In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with Olympic Gold Medalist Jordan Burroughs to discuss his new documentary, "Icarus" and discuss the doping scandal that has rocked the sport of wrestling and doping in Russia since the release of the film in 2016. We talk about doping in sports, doping in the Olympics, doping scandals in the media, doping at the Olympics and much, much more! Icarus is out now in theaters in theaters and is a must watch! If you haven't seen the film, you should definitely check it out! It's a must see! I'm sure you'll agree that it's one of the most influential films in recent memory! Also, if you don't know who it's about, you're not going to want to miss this one. It's an absolute must watch movie! You won't regret it! -Joe Rogan Joe Rogans Experience is a weekly podcast hosted by the legendary comedian, podcaster, and podcaster. He's been a long time friend of mine and I've been a big fan of his work for years. I think he's a great humanitarian, and I hope you enjoy this one too. - Thank you for listening and tweet me what you think! ! Tweet me if you liked it and if you have a question or would like to recommend it to a friend of yours! Timestamps: 0:00: 1:00 - What's your favorite part of the movie? 5: What do you like about it? 6:30 - What does it sound like? 7:00 8: How do you think it's better than the film? 9:15 - What are you looking for? 10:30 11:40 - How does it feel? 13: What's the worst thing you're watching it right now? 15:20 - Is it better? 16:10 - What would you want to see me do more? 17:00 | What s your thoughts on the movie in the next episode? 18:30 | What is your favorite moment? 19:40 | What are your biggest takeaway from it s better than it's a good one? 21:40 22: Should I watch it again? 23:00 // 15:10 26:10 | How do I watch the movie
00:00:19.000I 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.
00:00:28.000Here, I'll let you do that, because it's very clunky.
00:00:32.000He 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.
00:00:41.000So he was that pissed off that he literally...
00:00:46.000He'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.
00:00:54.000You 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,
00:02:12.000However, 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.
00:02:32.000That was part of the WADA requirements.
00:02:36.000And they never basically turned it over.
00:02:41.000So WADA basically had to go after them, go after them, go after them.
00:02:45.000They reinstate them without turning over the data.
00:02:56.000It was not that long ago, about a year ago.
00:02:58.000And when they turn over the data, they had literally manipulated all the data.
00:03:04.000And they had already got a copy of it from Rychenkov and another guy in the lab.
00:03:08.000And they literally put notes into this LIMS data, basically trying to frame Rychenkov for like money laundering and taking bribes and all this shit.
00:03:17.000But WADA knew that this wasn't legitimate because they had the real databases already.
00:03:24.000So they go and they say, okay, now Russia's banned for another four years, right?
00:03:30.000And in the meantime, Russia is putting out in the media that Rechenkov has tried to commit suicide.
00:03:36.000Because 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.
00:03:48.000This is literally just like a couple months ago.
00:03:51.000So they were supposed to be facing another four-year total ban.
00:04:00.000And 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,
00:04:15.000but they can't compete under their country's flag.
00:05:03.000So Rechenkov has got Asylum here in America?
00:05:06.000Yeah, so he's got asylum here in America, and that story is crazy, too.
00:05:13.000So, you know, in Icarus, you see this scene where basically, like, I see him off at the airport.
00:05:21.000And that was July of 2016. So we keep, you know, making the film.
00:05:27.000The 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.
00:05:40.000And they cite Icarus as one of their main reasons for doing that.
00:05:45.000In the meantime, Rechenkov is literally trying to get political asylum.
00:05:52.000And on the day of his asylum hearing, this was now a year and a half, two years ago.
00:06:01.000I need to get with his lawyers to get the exact date.
00:06:05.000Russia files drug trafficking charges against him in Russia on the actual day that he's supposed to go in for his asylum hearing.
00:06:15.000So 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.
00:06:28.000And under international law, anybody who's been charged with drug trafficking, right, is basically immediately ineligible for asylum.
00:06:38.000So 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.
00:06:45.000So they charge them with drug trafficking.
00:06:47.000And the court then gets kicked out, and it takes him another year and a half, two years to get his asylum.
00:06:54.000And he finally just got his asylum like four months ago, something like that.
00:07:10.000I 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.
00:07:24.000And last time I spoke to him was about Two months ago, and, you know, the conversation always goes like, hey, Gregory, how are you?
00:07:55.000I 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.
