remove it from their platform.
		And they took it off the air in Saudi Arabia.
		And then they defended the decision by saying, we're not a truth to power company.
		We're in the entertainment business.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They literally said that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was their statement?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		That was Reed Hastings' statement.
		You can Google it.
		You can look it up online.
		And he has supported that statement on many occasions.
		And apparently the back story behind that is that they were able to negotiate to have other content that wouldn't have been allowed in Saudi Arabia streaming on Netflix in exchange for taking off that episode.
		But the bottom line of it is that there was a decision made that, hey, we want to grow in the kingdom.
		We've got, you know, Saudi Arabia, investment, God knows what percentage of Netflix stock they own, etc., right?
		And we're going to remove this episode.
		Mohammed bin Salman doesn't want it on the air.
		So, I mean, if you look at that, the handwriting was on the wall that they were arguably not going to take the dissident, regardless of the fact that I had done Icarus.
		And regardless of, you know, the accolades and what the film is and, you know, arguably that, you know, hundreds of millions of people on their platform would want to watch it.
		This wasn't just them.
		It was all of them.
		And I think it speaks to, you know, this greater issue that we have to start thinking about, which is...
		If all these media conglomerates, and there isn't that many, you know, HBO is owned by Time and Warner Media, and I mean, it's, you know, it's like kind of what's happened with the airline industry now.
		There's only, you know, there's only a few big players, and there's not that many options.
		That, you know, this is...
		It's seeming to be an increasingly difficult time for filmmakers, for storytellers like myself that want to make content like this because they want to tell stories like this that they believe that humanity should see and know and not have a global distribution outlet for that.
		I don't know what the solution is, but I'm certainly not angry at anyone.
		I'm just disappointed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's got to be a very bizarre place to be in because does this flavor or does this have any impact on your next choice?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like what you do for your next film?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a great question.
		And I've really been thinking about that.
		I have two projects that I'm working on I don't want to disclose.
		One is very much of the Ilk of Icarus and the Dissonant.
		The other is more commercial driven and then I have a scripted series that I'm working on that is of the kind of Icarus Russia kind of stuff and that we do have a partner on we haven't announced it yet But it's scripted.
		I want to continue to when a story comes that I go somebody needs to do this or this has got the makings of a thriller and I think I can and me and my creative team can craft something really powerful.
		I don't think I'm going to be swayed by it but I think I'm going to go into it with a different perspective knowing that probably the distribution challenges are going to be there from the outset and might try to do things from the outset to try to limit that or figure out how we're going to position it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So this was, it's safe to say this was shocking to you to not get picked up.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Shocking is an understatement.
		And I don't ever want to toot my own horn, you know, but when you look at what this story is, I mean, I made this film for Hatisha Jenga as his fiancée.
		I made the film for Omar Abdulaziz.
		I made the film for Because I saw with Icarus the power that film can have.
		I mean, when Icarus came out in August 2017, despite the story already being public, Russia was still going to the Olympics.
		Five months later, the IOC on their reasoned decision basically cites Icarus as one of their reasons for banning Russia from the Games.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think without that, Russia still would be in the Olympics?
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I believe so, yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's got to be a crazy feeling.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Because look at what film does.
		Let's take The Cove, for example, right?
		About dolphin slaughter in Japan.
		That film completely changed that industry in Japan.
		Because you're watching dolphins get rounded up and murdered.
		Look at Blackfish and what that did for SeaWorld, right?
		And there are so many films that you can draw these parallels to that I have the power to actually change politics, have the power to change the course of history.
		And that was what was so incredible about Icarus.
		And that's what also gave me that feeling of a burden to go, you know, take on a story like the Khashoggi murder because I saw how it could impact change and how it could actually change a narrative.
		And I mean, everywhere I go, they might not recognize me, but then if I say, hey, what are you doing?
		I go, oh yeah, did you see Icarus?
		I mean, everywhere I go in the world, they all saw it.
		Like, I can't even find people that haven't seen it at this point.
		I mean, it feels like the whole planet watched it.
		And that is the extraordinary power of Netflix.
		That when they put out a film, it releases into like 197 countries across like 50 languages all at the same time.
		The entire world has access to it.
		And the entire world should have access to this film.
		But they're not going to have access to this film because there are business interests at stake.
		There are investment interests at stake.
		And that is really disappointing.
		And so I'm shocked that That I believe with great wealth and with great power comes great responsibility.
		And if these business titans that have these huge companies Lose their moral compass.
		Lose their direction to basically say, okay, this might not be the very best thing for our business or our subscriber growth, but goddammit, people should see this.
		Wow!
		We gotta do something about it.
		Wow!
		There are people losing their lives and sitting in jails and maybe our distributing this film can change that.
		Maybe our letting our hundreds of millions of subscribers see this can actually bring about positive change for humanity.
		And they don't do that?
		That's really soul-crushing.
		I got a message, and I hope Hatija is not going to be mad at me.
		His fiancée sent me a message two days ago.
		And she said, I'm proud of you every day.
		You made history.
		You did an incredible job, believe me.
		All is well now.
		I'm getting better every day.
