Joe Rogan Experience #1592 - Bryan Fogel
Bryan Fogel (guest), Joe Rogan (host)
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Bryan Fogel and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1592 - Bryan Fogel explores olympic doping, assassinations, and censored truth: Bryan Fogel reveals all Joe Rogan and filmmaker Bryan Fogel discuss Fogel’s documentary Icarus, the Russian state-sponsored Olympic doping scandal, and whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov’s perilous life in U.S. asylum under constant threat from Putin’s regime.
Olympic doping, assassinations, and censored truth: Bryan Fogel reveals all
Joe Rogan and filmmaker Bryan Fogel discuss Fogel’s documentary Icarus, the Russian state-sponsored Olympic doping scandal, and whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov’s perilous life in U.S. asylum under constant threat from Putin’s regime.
They pivot to Fogel’s new film The Dissident, which investigates the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, detailing how Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly ordered the killing and how Saudi cyber operations weaponize Twitter and spyware against dissidents.
Fogel explains how hacked phones, troll armies, and repression at home connect Khashoggi’s murder to a broader authoritarian playbook used by regimes like Russia and Saudi Arabia to silence critics abroad.
He also describes the extraordinary difficulty of getting The Dissident distributed, arguing that major streaming platforms avoided it due to Saudi financial and strategic ties, raising troubling questions about free expression, corporate power, and human rights.
Key Takeaways
State-sponsored doping can be more sophisticated than testing regimes.
Russia’s program, exposed in Icarus, swapped urine samples, broke tamper-proof bottles, and manipulated lab databases, showing that even heavily tested athletes and countries can cheat at scale while appearing clean.
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Whistleblowing against powerful states often means lifelong exile and danger.
Grigory Rodchenkov lives in secret U. ...
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Authoritarian regimes use both physical violence and digital tools to crush dissent.
Saudi Arabia combines arrests, beheadings, and extraterritorial assassinations (like Khashoggi’s) with troll farms, hacked phones, and spyware such as Pegasus to intimidate critics and control narratives on platforms like Twitter.
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Corporate and geopolitical interests can trump human rights in media decisions.
Despite acclaim and clear public-interest value, The Dissident was declined by all major streamers as originals; Fogel links this to Saudi investments, arms deals, and growth ambitions in the region discouraging risky content.
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Twitter and anonymous online spaces are lifelines for citizens without free speech.
In Saudi Arabia, where criticizing the monarchy can mean prison or death, dissidents rely on pseudonymous Twitter accounts and foreign SIM cards to speak out and organize—making control of that platform a central state priority.
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The frontier of cheating and enhancement is shifting toward genetic engineering.
Rogan and Fogel foresee CRISPR and related technologies enabling designer athletes and enhanced humans, with countries like China or Russia potentially embracing such edge technologies faster than the U. ...
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Impactful storytelling can materially affect policy and global awareness.
Icarus helped push the IOC to ban Russia from the Olympics, demonstrating that well-crafted investigative films can alter public perception, pressure institutions, and change how history unfolds—one reason governments fear and attack journalists and filmmakers.
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Notable Quotes
““If you can’t catch the most tested athlete on planet Earth, what does this mean for every other athlete on planet Earth?””
— Bryan Fogel
““Every day that he is alive in his mind is another day that he was gonna be dead.””
— Bryan Fogel on Grigory Rodchenkov
““They don’t forget and there’s just a list, and when they feel that they can strike, they do.””
— Bryan Fogel on Russian assassination operations
““We are living right now in a world where big business and money and investment take place over human rights, over freedom of speech, over freedom of journalism.””
— Bryan Fogel
““With great wealth and with great power comes great responsibility… and if these business titans lose their moral compass… that’s really soul-crushing.””
— Bryan Fogel
Questions Answered in This Episode
How should international sports bodies realistically police doping when entire states are willing to weaponize science and corruption to evade detection?