00:08:09.000My 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.
00:08:21.000But 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.
00:08:32.000He's not really able to communicate with his family.
00:08:35.000He hasn't seen his family for four years now.
00:08:39.000His wife and his kids are back in Russia.
00:08:43.000So this has been a crazy cost for blowing the whistle.
00:08:49.000Didn't they take his wife and his children, didn't they take their family home away?
00:08:55.000Well, 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.
00:09:08.000He had a dacha, which is like a summer home.
00:09:12.000And apparently they seized that and they seized bank accounts and they brought in the family to interrogate him and they took their passports.
00:09:26.000From what I've heard is that his kids have their passports back.
00:09:38.000But, 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.
00:09:55.000But, you know, to my knowledge, the family has been pretty much left alone.
00:10:01.000It was bad for a little bit, but over the last few years, I've heard that they're okay.
00:10:12.000None of the family wants to come, because even if they do, then that means that their lives are now in isolation, in hiding.
00:10:25.000So 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,
00:10:42.000and she's got family back in Russia, so it's complicated.
00:10:49.000And this goes on for the rest of his life.
00:10:51.000Well, I mean, arguably for the rest of his life.
00:10:54.000I 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...
00:11:13.000And one of the stories that he came out with was basically this guy who was living in the Ukraine.
00:11:19.000He was working for the gas company, right?
00:11:23.000And 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.
00:11:45.000Of like, basically like, you know, like, kill names.
00:11:49.000And this guy who they arrest, and I know I'm botching the story a little bit, and you can go back.
00:11:54.000It was in, you know, part of the New York Times Daily.
00:11:59.000And this guy that they go and arrest basically goes, yes, I've been hired.
00:12:07.000I don't know why, but my job is basically to kill these people.
00:12:11.000So they start going through the list, and none of these people are really known.
00:12:17.000It 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?
00:12:32.000And this was like, whatever, 15 years ago.
00:12:37.000And here, this guy's living this quiet life in the Ukraine, working for the power company.
00:12:43.000And 12 years later, they come and get him.
00:12:45.000I mean, you look at the case of Skirpel, you know, the guy that they poisoned with Novichok a few years in Salisbury.
00:12:51.000That was another case where, you know, the guy had...
00:12:56.000The guy had been, you know, out of sight, out of mind for 15 years.
00:13:02.000You look at even the poisoning of Alexander Lithonanko in 2006. Well, at the time that they actually poisoned Lithonanko with polonium, We're good to go.
00:13:26.000Essentially 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.
00:13:40.000One of the guys I've spoke to a lot who have become a good friend is Bill Browder, you know, who wrote Red Notice.
00:13:52.000So, Bill was running this thing called the Hermitage Fund in Russia.
00:13:58.000And he was American, but his parents were actually members of a Communist Party.
00:14:05.000And he sets up an investment fund in Russia during the, you know, as everything's kind of becoming whatever it is, open, right?
00:14:17.000And the fund is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Russia.
00:14:21.000And 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,
00:14:37.000was behind, that had stolen this money.
00:14:39.000And so Magnitsky basically tries to bring this forward.
00:14:45.000And 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,
00:15:01.000Canada 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.
00:15:15.000And 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.
00:15:29.000And according to intelligence agencies, these guys kind of flip places depending on the moment.
00:15:39.000But Rechenkov is certainly a high-value asset.
00:15:47.000The stress on that guy must be incredible.
00:15:51.000I don't really know how he does it because he's such a...
00:16:00.000I mean, the guy that you see in the movie, that is who this guy is.
00:17:00.000I 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.
00:17:15.000And 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.
00:17:28.000He wakes up in the morning and goes...
00:17:50.000And he's just protected by guards all the time?
00:17:53.000Well, 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...
00:18:09.000We should stop right here and I should explain to people that don't know what we're talking about.
00:18:13.000That Gregory was the guy who, in your documentary, you did a race.
00:18:20.000You tried to do an Icarus, which is an amazing documentary if you haven't seen it.
00:18:34.000Yeah, so Gregory Rechenkov, basically the premise was I felt that the entire doping system in sport was a fraud.
00:18:47.000And the reason why I had this belief was I had followed Lance Armstrong my whole life.
00:18:54.000The 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.
00:19:07.000Well, 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.
00:19:20.000So as he confesses, and I'd been a cycling fan, a lifelong cyclist, I'm going, wait, wait, wait.
