The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #737 - Lance Armstrong

00:00:01.000 And we're live, ladies and gentlemen, Lance Armstrong.

00:00:03.000 How are you, buddy?

00:00:04.000 Good, man.

00:00:04.000 Thanks.

00:00:05.000 Thanks for doing this.

00:00:05.000 Appreciate it.

00:00:06.000 Thanks for having me.

00:00:07.000 I really appreciate it, for real.

00:00:09.000 And, you know, you were just telling me before this, we were talking about social media.

00:00:13.000 And social media, the greatest part about social media is you get in contact with everybody.

00:00:19.000 The worst part about social media is that you get in contact with everybody.

00:00:23.000 It's just a tiny percentage of people that won't let it rest.

00:00:26.000 Like, I was looking at something that you posted, And it was something about some, like, you had a great time doing some race.

00:00:33.000 And, like, one of the first tweets, one of the first comments was, yeah, as good a time as running away from drug tests.

00:00:40.000 Yeah, I mean, that's right.

00:00:43.000 You're just going to have, I mean, what did we, I mean, I posted the other day, we were putting our Christmas tree up. 0.98

00:00:51.000 And my family, you know, all the kids there and Anna and, you know, the lights and the ornaments and And it's at the fucking Christmas tree. 0.95

00:00:59.000 And, you know, of course, most people love it. 0.98

00:01:01.000 They think it's a cute picture.

00:01:02.000 But then there's always the one, you know, is the tree juiced?

00:01:07.000 Or something.

00:01:08.000 I mean, there's just always, which I get.

00:01:10.000 I mean, that's just part of it.

00:01:12.000 But sometimes you're like, is that the best we got?

00:01:16.000 I mean, maybe that is.

00:01:18.000 Maybe I deserve it.

00:01:18.000 I don't know.

00:01:19.000 But it's like, give it a rest sometimes.

00:01:21.000 Well, you definitely deserve some of it, right?

00:01:23.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:01:24.000 There's no way around that.

00:01:25.000 Of course.

00:01:26.000 But it's also...

00:01:28.000 I think one of the things about this whole scandal, the whole thing, it illuminated the real issue.

00:01:34.000 And the real issue is the entire...

00:01:36.000 And this is what we're talking about. 0.98

00:01:37.000 Bill Burr did that thing on Conan, where he was saying, the fucking whole sport is like this. 0.98

00:01:42.000 It's not... 0.98

00:01:43.000 There was...

00:01:44.000 All the people that won the Tour de France in all the years that you did it, if you go back to people that either weren't implicated or didn't test positive, like, what is it, like, 18th place or something fucking crazy like that?

00:01:58.000 You know, that's probably generous.

00:02:02.000 Yeah, right?

00:02:02.000 It would be...

00:02:06.000 It would be hard to know that.

00:02:09.000 Look, Joe, these are all easy for me to sit here and say and talk about, and people would say, well, of course he says that.

00:02:15.000 Of course he thinks that.

00:02:17.000 Well, it's all out on the table now.

00:02:18.000 I mean, you really don't have anything to gain.

00:02:20.000 But is it?

00:02:21.000 It is.

00:02:22.000 Isn't it?

00:02:27.000 Well, I guess it is, but, you know, people don't want to talk about that.

00:02:30.000 I mean, people want to talk about my issue, and that's, I guess, also understandable. 0.98

00:02:35.000 But, look, it was a fucked-up time. 0.92

00:02:38.000 And you were at this crossroads of a very hard sport, a very hard event. 0.98

00:02:44.000 Some would say one of the hardest sporting events in the world.

00:02:46.000 Three weeks, 2,500 miles, conditions, terrain, etc., etc.

00:02:51.000 So that meets, really, the perfect drug.

00:02:55.000 You have a drug that's incredibly beneficial.

00:02:58.000 And at the time, totally undetectable.

00:03:02.000 And everybody dove in.

00:03:04.000 And so, nobody wanted to be in that position.

00:03:09.000 It's not like any of us growing up as kids thought, dude, I'm gonna go to Europe and get, you know, all doped up and try to win biker.

00:03:17.000 No, nobody wanted to be there.

00:03:19.000 Like, we all went with pure intentions.

00:03:22.000 We got there.

00:03:22.000 And I'm talking about this crop of Americans that went to Europe.

00:03:27.000 And the shit was messy. 1.00

00:03:29.000 And we're like, whoa! 1.00

00:03:31.000 Like, okay, do we go home?

00:03:34.000 Or do we stay and fight?

00:03:36.000 And literally almost everybody stayed and fought.

00:03:41.000 And they fought, you know, we fought the way that the fight was being fought.

00:03:46.000 And, you know, and that all meets with where we are today.

00:03:51.000 And the people who were there, I think, can speak to it.

00:03:55.000 Me, my teammates, my peers, my rivals, the competition.

00:03:59.000 And we have a unique perspective on it because we were in the war.

00:04:03.000 But the person on Main Street, right, the corner of Main and First, Wasn't there, and they don't understand it, and so they can't really speak to it, but that doesn't change the fact that they're disappointed.

00:04:15.000 They're really disappointed.

00:04:17.000 They're disappointed in me.

00:04:18.000 They're disappointed in the sport.

00:04:20.000 They might hate me.

00:04:21.000 They might hate the sport.

00:04:23.000 They were most likely defenders of mine, and so they're pissed off.

00:04:29.000 It's taken me a long time to really understand that.

00:04:34.000 But I'll spend the rest of my life trying to work that one out with that person.

00:04:39.000 And I don't, you know, they're out there.

00:04:41.000 There are millions of them.

00:04:45.000 Well, they have a legitimate point, but there's also, there's people out there that want you to be wrong and want you, they want to find someone who's done something bad and never let it go.

00:04:57.000 And I think there's definitely some of that going on.

00:04:59.000 And there's also people that they don't have a lot of sympathy for people who've been extremely successful and have made mistakes.

00:05:07.000 Like it gives them the green light to just decide to just continually attack you.

00:05:12.000 But what I tried to do when this whole thing was going down is I tried to put myself in your position.

00:05:18.000 Like you're this world-class biker, it's 1994, and that's right around when you started UZPO? 95. 95?

00:05:29.000 95. So around this time, when you realized...

00:05:34.000 That was 20 years ago.

00:05:34.000 20 years ago?

00:05:35.000 Right.

00:05:35.000 It's kind of crazy, right?

00:05:36.000 Crazy.

00:05:37.000 When you realized that pretty much all the best guys are doing this now, what is that feeling like when you're like, okay, I've got to cross over into this deceptive territory.

00:05:47.000 Now all of a sudden I have to lie about this, I have to hide this, and I have to be a part of this sort of Underground thing this underground aspect.

00:05:56.000 That's a part of this great sport, right?

00:05:59.000 Well we we held off as long as you know, I mean You know EPO came along in the early 90s We sort of got to Europe in 92 93 And then it's by that point by 94. It's you know full-on and And we're thinking,

00:06:20.000 okay, this isn't good, but surely they're going to have a test for this for EPO. And we waited, we waited, and it just never came.

00:06:28.000 And then we get to 95. There's tremendous pressure on the team, within the team.

00:06:37.000 We're losing the sponsor.

00:06:38.000 Will the sponsor renew?

00:06:40.000 The team wants results, and we're going... 0.99

00:06:42.000 Alright, we're really fucked here. 0.92

00:06:45.000 And so we all collectively made the decision in spring of 95 that, alright, we have to go play ball. 0.94

00:06:51.000 The first time you shot that stuff, what was that like?

00:06:56.000 It's not like...

00:06:58.000 I knew you were going to ask these questions.

00:07:03.000 It's not that type of drug.

00:07:05.000 It's not like a cocaine or a...

00:07:07.000 I didn't mean it that way. 0.99

00:07:10.000 I meant, was there a feeling like, ah, fuck, we've crossed into this land of cheating? 0.99

00:07:15.000 It was so long ago. 0.99

00:07:16.000 I mean, that was 21 years ago.

00:07:18.000 Or 20 years ago.

00:07:19.000 It's a little tough to remember exactly.

00:07:24.000 And also, too, it wasn't as if there were other things we did before that.

00:07:28.000 I mean, EPO is this hugely powerful drug, but...

00:07:32.000 But there was, you know, we sort of call them gateway drugs.

00:07:37.000 I mean, if EPO is, you know, is the, you know, meth of performance-enhancing drugs, I mean, there's marijuana, too.

00:07:46.000 There's a lighter sort of entry-level stuff.

00:07:49.000 What was the entry?

00:07:50.000 What was the first stuff?

00:07:51.000 Well, cortisone is there.

00:07:53.000 And that's just to relieve pain.

00:07:55.000 Yeah, or just...

00:07:57.000 Yeah, I mean it is, but it also works for racing bikes.

00:08:01.000 How does it work for racing bikes?

00:08:04.000 Well, it's such a strong anti-inflammatory that with that, inevitably, you feel better.

00:08:10.000 Whether it's physically you feel better, even just a euphoria that comes with that.

00:08:17.000 That's, you know, and who knows what, you know.

00:08:20.000 But at the same time, you have a drug that, you know, I love it in cycling, if you took cortisone, you would be banned.

00:08:31.000 However, you know, you watch, you know, the NFL and somebody gets banged up in the first half, they go in at halftime, they come out, The announcer says, they went in, they got a cortisone injection, they're going to play the second half, they rush for 100 yards, they win the game,

00:08:46.000 they're a hero.

00:08:47.000 It's like, wait a second.

00:08:50.000 It is what it is.

00:08:53.000 It is weird.

00:08:55.000 We've talked about that a bunch of times with me and my friends.

00:08:59.000 When you go to GNC, the UFC has this company, Muscle Farm, which sells a bunch of Supplements and things along those lines, but yet they ban performance-enhancing drugs.

00:09:12.000 What do these supplements do?

00:09:14.000 Well, they enhance you in some way, but it's like a certain level will allow.

00:09:19.000 Will allow a certain level of improvement, certain level of aid in recovery, but anything past that is cheating.

00:09:25.000 Well, it's all performance-enhancing.

00:09:28.000 A nap is performance-enhancing.

00:09:30.000 Sure, vitamins.

00:09:32.000 So we know that.

00:09:33.000 But there also, too, has to be – and I don't want to be critical of whether it's the UFC's efforts to combat doping or USADA or water or anybody or any major sport.

00:09:44.000 You have to draw the line somewhere.

00:09:46.000 That's just – and I get asked that all the time because people get frustrated with the issue.

00:09:51.000 They kind of throw their hands up and say, well, look, we should just – it should just all be legal.

00:09:56.000 And, you know, they said that to me, and they're thinking I'm going to go, yeah, you're right.

00:10:00.000 But you can't.

00:10:02.000 That's not the answer either.

00:10:03.000 There has to be a structure in place.

00:10:06.000 There has to be a line. 0.99

00:10:07.000 That line might seem weird or fuzzy to people sometimes, but shit, you have to have something. 0.99

00:10:13.000 And so... 0.96

00:10:16.000 Dude, it's tricky.

00:10:16.000 I mean, anytime you mix athletes that are super motivated with money, with pressure that comes with that temptation that comes with that, you know, people are for the rest of, I mean, come on, I mean...

00:10:33.000 The original Olympic Games, there was going on.

00:10:36.000 So you have to think that it's going to happen forever.

00:10:39.000 The substances will change over time.

00:10:41.000 But unfortunately, that's part of the game.

00:10:45.000 So the original writers, like way back in the early days of the Tour de France, before they had drugs, they were using alcohol.

00:10:52.000 You know, there's a lot of stories about whether it's alcohol, cocaine, crazy substances.

00:10:59.000 But at the same time, you had guys...

00:11:03.000 The Tour de France is 100 years old, right?

00:11:05.000 So doping is cheating.

00:11:07.000 We know that.

00:11:08.000 But there's other ways.

00:11:08.000 I mean, guys would hang on to cars.

00:11:10.000 Guys would get in trains.

00:11:12.000 Yeah.

00:11:13.000 There were guys... 0.92

00:11:14.000 They would take a cork out of a wine bottle and they would put, this is fucking crazy, they would have fishing string in the cork, right, so wired up and they would have it, you know, they have a car up the road and they'd put it in their teat. 0.99

00:11:28.000 Oh my god! 0.98

00:11:29.000 And it would be, you know, just a subtle pull.

00:11:31.000 I mean, they, you know, any way to get ahead.

00:11:34.000 I mean, this is, you know, the sport is just, it's a brutal sport and you're not getting your face pounded in like UFC, but You certainly feel like you're getting your face pounded.

00:11:46.000 Well, psychologically, it's almost more devastating because it's so grinding.

00:11:51.000 When you're talking about something that goes three weeks, is it 2,200 or 2,500 miles?

00:11:57.000 Is that what it is?

00:11:57.000 About 2,500.

00:11:58.000 That's insane.

00:11:59.000 That's an insane amount of time to be pushing your body.

00:12:02.000 100 miles a day.

00:12:03.000 But once you get to the top level, it's remarkable how efficient it is.

00:12:07.000 I mean, you have 200 guys going down the road.

00:12:10.000 On a normal day, if it's a flat day and there's not wind or crosswind or rain or, you know, the conditions, it's pretty easy, to be honest.

00:12:18.000 I mean, it's conversational.

00:12:19.000 The final is tough and the final gets fast and people are competing for the stage win.

00:12:23.000 But it's not, you know, those three weeks aren't like three weeks on the line.

00:12:29.000 I mean, on, you know, in the red line.

00:12:31.000 So you have to pace yourself.

00:12:33.000 The peloton paces itself.

00:12:36.000 Like, you know, they sort of pace and police, for lack of a better word, itself.

00:12:42.000 And obviously the mountains and the time trials are where the race is decided, and those are the hardest moments.

00:12:47.000 When they first started introducing things like, when they started using transfusions and things along those lines, how much of an improvement did it have on the times?

00:12:59.000 Well, you know, it's hard to say because the times are, you know, people look at our era, they look at my generation, and they say, okay, well the times must be You know, significantly faster.

00:13:13.000 But you can't compare cycling to track and field or cycling to another sport that's had a rough patch and is now trying to clean itself up because technology changes, road surfaces change, obviously training has changed.

00:13:26.000 But, I mean, if you go back to the 84 games right here in Los Angeles, that was really the first major exposure you had for transfusions.

00:13:36.000 Which the American team did, and Rolling Stone exposed it.

00:13:41.000 But a transfusion was an old-school...

00:13:44.000 EPO replaced that, right?

00:13:47.000 Because a transfusion is just adding red cells to your system, which carries oxygen and gives you more oxygen.

00:13:55.000 Then you had a drug came along that did that for you.

00:13:57.000 So you didn't have to extract the blood, you didn't have to put it back in.

00:13:59.000 It made it a lot easier.

00:14:02.000 And then when the test, when they refined the EPO test and ultimately came up with it, then people went back to the old school system.

00:14:13.000 And then came other ways to detect that through, not so much through a test, but just through what they call the biological passport.

00:14:23.000 Studying parameters in your blood, whether it's reticulocytes or red cells or all of these things that smart people can come up with tests for.

00:14:31.000 It was more of a screening method to detect a transfusion.

00:14:38.000 What's kind of fucked up about all this is that you won the Tour de France seven times. 0.97

00:14:44.000 You obviously trained like a demon, pushed yourself to the limits. 0.96

00:14:48.000 You beat everyone in the competition, and they were all doing the same thing you were doing.

00:14:53.000 Right.

00:14:54.000 Yet, you're the one who's demonized, and yet you're the one who takes all the grief for it.

00:15:00.000 Yeah.

00:15:01.000 And...

00:15:02.000 There's a situation that happens when you're involved, you're involving money, you're involving sponsors, you're involved...

00:15:09.000 Once you first start, once the ball starts rolling, and the first deception has been launched out there into the ether, there's no way to take it back if you want to keep racing.

00:15:20.000 Yep.

00:15:21.000 And that's the thing, I mean, people...

00:15:25.000 Look, I mean, my story, and I hear you loud and clear, and you can say that, I can never say that.