Joe Rogan and filmmaker Bryan Fogel discuss Fogel’s documentary Icarus, the Russian state-sponsored Olympic doping scandal, and whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov’s perilous life in U. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What obligations, if any, do streaming platforms and large media companies have to prioritize human-rights-focused content over purely commercial or geopolitical considerations?
They pivot to Fogel’s new film The Dissident, which investigates the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, detailing how Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly ordered the killing and how Saudi cyber operations weaponize Twitter and spyware against dissidents.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Where should democracies draw the line between doing business with authoritarian regimes and holding them accountable for assassinations and systemic abuses?
Fogel explains how hacked phones, troll armies, and repression at home connect Khashoggi’s murder to a broader authoritarian playbook used by regimes like Russia and Saudi Arabia to silence critics abroad.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How can individuals and civil society push back against state-run troll armies, surveillance, and spyware that target journalists and dissidents worldwide?
He also describes the extraordinary difficulty of getting The Dissident distributed, arguing that major streaming platforms avoided it due to Saudi financial and strategic ties, raising troubling questions about free expression, corporate power, and human rights.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
As genetic engineering and radical life-extension become more feasible, who will set the ethical boundaries—and what happens if rival nations ignore them to gain an edge?
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Transcript Preview
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, buddy.
Hey, Joe.
Good to see you again, buddy.
Yeah, man.
What's happening?
This is good to be in Austin.
I was just here yesterday with Jordan Burroughs, uh, Olympic gold medals in wrestling. And, we discussed Icarus and he told me that he actually had to shut it off. Here, I'll let you do that, because it's very clunky. Um, he told me he had to shut it off. He couldn't handle it. Because he's an Olympic gold medalist in wrestling and he has faced people that he believes were cheating, and particularly Russians. And, it drove him crazy.
So he was that pissed off-
Yeah.
... that he literally-
Well, it's his livelihood. I mean, it's everything. He's an Olympic gold medalist, he's a four-time world champion, and he's convinced that he had to wrestle against people that were cheating, particularly Russians.
You know, I've gotten a, a bunch of messages since that film came out from other Olympic athletes and, um, it's been either a mix of, like, "Hey man, I'm ... Thank you so much," or, it's just like, not mad at me, just like, "What the fuck?"
(laughs)
(laughs) And then, you know, like, like, and I was actually, like, uh, invited, um ... It was the, uh, uh, the bobsled team, uh, that, when they actually disqualified the Russian bobsled team. And, uh, uh, the U.S. bobsled team was then gonna get the, the third place medal. They, like, invited me to the ceremony. I, I didn't go, but, you know, it was, uh, crazy. Crazy.
Yeah. Well, Jordan said that the ... I guess, in 2020 and 2024, the Russians can't fly a flag. Like, they, they cannot re- ... They can't be represented. Like, they have to be individual athletes from Russia at, at the Olympics in 2020 in, uh, Tokyo. It's 2021 now.
Yeah.
And then 2024. Those Olympics, you can't have a Russian flag. Like, you literally can't. Because of what happened, that you exposed in your documentary.
Well, that's, that's true. However, um, if you, if you followed the, the story post-Icarus with Rechenkov, is, um ... Russia was supposed to turn over this LIMS data, which was this Laboratory Information Management System data, um, in order to be reinstated into, into world sport. Um, that was part of the WADA requirements. And, um, they never basically, uh, turned it over. So, WADA basically had to go after them, go after them, go after them. They reinstate them without turning over the data. Then they turn over the data. This is now, uh, December of 2019, uh, or January. It was not that long ago, about a year ago. And when they turn over the data, they had literally manipulated all the data, and they had already got a copy of it from Rechenkov and another guy in the lab. And they literally put notes into this LIMS data basically trying to frame Rechenkov for, like, money laundering and taking bribes, and all this shit. But WADA knew that this wasn't legitimate because they had the real databases already.
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