00:19:29.000You caught the guy based on a criminal investigation, but you didn't catch him based on the science.
00:19:34.000And if you can't catch the most tested athlete on planet Earth, well, what does this mean for every other athlete on planet Earth?
00:19:43.000And so the idea was that I was going to do like a supersize me in the world of sports.
00:19:51.000I 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.
00:20:04.000I mean, I was literally like injecting myself with like, you know, it was like 10 syringes a day.
00:20:20.000So, like, every other week, I'm literally going to get my blood drawn.
00:20:23.000I'm pissing to, like, you know, build, like, my whole steroid profile to basically try to evade testing.
00:20:30.000So, I get connected to this guy, Gregory Rutchenkov.
00:20:34.000And 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.
00:20:49.000This 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.
00:21:06.000Like, 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?
00:24:10.000If I put it on my credit card, well, no, you'll have to put it on your credit card.
00:24:14.000So 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.
00:25:54.000Everybody that I talked to admitted to cheating.
00:25:57.000And 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,
00:26:28.000And I went, alright, that's enough for me.
00:26:30.000I 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?
00:26:52.000Because everybody knows that everybody cheated.
00:26:54.000The general public is aware that cycling is a dirty sport.
00:26:57.000And they're also aware that if you take...
00:27:00.000Most 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.
00:27:22.000Which is, yeah, that he basically became the scapegoat for a broken system.
00:27:27.000But it was, and I think Lance would tell you the same thing, I mean, it was the way that he handled it.
00:27:35.000That got him in trouble and that he never knew when to say when.
00:27:40.000And 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.
00:27:53.000Denies it, denies it, denies it, and then he serves his suspension, comes back, and Lance has come out of retirement.
00:28:01.000You know, the great hope, you know, because the cycling ratings, nobody gave two shits about cycling this second.
00:28:08.000Lance retired, so he comes back, and Floyd is like, hey, man, I've been silent.
00:28:23.000And Lance was like, no, bro, you're a doper.
00:28:28.000And that is, I think, what was the start of the downfall.
00:28:40.000But 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.
00:29:56.000But 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.
00:30:06.000He saw it as that everybody else was cheating too.
00:30:11.000And so this was just a game to out-cheat everyone else who was cheating.
00:30:14.000And I think that that probably comes from the mentality of Russia before the fall of communism, which is this survival mechanism.
00:30:26.000And even if you look at modern Russia...
00:31:40.000And 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,
00:32:00.000successful guy there, basically made some calls and was like, what the fuck is going on?
00:32:15.000But 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
00:32:46.000Crazy 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,
00:33:01.000you 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.
00:33:14.000To 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.
00:34:20.000When 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.
00:34:40.000Not just one or two Olympics, but all of them.
00:34:44.000There'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.
00:35:07.000I mean, this is before the fall of Russia.
00:35:09.000And Rechenkov was on the ship because all the athletes were on the ship, too.
00:35:14.000And they had the whole doping lab set up on the ship.
00:35:18.000And they literally, there was a coffee bar on the ship.
00:35:35.000All 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, United States came third and this was another one of Gregory's very,
00:38:08.000If 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?
00:38:20.000Well, I don't know, and I certainly wouldn't want to be, you know, leveling false accusations.
00:38:28.000All that I know is that in, like, the two years that they shut down the laboratory, right, well, who was doing the testing then?
00:38:35.000Like, 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.
00:38:52.000On the other hand, I view it as just kind of a continual cat-and-mouse game.
00:39:14.000And 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.
00:39:19.000They'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.
00:39:54.000I 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...
00:40:08.000You really have the best of all worlds and including intelligence and I mean even maybe possibly discipline.
00:40:14.000I mean they might be able to engineer discipline into people.
00:40:51.000Which 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?
00:45:06.000So this guy's spending a lot of money trying to stay alive.
00:45:09.000I think the real thing is fetuses, though.
00:45:11.000The 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...
00:46:27.000Well, 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.
00:46:50.000Because they understand the gene sequencing and the properties in your DNA that cause you to grow, that cause you to have lean muscle mass.
00:47:02.000So I don't know exactly how much of it's available, but...
00:50:09.000I was nominated for the Directors Guild Award.
00:50:13.000Nominated for the BAFTA. It's jaw-dropping.