00:15:32.000 You know, if I were to say things like that, people would, they would nuke me.

00:15:36.000 But it is what it is.

00:15:37.000 It is what it is, but that's, anyhow, there was the doping, okay, which led to the lying, right, which led to the treatment of other people.

00:15:48.000 I think, by and large, people can have the perspective that you have.

00:15:51.000 They can say, look, looks to me like everybody did it.

00:15:54.000 So, okay.

00:15:56.000 Then they can look to the line, and that's where they really start to not like it.

00:15:59.000 They say, this guy lied to us repeatedly.

00:16:02.000 But of course, you get, you know, there's no defense to that, but if I could share any personal insight.

00:16:08.000 I mean, once you lie once, you just keep lying, you keep lying. 0.99

00:16:11.000 It's not as if I'm going to sit here, you know, this is 15 years ago, and Joe, you're a nice guy, and I mean, if I was on this podcast, I would have lied to your fucking face a million times, just so you know. 0.99

00:16:25.000 Just so you know. 0.98

00:16:26.000 Just so you know.

00:16:27.000 But that's not a surprise to you or anybody else.

00:16:30.000 But once you're in there, it's not as if I'm going to go, you know, this guy Joe seems like a really nice guy.

00:16:35.000 I think I'm going to be honest with him.

00:16:37.000 Too much money.

00:16:38.000 There's no way.

00:16:38.000 You can't.

00:16:39.000 Yeah, so I was stuck, for lack of a better word, in that lie or that deception.

00:16:47.000 But then the way that I took my competitive nature, which served me well in training and in racing, and took it into the real world, took it into a press conference, took it into a personal relationship, took it into former teammates, my relationship, that's the part where people go, 1.00

00:17:03.000 okay, fuck this guy forever. 1.00

00:17:05.000 I'm done. 1.00

00:17:06.000 And so that, you know, you got sort of the three phases. 0.98

00:17:12.000 None of them are good, but as it got further away, That lack of respect for others Is the thing that totally fucked me.

00:17:22.000 And, you know, to that, I would say to anybody that I understand, and I may be in their time out forever, I have, and the only thing I will add that may sound like I'm trying to defend myself, is I've tried to make amends with all those people,

00:17:40.000 right?

00:17:41.000 The ones that we all know, the ones people talk about.

00:17:43.000 I've traveled the world, I've sat with them, I've looked them in the eyes and said, what I did was totally unacceptable, and I'm sorry.

00:17:50.000 And almost everybody has accepted the apology and we've moved on.

00:17:55.000 But that doesn't get to this crowd of people that you can't sit with face to face and you can't say you're sorry.

00:18:05.000 I mean, I can talk to you.

00:18:06.000 We can talk about it.

00:18:07.000 Some people may view that as an apology or not.

00:18:10.000 But the ones that I could go sit with, I did.

00:18:13.000 And that's all that I would add to that.

00:18:15.000 And I mean, I'm proud that most of those people, and I say most, not everybody, because not everybody's ready, but most of those people said, you know what?

00:18:25.000 We're good.

00:18:26.000 We're done. 1.00

00:18:27.000 And so if it was my son and he acted that way, first of all, I'd say, what the fuck are you doing? 1.00

00:18:32.000 You can't act that way. 1.00

00:18:33.000 But nobody was standing over me going, dude, you're acting like an asshole. 1.00

00:18:40.000 Nobody did that. 0.99

00:18:41.000 But if my son did that, I would say, you get over there and you make it right with that person.

00:18:46.000 So that's where it is.

00:18:49.000 Here we go.

00:18:50.000 You're also in this bizarre position at the time to be the only famous cycler in the entire country.

00:18:55.000 Cyclist.

00:18:56.000 Cycler?

00:18:57.000 Isn't that it?

00:18:59.000 What a cycler is cycling drugs?

00:19:02.000 A cyclist.

00:19:03.000 Biker. 1.00

00:19:04.000 But a biker is like Sons of Anarchy. 1.00

00:19:06.000 And that's, yeah.

00:19:07.000 Yeah.

00:19:08.000 I kind of get burned out on that series.

00:19:11.000 But...

00:19:14.000 Yeah.

00:19:14.000 I mean, there's a lot of weight to carry around.

00:19:16.000 Yeah.

00:19:17.000 And then there's the cancer organization, there's Livestrong.

00:19:19.000 All of it.

00:19:20.000 There's a lot of weight you're carrying around.

00:19:22.000 I speak to it all the time.

00:19:24.000 I mean, it was a huge wave.

00:19:26.000 But you're also balancing out so much good with this lie, and this lie is helping all this good.

00:19:33.000 Right.

00:19:33.000 Like, the Livestrong Foundation is generating hundreds of millions of dollars, helping all these people with cancer.

00:19:38.000 I've seen you in the hospitals with these kids, and me having kids myself, it makes me cry.

00:19:43.000 Yeah.

00:19:43.000 Seeing these kids with face masks on because their immune system is so compromised and they don't have any hair and they're just devastated.

00:19:49.000 And you're hanging out with these kids and you're generating all this positive energy for them, generating all this money, all this research that's being funded.

00:19:59.000 So there's all this good as well.

00:20:01.000 You start telling the truth, that stops.

00:20:03.000 Well, we know what happens because it happened.

00:20:05.000 Yeah, it did happen.

00:20:06.000 It happened.

00:20:07.000 It dried up. 0.99

00:20:08.000 I don't see any of those fucking bracelets anymore. 1.00

00:20:10.000 Those goddamn things were everywhere. 1.00

00:20:12.000 Yeah, they were. 1.00

00:20:13.000 We had a good run.

00:20:14.000 85 million bracelets.

00:20:16.000 But look, I mean, I don't want anybody to be mistaken.

00:20:20.000 My interests were selfish.

00:20:22.000 I mean, I was defending myself and protecting myself.

00:20:28.000 But at the same time, it wasn't just myself I was protecting.

00:20:32.000 I was protecting the sport.

00:20:34.000 I was protecting our sponsors.

00:20:35.000 I was protecting the tour.

00:20:36.000 I was protecting the foundation.

00:20:39.000 And, you know, it's just hard to say, I'm going to stop.

00:20:44.000 And what we just said, I mean, we now know, on all of those things, right?

00:20:49.000 We know what's happened to the foundation.

00:20:50.000 We know what's happened to the sport.

00:20:52.000 We know what's happened to the sponsor.

00:20:54.000 We know.

00:20:54.000 We can now see.

00:20:56.000 It was a devastating toll.

00:21:00.000 You know, most would say, well, that's all your fault, Lance.

00:21:03.000 And maybe they're right, but it's been, you know, especially on the foundation side, dude, it just breaks my heart to see the effect it's had on their effectiveness.

00:21:20.000 Well, it's got to be way more complicated than it's just all your fault.

00:21:24.000 It's way more complicated, because when you're talking about an entire sport that's dirty, I mean, for lack of a better word, an entire sport that's being deceptive, an entire sport that's using these performance-enhancing drugs, and then you're talking about you,

00:21:40.000 because you're this weird outlier.

00:21:41.000 You're this one guy who is incredibly successful at it in a country where nobody gave a fuck about the Tour de France until you came along.

00:21:48.000 I mean, is Greg LeMond you?

00:21:53.000 I mean, that's it.

00:21:55.000 The story being what it was, a cancer survivor that comes back, that wins this event, that transcends the sport, that brings the sport to cycling, although Greg did do a tremendous job.

00:22:10.000 Really, that was like the first blow up of cycling in the United States.

00:22:13.000 And then comes my story.

00:22:15.000 I mean, the story was too big, right?

00:22:19.000 And that's the reason that incentivized and motivated people like Nowitzki and like the feds to come along and say, oh.

00:22:30.000 A hundred percent.

00:22:31.000 I mean, they're not doing that to save the world.

00:22:35.000 They're not doing that to save the children.

00:22:36.000 No matter what ulterior motives that they might, you know, try to list as, well, we wanted to make sure that children don't do this.

00:22:42.000 We wanted to send a great message. 1.00

00:22:44.000 Bullshit. 0.99

00:22:45.000 It's a high-profile, high-publicity avenue for them to achieve notoriety. 0.99

00:22:52.000 Yeah, but, right, and we'll get into that, but the...

00:22:56.000 My rivals, so if you take my main rivals, whether it's Jan Ulrich or Basso or Baloki or Pantani, their star factor, for lack of a better phrase, was just different.

00:23:07.000 They weren't cancer.

00:23:09.000 So there was this disparity, which the sport enabled there to be, because it's just kind of an old-school, janky sport in terms of the way it's organized and run as a business.

00:23:24.000 It was like a South American economy.

00:23:27.000 There was really the haves and the have-nots.

00:23:30.000 That's a crazy way of putting it.

00:23:32.000 Yeah.

00:23:32.000 When you have something like that, it doesn't work.

00:23:38.000 All of those ships need to rise with that sea. 0.99

00:23:42.000 I probably didn't do a good enough job trying to push for that in my time.

00:23:48.000 But don't you have only a certain amount of resources?

00:23:51.000 I mean, one of the things that I've always said about extreme winners is there's a borderline between greatness and madness, and it crosses back and forth.

00:24:00.000 I would say that greatness and madness are next-door neighbors, and they borrow each other's sugar. 1.00

00:24:03.000 Because there's almost no way you can get that good without almost losing your fucking mind. 0.99

00:24:10.000 Right? 0.99

00:24:11.000 I've met some people that are fantastic at things, the great ones.

00:24:14.000 I've met great ones, especially great fighters. 1.00

00:24:17.000 They're all fucking crazy. 0.99

00:24:19.000 It's almost like you can't not be. 1.00

00:24:21.000 You can't be a regular guy and get there.

00:24:25.000 I probably still am a little crazy. 1.00

00:24:28.000 Oh, you're crazy. 1.00

00:24:28.000 I can tell. 1.00

00:24:29.000 You're definitely crazy. 1.00

00:24:31.000 I don't think you're bad. 1.00

00:24:33.000 I don't think you're a bad guy.

00:24:34.000 I mean, I don't know you that well, but I just think you have to have that sharpness.

00:24:40.000 You have to have that grit. 0.96

00:24:42.000 You have to have that aggressive competitive nature in order to succeed, especially in some fucking thing where everyone's doing the same thing. 0.95

00:24:48.000 There's not a lot of creativity involved. 0.94

00:24:50.000 There's not a lot of variables. 1.00

00:24:53.000 You're fucking... 0.99

00:24:54.000 You're pushing yourself. 1.00

00:24:56.000 You're pumping your legs.

00:24:57.000 That's it.

00:24:58.000 You can't fake to the left and go to the right. 0.95

00:25:01.000 You can't fucking throw up some new move that no one's ever seen before. 0.99

00:25:04.000 You're fucking pushing yourself. 0.99

00:25:06.000 We had some of those. 1.00

00:25:07.000 Yeah, you definitely had some of those. 1.00

00:25:08.000 But at the end of the day, you're on a fucking bike, and everybody else is on a bike, and you're going up the goddamn same hill. 0.99

00:25:13.000 Right. 0.99

00:25:13.000 And there were no secrets. 0.99

00:25:15.000 Right.

00:25:15.000 That's the...

00:25:16.000 That concentrates down what the competitive nature is to the edge.

00:25:22.000 Who's got the sharper edge?

00:25:24.000 Who's more intense?

00:25:25.000 And you won because of that.

00:25:27.000 He's getting riled up.

00:25:28.000 I get riled up.

00:25:29.000 Dude, I'm going to step back.

00:25:31.000 Don't jump across this table.

00:25:34.000 I mean, isn't that what it is?

00:25:35.000 I've got a big old kettlebell over here when I'm going to swing at you if you come over here.

00:25:38.000 Just settle down.

00:25:39.000 Isn't that what it is, though?

00:25:41.000 I mean, that has to be what it is.

00:25:42.000 It's the only way to win.

00:25:43.000 Yeah, it's an endurance event, so you have to be a little careful with that.

00:25:46.000 But there are those moments where you just have to unleash...

00:25:49.000 Everything you have and you can unleash them in training or in in racing and yeah, but yes That seems like a really good point where you just put that up is there's you have to be careful with that You have to know when to put like how you have to know your body Yeah, like really intimately as far as you didn't you have to manage it over the course of many many Say the marathon I mean nobody takes off and you know like it's a hard-yard dash I mean you have to manage that you obviously you have the experience of knowing What that effort is going to look and feel like,

00:26:19.000 and you know how to manage all of that.

00:26:21.000 But yeah, three weeks long, man, you've got to be careful.

00:26:26.000 Yeah, is there a moment where you remember, like, during a race, where you wanted to push, but you had to back down?

00:26:34.000 Like, is there moments where you, like, you're managing your body?

00:26:37.000 Because I didn't have it?

00:26:38.000 Well, yeah, where you feel like, I just, this is not a smart thing to go.

00:26:43.000 And, you know, now you can, I mean, when we raced, you know...

00:26:48.000 Well, in the old days, people just trained and they thought, well, I'm going to go hard today and I'm going to go easy tomorrow.

00:26:52.000 Right.

00:26:53.000 And then it came the heart rate monitor and they, you know, followed their heart rate and they managed their training and racing through that.

00:26:59.000 And then came the power meters.

00:27:00.000 So now there's all these, you know, there are these devices where you can really monitor all of that stuff.

00:27:06.000 And so you're out there.

00:27:07.000 You're not just sort of driving around.

00:27:09.000 Blind. 0.66

00:27:10.000 I mean, you actually can see what you're doing.

00:27:13.000 And that makes managing that effort a lot easier.

00:27:16.000 What are the differences in numbers?

00:27:18.000 Like, if you go back to, like, a hundred years ago, assuming that people weren't using corkscrews or corks and fishing line and whatever other ways they were cheating.

00:27:27.000 Yeah.

00:27:28.000 Like, what is, like, a realistic difference between the...

00:27:33.000 You have to look at modern cycling.

00:27:35.000 You have to look at when the bike basically got to the bikes and the wheels and these things got to where they are today.

00:27:44.000 They're fast now.

00:27:47.000 These guys are fast.

00:27:49.000 Two things have happened.

00:27:50.000 Number one, my story.

00:27:52.000 Got exposed.

00:27:53.000 And so then people question everybody, whether it's Chris Froome, who won the Tour de France this year, or somebody that wins the World Championships.

00:28:00.000 They question them because of me.

00:28:03.000 And then they say, okay, well, you know, he's dirty, seems like everybody's dirty, so you must be dirty.

00:28:08.000 And then they go to the times, right?

00:28:10.000 They look at my times in the Tour de France, they look at the Peloton's times, and they see now that the times are actually either the same or better. 0.77

00:28:18.000 So they say, well, then of course, that supports my argument that you're dirty.

00:28:23.000 Does it?

00:28:24.000 Well, if it's fast, I mean, I don't know.

00:28:26.000 I mean, I don't have the answer to that, and I get asked all the time, what's going on now?

00:28:32.000 I have no idea.

00:28:33.000 I mean, I'm so far removed from cycling.

00:28:35.000 That I have no earthly idea of what's going on or not going on.

00:28:39.000 But I don't think it's necessarily fair to blame those guys. 0.99

00:28:44.000 I understand it, but, you know, shit. 0.99

00:28:48.000 I mean, you could have... 1.00

00:28:49.000 These athletes might be a lot better.

00:28:51.000 The training might be a lot better.

00:28:52.000 I do think technology, the bikes, the wheels...

00:28:56.000 Even road surfaces are a lot better.

00:28:58.000 Is there any part of you that's kind of pissed off that there are performance enhancing drugs?

00:29:04.000 Like, if there was nothing, and if it just had to be mano a mano, Same result.

00:29:10.000 You would have the same result.

00:29:11.000 It is my belief that the results would be the same.

00:29:15.000 It would be a few seconds slower or whatever it would be.

00:29:18.000 It doesn't matter if the overall time is slower.

00:29:21.000 What matters is if you were five minutes ahead of the next guy.

00:29:25.000 That's what matters.