		This trauma has created a new Hattisha, I think.
		I understand that every day.
		I'm not the same person two years as I was two years before.
		I got a lot, and I learned a lot, and I made some good friends.
		The most important one is you and your team, Thor, that's Thor Halverson, the president of the Human Rights Foundation who financed the film, and Jake Swanko.
		He is my cinematographer.
		My life changed and my opinion also changed and my daily life also changed.
		The one thing that did not change is my love and my heart.
		It's still full of love for humanity and Jamal's soul.
		I believe that if we change life, it will be with love and with love for our values.
		And that's extraordinary to me to see that his fiancée two years on has such that incredible positive outlook in the world.
		And I'm so honored to receive that message.
		And at the same time, I know that for the world to actually learn of her story and her fight for Jamal's life and for justice is going to be a struggle because of the,
		whatever you want to call it, business interests of these major platforms that come ahead of Seeking any sort of accountability for human rights abuses.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the potential to make the world a better place.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		And the potential to make the world a better place, but it might not align with their goals for subscriber growth in that region of the world.
		Or it might not coincide with possible future investments or investments or shareholder value.
		That's unfortunate.
		It's unfortunate if the richest man on planet Earth, or now the second, I guess, Jeff Bezos, is more concerned with his bottom line than he is concerned about seeking justice and accountability for a man who worked for him,
		who was murdered while working for his newspaper, and that He and his company could have stepped forward to see to it that the world truly had access to this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know Brian it's really crazy hearing your story and thinking that just eight years ago you were doing this play and your your life is falling apart and you know telling the story that you've Created this documentary in Icarus and then just by circumstance while you're making this documentary the scandal unfolds Changes everything the document becomes the documentary comes out.
		It's a masterpiece literally changes the way the entire sporting world looks at Russia and drug doping and now I mean, your life has taken a really bizarre turn.
		And you've been very courageous.
		You know, what you've done is you looked in the mirror and you did the right thing.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Oh, thanks.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I really appreciate that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you did a bold thing.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't change it.
		Because when you get to work with these people, as hard as it may be, I think of Hattisha as my sister now.
		And when I get messages like that, or when I get to talk to Gregory and he thanks me for saving his life, You know, I go, okay.
		Well, I should keep doing this.
		I should, you know, and I think that that is...
		I don't...
		Not to wax philosophically, but...
		You know, I just...
		I've had so many ups and downs in my life and so many financial kind of struggles and thinking, you know, here I was, you know, facing 40 years old a few years ago going, I'm going to go move back to Colorado with my parents.
		That...
		But if I have been kind of bestowed these gifts and people who are willing to finance and back these projects for me to go do and me and my team can go and make this content and do this content and and follow these stories then you know then then why not you know we were just on this planet for such a for such a short time I mean it's
		I mean every year the ticks by I can't I can't believe it I mean and so you know we know that we've got this really limited time and that we're all just ants on the planet like I'm so aware that and like when I go to get New York I always get I get depressed because I realize how much I am an ant on the planet, and it doesn't matter how famous you may be.
		When you're gone, you're gone, and the newspapers might write about you for a couple days, and you're David Bowie, or you're Michael Jackson, or Whoever you are, and when you pass, you pass on.
		And we don't know where we're going.
		I certainly don't know where I'm going.
		So I go, well, at least this time that I have on this planet, if I've been given this gift, I might as well keep trying to use it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you most certainly have made an impact.
		And I appreciate you.
		And anytime you got something going on that you want to promote, I am here for you.
		100%.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		You're a good man.
		I listen to you all the time, and yeah, you are the powerful Joe Rogan.
		But it's a testament to the work that you're doing too, Joe, because your story is equally incredible from...
		You know, from Fear Factor and being able to do comedy and get up on a stage and make people laugh and then have this show where you're able to bring in people from all sorts of walks of life all sorts of careers and talk to them and have built this huge audience because you've opened up that platform
		for people to get information you know kudos man it's it's a good thing that you're doing and I listen to you religiously so thanks man I appreciate it I don't know what the fuck happened I have no idea how this happened My story is much more convoluted than yours.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's very bizarre.
		But thanks, man.
		Thank you.
		Thank you very much.
		And everybody, go check out the documentary.
		It's really excellent.
		The Dissident, it's available.
		Like you saw, it's available.
		You can get it on iTunes.
		You can get it on Amazon.
		It's worth the money.
		It's very good.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and if you go online, thedissident.com, there's trailers.
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		You can read about it and you can find out how to watch it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And give everybody out your social media as well so they can...
bryan fogel ▲ ● ▼		My Twitter is at Brian Fogel.
		My Instagram handle is at Brian Fogel.
		And...
		The site is thedissident.com and you can rent it or buy it today.
		I promise you, you'll be shocked and horrified, but I think you'll also love the film.
		Crafted kind of as a born identity thriller and hopefully will keep you glued to your seat.
		And at the end of it, it'll make you want to get involved with the Human Rights Foundation or other human rights organizations around the world to try to continue fighting for justice for Jamal and accountability for this horrendous murder.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, everybody.

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