00:50:34.000So you would think that another documentary coming from Brian Fogle would be well received, especially one that's as good as The Dissident.
00:50:45.000But you're having a really hard time distributing this.
00:50:50.000Well, The Dissident actually releases today, January 8th, on video on demand.
00:51:00.000So it's, oh yeah, you can enter the site there.
00:52:07.000Yeah, 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.
00:54:28.000Turkey, there was a listening device in the consulate.
00:54:32.000We don't know how the consulate was bugged, but it was bugged.
00:54:36.000And 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
00:55:07.000very high level of confidence That MBS ordered the murder.
00:55:12.000And if you understand how Saudi Arabia works, right?
00:55:16.000I mean, this is considered an absolute monarchy.
00:55:21.000This is an authoritarian regime, right?
00:55:24.000And 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.
00:55:36.000So 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.
00:55:53.000One of the guys was Moutreb, who was Mohammed bin Salman's, you know, personal security, head of security.
00:56:03.000Other guy was Al-Tubaji, who is the state forensic examiner and coroner who came with a bone saw.
00:56:11.000Another guy, Al-Asiri, is one of the top-ranking generals.
00:57:06.000Yeah, and most of these beheadings were of essentially dissidents or activists.
00:57:18.000I 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.
00:57:47.000He's been trying to get big musical acts there, Formula One racing, movie theaters.
00:57:52.000All of this was never in Saudi Arabia before.
00:57:56.000On the other hand, this guy, as part of his...
00:58:01.000I 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.
00:58:45.000He 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.
00:59:00.000And 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,
00:59:18.000on one hand, there's a lot of positivity, And a lot of good things are happening.
00:59:23.000And on the other hand, his friends are being arrested for simply having a freedom of opinion.
00:59:31.000Activists and anybody who literally was not supporting Mohammed bin Salman.
00:59:37.000And 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.
00:59:47.000And if he wasn't willing to Consistently post how great Mohammed bin Salman, you know, is or was, this guy was literally arrested.
00:59:58.000So the government basically, you know, went to all of their known figures and said, you have to support the Crown Prince.
01:00:06.000And if you don't, you're basically going to go to go to prison.
01:00:12.000What do you mean they have to support them, meaning they would tell them when to post things?
01:01:56.000Joseph, Mohammed, Sultan, Abdulaziz the 15th, and you can just create that as your Twitter handle, and you can have 20 accounts.
01:02:05.000And so Twitter is the last bastion for essentially free speech and for, you know, basically opinion.
01:02:15.000And 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.
01:02:28.000They were able to plan their demonstrations and ultimately their revolution.
01:02:35.000Well, Saudi Arabia realized this, that this was a huge danger to basically the monarchies in the Middle East.
01:02:44.000This is a huge danger to the Emiratis.
01:02:46.000This 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.
01:02:57.000And 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.
01:03:09.000So they hire thousands of trolls, basically people to work for the government, sit in a room, and we have photos of these rooms.
01:03:20.000Actually, 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.
01:03:31.000That's actually like the main room where they're manipulating Twitter.
01:03:37.000And 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.
01:03:52.000MBS is the greatest thing to ever happen to the country.
01:03:57.000Vision 2030. MBS is changing the country.
01:04:00.000And 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.
01:04:18.000So Khashoggi essentially was criticizing Mohammed bin Salman, at the same time liking him.
01:04:53.000Was that, yes, they were the monarch, but they would listen to other opinions.
01:04:59.000There was more of a form of, you know, a parliament.
01:05:05.000And 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.
01:05:26.000Stories 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.
01:05:41.000You're going to give me half, you're going to give me your money, or you're not leaving the Ritz-Carlton.
01:05:47.000And that was one of his major ways to consolidate his power, and so that nobody would go against him.
01:05:56.000So 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,
01:07:21.000He 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.
01:07:36.000And 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,
01:07:52.000and take your education and help our country, you know, grow.
01:07:56.000So, Omar Abdulaziz is one of these guys.
01:07:59.000He goes to Montreal at 19. He's studying at McGill.
01:08:05.000And He literally goes on a foreign exchange program, and the first family that he goes to live with is a Jewish family in Montreal.
01:08:15.000And 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...
01:09:20.000And 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.
01:09:31.000And Omar decides to head back to Canada.
01:09:37.000This was now six years ago, seven years ago.