00:29:29.000 That's my belief.

00:29:30.000 But there are others that don't hold that belief.

00:29:32.000 There are others that say no.

00:29:33.000 I mean, doping affects other individuals differently and, you know, you might have won two or you might have won none.

00:29:41.000 Well, that means that some people weren't doping correctly.

00:29:44.000 But look, once you're doping, if you're doping and the other guy's doping better than you, like, well, then you're not doing your job doping.

00:29:51.000 You know, you're not being a good competitive doper.

00:29:53.000 No, he's not like Bill.

00:29:54.000 But, I mean, that's really what it is, right?

00:29:56.000 I mean, doesn't it make sense?

00:29:57.000 It gets complicated.

00:29:59.000 And we would talk forever and people would argue with us forever about that.

00:30:04.000 Yeah, but they're not here.

00:30:07.000 Oh, they are.

00:30:08.000 They're listening.

00:30:10.000 But my perspective is really clear on that.

00:30:13.000 I mean, I think if you have a sport where everybody's, you know, and we were both talking about the Bill Burr thing that he did on Conan, which is like, yeah, our psychopath is better than your psychopath.

00:30:23.000 You know, that's really what it is.

00:30:26.000 You can't say...

00:30:28.000 I mean, how could they take away?

00:30:31.000 This is one of the things that drove me the craziest about this.

00:30:34.000 Like, what did they do with the seven years where you won, where they said, you're not the winner anymore? 0.99

00:30:39.000 Well, who the fuck won it then? 0.97

00:30:42.000 How do you find the guy who won it? 0.99

00:30:44.000 Joe, that's a problem.

00:30:46.000 What's in the record books now?

00:30:47.000 It's empty.

00:30:48.000 Empty?

00:30:49.000 It's empty for seven years?

00:30:51.000 Yeah. 0.95

00:30:53.000 That's ridiculous. 0.98

00:30:54.000 Look, I agree with you, but you can say that. 0.98

00:30:59.000 I cannot say that.

00:31:00.000 All I will say is that I don't think it's, far be it from me to talk about what's fair or not fair, but I don't think it's fair for the sport to leave those empty.

00:31:11.000 I think that's crazy.

00:31:13.000 And compare and contrast, so in the tour you have the yellow jersey, who's the guy who wins.

00:31:17.000 You have the polka dot jersey, who's technically the best climber.

00:31:21.000 And then you have the green jersey, who's technically the best sprinter.

00:31:24.000 Those seven years were...

00:31:27.000 The green jersey was won by Zabel, who admitted to having doped all seven of those years.

00:31:31.000 The polka dot jersey was won by Varenk from France, who admitted to having doped all those years.

00:31:37.000 Those all stand.

00:31:39.000 Everything's still there.

00:31:40.000 That's hilarious.

00:31:41.000 But the yellow jersey has been erased.

00:31:43.000 Second place, third place, all those places are still there.

00:31:46.000 The years prior to me where somebody had admitted or was caught, all still there.

00:31:52.000 So there's just an asterisk in first place.

00:31:54.000 If you go to Wikipedia, there's just a line through it.

00:32:00.000 That's so strange.

00:32:02.000 That's the word, man.

00:32:03.000 It's very strange.

00:32:04.000 And it's strange for me.

00:32:05.000 And it makes me sad.

00:32:10.000 Look, I'm going to be honest.

00:32:11.000 I believe I won the races.

00:32:14.000 Well, no, you did win the races.

00:32:16.000 No, you won the races.

00:32:17.000 The people to ask are the ones that got beat.

00:32:21.000 Yeah.

00:32:21.000 So if you ask them, right?

00:32:22.000 If you ask Jan, if you ask Zula, if you ask...

00:32:26.000 If you ask any of them, they say he won those bike races.

00:32:32.000 Do you still have those yellow jerseys in your house or do you have to give them back?

00:32:37.000 No. 1.00

00:32:37.000 Good, fuck them. 1.00

00:32:38.000 You should put up an Instagram picture of them every day. 1.00

00:32:41.000 That was, yeah, that, yeah.

00:32:44.000 I'm not going to put that picture up again.

00:32:47.000 That was a great picture, though.

00:32:48.000 Are you chilling on the couch with seven yellow jerseys on your wall?

00:32:52.000 I got nuked for that one.

00:32:54.000 Well, you're going to get nuked no matter what you do.

00:32:56.000 Look, I mean, they're up.

00:33:00.000 They're up, and I'm proud of them.

00:33:04.000 I really am.

00:33:04.000 And I'm proud of, and that's the thing, too, is that As weird as it is and as strange as it is that there's just a line through those years as if they did not happen, man, I was paid to do a job, right?

00:33:16.000 As messy as the job was, whatever, I was paid to do it and I did it.

00:33:20.000 And I wanted to win.

00:33:22.000 I wanted to capture those memories for myself and for my teammates.

00:33:26.000 Nobody can take those away from me.

00:33:28.000 I still hold those memories to myself.

00:33:32.000 Yeah, it's had a complicated ending, but I still view those as victories and I still view those memories as good.

00:33:41.000 Carrying around the lie and being interrogated and questioned, was that the hardest part about all of it?

00:33:50.000 I was only interrogated or questioned with the press.

00:33:57.000 God, if it would have been in this day and age with Twitter and Facebook and social media, it would have been a thousand times worse.

00:34:06.000 This was in the late 90s.

00:34:11.000 Think about that.

00:34:11.000 That was a long time ago.

00:34:14.000 The level of scrutiny, while it was high, wasn't nearly as high as it would have been today.

00:34:22.000 Once you dig in with these guys, you're stuck.

00:34:27.000 Once you finally came clean, obviously there was a lot of blowback, but was there also a relief?

00:34:37.000 Not immediately.

00:34:39.000 Not immediately.

00:34:40.000 I mean, I get asked that a lot.

00:34:42.000 And I think people expect me to say, well, it was just this huge relief off your shoulders when you talked to Oprah or whatever you did that you can now move forward and live...

00:34:56.000 The life of an honest man and et cetera, et cetera.

00:34:58.000 But it's taken me...

00:35:00.000 Let me just sum it up. 0.99

00:35:01.000 I mean, sitting here today having this conversation, I would much prefer to have this conversation than the one where I would have lied to your fucking face 15 times 10 years ago. 0.99

00:35:11.000 I'd much rather us talk like this. 0.99

00:35:12.000 So that's a relief.

00:35:16.000 But it's not like I walked out of sitting with Oprah and was like, Oh my God, I feel amazing. 0.98

00:35:23.000 That was an ass-whipping. 0.97

00:35:26.000 What's it like sitting there with Oprah? 1.00

00:35:30.000 She's drilling you, asking you questions.

00:35:32.000 How about that start?

00:35:33.000 She came out hot.

00:35:34.000 Yeah, she came out hot. 1.00

00:35:35.000 Yes or no.

00:35:36.000 She only wanted yes or no.

00:35:39.000 I thought she did a good job. 0.76

00:35:40.000 She did a great job. 0.95

00:35:41.000 I thought she did a good job. 0.76

00:35:42.000 It was very compelling because of the way she structured the beginning part of the conversation.

00:35:48.000 Especially if you're going to do something like that on television, you want to capture people and keep them there.

00:35:52.000 You kind of have to approach it that way.

00:35:53.000 I thought she did a good job. 0.76

00:35:56.000 I know that it wasn't well received.

00:36:00.000 In what way?

00:36:01.000 You mean people didn't like you afterwards in that way?

00:36:05.000 Yeah, well, I think there's two things.

00:36:07.000 Number one, I wasn't emotionally ready to do that interview.

00:36:11.000 I wasn't in a place where I think that I sit today where it is a position of contrition and understanding the tremendous sense of betrayal that's out there.

00:36:25.000 My perception of that today is much sharper than it was three years ago when I sat with her.

00:36:31.000 The feds and other lawsuits forced my hand.

00:36:34.000 I had to sit there with that because I knew I was going to be sitting with her or with you or with Tom Brokaw, or I was going to be sitting with a government lawyer, being deposed, being videoed, and being leaked.

00:36:46.000 So I said, well, I'm going to go, I'm going to find the place that I'd rather sit down and talk about this as opposed to a grainy video that the government leaks to the world.

00:36:55.000 And that's your coming out party.

00:36:57.000 So I did that.

00:36:58.000 But the thing about Oprah is, aside from me just not being ready at the time to do it, you know, people sensed that.

00:37:07.000 But most importantly, for the diehard cycling fans and sports fans, I didn't say enough.

00:37:13.000 You didn't name names.

00:37:14.000 You didn't call anybody out.

00:37:16.000 It wasn't detailed enough.

00:37:18.000 You're holding back.

00:37:19.000 You're protecting people.

00:37:19.000 That's what they said.

00:37:21.000 That's a very small percentage of the population.

00:37:23.000 For the majority of the population, those first five minutes was way too much information. 0.99

00:37:29.000 They were like, what the fuck did I just hear? 0.94

00:37:33.000 Like blood bags, EPO, testosterone, transfusions, cheating. 0.99

00:37:39.000 It was way too much.

00:37:40.000 So you had people that were one camp, a smaller camp said, he didn't say enough.

00:37:44.000 He's holding back here.

00:37:46.000 The other camp was like, alright, that's more than I needed to hear.

00:37:50.000 And so everybody was pissed.

00:37:52.000 But I don't know why they would think it's too much.

00:37:54.000 I mean, I don't know.

00:37:55.000 I don't understand that logic because it is reality.

00:37:58.000 Dude, you're a grandma in Duluth?

00:37:59.000 Right.

00:38:00.000 And you supported the cancer survivor?

00:38:03.000 Santa Claus isn't real!

00:38:04.000 And you hear that?

00:38:06.000 I mean, you're sitting there going, uh-uh, I don't like anything about this.

00:38:11.000 So I see, because they were also supporting Livestrong, they were also supporting cancer.

00:38:19.000 How much of an effect did it have, like almost immediately, on your foundation?

00:38:23.000 I don't know.

00:38:24.000 Because I was asked to leave the foundation before that, and I haven't been back.

00:38:28.000 So I don't know, and I don't ask.

00:38:31.000 Is it still around?

00:38:32.000 Yeah.

00:38:33.000 Yeah.

00:38:33.000 But it must have taken a devastating hit.

00:38:36.000 I think so.

00:38:36.000 I mean, it takes a hit in terms of, obviously in terms of fundraising, which directly leads to its effectiveness in terms of helping create change for cancer survivors all around the world.

00:38:50.000 You need to raise money in order to do that.

00:38:54.000 Staff layoffs.

00:38:56.000 I mean, you name it.

00:38:58.000 But I don't have specifics because once I left the board and left the organization and they legally changed the name, I don't know.

00:39:09.000 None of it was shocking to me.

00:39:11.000 I mean, I knew...

00:39:13.000 I didn't know, but I knew.

00:39:15.000 I have a friend who is a professional cycler.

00:39:18.000 Just say his name is John.

00:39:20.000 Cyclist.

00:39:20.000 Sorry.

00:39:21.000 We're going to get this right.

00:39:23.000 Okay, people.

00:39:24.000 I'm going to write it down.

00:39:26.000 Cyclist.

00:39:27.000 Cyclist.

00:39:27.000 Yeah.

00:39:28.000 He's a biker.

00:39:29.000 It's like people say, the ultimate fighting challenge is championship.

00:39:34.000 See, I would say that.

00:39:35.000 My friend John was a professional cyclist, and this was 2003, 2004, and he told me, he was like, listen, man, we're all on it.

00:39:51.000 He goes, guys would get off the bus in the middle of the night, you'd hear them taking off their bikes and going for a ride because their blood got too thick.

00:39:58.000 There are those old stories.

00:39:59.000 Yeah, that's from EPO, right?

00:40:02.000 Yeah, I've heard those stories.

00:40:05.000 I never saw that.

00:40:07.000 So my friend John, I mean, maybe he was on a crazy team or something like that.

00:40:10.000 Back in the day, before they...

00:40:13.000 Got it dialed in?

00:40:14.000 Well, what happened was there was no test, right?

00:40:18.000 No sport had a test, whether it's cycling or swimming or running.

00:40:22.000 Or even boxing.

00:40:22.000 Or whatever sport is using EPO. They didn't have a test for EPO. And so they...

00:40:28.000 And with, you know, one of the side effects of EPO or, you know, increasing your red cell count is your blood.

00:40:33.000 It's literally a question of viscosity, right?

00:40:36.000 So your oil and your...

00:40:37.000 Like motor oil.

00:40:38.000 Yeah.

00:40:38.000 Well, that's the only time you ever think of the word viscosity, right?

00:40:41.000 Yeah.

00:40:41.000 Is your motor oil.

00:40:42.000 But more red cells means thicker blood.

00:40:45.000 Your blood's too thick.

00:40:47.000 We know what happens.

00:40:48.000 It's not...

00:40:48.000 It isn't a good thing.

00:40:49.000 And so the sport had to go.

00:40:51.000 They couldn't test for it.

00:40:53.000 The science wasn't there yet.

00:40:54.000 So they went to these sort of preventative screening methods, right?

00:40:58.000 So then they started testing the viscosity or the thickness of people's blood, otherwise known as hematocrit, right?

00:41:05.000 And so they would use that as a screen.

00:41:07.000 Anybody above 50% hematocrit couldn't race. 0.94

00:41:10.000 You weren't positive.

00:41:11.000 You didn't get banned.

00:41:13.000 But you were put on the side for two weeks as a health measure.

00:41:16.000 Anyone under 50% Was fine to race. 0.94

00:41:19.000 So everybody took that as, I mean, before that, there were people that were 60, 64%.

00:41:24.000 Those guys might be getting up in the middle of the night going for a little spin.

00:41:27.000 Yeah.

00:41:28.000 But at 50, you know, they deemed that sort of the healthiest level, you know, but people pushed it right up to 50 then.

00:41:35.000 And there's some side effects and there's some possible potential health risks as far as like strokes and things along those lines, right?

00:41:41.000 I'm sure.

00:41:41.000 Did anybody that was on the tour ever drop dead from EPO? Well, there was, you know, look, there are, I don't know.

00:41:50.000 I mean, there are a lot of documented cases, especially in the 80s.

00:41:55.000 Right when Ippo, I guess, was first hitting the scene, there was this wave of Dutch cyclists that passed away in the night.

00:42:03.000 In the night, huh?

00:42:05.000 In their sleep.

00:42:06.000 And that's probably when it would happen.

00:42:07.000 Well, I don't know.

00:42:09.000 I mean, I didn't do the autopsy.

00:42:12.000 I don't know if anybody's ever proven that, but that sort of...

00:42:15.000 I don't want to say that was the myth, but that was...

00:42:21.000 EPO, the drug, took the blame for those deaths.

00:42:25.000 And so it hasn't happened since, and it didn't happen in our generation, but...

00:42:32.000 I don't know.

00:42:34.000 My point being that it can be fairly dangerous.

00:42:39.000 Well, if your blood...

00:42:41.000 Yeah, you can imagine.

00:42:42.000 If it gets too thick, that would not be...

00:42:45.000 One of the things that...

00:42:47.000 It didn't surprise me that when you came clean, I was like, well, good for him.

00:42:52.000 That was really what I thought. 0.96

00:42:54.000 I was like, it's kind of fucked up that he was lying all this time, and it's kind of fucked up that he was suing people that were saying that he was telling lies, and... 0.96

00:43:02.000 But one of the things that shocked me the most when I was thinking about it was that you had recovered from cancer. 0.98

00:43:10.000 You had one of your testicles removed.

00:43:11.000 You had brain surgery. 0.66

00:43:13.000 You had lung cancer.

00:43:14.000 I mean, your body was ravaged by this, and yet you still were taking drugs.

00:43:21.000 Yep.

00:43:21.000 That's what got me.

00:43:23.000 I was like, what a crazy desire to win that you...

00:43:28.000 You got to this place where your body was, you know, you were on death's door.

00:43:33.000 And recover from it and then put yourself back at risk.

00:43:37.000 Yeah.

