#20: Why the Steroid Olympics Flopped and the Truth About Peptides | Chris Gayomali & Sam Eagan

What if you juiced a roster of athletes to the gills with performance-enhancing drugs and let them compete for a million-dollar prize? That's the Enhanced Games — the billionaire-backed "Steroid Olympics" held in Las Vegas — and the results were not what investors expected.

Michael Easter sits down with journalists Chris Gayomali and Sam Eagan, hosts of the Superhuman podcast, who were embedded with the founders, athletes, and scientists during the games. Despite being hyped as the future of human performance, almost no world records actually fell. In many cases, non-enhanced athletes beat the juiced ones. Within about a day, it became clear the event was really a marketing engine for selling testosterone and peptides to the public, and a glimpse of how we're increasingly being sold a frictionless, "enhanced" version of ourselves, all with the swipe of a credit card.

Two Percent is hosted by Michael Easter. Today’s episode was produced by Joey Fischground, Robbie Hiser, Dana Brawer and Julia Nutter. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Mangesh Hattikudur and Kate Osborn and Julia Nutter. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Ettore. Our Head of Video is Maria Paz Mendez Hodes. This episode was edited by Joey Fischground. Our theme music is by the Heater Manager.

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Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro

00:04:29 - What the Enhanced Games actually are (the "steroid Olympics")

00:07:00 - "It took me a full day to realize this is an ad"

00:08:00 - The real business model: Hims with a WWE marketing layer

00:13:13 - Peter Thiel, transhumanism, and how it started

00:16:17 - The "44% of Olympians dope" stat — and the cherry-pick

00:18:28 - Doped so much he got slower in the water

00:21:04 - Inside the "wellness Coachella" in the desert

00:23:48 - The money: $250K to win, $1M for a world record

00:28:03 - The event: almost no records, and the clean athletes won

00:31:16 - The banned super suit and the Barry Bonds problem

00:36:04 - The IOC's own-goal: "I don't believe in paying athletes"

00:38:07 - The stock crashes 75% — and the spin that followed

00:40:08 - What they actually sell you (peptides, testosterone, NAD+)

00:41:49 - Why the "study" proves almost nothing

00:51:00 - Is removing life's friction making us weaker?

01:00:06 - "$250 shoes are the testosterone for your feet"

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