01:09:44.000He'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.
01:10:01.000And 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,
01:10:16.000you know, see how he can change his country.
01:10:20.000And 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.
01:10:34.000Hundreds and hundreds of responses come onto his Twitter feed.
01:10:44.000And Jamal is thinking that his whole country has turned on him.
01:10:47.000What he doesn't realize is that this isn't real.
01:10:51.000These are the Saudi flies, the trolls that the government has hired to basically quash his Twitter account and basically have their own hashtags trending.
01:11:02.000So Omar understands this and he tells Jamal, he goes, no, no, no, no, no.
01:11:13.000So Omar and Jamal start working together.
01:11:15.000And 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,
01:11:33.000right, so that you can't track where the phone is coming from because it'll look like a U.S. or Canadian SIM card.
01:11:39.000And 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,
01:11:59.000Well, 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.
01:12:20.000And they hack Omar's phone with Pegasus.
01:13:06.000Saad 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.
01:13:23.000You know, I think having worked for the kingdom for so many years, I think he viewed there would maybe be a threat of rendition.
01:13:30.000There would be a threat of, you know, you were going to, I don't know, try to bring you back.
01:13:37.000But I don't think he ever could imagine that they were going to murder him in his own country's consulate.
01:13:45.000Why do you think they did that with him?
01:13:47.000Why did they treat it as such a hostile act?
01:13:52.000That they were willing to be so brazen?
01:13:57.000Well, 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.
01:14:16.000Here's the poisoning in 2006 of Alexander Lithunenko with polonium, basically nuclear poisoning.
01:14:24.000And while Britain determines 100% that it's Russia, they know it's Putin, they don't do anything about it.
01:15:05.000And 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,
01:15:37.000And really, what are you going to do against us?
01:15:41.000Now, at the same time, You know, the Trump administration and Kushner are very close with the royal family.
01:15:47.000Whether you like or dislike Trump, this is just a flat-out fact.
01:15:53.000I 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.
01:16:17.000Saudi Arabia is the single biggest purchaser of weapons from the United States.
01:16:23.000So they block hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons from us, and Trump vetoes it.
01:16:29.000At the same time they're trying to pass legislation to sanction Saudi Arabia against the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Trump vetoes it.
01:16:37.000And 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.
01:16:46.000And 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,
01:17:04.000you 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.
01:17:16.000And this is pending right now with the Justice Department.
01:17:22.000And, you know, in the film, the admonishing of Trump comes from Bob Corker, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham.
01:17:29.000So 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.
01:17:44.000And you've had the Trump administration basically going, no, no, no, we're going to protect this guy.
01:17:50.000And 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.
01:18:03.000And 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.
01:18:14.000Did Trump make any statements, any public statements about what he thought happened or what he was going to do about it?
01:18:22.000I 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,
01:18:39.000you know, with a high level of certainty, which apparently if the CIA says that, that's like basically going, It happened.
01:19:57.000There'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.
01:20:18.000I 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.
01:20:32.000Talking about how it'll be easy to cut up his body because you're just going to basically hang him and quarter him.
01:20:46.000And in this 37-page transcript that I receive, it cuts out.
01:20:54.000Right after Khashoggi has been murdered and they take off his clothes, basically strip him.
01:21:01.000And 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.
01:21:11.000And the Turks found this in surveillance footage of this body double trying to pretend to be Khashoggi leaving the consulate.
01:21:19.000And 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.
01:21:36.000And I asked my sources, Why the transcript cut out?
01:21:45.000What 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.
01:22:03.000In the film, you'll see these footage and photos which To this day, it's still not been released to the world.
01:22:10.000The Turks gave me this footage and photos for the film, which is staggering.
01:22:16.000And you'll see this media room where there's the camera set up basically to do a secure call.
01:22:21.000And 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.
01:22:30.000And 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.
01:22:48.000And I guess Turkey has decided to, you know, save this piece or whatever of information.
01:23:00.000Well, for whatever reason, they haven't wanted to come forward with this part of the transcript.
01:23:11.000And 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.
01:23:25.000And the Turks believe they burned his body in the tandoori oven.
01:23:30.000They 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,
01:23:51.000you know, meat burning rather than a body.
01:23:55.000That there's a bag that apparently contained his hands.
01:24:01.000And Moutreb basically says, no, no, no.