00:43:38.000 I mean, yeah.

00:43:39.000 Saying it like that, there's no justifying that other than I was in this sport that I really wanted to be in and stay in.

00:43:51.000 And after the disease, I wanted to go back to.

00:43:54.000 And that was the landscape.

00:43:57.000 And so you viewed it.

00:43:58.000 You thought, okay, this is not ideal.

00:44:02.000 But you asked the question, knowing my health history with cancer, with all that I went through, Is going back to my sport and taking EPO a risk to my disease or to my health?

00:44:20.000 And the answer to that, obviously, my answer to myself was no.

00:44:24.000 You really didn't think that it was a risk to push your body like that and to put all these...

00:44:32.000 I mean, in a lot of ways, they're pushing your body in an unnatural way or to an unnatural level.

00:44:42.000 Testosterone and human growth hormone and EPO and all these...

00:44:45.000 And that's the only difference that was made was, I mean, I had a slight experience with growth hormone before the disease and then after the diagnosis and the treatment and the recovery, I said, okay, that does not sound like a good idea.

00:45:02.000 Because it's too dangerous.

00:45:03.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:45:03.000 In my own fucked up way, I was thinking, well, that would lead to the growth of a malignant cell, etc., etc. 0.98

00:45:14.000 But I didn't view those to the same. 0.94

00:45:17.000 Plus, I don't think HGH is for cycling.

00:45:20.000 I don't think it's very effective.

00:45:21.000 Anyways, I think it's a waste.

00:45:22.000 Did you alter your diet?

00:45:25.000 Well, for sure, yeah.

00:45:26.000 What changes did you make when you came back from having cancer?

00:45:31.000 Man, I was, and again, this is the stuff that we can talk about.

00:45:34.000 I talked about forever and, you know, and it's almost sort of mocked now, you know, because we talked about the change in diet and the increased, you know, intensity of training and the reconnaissance and the technology and the wind tunnel and we did all of those things and they all worked.

00:45:49.000 You know, but I say they're mocked now because people now know the truth.

00:45:53.000 We all know the truth. 0.99

00:45:54.000 And people say, oh, he told us it was all that other bullshit. 0.99

00:45:56.000 He told us it was the training. 0.99

00:45:58.000 He told us it was his diet.

00:45:59.000 Right.

00:45:59.000 Well, now we know.

00:46:00.000 It was just the doping.

00:46:03.000 Well, it wasn't, though.

00:46:04.000 It was the doping end.

00:46:05.000 That was the final piece.

00:46:07.000 Yeah.

00:46:07.000 Which just was unfortunate, as we've said numerous times, it was unfortunate, and it was inevitable.

00:46:14.000 But that was the final piece, and it was also the piece that we never talked about, of course.

00:46:20.000 Right, of course.

00:46:21.000 Yeah.

00:46:21.000 See, this is the weight you're carrying around.

00:46:23.000 When I'm asking you about your diet, I literally didn't know that you had discussed this ad nauseum.

00:46:28.000 Yeah.

00:46:29.000 So you're carrying this around.

00:46:30.000 You're always assuming that people have heard this.

00:46:32.000 Yeah, if you look at me racing in 96 before I was diagnosed, and then you look at me winning the Tour in 99, I mean, this is 20 pounds difference.

00:46:39.000 So, I mean, I had this, when I got out of sort of my cancer mission, you know, and recovered and took a year and a half away and went back, I viewed racing bikes as life and death.

00:46:55.000 I viewed my disease as a competitive event, as a sporting event.

00:46:59.000 It's me versus the opposition, looking at the scoreboard, how we doing.

00:47:03.000 And then when I got back on the bike, it was like life and death.

00:47:08.000 And so everything was intensified. 0.98

00:47:10.000 Starving yourself, training your ass off, just being, as you said a minute ago, just being generally fucking totally crazy for a result. 0.99

00:47:21.000 Mad. 1.00

00:47:21.000 Not mad, but madness. 1.00

00:47:23.000 You were starving yourself to be lighter?

00:47:25.000 Yeah.

00:47:27.000 Well, that's part of it.

00:47:28.000 I mean, these poor guys now, I mean, they're a lot skinnier than we were.

00:47:32.000 I mean, this is guys riding five, six hours a day and not eating. 0.99

00:47:36.000 I mean, it just, it fucking sucks. 0.99

00:47:38.000 How do they do it? 1.00

00:47:39.000 You don't eat.

00:47:40.000 Just deal with it.

00:47:42.000 Just go to bed hungry.

00:47:43.000 Wow.

00:47:44.000 Just to keep your body weight light.

00:47:46.000 It's all power to weight. 0.99

00:47:48.000 I wish you were still I wish I would like to know what the fuck these guys are doing now. 0.90

00:47:52.000 I would like to know when you see guys with faster times and Really ridiculously stringent drug testing Yeah. 0.97

00:48:01.000 Well, anytime I go anywhere near that, I just get destroyed because the people view it as me accusing them.

00:48:12.000 I mean, because I get a lot of questions, so I'll tweet back.

00:48:15.000 Don't ask me.

00:48:15.000 I have no idea.

00:48:17.000 You know, people take that as saying, well, he just blamed them. 1.00

00:48:19.000 He just accused them of doing the same shit. 0.99

00:48:22.000 I feel bad for those guys, man. 0.97

00:48:24.000 I feel bad for any top-level rider that is racing their bike in 2015 and has to answer questions about a guy from 1999. Like, if I was winning in 1999, what is that, 16 years?

00:48:35.000 If somebody asked me a question about somebody from 1983, I said, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.98

00:48:40.000 Don't ask me that question. 0.97

00:48:41.000 Like, why are you asking me about some dude 20 years ago?

00:48:45.000 I'm here today.

00:48:46.000 So, but it's...

00:48:48.000 Well, that's the craziest thing about you and the sport.

00:48:51.000 You're inexorably tied to it.

00:48:53.000 There's no way to pull it away from you.

00:48:55.000 Like, that scandal was one of the, at least in the United States, was one of the biggest aspects of that sport ever.

00:49:02.000 It's still...

00:49:03.000 I mean, any...

00:49:05.000 Any story that gets written, I mean, so I don't know if you follow Track and Field or all of the stuff that came out of...

00:49:10.000 Ben Johnson.

00:49:11.000 That's all everybody will talk about.

00:49:12.000 But there was just this revelation that came out of International Track and Field and the Russian Federation and the covers up there and all of those stories that get written, whether it's on Deadspin or...

00:49:23.000 I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but it brings people back to my history.

00:49:36.000 Yeah, it's baseball and Barry Bonds.

00:49:39.000 They're tied.

00:49:40.000 There's just no way you're gonna separate the two of them together.

00:49:44.000 It's gotta be a very bizarre thing for those people that are racing.

00:49:50.000 Ask them.

00:49:51.000 Yeah, you should.

00:49:52.000 You don't want to.

00:49:54.000 Nobody knows who they are. 0.99

00:49:55.000 That's the most fucked up thing about it. 0.97

00:49:59.000 I mean, in a way, Tony Hawk is the only skateboarder I've ever heard of. 0.97

00:50:05.000 I'm sure I've met a few other ones, but I don't remember their names.

00:50:08.000 But Tony Hawk is that guy.

00:50:10.000 You think of skateboarding, you think of Tony Hawk.

00:50:12.000 You think of bike racing, you think of Lance Armstrong.

00:50:15.000 You think of swimming, you think of Michael Phelps.

00:50:17.000 Yeah.

00:50:20.000 Greg LeMond is a diver.

00:50:21.000 You think of him, I guess.

00:50:22.000 He's kind of a swimmer.

00:50:23.000 But there's not a lot of names.

00:50:25.000 Greg LeMond is a cyclist.

00:50:26.000 Greg Louganis.

00:50:28.000 Sorry.

00:50:28.000 Dude!

00:50:29.000 I'm gonna pay attention.

00:50:31.000 At least you said cyclist.

00:50:32.000 I did.

00:50:33.000 I'm getting better. 1.00

00:50:36.000 Greg LeMond's probably like, what the fuck? 0.99

00:50:40.000 It's weird when you have a sport where the public locks on to one person and they don't know any of the other people in it. 1.00

00:50:48.000 Like if it's football, there's like fucking hundreds of guys. 0.98

00:50:50.000 Hundreds. 0.99

00:50:51.000 Boxing.

00:50:52.000 Hundreds of guys.

00:50:53.000 But with cycling, there's just so few.

00:50:56.000 And you carrying the weight of that sport in the United States and trying to popularize it as well as holding onto this lie.

00:51:09.000 Yeah, I mean, when I hear you say that, and you may not be defending me, but it sounds as if you're defending me, so I don't necessarily want that.

00:51:21.000 I'm not defending you.

00:51:22.000 What I'm doing, I'm trying to illuminate reality in a pretty objective way.

00:51:26.000 Well, yeah, do that on your next podcast, because me sitting here right now...

00:51:30.000 It makes you uncomfortable? 0.99

00:51:31.000 No, it doesn't make me uncomfortable, but I'm of the belief that nobody wants to hear that shit. 1.00

00:51:37.000 There's still... 0.99

00:51:38.000 I think people are upset.

00:51:40.000 I know they're upset.

00:51:42.000 Some people do.

00:51:43.000 I mean, look, you're going to have people that are upset.

00:51:45.000 I think what we're dealing with when it comes to the internet is just a gigantic number of people.

00:51:49.000 There's too many people to say, some people want this, some people...

00:51:52.000 You can't manage it.

00:51:55.000 Hundreds of millions of people who can get on their Facebook or get on their Twitter and just start giving their input right now.

00:52:01.000 And that's never happened before.

00:52:02.000 And when that happens, you're going to be understandably sensitive to the outcome.

00:52:09.000 What was the blowback like when you did the Oprah thing and then you just went out into the public?

00:52:16.000 Did you just try to lay low for a while?

00:52:19.000 Yeah, there were several variations of quote-unquote blowback.

00:52:26.000 There was just the public's perception.

00:52:27.000 So if I walked down the street, which I have to admit was better than I expected. 0.99

00:52:34.000 It's not as if I left talking with Oprah and I walked out on the street and people were throwing shit at me. 0.94

00:52:39.000 That's never happened. 0.80

00:52:41.000 Could happen one day, but it hasn't yet.

00:52:43.000 There's the blowback, which is the most important part, which is the way my kids were treated.

00:52:47.000 I've got five kids, three older ones.

00:52:50.000 I was very concerned with what they heard in the hallways, what they saw on their social media stuff.

00:52:58.000 What does that news do to them?

00:53:02.000 That is the most important thing.

00:53:04.000 A real credit to the city of Austin and the schools that they go to and our community and their friends and the kids in the school.

00:53:12.000 Very little blowback.

00:53:13.000 So that was for me, that was like the biggest relief. 1.00

00:53:16.000 Like people can throw shit at me and say shit all day long. 0.99

00:53:19.000 But if my kids were treated roughly, I mean, that would break your heart, wouldn't it? 1.00

00:53:24.000 Yeah, it would be devastating.

00:53:25.000 Yeah, that would be by far the worst.

00:53:27.000 So that was very fortunate that it was not seamless.

00:53:32.000 I mean, there was some stuff, but they managed it and we managed it and the community managed it pretty well.

00:53:38.000 And then there was the legal blowback, which was pretty nasty.

00:53:42.000 I mean, I got, as soon as I stepped off the stage with Oprah, call it a stage, the lawsuit just piled up.

00:53:49.000 I mean, and piled up big.

00:53:52.000 And how many of them are still ongoing right now?

00:53:54.000 There's one.

00:53:55.000 Just one?

00:53:55.000 One.

00:53:56.000 The federal government one?

00:53:57.000 The federal case.

00:53:58.000 But there were – and some of them were highly publicized and some were not.

00:54:06.000 The team was insuring all of my salaries and all of my bonuses unbeknownst to me because they didn't have the money.

00:54:15.000 And so when this goes down, all of these companies came back and said, where's our money?

00:54:19.000 And I said, well, who are you?

00:54:21.000 So the team, I knew about one situation, right?

00:54:25.000 The big one, the SCA case, which has been settled since.

00:54:28.000 But there were many, many others.

00:54:30.000 And some were public, some were private, but they all had to get settled.

00:54:34.000 And so we've navigated that landscape, and now we're just down to the postal case, the federal case.

00:54:40.000 And when is that going to be resolved?

00:54:43.000 That's a good question.

00:54:44.000 It's been going on a long time.

00:54:47.000 And it came on the heels of a two or three year criminal investigation, which you're well aware of through Jeff Nowitzki and through the US Attorney's Office here in Los Angeles.

00:54:58.000 So once that case was closed, Then the Civil Division picked up the postal case, and it's been ongoing for years, and we've sort of finished that first phase of litigation, and it'll go to trial maybe a year from now in Washington,

00:55:13.000 D.C. We talked about this very briefly before the podcast.

00:55:17.000 We wanted to kind of save it for the podcast.

00:55:18.000 I don't understand the criminal investigation.

00:55:20.000 I don't understand the allocation of resources towards someone who is bike racing.

00:55:25.000 I feel like in a world where we have Bankers, it causes gigantic 2008 financial collapse. 0.58

00:55:33.000 We have pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars getting people hooked on OxyContin when we have crime and murder and all the fucking problems we have in this culture to spend taxpayers dollars On bike racing, a guy who may have cheated or definitely cheated in a sport where everybody's cheating. 0.99

00:55:53.000 That seems kind of fucked up. 0.99

00:55:55.000 Well, you can... 0.99

00:55:56.000 It's McCarthyism.

00:55:57.000 I mean, you can have...

00:55:58.000 First of all, cyclists don't have any lobbyists.

00:56:01.000 Nobody's out protecting us, whatever we did or didn't do in Europe 20 years ago.

00:56:06.000 The banks do, Big Pharma does, etc., etc.

00:56:10.000 So that's kind of a good old boys club that we're not a part of.

00:56:15.000 And we've talked about this offline.

00:56:17.000 I mean, when you have a federal agent in a guy like Nowitzki who's made his career with these types of cases, whether it's Balco or Bonds or Marion Jones, when you have a guy like that that all of a sudden is interested,

00:56:33.000 it's going to happen.

00:56:36.000 And when you have that particular agent or any agent that walks into Interview a witness or interview an old teammate with a badge and a gun.

00:56:47.000 They're talking.

00:56:48.000 Yeah, it gets weird, right?

00:56:50.000 It's a different kind of investigation.

00:56:52.000 Yeah.

00:56:53.000 So, of course, I mean, I heard what you said.

00:56:57.000 Of course, I don't think it makes much sense, but I was in the crosshairs, so people are going to say, well, of course you don't think it makes sense.

00:57:02.000 But, look, I mean, and I listened to your podcast with Nowitzki, and, I mean, it's just a... 0.99

00:57:16.000 There's some bullshit in there. 0.98

00:57:18.000 What specifically? 0.97

00:57:22.000 I think the idea that – and again, I don't work for the government, I don't work for the U.S. Attorney's Office here – but I think the idea that he was brought into the investigation I don't know that that's necessarily true.

00:57:37.000 I think, and again, I don't know Jeff, but I think he looked for those cases.

00:57:46.000 And whether or not, and by the way, when you're an agent for the Food and Drug Administration, I don't know how, I mean, all of these things have missions.

00:57:54.000 He was an agent for the IRS, and so that's when Balco and Bond started.

00:57:59.000 I don't know that doping in baseball is an IRS issue.

00:58:02.000 I don't know that doping and cycling 20 years ago is an issue for the FDA. I mean, they regulate who makes aspirin and who gives you your lettuce and your eggs.

00:58:11.000 What does that have to do with...

00:58:12.000 But I think he was opportunistic when it came to these cases, whether it's Barry Bonds or myself.

00:58:20.000 And, you know...

00:58:22.000 He thrived on that.

00:58:24.000 Well, I think you look at it two ways.

00:58:26.000 On one hand, he certainly capitalizes on these high-profile cases.

00:58:31.000 He certainly goes after them.

00:58:33.000 On the other hand, him capitalizing and being the rabid investigator that he is, it highlights the issues that are going on.

00:58:42.000 Sure.

00:58:43.000 I think the real problem is the allocation of money, like how much money is being spent on these cases.

00:58:49.000 You know, he told me that the Barry Bonds case, that they only spent like $100,000.

00:58:54.000 I didn't, I didn't expect that from, I didn't question them, and I didn't research it beforehand.

00:59:00.000 I didn't, I didn't know that that was even going to come up.

00:59:02.000 But then once I did research it, it seems like it was a fuckload more money than $100,000.

00:59:08.000 Yeah, well that's, that's obviously, that's laughable, but Whatever the number was, it wasn't 100,000, but it was probably not as much as what was reported.

00:59:21.000 But hey, that's the United States of America.

00:59:25.000 That's what they get to do.

00:59:27.000 And also, you get a guy like him, and that's how these issues get highlighted.

00:59:31.000 I mean, that's why we know about it.

00:59:32.000 Because he was so aggressive in his tactics, he was so aggressive in chasing down Anybody that he thought was doing these drugs.

00:59:40.000 That's why we know about these cases in such an extreme detail.

00:59:44.000 Yeah.

00:59:46.000 Yeah, man.

00:59:47.000 It wasn't pleasant watching that or listening to that podcast.

00:59:53.000 And the fact that, I don't know if you're bullshitting me or not, the fact that he wanted to do the podcast with me.

00:59:59.000 Oh, he did.

01:00:00.000 Yeah.

01:00:01.000 He asked to do it.

01:00:03.000 What kind of crazy is that?

01:00:04.000 Well, I think he wanted to find out how he felt about it, what it feels like now.

01:00:11.000 He works right now doing drug investigations for the UFC, and he's done a fantastic job to the point where, as I was telling you before the podcast, we've seen radical changes in fighters' physiques and their performances.

01:00:26.000 Guys who are world beaters have dropped off substantially.

01:00:30.000 The word in the mixed martial arts community, when I talk to fighters, when I talk to trainers, it's had a gigantic impact and they're terrified because they've imposed these very strict fines and probationary periods.

01:00:45.000 And as you also said before the podcast, you have a sport where the bigger and stronger you are physically, the more you're pummeling somebody else's head in.

01:00:55.000 It's different.

01:00:56.000 Yeah, it's different than baseball.

01:00:58.000 It is definitely different.

01:00:59.000 I think it's much more important.

01:01:03.000 Is this sport just as exciting?

01:01:05.000 It's pretty damn exciting.

01:01:07.000 It's hard to say if it's just as exciting or not, because I think there's a lot of great fighters who are world champions who are clean.

01:01:15.000 It's just, it's like some of the all-time greats.

01:01:17.000 I mean, there's great guys right now.

01:01:18.000 Frankie Edgar, clean as a whistle.

01:01:20.000 Chris Weibin, very clean.

01:01:22.000 Rockhold, clean.

01:01:23.000 He's a new champion in the middleweight division.

01:01:25.000 There's a lot of great fighters that are clean.

01:01:27.000 It's hard to tell. 0.97

01:01:30.000 There's a lot of fighters who weren't clean who are fucking awesome.

01:01:33.000 When they weren't clean, Vitor Belfort, who went on this wild run For like, at 36 years old, when he, they had, this is one of the problems, one of the big problems with the UFC, was that they had legal testosterone replacement for a short period of time, 0.99

01:01:49.000 for a few years, and guys were just fucking juicing to the tits. 0.99

01:01:54.000 You know, like it was Skittles. 0.99

01:01:55.000 Oh, they would come back with these hyperhuman levels.

01:01:57.000 They would test them and, you know, like a normal person in your testosterone level would be like a low 3, a high 800. Vitor was like 1,475 and he looked like a fucking silverback. 0.99

01:02:11.000 Wow. 0.99

01:02:11.000 And just hyper aggressive, super confident. 0.99

01:02:14.000 That's different.

01:02:15.000 You know, that's dangerous.

01:02:17.000 And winning and beating guys to, you know, to a pulp.

01:02:21.000 Right.

01:02:21.000 That's a different situation.

01:02:25.000 You're not talking about an extreme endurance sport.

01:02:28.000 That kind of aggression and explosion wouldn't benefit you in cycling because it's such a long endurance race.

01:02:35.000 And also, the end result is in someone's health.

01:02:40.000 It doesn't get...

01:02:42.000 Compromised by it.

01:02:42.000 Yeah, so yeah, so I mean that's I don't know that sport that well and I don't know what people's feeling are in and amongst the sport I mean you just gave a pretty good perspective on it so More power to him there.

01:02:56.000 It's just it's messy to pull it out.

01:02:59.000 It's messy because it was so pervasive It's like if they had figured out If the tour, if half the guys were clean and half the guys were dirty in the Tour de France, and then they figured out how to pull the drugs out from half,

01:03:16.000 it would be messy, right?

01:03:18.000 Because then it would be like, okay, well, what happened?

01:03:20.000 Why were these guys doing so well and now they're not?

01:03:22.000 The guys are winning or not winning?

01:03:24.000 But the tour seems like it's so pervasive that if they pulled the drugs out, the same guys would be winning, the times would be slower.

01:03:32.000 But what happened was primarily, I guess, through Nowitzki's investigation, which when was closed, he more or less handed everything to USADA, USADA picked up the investigation, and then they acted.

01:03:47.000 They gave me the lifetime ban.

01:03:50.000 When the world reads that in 2012, it was the summer of 2012, the world reads that.

01:03:55.000 The impression is, or when I do Oprah, for example, which is three or four months later, the impression is that we were hanging a blood bag six months ago.

01:04:04.000 Like, it's a current event.

01:04:06.000 It feels, although it had been...

01:04:09.000 It had been seven years before any line had ever been crossed.

01:04:13.000 Ever.

01:04:13.000 Even during the comeback.

01:04:15.000 But it made it current.

01:04:17.000 The comeback made it current for people.

01:04:19.000 Nowitzki investigating, getting everybody to speak through his own tactics.

01:04:25.000 It made it a current event.

01:04:27.000 When it really wasn't, it's like... 1.00

01:04:30.000 I remember sitting there in 2012 thinking, Alright, this shit's going down. 0.99

01:04:35.000 This is unbelievable. 0.99

01:04:37.000 Being in the middle of it, being me, this is unreal.

01:04:40.000 And I thought, you know, and we're talking about 1999 through 2005, but let's use 99 as an example.

01:04:47.000 I remember thinking to myself, who won the Super Bowl in 99?

01:04:51.000 And it was the Broncos, and Elway was the MVP. I remember thinking to myself, what if I opened the paper today and the NFL has opened a case against John Elway?

01:05:00.000 In 2012. I would have read that and gone, this is a joke, right?

01:05:04.000 Is it April Fools?

01:05:06.000 He's like an old guy who stands on the sideline now.

01:05:09.000 So it just...

01:05:11.000 They were able to go way, way back and sidestep and ignore any sort of due process and statute of limitations.

01:05:19.000 And they made it a current event.

01:05:21.000 I'm not blaming them or defending myself.

01:05:24.000 I'm just telling you what happened.

01:05:26.000 And, you know, that...

01:05:29.000 It's not totally accurate, but...

01:05:31.000 Well, it's because it was so long.

01:05:34.000 It went on for so long.

01:05:36.000 Like, remember, they had that Nike commercial.

01:05:38.000 When that Nike commercial, when you were doing that Livestrong Nike commercial, and you're riding your bike, and you're talking about people calling you a doper.

01:05:46.000 This is before you had come clean.

01:05:48.000 That was in 2000. Yeah, and this is before you'd never failed any tests.

01:05:52.000 But you still had to address it in a fucking Nike commercial. 0.99

01:05:56.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:05:57.000 So this was something that was ill-advised.

01:06:00.000 Yeah, it seems right now, right?

01:06:03.000 But that's, again, I mean, all of this, whether it's agreeing to that commercial or the way you treat it, I needed, you know, somebody in my life to go, I just read this script or this storyboard, and I think that's a real bad idea.

01:06:19.000 Yeah.

01:06:20.000 But did you have anybody like that in your life?

01:06:21.000 Well, clearly not.

01:06:23.000 But did anybody suggest it?

01:06:24.000 No.

01:06:25.000 No one.

01:06:25.000 But no, but I was...

01:06:27.000 Isn't that hard though? 1.00

01:06:28.000 Because you're such a fucking winner. 1.00

01:06:30.000 You're on top of the world. 1.00

01:06:32.000 Nobody wants to say, hey man, don't do that.

01:06:34.000 Dude, it's like when you're in that position, everybody's saying yes.

01:06:40.000 Yes, yes, yes.

01:06:41.000 That's a great idea.

01:06:42.000 Yes, Lance.

01:06:43.000 Yes, absolutely.

01:06:45.000 Right now.

01:06:46.000 Yes.

01:06:46.000 Nobody's sitting there playing the devil's advocate or saying, I think that's a bad idea.

01:06:50.000 I didn't have that North Star, man. 0.99

01:06:53.000 And again, the fucking buck stops with me, man. 0.99

01:06:57.000 I should have been mature enough and worldly enough to go, bad idea. 0.99

01:07:01.000 Let's make another commercial.

01:07:03.000 Or bad idea, Lance.

01:07:04.000 Let's say something else in the next press conference.

01:07:06.000 But it seems like the weight of it all and the air of it all was so thick that you kind of had to address it all the time.

01:07:13.000 Because it was being thrown at you all the time.

01:07:15.000 I peripherally watched cycling.

01:07:19.000 Peripherally.

01:07:19.000 And I knew about it.

01:07:20.000 Everyone knew about it.

01:07:22.000 But the more defensive I became and the more aggressive I became in the denials, all that does, right?

01:07:31.000 It might appease some people or supporters.

01:07:34.000 I heard it in his voice.

01:07:36.000 I believe that.

01:07:37.000 But what it really did, especially with the press, was it just made the next occasion, the next question, the next episode...

01:07:47.000 Even more inevitable.

01:07:49.000 Like, it just added fuel to that fire.

01:07:51.000 Like, you know, looking back in hindsight, I should have just said, like, I'm not going to talk about it.

01:07:57.000 Or whatever the answer was. 1.00

01:07:59.000 But instead of saying, you know, it was literally like, finger in your chest, fuck you, don't ask me that. 1.00

01:08:05.000 I mean, that is... 1.00

01:08:07.000 When you're guilty, that's a real bad approach.

01:08:10.000 And it's the one that I took, and quite honestly, it's probably one of the main reasons that we're sitting here today talking about this.

01:08:20.000 Why do you think you took that approach when looking back on it?

01:08:25.000 Because that is the approach that I took in training and in racing. 0.98

01:08:30.000 I mean, these are guys that I raced against that I liked, but I would make up reasons to fucking hate them. 1.00

01:08:35.000 Like, I'd read something and be like, look at this asshole. 1.00

01:08:38.000 Did you read what he said? 1.00

01:08:39.000 I mean, he probably didn't even say anything.

01:08:40.000 I'd take it and be like, I can't believe he said just his fuel, just his motivation.

01:08:45.000 So that's all fine and good when you're training and you're racing and you're competing.

01:08:49.000 But when you step off the bike, you have to have that switch to say, okay, that's been done.

01:08:55.000 You won the race.

01:08:55.000 We're not going to go treat another human being that way, right?

01:08:59.000 In just a professional context or in a press context.

01:09:03.000 You got to turn it off, man.

01:09:04.000 And I couldn't.

01:09:05.000 I had my finger in people's chest, on the bike, off the bike, everywhere.

01:09:13.000 My bad, dude.

01:09:14.000 I mean, I didn't have the ability to turn that off.

01:09:18.000 I mean, it's good to be a competitor, but it's not good to be too competitive.

01:09:21.000 And once you took that approach, once you started with that approach, did you feel like there was a weight of momentum behind you?

01:09:29.000 Like, to dig your heels in and stop it and try a new approach would be very difficult.

01:09:35.000 Well, yeah.

01:09:36.000 Once it gets rolling, it's tough to...

01:09:41.000 What was it like with the people that you were close to?

01:09:44.000 Obviously, the people that you trained with, they knew what you were doing.

01:09:47.000 But what about your family and your close friends?

01:09:50.000 How many of them were aware of what was going on?

01:09:52.000 I think, by and large, I don't know.

01:09:56.000 I wouldn't have asked them and they wouldn't have asked me.

01:09:58.000 I think it was sort of this...

01:10:00.000 So your friends never asked?

01:10:01.000 Hey, man, come here.

01:10:02.000 I think it's more don't ask, don't tell.

01:10:03.000 They never pulled you aside?

01:10:04.000 Don't ask, don't tell.

01:10:05.000 Really?

01:10:06.000 Yeah.

01:10:06.000 Wow.

01:10:07.000 Because they probably, you know, they probably didn't want to know.

01:10:10.000 Do you have close friends outside of cycling?

01:10:12.000 Yes.

01:10:13.000 And they didn't ask you?

01:10:15.000 Well, no, they didn't.

01:10:17.000 Really?

01:10:18.000 Yeah, I mean, they might also ride bikes, so they're not in the sport.

01:10:21.000 Right, but people you went to dinner with.

01:10:22.000 Yeah, nobody saddled up at the bar and was like, dude, come on.

01:10:25.000 Really?

01:10:26.000 No one?

01:10:27.000 No.

01:10:28.000 Wow! 1.00

01:10:29.000 That's fucking crazy. 1.00

01:10:31.000 If I was your friend, dude, I would have got you fucked up. 1.00

01:10:33.000 I was just going to say... 1.00

01:10:33.000 I would have got you drunk. 1.00

01:10:35.000 I'm like, come on, dude, we're going on a hike.

01:10:37.000 Joe would be talking about it now. 0.98

01:10:38.000 I remember that time I got him all fucked up. 0.99

01:10:41.000 No, no, no. 0.99

01:10:42.000 He admitted it.

01:10:42.000 I would have never said a word until you came out.

01:10:45.000 Once you came out, then I would have told him.

01:10:47.000 Until the guy with the badge and the gun showed up.

01:10:49.000 And then you would have said everything.

01:10:50.000 I would have ducked.

01:10:51.000 Jeff Novitski?

01:10:53.000 No, I would have hired some lawyers. 0.64

01:10:54.000 I'd be like, you guys sit with me when this guy comes in?

01:10:57.000 What's going on?

01:10:58.000 What do you want to know?

01:10:59.000 About bike racing?

01:11:00.000 I would have mocked it.

01:11:01.000 Bike racing? 1.00

01:11:03.000 Like a kid's bike?

01:11:05.000 You have a gun?

01:11:06.000 Someone stealing bikes?

01:11:07.000 No.

01:11:08.000 Are they killing people with bikes? 1.00

01:11:09.000 What the fuck's going on with that gun? 1.00

01:11:11.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:11:12.000 What happens in these podcasts when the interviewee has to take a leak?

01:11:16.000 You go take a leak, man.

01:11:17.000 Don't worry about it.

01:11:17.000 What happens to the podcast?

01:11:18.000 Well, just pause it for a second.

01:11:19.000 What about the people at home?

01:11:21.000 I'll talk to them.

01:11:21.000 Don't worry about it.

01:11:22.000 Oh, yeah.

01:11:22.000 That's right.

01:11:23.000 You're also here, too.

01:11:24.000 Don't worry about it, man.

01:11:24.000 Go take a leak.

01:11:25.000 It happens all the time.

01:11:26.000 It's no big deal.

01:11:27.000 Oh, really?

01:11:27.000 Yeah.

01:11:28.000 Yeah.

01:11:28.000 Okay.

01:11:28.000 All the time.

01:11:29.000 Don't sweat it.

01:11:30.000 Well, I'm gonna go take a leak.

01:11:30.000 Go take a leak.

01:11:31.000 Please do.

01:11:32.000 It's one thing about athletes. 0.98

01:11:33.000 They drink fuckloads of water. 0.99

01:11:34.000 Lance is here. 0.99

01:11:36.000 He's hungover, too.