01:24:29.000U.S. considers granting immunity to Saudi prince and suspects it's assassination attempt.
01:24:33.000So this was an assassination attempt of another Saudi national who's living in the United States.
01:24:40.000And they had basically sent this whole kill team in through Canada to come kill this guy.
01:24:45.000Who 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.
01:25:04.000What kind of weird backroom deals are they making?
01:26:11.000Over 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?
01:26:19.000And Qatar is, you know, this small, very, very rich country, but it is landlocked, you know.
01:26:28.000It's the only way to in and out of Qatar without traveling through Saudi Arabia is by sea.
01:26:34.000So Saudi Arabia basically tried to invade Qatar and take it over.
01:26:39.000The Turks basically saved Qatar by helping them, you know, with their military.
01:26:46.000And the Saudis and the Qatar's have been, you know, basically hated each other for a long time.
01:26:53.000So 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.
01:27:04.000So, you know, creating some really serious economic damage to Qatar, right?
01:27:11.000So, 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,
01:27:27.000bankruptcy over all these real estate debts.
01:28:11.000Saudi Arabia end feud with Qatar and Jared Kushner broker deal.
01:28:16.000January 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.
01:28:39.000What is it like for you to put together a documentary like this?
01:28:45.000I mean, while you're going over all this information, while you're reading the transcripts and piecing together the crime...
01:28:53.000What 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?
01:29:04.000Here we are in the United States, a completely different way of living, much freer access to communication.
01:29:14.000Free speech is one of our core tenets.
01:31:07.000I didn't want to do comedy anymore, really.
01:31:10.000I 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.
01:31:23.000And 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.
01:31:36.000I 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.
01:31:46.000And so I really got started to focus just that I wanted to direct and produce.
01:31:51.000So 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.
01:32:03.000And long story short, the money I took into it was just not friendly money.
01:32:09.000It was a real estate guy and he didn't understand the movie business.
01:32:13.000A 26-day shoot turned into a 19-day shoot.
01:35:04.000It 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,
01:35:32.000And 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.
01:35:50.000So 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,
01:37:05.000Do 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.
01:37:17.000And if they think they know about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and they watch The Dissident, they realize they don't.
01:37:23.000And for me to do that, it depended on three things.
01:37:33.000Whether 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.
01:37:44.000Because that to me was going to be the emotional connection of the film.
01:37:51.000A 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.
01:38:15.000Here'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.
01:38:28.00023 of his friends are sitting in a Saudi jail with no charges.
01:38:32.000That he had been hacked with Pegasus, that the Saudis had come to rendition and kill him in Canada months before.
01:38:39.000And 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.
01:38:51.000And 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.
01:39:03.000And the third element was the Turks, the Turkish.
01:39:06.000Would 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?
01:39:21.000So as I set out on this journey, I get connected to Hatice, and I go to Istanbul a month after Jamal's murder.
01:39:36.000I traveled there with Jake Swanko, my cinematographer, who also produced the film with me.
01:39:42.000And Hatice was just willing to meet with me.
01:39:45.000She didn't even speak English at the time, and we had a translator.
01:39:50.000And 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.
01:41:11.000And 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.
01:41:20.000And 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.
01:41:37.000I 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.
01:41:51.000For doing nothing other than knowing Omar.
01:41:54.000I'm shooting with Omar in Canada as he's receiving death threats on his phone in Arabic coming from Canadian phone numbers.
01:42:05.000I'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,
01:44:10.000And we were not offered a single dollar for this film.
01:44:15.000And I'm going in there basically at this point as an Oscar winner.
01:44:24.000And so to go through that experience and go, wait, am I the only one that wants to speak truth to power?
01:44:35.000What happens when I go and spend two years of my life fighting for something like this?
01:44:40.000And 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.
01:45:07.000And 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.
01:45:23.000So I know that people want to see this film.
01:45:26.000I know people want to learn about this.
01:45:33.000It's crafted like The Bourne Identity.
01:45:35.000But 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.
01:46:01.000And 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.
01:47:00.000Or they just would say, you know, sorry, our slate is full for the year, right?
01:47:11.000You 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,
01:47:36.000over freedom of speech, over freedom of journalism, over freedom of press.
01:47:41.000And 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,
01:49:15.000But it's very different than having it as an original, right?
01:49:21.000When something is, let's say, an Amazon original, a Netflix original, an HBO original, A Disney original, a Hulu original, right?