01:11:38.000 He has a very specific schedule, he told me. 0.99

01:11:40.000 He drinks two cups of coffee in the morning, then he takes a shit, then he drinks water all day, and then he waits until about five, about five, and then he starts drinking. 0.98

01:11:50.000 That's a good drug. 0.99

01:11:51.000 I was going to ask him about marijuana. 1.00

01:11:53.000 Because if he smoked marijuana and he was holding in all those lies, that shit would fuck with you. 1.00

01:11:59.000 Like, I'll smoke some weed and I'll think about a lie I told in high school and it'll fuck with me. 1.00

01:12:05.000 It really will. 1.00

01:12:06.000 I'll think about some shit that I did in high school and it'll make me go, oh, why the fuck did I say that? 0.99

01:12:14.000 That's one of the crazy things about marijuana. 1.00

01:12:16.000 It never lets you forget.

01:12:18.000 It'll bring those things up that you're trying to hide.

01:12:20.000 But alcohol? 1.00

01:12:21.000 Alcohol is like, ah, don't worry about it, pussy. 1.00

01:12:25.000 Alcohol is the best drug if you're trying to hold back a lie. 1.00

01:12:28.000 Just throw that down. 0.93

01:12:30.000 And, you know, as soon as you can't walk straight, you're thinking about that.

01:12:34.000 As soon as you're, you know, you're thinking about the song that's playing, you're thinking about your...

01:12:39.000 Whatever.

01:12:40.000 You're thinking about other things.

01:12:41.000 It's a good close your focus drug, whereas pot is the opposite.

01:12:46.000 Pot is a open your focus.

01:12:49.000 This is fascinating though, isn't it, Jamie?

01:12:51.000 You forget you have a secret.

01:12:52.000 Yeah, you forget. 0.99

01:12:53.000 You don't give a fuck about your secrets. 1.00

01:12:54.000 I mean, that's why people make horrible sexual decisions when they're drunk. 0.99

01:12:59.000 I mean, it's also why people think that people that are drunk shouldn't have sex with someone who's drunk, even if you're drunk. 0.99

01:13:06.000 I mean, that's why the crazy feminists try to say that that's rape. 1.00

01:13:10.000 You know, that if a man and woman have sex and they're drunk, it's rape. 0.99

01:13:12.000 Well, they say it because you're obviously not exactly of sound. 0.50

01:13:17.000 I mean, it depends on how drunk you are, right?

01:13:20.000 But at a certain level, you're certainly impaired and you can't make good decisions. 0.99

01:13:25.000 I think it's funny, though, that a guy who's just such an athlete, a lifelong athlete, fucking pounds the hooch like that. 0.98

01:13:31.000 I'll ask him how often he does it. 0.99

01:13:33.000 We were talking about marijuana and whether or not you used marijuana while you were holding back all those lies and how it would fuck with you. 0.99

01:13:42.000 Because when I was... 1.00

01:13:43.000 I'll get high and I'll think about some shit I lied about in high school. 0.99

01:13:46.000 And we'll go like, oh... 0.98

01:13:50.000 You know, paranoia and it'll illuminate areas of your life that you're trying to avoid.

01:13:58.000 The economy of all this is a fascinating aspect of it because there were a lot of people that were making money Off of you racing.

01:14:09.000 A lot of people.

01:14:10.000 There was a gigantic industry. 0.99

01:14:13.000 And for them to pretend that they didn't know what I knew as a fucking comedian who, again, peripherally watched cycling. 1.00

01:14:21.000 You know, I'd watch you win, and I'd be like, damn, that motherfucker won again? 1.00

01:14:25.000 Damn! 1.00

01:14:26.000 That's it, you know? 1.00

01:14:27.000 I mean, I never raced bikes, I never rode bikes. 0.91

01:14:31.000 So, for me, and I knew, you know, I'm like, how the fuck does the U.S. Post Office not know? 0.97

01:14:37.000 How the fuck does Nike not know? 0.99

01:14:39.000 How the fuck does... 1.00

01:14:39.000 They know! 1.00

01:14:40.000 They know.

01:14:41.000 They know.

01:14:41.000 They can pretend they don't know, but they know.

01:14:43.000 If they didn't know, then they're irresponsible.

01:14:49.000 That's irresponsible.

01:14:51.000 But they kind of knew, and they just said, it's alright.

01:14:54.000 We're getting away with it.

01:14:55.000 We're getting away with it. 0.99

01:14:57.000 But then, once the shit came down, then they all wanted their money back. 0.99

01:15:04.000 That's a weird aspect. 0.97

01:15:05.000 You can't talk too much about this, right?

01:15:07.000 That one gets sensitive for me.

01:15:09.000 Well, the post office one, I know you can't talk about it, but can you talk about, this is a reality.

01:15:15.000 When you are accused of defrauding the federal government, which is what they're saying, because you were riding for the U.S. Post Office, that was the team, and you won X amount of money during that time, they can sue you for three times that money.

01:15:33.000 Correct.

01:15:34.000 Right, so they won a hundred million bucks.

01:15:41.000 Yeah, that's a lot of money.

01:15:43.000 How's that going?

01:15:44.000 That's uh...

01:15:46.000 You know, honestly, that's the only active case, so that one does get a little trickier to talk about, just from a...

01:15:53.000 I don't want to get crushed by my lawyers, but we like our case.

01:15:59.000 We think that we're confident in the case.

01:16:03.000 We believe that the Postal Service...

01:16:06.000 While none of this story is perfect, we believe that the Postal Service, and their own numbers support it.

01:16:15.000 I mean, the Postal Service commissioned three separate studies to analyze the effect of the sponsorship on the team.

01:16:21.000 We believe they made hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:16:24.000 And we know that they were also using the team as a sales vehicle.

01:16:28.000 So, coming during the tour, bringing over potential new clients, bringing over new clients, They were actually converting their business to the Postal Service.

01:16:37.000 We know that happened, and we know that it equaled a significant increase in revenue.

01:16:43.000 So, we like our case.

01:16:46.000 I mean, and at this point, would I like to have all legal issues out of my life?

01:16:51.000 Yes.

01:16:52.000 But settlement's not an option, and so we have to just fall back on what we think is the strength of the case.

01:17:01.000 If they made a ton of money while you were being dishonest, does that exonerate you from owing them money?

01:17:08.000 How does that work?

01:17:10.000 Well, I'm not a lawyer, but my view of, it's called a KETAM case, which is a false claims case.

01:17:16.000 My view is, and I think is one that our side shares, is it's about damages.

01:17:23.000 Was the Postal Service damaged?

01:17:26.000 And what can we prove to be the damages?

01:17:31.000 If there are no damages, then I would like to think that there's no case.

01:17:40.000 It is what it is.

01:17:41.000 The federal government is interested, the Department of Justice is interested in the case, and I have no choice but to fight it.

01:17:48.000 I don't have, after the dozen previous lawsuits, I'm not in a position to really cut any more checks, and so I'm in a position where I have to go fight this one out.

01:18:01.000 How do you get by financially now?

01:18:07.000 Well, the first thing that I did was, and I saw this coming, knew this was going to happen, is life was big.

01:18:15.000 I mean, we had three houses, we had a jet, I mean, we had the whole...

01:18:17.000 You just take that burn rate way down.

01:18:20.000 So you just, your overhead goes way down. 0.99

01:18:23.000 And, you know, the crazy thing is, if you'd have told me before, like, you're going to go sell a bunch of shit and sell your plane, I'd be like, dude, that is, life is going to suck. 0.99

01:18:34.000 Was that a plane? 0.99

01:18:35.000 Well, just, you know, the house in Hawaii.

01:18:39.000 I'm not bragging.

01:18:40.000 I'm just telling you what really happened.

01:18:44.000 But I would have thought, man, life is going to be terrible.

01:18:47.000 As you take it down and you live a simpler life and you get your burn rate down and you get it manageable, Life's exactly the same.

01:18:55.000 Like, I don't know.

01:18:56.000 I mean, the happiness factor is exactly the same.

01:19:01.000 Yeah.

01:19:01.000 Well, they've done studies on that.

01:19:02.000 They've done studies on that. 1.00

01:19:03.000 Yeah, none of that shit. 0.99

01:19:04.000 It's more convenient, right? 1.00

01:19:05.000 Obviously, going direct somewhere and not dealing with a terminal and, you know, fucking TSA. Obviously, that's different, but it takes a little more time, you know, around more people. 0.97

01:19:16.000 But I'm just as happy as I was.

01:19:19.000 Yeah, they've done studies on people that actually complicate their lives with more success, more houses, more things, and it actually makes you more tense.

01:19:27.000 It gives you more to think about.

01:19:29.000 Well, you gotta, yeah.

01:19:30.000 I mean, you gotta keep, you know, you have to feed that beast.

01:19:33.000 Yeah.

01:19:33.000 And so you get a little bit of the dog chasing the tail going on.

01:19:40.000 Life was moving real fast for me then, and it moves a lot slower now.

01:19:46.000 It might be a little slow for my taste right now, but I didn't like it when it was that fast.

01:19:51.000 So you cut back on all the expenses, and do you earn money now?

01:19:56.000 What do you do to earn money?

01:19:57.000 You know, occasionally.

01:19:58.000 So I still speak, and sometimes I'm paid to speak.

01:20:04.000 And then there are just other appearances.

01:20:07.000 I mean, I still have some investments that, you know, that help sort of ease that pain.

01:20:15.000 But, you know, and who knows what the future holds.

01:20:18.000 I don't know if that stuff dries up forever or comes back or who knows.

01:20:23.000 What is it like to sit while this is all going on and watching the economy of this story grow and develop?

01:20:30.000 Because it wasn't just the lawsuits.

01:20:34.000 There's also books.

01:20:36.000 There's documentaries.

01:20:37.000 There's all these television shows.

01:20:39.000 There's all this focus.

01:20:40.000 There's ad revenue coming from those shows.

01:20:43.000 There's all these people that are dedicating all this time.

01:20:45.000 A big part of their career has become Telling the Lance Armstrong story.

01:20:51.000 Yeah, it's a small industry.

01:20:53.000 Yeah.

01:20:54.000 I mean, there was the industries that benefited on the way up, and I was one of those industries.

01:20:59.000 They were the sponsors.

01:21:00.000 I mean, you look at Trek Bicycles, for example.

01:21:02.000 I mean, before the first tour, I think they did $125 million in sales.

01:21:05.000 They do a billion now.

01:21:07.000 So, yeah, that's a big difference.

01:21:11.000 So you have those sort of industries.

01:21:13.000 But then, you know, on the way down, so those are all people making money on the way up.

01:21:16.000 And then on the way down...

01:21:19.000 I think it did happen, but it's probably normal and natural that people capitalize on the way down.

01:21:25.000 I mean, look at Bill Clinton.

01:21:25.000 I mean, as he's going through everything he went through, believe me, there were plenty of people going, all right, now it's my turn to make some money.

01:21:32.000 And fair play.

01:21:33.000 I mean, that's just the way it is. 1.00

01:21:35.000 And, you know, some people may think that's BS, but shit. 0.99

01:21:40.000 I mean, everybody was hopping on the way down. 0.99

01:21:43.000 Well, they have to, right?

01:21:44.000 I mean, it is a gigantic story.

01:21:47.000 Now, your friends didn't know what you were doing.

01:21:52.000 When it came out, how many of them had a hard time with it?

01:21:56.000 How many of them We're cool with it?

01:21:58.000 Like, what was it like?

01:21:59.000 You know, it's, yeah, some, I mean, obviously the people we, you know, the sponsors fled.

01:22:05.000 Right.

01:22:05.000 Did any of them stay?

01:22:07.000 No.

01:22:08.000 None.

01:22:08.000 How many did you have at a time?

01:22:11.000 Maybe 10. But they have to leave, right?

01:22:14.000 Right.

01:22:14.000 I mean, like, some of them are publicly traded companies, so they have concerns about that.

01:22:18.000 Some of them are just covering their ass, whatever. 0.98

01:22:20.000 But they're all gone. 0.99

01:22:23.000 And friends are interesting.

01:22:25.000 I mean, just use the foundation as an example, right?

01:22:30.000 I mean, I was on the board.

01:22:31.000 I was the chairman of the board.

01:22:32.000 I was the founder.

01:22:34.000 The board was my friends.

01:22:36.000 But these are the friends that say, okay, you're out.

01:22:37.000 And so I get it that there might be a strategic reason for that.

01:22:42.000 But then when you never hear from these, then all of a sudden these people disappear from your life.

01:22:46.000 I mean, the way I sum it up is anytime anybody goes through anything, and I don't know if you've had some heavy shit in your life, but when you're going through it, people either lean in or they lean out.

01:22:56.000 And some people lean out, which means they run away, and you're surprised by that. 0.99

01:23:02.000 And you're like, what the fuck? 0.98

01:23:03.000 I mean, that guy was at every champagne party we threw in Paris. 1.00

01:23:06.000 Right.

01:23:07.000 And now he's like, I haven't heard from the dude in three years.

01:23:09.000 Like, that's strange.

01:23:11.000 Right. 0.99

01:23:12.000 But he probably has his own motive, either covering his own ass, or maybe he's one of these people that has a tremendous sense of betrayal and is just so pissed still and hurt. 0.99

01:23:20.000 We have to, I mean, I have to be receptive to that. 0.99

01:23:23.000 But then there are the ones who lean in, right?

01:23:25.000 And most of those people don't surprise you, but then there are others that lean in and they surprise you like, wow.

01:23:31.000 I didn't know you had my back like that.

01:23:33.000 And so you get surprised on both sides.

01:23:36.000 And at the end of it all, dude, you look around and you're like, all right, these are the people that are going to ride anything out with me.

01:23:45.000 Which is kind of cool and refreshing for me to really know, right?

01:23:50.000 If you're loading up a bus with all your most loyal, closest friends, I fucking know who's on that bus now.

01:23:58.000 Yeah, you know now. 0.93

01:23:59.000 At this point. 0.95

01:24:01.000 And for 20 years, you know, there was just a bunch of chumps that were on that bus. 0.99

01:24:08.000 But, you know, as soon as somebody changed the music, they hopped off.

01:24:15.000 It takes adversity to illuminate that.

01:24:19.000 There's no other way.

01:24:20.000 Until you test them, you really don't know.

01:24:23.000 Adversity.

01:24:24.000 I remember, this is a funny question, we were, this is a postal thing, but we were, once I was at a, I don't remember the postmaster general's name, his name at the time, but we did a, this is totally unrelated, but you said adversity, so it reminded me.

01:24:36.000 He was introducing me at this thing, and he wanted to say, you know, introducing me, he's overcome great adversity.

01:24:43.000 He says, here's Lance, he's overcome great diversity.

01:24:50.000 And I'm thinking, Jesus, white kid from Plano. 0.99

01:24:54.000 I didn't overcome shit when it came to diversity. 1.00

01:24:58.000 Whoops. 0.99

01:25:02.000 Raising kids, we both have children, and obviously when you're raising a kid, you're teaching them about life, you're trying to set an example.

01:25:14.000 Did you have to sit them down and explain what was going on?

01:25:20.000 How old were your youngest at the time?

01:25:22.000 Oh, and the youngest were one and two.

01:25:26.000 Whoa.

01:25:27.000 Yeah.

01:25:27.000 So you didn't have to explain it.

01:25:29.000 So I have three kids with my ex-wife, Kristen, and Luke is now 16 and twin girls that are 14. And then I have a six and a five-year-old with Anna.

01:25:38.000 By the way, it's the craziest blended family you've ever seen. 1.00

01:25:43.000 Like, those five kids are five siblings.

01:25:46.000 It's the most beautiful thing.

01:25:48.000 And Anna and Kristen are like sisters.

01:25:49.000 I mean, I've got a great situation.

01:25:52.000 That's awesome.

01:25:52.000 Awesome.

01:25:53.000 Awesome.

01:25:53.000 It takes a lot of work, or took a lot of work to get to this place, but it's awesome.

01:25:57.000 And Kristen, to her credit, Who I was married to during this ugly period, and who obviously would have known everything, has been great.

01:26:10.000 Whether it's conversations she's had with our older children while they're at her house, or just helping massage this thing.

01:26:18.000 But I'm still sitting down with my kids.

01:26:20.000 I mean, I go to therapy, Anna goes, we all go, the kids go.

01:26:24.000 So we still sit down and just kind of work this out, dude.

01:26:28.000 This is not...

01:26:30.000 This is a complicated thing.

01:26:31.000 And the crazy thing is my older kids have kind of gotten through it.

01:26:36.000 The six and the five-year-old will come into it, right? 0.96

01:26:39.000 I mean, the internet and fucking Google, Wikipedia, you name it, they will grow into this. 0.65

01:26:46.000 Like at some point, my six-year-old boy, who's just a fanatical athlete and everything is sports and sports and sports. 0.99

01:26:53.000 I mean, I hear him and his friends talk about Tom Brady and one of his friends is like, oh, he's a cheater.

01:26:58.000 My son loves Tom Brady. 0.84

01:26:59.000 He's like, oh, he's a cheater.

01:27:00.000 I'm like, it ain't going to be long before Max Armstrong is at school and some kid in another class goes, isn't your dad that cheater?

01:27:08.000 He's going to be like, what?

01:27:11.000 He doesn't know.

01:27:12.000 So he's going to grow into that.

01:27:14.000 So that conversation will then be had at that time.

01:27:16.000 It's tough to have it with a six-year-old today.

01:27:19.000 So I know that's coming.

01:27:21.000 But I have the experience of having dealt with it.

01:27:25.000 With a 16-year-old boy who at the time was 13. And still dealing with it, with those guys.

01:27:31.000 And, you know, so far, I mean, I think we've been super proactive.

01:27:35.000 Probably, you know, Anna and Kristen probably think I should have been more proactive.

01:27:39.000 But I think that's in a good spot.

01:27:43.000 So you have group therapy sessions where you just discuss?

01:27:47.000 So I've sat with all three kids, the older kids.

01:27:51.000 You know, and it's just sort of free-for-all.

01:27:53.000 Wow.

01:27:54.000 Yeah.

01:27:55.000 And they had no idea until the scandal broke.

01:27:58.000 Yep.

01:27:59.000 And what was their reaction?

01:28:03.000 You know, the girls were, they were nine, so they were still, they were young.

01:28:07.000 I mean, a nine-year-old girl, they really didn't have a reaction.

01:28:10.000 Luke was, you know, was a 13-year-old boy.

01:28:14.000 No, so they were 11. So Luke was 13, they were 11. They still sort of were immune to it.

01:28:19.000 You know, when he watched Oprah, because it aired three or four days later, I had sort of fled to Hawaii.

01:28:28.000 I mean, he called me, because I talked about Luke on her show.

01:28:33.000 With the whole idea that I know he's defending me at school.

01:28:37.000 I mean, there was enough smoke that people were going, dude, your dad's a doper, etc.

01:28:41.000 And he was defending me.

01:28:42.000 And my point to Oprah was that at this point I get to say to Luke, stop defending me.

01:28:46.000 You don't need to defend me anymore, right?

01:28:49.000 It's true.

01:28:50.000 And so he watched that, which is probably a heavy moment for him.

01:28:54.000 It would have been awful watching it with him.

01:28:57.000 But he called me and said, I understand and I love you.

01:29:03.000 But we still...

01:29:04.000 I mean, that was three years ago.

01:29:05.000 We still have to talk about these things, man.

01:29:08.000 How often?

01:29:09.000 Not often.

01:29:10.000 But it still occasionally comes up, especially if you're talking about the importance of being honest and truthful and having character.

01:29:20.000 Yeah.

01:29:20.000 And he's an athlete.

01:29:21.000 I mean, look, that's the only thing that I will say.

01:29:25.000 I mean, I don't want...

01:29:28.000 Ideally, my son's huge.

01:29:30.000 6'3", 230 pounds, plays offensive line.

01:29:33.000 Well, that's good. 0.99

01:29:35.000 Not too many people would be fucking with him. 0.98

01:29:37.000 Yeah, I think he's good there, but he's also a real sweet guy. 0.98

01:29:41.000 He's not in anybody's face.

01:29:45.000 But I don't want him to say his football...

01:29:53.000 I don't want him in a messy spot where he's got to make tough choices.

01:29:56.000 Right.

01:29:57.000 In fact, I don't want that at all.

01:29:59.000 And football is a sport where you have to make tough choices.

01:30:03.000 I'm not a football player, but I can imagine.

01:30:11.000 It's also open.

01:30:13.000 It's also brought up by coaches.

01:30:15.000 It's also brought up by trainers.

01:30:17.000 It's a part of the game as much as I'm sure it is in cycling.

01:30:24.000 Yeah.

01:30:25.000 That had to be...

01:30:26.000 It just had to be chewing you apart when you know that your kid's defending you and you know it's going to come out.

01:30:34.000 You know he's having these conversations at school and he's like, my dad's not a cheater.

01:30:39.000 Yeah.

01:30:40.000 Well, we didn't know it was going to come out.

01:30:43.000 I mean, even when the Vitsky was investigating, I mean, that case went away, right?

01:30:49.000 So we thought...

01:30:50.000 At that point, maybe we're done.

01:30:52.000 And it didn't.

01:30:55.000 I mean, USADA picked up the investigation, and then, you know, based on all his work, they picked it up, and then it came out.

01:31:04.000 But, man, it happened fast.

01:31:08.000 Like, it was seemingly, like, instantaneous, man.

01:31:12.000 Did it surprise you?

01:31:16.000 Um...

01:31:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:31:18.000 I mean, I guess it's, yeah.

01:31:19.000 It surprised me, but... 0.99

01:31:22.000 Shit, anybody would have been surprised, I suppose. 0.98

01:31:24.000 And it was just surreal, you know, the way it all came out, and, uh... 0.99

01:31:32.000 And the method at which they sort of advertised the findings.

01:31:39.000 To their credit, there was a strategy on their end.

01:31:44.000 So let's take Nowitzki's work, let's do some additional investigations, let's package it in with something they called the reasoned decision, and then let's go out and talk about it all over the place.

01:31:55.000 That was kind of unbelievable to me.

01:31:58.000 Why do you think they spent so much time and resources going after you, as opposed to all the other people who've won?

01:32:06.000 Well, they needed a landmark case.

01:32:10.000 I think there's plenty of people that, and I'm just guessing.

01:32:16.000 This is not based on any proof.

01:32:18.000 And I've had conversations with USADA. I mean, I think we're still getting to the point where we can Do stuff together or have a conversation, so I'm not trying to criticize them.

01:32:28.000 I mean, I think there ought to be a place for them.

01:32:31.000 But I think there's also realistic, I mean, in reality, there are people that think they're ineffective.

01:32:37.000 They think they spend 10 or 20 or 50, whatever the number is, millions of dollars a year, and they don't catch anybody, right?

01:32:44.000 I mean, if you look at the amount of positives, it must be, you know, less than 1%.

01:32:50.000 Well, if I told you, well, Joe, we're all good, man.

01:32:52.000 It's less than 1% testing positive.

01:32:54.000 You would laugh.

01:32:57.000 Right.

01:32:57.000 So they needed a landmark case to say, no, we are effective.

01:33:02.000 And here it is.

01:33:05.000 And I think also from a legal perspective, it sets some legal precedence for them that they can use going forward in other cases with future cases.

01:33:15.000 And then you add in just a ginormous story that was guaranteed to get a lot of press.

01:33:24.000 But it still pains me to—look, I know what went on.

01:33:28.000 We all know what went on.

01:33:29.000 But I can't take—when I hear that this program or this particular athlete being me was the greatest fraud in the history of sport, You know, I can't.

01:33:42.000 That's just not true, right?

01:33:44.000 And then when you hear that our team's doping program was the most sophisticated program in the history of sport, well, we also know that's not true, right?

01:33:55.000 So those are...

01:33:57.000 And then the final one, which is really, I think, bothered a lot of people that this person, being me, Forced young, impressionable young men to put dangerous substances into their body.

01:34:09.000 That just is not true.

01:34:13.000 But if I heard somebody, if somebody said that about one of my son's friends, I would be pissed off too. 0.96

01:34:18.000 I'd be like, dude, screw that guy.

01:34:22.000 But we all made our own choices. 0.84

01:34:24.000 We were all grown men.

01:34:26.000 They were bad choices, right?

01:34:27.000 Most would say.

01:34:28.000 We would say.

01:34:30.000 But there was no forcing to do that.

01:34:34.000 What is it like now, like, in, I mean, I don't want to get too personal, but your personal life, like, people value honesty.

01:34:42.000 It's one of the most important things in friends and lovers, when you have this thing where you're On video over and over and over and over and over and over again being deceptive over and over again defending yourself when you it's and then you come out and say it's all a lie.

01:35:00.000 And so this is like database of lying.

01:35:04.000 Like what is it like like trying to get people to trust you?

01:35:08.000 Right.

01:35:09.000 Hey man, this is what I talked about in the beginning, is that road is a never-ending path.

01:35:20.000 I will be walking that walk the rest of my life.

01:35:22.000 And there are...

01:35:23.000 There's a lot of people that'll say, uh-uh, I'm never trusting this guy ever again.

01:35:28.000 I don't care.

01:35:29.000 I don't care how apologetic or contrite he is.

01:35:32.000 I'm done.

01:35:34.000 But the key is that I have to be committed to that path, right?

01:35:39.000 And so I can walk that walk and take each case individually and one-on-one.

01:35:47.000 But We've talked about endurance.

01:35:51.000 That will be the longest walk or the longest journey of my life.

01:35:55.000 Do you have a code that you follow now?

01:35:59.000 Have you imposed a stringent set of rules on yourself where because of this history, you can't lie about anything ever?

01:36:12.000 No, I mean, I haven't thought, I mean, I guess the answer is no, because I haven't, there's not been a, you know, sort of a new mission statement or sort of this key, but, but, I mean, life was pretty transparent anyways before that,

01:36:30.000 but, I mean, there was obviously, there was the huge deception, but it's not as if, you know, There's anything crazy out there outside of that.

01:36:41.000 Right.

01:36:41.000 But I mean, you know, it's just, that's a big thing with people, you know, to be able to trust their friends or be able to trust their boyfriend or girlfriend, you know?

01:36:51.000 Yep.

01:36:52.000 For sure.

01:36:54.000 What is life like for Lance Armstrong now?

01:36:57.000 Like, is everything calmed down to the point where the stress is minimized except for the lawsuit?

01:37:04.000 Yeah, it's, as I said a second ago, it's just simple, man.

01:37:07.000 I mean, I still, I love to work out, you know, so I train every day.

01:37:11.000 I think that's...

01:37:12.000 What do you do?

01:37:13.000 I primarily run, and then I'll do a little bit of gym work, and then I'll ride occasionally, although very rarely, very rarely get on a bike.

01:37:24.000 Why is that?

01:37:26.000 I just, it takes too much time, and it's just...

01:37:29.000 It takes too much time?

01:37:31.000 I mean, you could run for an hour.

01:37:33.000 Oh, I see.

01:37:33.000 If you do a hard run for an hour, you've got to go ride for three hours.

01:37:36.000 Right.

01:37:36.000 So that's two more hours that you...

01:37:38.000 Plus you've got to get all the shit on and go out and deal with traffic. 0.99

01:37:41.000 Right. 0.99

01:37:41.000 But does it psychologically fuck with you when you get on a bike? 0.99

01:37:45.000 It's... 0.94

01:37:45.000 I mean... 0.94

01:37:47.000 I have some bitterness there towards what we've talked about, primarily in and around the economy of it, how it was...

01:37:54.000 Right.

01:37:54.000 And now everybody's like, no, no, no, we're out.

01:37:57.000 Right.

01:37:58.000 We're going to...

01:37:59.000 But that's on me.

01:38:01.000 I've got to work that out.

01:38:02.000 And that's not their fault.

01:38:04.000 That's my fault.

01:38:05.000 So...

01:38:06.000 There's some of that.

01:38:07.000 And it's nice to do...

01:38:08.000 I love to run.

01:38:09.000 I mean, I grew up...

01:38:10.000 I ran before I rode.

01:38:11.000 So it's nice to go into something where I can still get...

01:38:13.000 I mean, I view working out.

01:38:15.000 You probably view it the same way.

01:38:16.000 It's almost like a therapy.

01:38:17.000 Like, you're in there.

01:38:17.000 You're suffering.

01:38:18.000 You're just working shit out. 0.99

01:38:20.000 And that's what I do when I work out or go for a long run. 0.99

01:38:25.000 So I do that.

01:38:27.000 I joke.

01:38:28.000 I mean, we have five kids.

01:38:30.000 They're in four different schools.

01:38:31.000 So I'm like an Uber driver for my kids.

01:38:34.000 Traffic in Austin is not like LA, but it's bad now.

01:38:37.000 It's getting bad now.

01:38:38.000 Dude.

01:38:39.000 So all I do is drive my kids around.

01:38:41.000 Too many people talk about how great Austin is.

01:38:43.000 That's what happened.

01:38:43.000 Right.

01:38:44.000 But they didn't build that city 50 years ago to accommodate 2 million people.

01:38:49.000 No.

01:38:49.000 And then I play a lot of golf.

01:38:53.000 Which is why we're going to end this podcast a little bit so I can go play Riviera today, man.

01:38:57.000 Don't mess with my tea time.

01:38:58.000 I don't want to mess with your tea time.

01:38:59.000 I appreciate your time very much, man.

01:39:01.000 I appreciate you doing this.

01:39:02.000 We're already done?

01:39:03.000 We can keep going.

01:39:04.000 Want to keep going?

01:39:05.000 I don't know if Higgs is here yet.

01:39:07.000 I'm sure he's here.

01:39:08.000 Someone's calling me.

01:39:10.000 No, it's on him.

01:39:12.000 And then you got the Hunter book.

01:39:13.000 We've got to talk a little bit about Hunter.

01:39:15.000 Yeah, definitely.

01:39:16.000 I didn't know you were a fan until I saw your, maybe Bill Burr, retweeted maybe your tweet that said, if there's one person that's dead that I could meet today or was alive, it would be Hunter.

01:39:28.000 Yeah, it was an Instagram post that I made about one of his incredible quotes about...

01:39:33.000 It was about heroes, and it was particularly poignant about...

01:39:40.000 It was after Ronda Rousey got knocked out that I posted it, that people, they love the idea...

01:39:47.000 Of someone who is like a superhuman person, like someone who's a legend, someone who can defy the odds because it gives them hope in this crazy world of boredom and cubicles.

01:40:00.000 I'm doing a shitty job of paraphrasing it, but it's a fantastic quote.

01:40:04.000 And then you got a hold of me about it and had that incredible book sent to me when Hunter was running for sheriff of Aspen.

01:40:12.000 Yep.

01:40:13.000 So he, yeah, he just, you know, he kind of ruled the valley.

01:40:17.000 I mean, he lived down in Woody Creek, but the whole...

01:40:20.000 Um, the whole valley was, the Roaring Fork Valley was kind of his domain, man.

01:40:24.000 He was just, and his best friend was, was our longtime sheriff.

01:40:28.000 He was the sheriff for 26 years, Bob Broutes, who was a great friend of mine.

01:40:33.000 Uh, his undersheriff is probably my best bud there, a guy named, by the name of Joe DeSalvo.

01:40:37.000 So how a kid from Brooklyn ends up in Aspen is now the sheriff.

01:40:40.000 He's on his second term.

01:40:41.000 So Joey and Bob were, were Hunter's best buddies. 0.99

01:40:45.000 I mean, fucking crazy stories. 0.96

01:40:48.000 And not to toot my own horn, but Bob is the sweetest guy. 0.99

01:40:53.000 He's the guy that was sheriff for 26 years.

01:40:55.000 He says to me one day, he calls me Champ, which is also funny.

01:41:00.000 He says, Champ, did you ever meet Hunter?