01:49:30.000That 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.
01:49:52.000So 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,
01:50:08.000and it's not being labeled as an original, so it's not like a, wow, why did you do this?
01:50:15.000But as of right now, we don't have a secondary output window, meaning after Our video on demand window is kind of over.
01:50:25.000Right 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?
01:51:29.000When Icarus was acquired, they had never won an Academy Award for a feature.
01:51:36.000Icarus 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,
01:51:52.000plus all the biggest actors and stars in the world.
01:51:56.000Meaning, not only are they a different company, it's everybody is doing business with them.
01:52:05.000And the awards season this year, probably 40-50% of those top films, you know, will be Netflix films.
01:52:16.000And 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?
01:52:30.000There'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.
01:52:41.000They want to preserve theaters that won't work with Netflix.
01:52:46.000But that growth and their need to expand internationally because they're topped out in the United States.
01:52:56.000I think has changed the company as to the risks they're willing to take as to content.
01:53:58.000And he has supported that statement on many occasions.
01:54:04.000And 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.
01:54:19.000But the bottom line of it is that there was a decision made that, hey, we want to grow in the kingdom.
01:54:27.000We've got, you know, Saudi Arabia, investment, God knows what percentage of Netflix stock they own, etc., right?
01:54:34.000And we're going to remove this episode.
01:54:38.000Mohammed bin Salman doesn't want it on the air.
01:54:41.000So, 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.
01:54:54.000And 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.
01:55:15.000And I think it speaks to, you know, this greater issue that we have to start thinking about, which is...
01:55:25.000If 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.
01:55:36.000There's only, you know, there's only a few big players, and there's not that many options.
01:55:46.000It'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.
01:56:12.000I don't know what the solution is, but I'm certainly not angry at anyone.
01:56:39.000And I've really been thinking about that.
01:56:42.000I have two projects that I'm working on I don't want to disclose.
01:56:45.000One is very much of the Ilk of Icarus and the Dissonant.
01:56:51.000The 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.
01:57:18.000I 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.
01:57:36.000I 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.
01:58:01.000So this was, it's safe to say this was shocking to you to not get picked up.
01:59:09.000That film completely changed that industry in Japan.
01:59:15.000Because you're watching dolphins get rounded up and murdered.
01:59:21.000Look at Blackfish and what that did for SeaWorld, right?
01:59:27.000And there are so many films that you can draw these parallels to that I have the power to actually change politics,
01:59:43.000have the power to change the course of history.
01:59:46.000And that was what was so incredible about Icarus.
01:59:51.000And 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.
02:00:05.000And I mean, everywhere I go, they might not recognize me, but then if I say, hey, what are you doing?
02:01:02.000And so I'm shocked that That I believe with great wealth and with great power comes great responsibility.
02:01:17.000And if these business titans that have these huge companies Lose their moral compass.
02:01:34.000Lose their direction to basically say, okay, this might not be the very best thing for our business or our subscriber growth, but goddammit,
02:03:38.000I'm not the same person two years as I was two years before.
02:03:44.000I got a lot, and I learned a lot, and I made some good friends.
02:03:49.000The 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.
02:04:36.000And I'm so honored to receive that message.
02:04:40.000And 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,
02:04:59.000whatever you want to call it, business interests of these major platforms that come ahead of Seeking any sort of accountability for human rights abuses.
02:05:15.000And the potential to make the world a better place.
02:05:18.000And 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.
02:05:29.000Or it might not coincide with possible future investments or investments or shareholder value.
02:05:44.000It'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,
02:06:02.000who 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.
02:06:17.000You 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.
02:06:46.000It'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.
02:08:37.000But 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
02:09:07.000I 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,
02:09:29.000and it doesn't matter how famous you may be.
02:09:37.000When 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.
02:10:20.000I listen to you all the time, and yeah, you are the powerful Joe Rogan.
02:10:30.000But it's a testament to the work that you're doing too, Joe, because your story is equally incredible from...
02:10:42.000You 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
02:11:12.000for 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.
02:12:06.000The site is thedissident.com and you can rent it or buy it today.
02:12:14.000I promise you, you'll be shocked and horrified, but I think you'll also love the film.
02:12:23.000Crafted kind of as a born identity thriller and hopefully will keep you glued to your seat.
02:12:30.000And 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.