01:41:03.000 And I said, no, I never met him.

01:41:05.000 And he pauses for a long time and he goes, man, he would have loved you. 0.99

01:41:10.000 And I took that, I was like, fucking A, that is a compliment right there. 0.99

01:41:14.000 That is a compliment. 0.99

01:41:15.000 I mean, Hunter was nuts in a lot of ways, but I mean, he had such a diverse group of friends, whether it was our sheriff, or whether it was Lyle Lovett, or whether it was Johnny Depp, or whether it was Doug Brinkley, I mean, just this diverse group of fucking artists and thinkers and lawmen and druggies, 0.97

01:41:33.000 and dude... 0.99

01:41:35.000 Gnarly.

01:41:36.000 I mean, he'd go out to the... 1.00

01:41:37.000 The shit they did was just... 0.99

01:41:39.000 I probably can't even talk about it. 1.00

01:41:41.000 I'm sure you can.

01:41:41.000 He's dead.

01:41:42.000 It's fine.

01:41:43.000 Some of the people are still alive.

01:41:44.000 They're still alive.

01:41:45.000 Well, we were talking before the podcast about his ritual, before he would write.

01:41:50.000 Yeah.

01:41:51.000 Superhuman.

01:41:52.000 So you read that, and for those listening, you just Google Hunter Thompson's Daily Regime, and it'll come up.

01:41:58.000 I think Esquire wrote it. 0.99

01:42:00.000 And the shit starts at like, what is he? 1.00

01:42:02.000 He wakes up at like 3 in the afternoon, right? 1.00

01:42:04.000 And just, you gotta go read it.

01:42:06.000 I mean, it's unbelievable.

01:42:07.000 So I thought, this is so unreal, it ain't true.

01:42:10.000 So I called Joey, our sheriff, and I said, dude, have you seen this?

01:42:15.000 And he says, yeah.

01:42:16.000 I said, that's not real.

01:42:17.000 You know what he said?

01:42:19.000 He said, that isn't enough.

01:42:21.000 He said, that's light.

01:42:24.000 Go read it, people, and then imagine that that didn't quite get there.

01:42:30.000 Well, Jamie, why don't you find it?

01:42:31.000 Because it's kind of hilarious.

01:42:32.000 We could actually read it on the air.

01:42:34.000 Dude.

01:42:35.000 Yeah, he had a strong tolerance for substances, and I don't think he ever went without it.

01:42:42.000 I mean, it's just he wasn't interested.

01:42:44.000 No.

01:42:45.000 No.

01:42:45.000 Yeah.

01:42:46.000 I mean, that was the life that he was interested in. 0.99

01:42:49.000 He was interested in just getting fucked up and having a great time and writing about shit and pontificating on the demise of civilization. 0.99

01:42:57.000 But it, you know, I don't know if that's what caught up to him, but... 0.99

01:43:01.000 It definitely did.

01:43:03.000 Yeah, I mean, how could you...

01:43:04.000 Did you ever see the late appearances?

01:43:06.000 I have a really hard time watching his later appearances.

01:43:09.000 Like, we would do, like, the Conan O'Brien show, and you couldn't understand a word he was saying.

01:43:13.000 Like here, you can see it right here.

01:43:16.000 3 p.m.

01:43:17.000 rise.

01:43:17.000 3.05, Chivas Regal with morning papers.

01:43:21.000 Dunhills.

01:43:21.000 3.45, cocaine.

01:43:23.000 3.50, another glass of Chivas, another Dunhill.

01:43:27.000 4.05, first cup of coffee.

01:43:30.000 Dunhill.

01:43:30.000 Reminder, this is p.m.

01:43:31.000 Yes, p.m.

01:43:33.000 4.15, cocaine.

01:43:35.000 4.16, orange juice, Dunhill.

01:43:37.000 4.30, cocaine.

01:43:39.000 4.54, cocaine.

01:43:40.000 5.05, cocaine.

01:43:41.000 5.11, coffee, Dunhill's.

01:43:44.000 5.30, more ice in the chivas.

01:43:46.000 5.45, cocaine, etc., etc.

01:43:48.000 6 p.m., grass to take the edge off the day.

01:43:52.000 Three hours he's been awake and been stressful.

01:43:55.000 Seven o'clock, Woody Creek Tavern for lunch with Heineken, two margaritas, coleslaw, taco salad, double order, fried onion rings, carrot cake, ice cream, a bean fritter, Dunhills, another Heineken, cocaine, and for the ride home, a snow cone,

01:44:11.000 a glass of shredded ice over which is poured three or four jiggers of Chivas. 0.99

01:44:17.000 God damn it. 0.99

01:44:18.000 Nine, start snowing cocaine seriously. 1.00

01:44:21.000 Now it got serious.

01:44:23.000 10. Drops acid.

01:44:25.000 11. Chartreuse, cocaine, grass.

01:44:29.000 11.30.

01:44:29.000 Cocaine, et cetera, et cetera.

01:44:32.000 Midnight.

01:44:33.000 Hunter S. Thompson is ready to write.

01:44:35.000 That is...

01:44:36.000 And then it keeps going on.

01:44:39.000 12.05 to 6 a.m.

01:44:41.000 Chartreuse, cocaine, grass, chivas, coffee, Heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, Dunhills, orange juice, gin.

01:44:48.000 Continuous pornographic movies.

01:44:50.000 Yeah.

01:44:52.000 Six, in the hot tub, champagne, Dove Bars, Fettuccine Alfredo.

01:44:59.000 Alfredo, 8am, Halcyon.

01:45:01.000 Is that how you say it?

01:45:02.000 Yeah, Halcyon.

01:45:02.000 That's the first, that was before Ambien.

01:45:05.000 Yeah, 820 sleep.

01:45:07.000 Wow.

01:45:07.000 Jesus Christ.

01:45:08.000 So I asked these guys, I asked the sheriffs, I'm like, that shit's not real. 0.99

01:45:11.000 Yeah, there's the quote that I posted. 0.99

01:45:13.000 Myths and legends die hard in America.

01:45:15.000 We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality.

01:45:23.000 Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as proof to those who need it that the tyranny of the rat race is not yet final. 1.00

01:45:32.000 I mean, that applies to you too, dude.

01:45:35.000 I understand that.

01:45:36.000 It applies to your life.

01:45:38.000 And that's part of the reason, I'm sure, why some people are pissed at you.

01:45:43.000 It's like you were a legend with a caveat.

01:45:45.000 Yeah.

01:45:46.000 I mean, the story in its totality, right?

01:45:52.000 If I was just a cyclist, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

01:45:56.000 But the cancer part of the story, right, is what, you know, nobody could relate to cycling.

01:46:02.000 They got to figure it out.

01:46:03.000 They started to watch it.

01:46:04.000 They're like, cool, he won again.

01:46:05.000 The cancer part of it, everybody can relate to, right?

01:46:08.000 I mean, everybody has either had the disease themselves or lost a loved one or had a loved one or a friend or a neighbor affected by it.

01:46:15.000 So they're like, all right, I'm in. 0.99

01:46:18.000 Like, that's some bullshit right there, that disease. 0.99

01:46:21.000 And they rallied around that, and that's... 1.00

01:46:24.000 You know, that's why that fall came swift and hard, man.

01:46:29.000 Well, there's parallels in life when it comes to this story in a lot of ways because everything is kind of messy.

01:46:34.000 You know, the reality versus the narrative, it's always messy.

01:46:40.000 And there's so many variables that don't get discussed and there's so many aspects of it that they're flexible and they move around and that's...

01:46:49.000 Yeah, I mean, more and more now.

01:46:51.000 I mean, the transparency we see in our society today, whether it's politicians or politics or sports or entertainment, I mean, dude, imagine, like I always say, like, you know, if I give you three names that were alive today, like Sinatra, we just, you know, just had celebrated his 100th birthday.

01:47:09.000 If you took Sinatra, JFK, and Michael Jordan, and they were at their peak today, TMZ alone.

01:47:19.000 Would be nuking people.

01:47:21.000 Yeah.

01:47:22.000 And so we're just getting deeper and deeper into that.

01:47:28.000 Yeah.

01:47:29.000 And I think this is just still the beginning.

01:47:32.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:47:33.000 Well, I think what's going on with technology, too, is we're seeing this very obvious trend that the boundaries between people and thoughts and ideas and reality and facts, they're getting smaller and smaller and smaller to the point where they're going to be erased.

01:47:46.000 And I don't know how that's going to happen, but I think it's going to happen with something that connects us in a much more personal way than peripheral devices like laptops or phones.

01:47:55.000 I think there's going to be some technology that connects us Body to body, whether it's some sort of a neural implant or something along those lines. 0.98

01:48:04.000 Damn. 0.98

01:48:04.000 I really do. 0.98

01:48:05.000 I think it's inevitable.

01:48:06.000 Yeah.

01:48:07.000 I mean, the symbiotic relationship that we have with cell phones right now is undeniable.

01:48:12.000 I leave my phone like you.

01:48:13.000 You dropped your phone. 1.00

01:48:14.000 You're like, fuck, where's my phone? 1.00

01:48:15.000 My phone's broken. 1.00

01:48:16.000 Fuck, fuck, fuck. 1.00

01:48:17.000 No, here, yeah. 1.00

01:48:19.000 Yeah.

01:48:20.000 I mean, I dropped it, so I did drop my phone, but I'm like fucking scratching myself because I haven't had the phone for like two or three hours.

01:48:26.000 Yeah.

01:48:26.000 Dude, it's...

01:48:27.000 That ain't good.

01:48:28.000 No, it's not good. 0.89

01:48:29.000 I leave my phone sometimes in the car when I go do the podcast, and I don't realize that I left it, and I'll be in the middle of a great podcast, but like, fuck, my phone's not here.

01:48:38.000 I'm not even going to use it. 0.69

01:48:39.000 It's out there.

01:48:39.000 I don't touch it.

01:48:40.000 But the fact that it's not physically, like, I want it right there. 0.96

01:48:43.000 Dude, imagine if, like, you know, you're on here, and you just start, like, you know, you got some guests on, and you're, like, texting them, and the guests would be like, what the fuck?

01:48:51.000 I come all the way over here, this godforsaken valley, And that LA traffic, and the guy's on his phone?

01:48:57.000 Yeah, well, I have had people that are guests that start checking their Twitter.

01:49:00.000 Like, Neil Brennan will start checking his Twitter in the middle of the pocket. 0.99

01:49:03.000 What the fuck are you doing? 0.99

01:49:04.000 I want to see what people are saying about it. 0.99

01:49:06.000 Talk to them afterwards.

01:49:07.000 Just flip your phone over.

01:49:08.000 You don't let people call in and ask questions?

01:49:10.000 Or tweet and ask questions?

01:49:12.000 We've done that before, but the problem is that people that want to do it are usually trolls.

01:49:16.000 Some of those might be fun.

01:49:20.000 If I wanted that kind of a show, I would do an all-call-in show, which I think would be fine.

01:49:24.000 I did a talk a couple months ago in Denver, and it was 600 people, and it was kind of a moderated Q&A, and then the audience was allowed to ask questions.

01:49:33.000 And people were cool.

01:49:34.000 They were asking questions, and the moderator says...

01:49:37.000 And there's a line to get to the mic desk questions.

01:49:39.000 And the guy says, not that this lady, I'm not calling her a troll, but the guy says, is anybody in line really pissed at Lance and want to ask a question?

01:49:49.000 This lady in the back, she's like, me! 0.52

01:49:52.000 She comes trucking up there. 0.98

01:49:54.000 And so, you know, I was like, this is going to be super interesting.

01:49:57.000 Like, what the hell is she going to ask me?

01:50:00.000 How am I going to answer it?

01:50:02.000 So I, you know, maybe I like a challenge, but...

01:50:06.000 You definitely like a challenge.

01:50:07.000 I think you're just bored.

01:50:08.000 In between golf games, you want to spar with somebody verbally.

01:50:12.000 Hey, ask Kiggs if my phone got fixed.

01:50:14.000 Did he text you?

01:50:15.000 Oh, let me see.

01:50:16.000 He's probably out there.

01:50:17.000 I looked when I went to go to the bathroom.

01:50:19.000 Ha, cool, thanks.

01:50:21.000 That's the last thing he said.

01:50:22.000 Here, I'll text him right now.

01:50:23.000 You out there?

01:50:24.000 Who says, ha, cool, thanks?

01:50:25.000 He did.

01:50:26.000 Because I said you wanted Advil.

01:50:30.000 I said, Lance would like you to bring Advil.

01:50:32.000 He says, ha, cool, thanks.

01:50:34.000 And I said, you out there?

01:50:36.000 Yeah, it was his birthday last night.

01:50:38.000 So we went out to dinner and just, we got, you know, way too drunk.

01:50:44.000 It happens.

01:50:45.000 Dude.

01:50:46.000 It happens.

01:50:47.000 What we were talking about, about technology, though, about bringing people closer together, and the fact that there's going to...

01:50:56.000 I mean, I really think there's going to be no secrets.

01:50:58.000 I don't think anybody's going to have secrets from anybody in the future.

01:51:00.000 I think you kind of...

01:51:03.000 You caught, like...

01:51:05.000 The wave of this trend before it got even crazier than it.

01:51:09.000 I mean, you caught that wave.

01:51:10.000 And even in 2012, the comparison between 2012 and 2015, it's like, it's ramped up considerably.

01:51:16.000 For sure.

01:51:17.000 And it'll continue to do that.

01:51:18.000 There's no getting around it, right?

01:51:21.000 Is that good?

01:51:21.000 Is that a good thing?

01:51:24.000 Or is it just what it is?

01:51:27.000 You and I are not going to stop it, so it's inevitable.

01:51:30.000 No one is.

01:51:31.000 Nobody's.

01:51:32.000 I think it's going to not just...

01:51:35.000 One of the things that's going to happen is it's not going to just be celebrities.

01:51:40.000 It's not going to be just people like you, people like Michael Jordan or whoever.

01:51:43.000 It's going to be everybody.

01:51:45.000 If you want to find out anything about Jamie, it's going to be all on the table.

01:51:48.000 Maybe Jamie was one of those Ashley Madison clients.

01:51:50.000 He could have been.

01:51:52.000 Maybe Nowitzki was. 1.00

01:51:54.000 Well, there have been some fucking ridiculous people that were that wound up killing themselves, like preachers and shit like that, that it was found out. 1.00

01:52:02.000 But how dumb do you have to be to think that that's going to be secure? 1.00

01:52:06.000 You're going to go on some dating site. 1.00

01:52:08.000 I mean, come on, man.

01:52:11.000 That's insane. 0.99

01:52:14.000 But, you know, what kind of a fucking weirdo wants to find out about people that were on the dating site? 1.00

01:52:19.000 Like, what do you give a shit? 1.00

01:52:20.000 Leave him alone. 0.99

01:52:21.000 Exactly.

01:52:21.000 But that's not the world we live in, right?

01:52:23.000 I've got to take a leak again.

01:52:24.000 Do you? 1.00

01:52:24.000 Well, let's end this fucking thing. 1.00

01:52:26.000 Well, let's end it, yeah. 1.00

01:52:27.000 We're done.

01:52:27.000 I think we're done.

01:52:28.000 It's 11.30.

01:52:28.000 We're supposed to tee off at 11.30, but...

01:52:31.000 Were you?

01:52:31.000 Really?

01:52:31.000 Yeah, but I'm going to meet him out there.

01:52:33.000 It's all good.

01:52:34.000 It's all good, man.

01:52:34.000 Well, thank you, Lance.

01:52:35.000 I really appreciate it.

01:52:35.000 Thank you.

01:52:36.000 Thanks for doing this.

01:52:37.000 And thanks for listening, whoever.

01:52:38.000 Hopefully somebody listened.

01:52:39.000 A lot of people listened, I'm sure.

01:52:40.000 Cool.

01:52:40.000 All right.

01:52:41.000 That's it.

01:52:41.000 Bye, everybody.

01:52:42.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 15, 2015

Joe Rogan Experience #737 - Lance Armstrong

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