RedHanded x The Upshot: The Enhanced Games | #451

Summary

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RedHanded x The Upshot: The Enhanced Games | #451 (May 21, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this exhilarating crossover, the RedHanded team joins The Upshot hosts for a deep, darkly comic, and surprisingly educational dive into the world of sports doping—culminating in an investigation of the controversial new “Enhanced Games.” Drawing on both hosts’ specialties—true crime and sports scandal—the crew recounts bizarre tales of historical doping, athletes’ wild attempts to gain an edge, the ethics of chem-enhanced competition, and the saga behind the Enhanced Games' creation. With lively debates, colorful anecdotes, and plenty of gallows humor, listeners are taken from ancient Greek mushroom parties to Silicon Valley billionaires funding steroid-fueled Olympics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. RedHanded & The Upshot: Crime & Sports Collide (01:11–04:17)

• Collaborative Spirit: Both podcasts recount favorite crossover episodes where sports personalities meet crime (O.J. Simpson, Jermaine Pennant’s cat “coverup,” cannibal rugby myths).
• Sports as fertile ground: Many sports stories inherently intersect with criminal or ethically murky deeds, making the crossover a natural fit.
• Memorable Moment:
  • George on cat crime: “He went around with her putting up missing cat posters around their neighborhood.” (03:18)

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2. The Strange History of Doping (07:23–26:17)

• Ancient & Early Modern Doping:

  • Ancient Olympians used magic mushrooms and opiate cocktails; Roman gladiators took strychnine (a poison), which remained a popular stimulant for centuries.
  • The Brutal 1904 St. Louis Marathon: Only one water station; athletes dehydrated under a sadistic experiment, then given egg whites, brandy and rat poison (strychnine) as “performance aid.” Winner Thomas Hicks was hallucinating, carried across the line, legs “still moving like a dog.”
  • Quote: “His eyes were dull, lusterless…his face had deepened. That’s not a well man.” – George (15:11)

• Meth, Monkey Testicles & Placebo Madness:

  • 1930s: Athletes switch to methamphetamine (even Nazi soldiers and British soccer players took it).

  • Wolverhampton Wanderers football team: Players injected with monkey testicle tissue, inspired by French surgeon Sergey Voronov’s anti-aging theories.

  • Placebo and psychological effect: Was there really a benefit, or was the elaborate ritual key?

  • Quote: “There’s a thing where the more complex the ritual to deliver a placebo, the better it works.” – Host 2 (24:40)

• Cheating Innovations in Early Cycling:

  • Early endurance races were essentially six-day drug benders (strychnine, cocaine).

  • Wacky antics: Riders taking trains, sabotaging competitors with tacks/itching powder, water bottles filled with lead for downhill speed, and more.

  • Quote: “He had a cork on the other end which he held in his mouth, probably from his red wine, and just got towed the whole way.” – Host 1 (38:02)

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3. Doping in the Modern Era: From Wild West to Lab Science (44:33–51:16)

• The Rise of Real Performance Enhancers:

  • For decades, top athletes simply used party drugs; true “performance enhancers” (like EPO, steroids) came later.

  • Tour de France’s infamous doping era: 1998 Festina Affair exposed systematic team-wide doping; only half the field finished as scandals erupted.

  • Lance Armstrong’s saga: Doping, cover-ups, the Livestrong band craze, bullying and blackmail, eventual Oprah confession. All seven titles remain unclaimed—“every other rider was doping.”

  • Quote: “Apparently, a lot of them didn’t want to [dope] and were basically blackmailed into not only covering it up, but taking drugs with him so that they were implicated.” – Host 1 (48:51)

• Olympic Testing & Creative Evasion:

  • Stories abound of athletes swapping urine with tubes, armpit sachets, or prosthetic penises (“The Wizard N’eater” device favored by Mike Tyson and Maradona).
  • Testing protocols often as inventive as the cheating methods.

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4. The Enhanced Games: “Steroid Olympics” for a New Era (54:32–89:39)

Origins & Ethos

• The Big Idea: The Enhanced Games are pitched as the arena for athletes to compete “unshackled” by anti-doping rules—“steroid Olympics”—with full freedom to use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).
• Aaron D'Souza: Eccentric Australian VC, gym-goer, and self-styled crusader against Olympic hypocrisy. Allegedly inspired by gym culture and “everyone’s already juiced” stats (though these are dubious).
• Venture Funding & Silicon Valley Connections:
  • D’Souza’s rise includes brokering Peter Thiel’s (PayPal/Facebook) revenge-funded lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker Media.
  • Enhanced is heavily backed by Thiel, Christian Angermayer (psychedelics evangelist), and Donald Trump Jr.’s firm; positioning it with both libertarian rhetoric (“human right to enhance”) and MAGA overtones.

Notable Quotes & Segments

• The Real Motive:
  • “The Enhanced Games isn’t just a sports day for retired swimmers. It's a shop front stake in the anti-aging and health industry, which is worth trillions.” – Guest 1 (Hannah), (82:08)
• Attitude towards the Rules:
  • “To push such a controversial event to actual fruition takes a special kind of stupid blind arrogance and loads of other people’s money.” – Guest 1 (Hannah), (59:10)
• Sport as Entertainment vs. Virtue:
  • Host 1: “I’m just a sport-as-entertainment guy and those concepts are just devices to make the entertainment work. But I think therefore it’s fair game…”
  • Guest 1 (Hannah): “But is that missing the point of sport?” (70:14)

The Athlete Guinea Pigs & Early Results

• James Magnusson:

  • Swimmer “juicing to the gills.” Trains in an apartment pool, publicly details his protocol (testosterone, peptides), bulks up by 30 lbs—yet swims slower than his Olympic self.
  • “All of the illegal doping that he did actually made him worse.” (76:00)

• Christian Gkolomeev:

  • Failed to qualify for Olympics; given protocol plus rare banned swim suits—breaks the world record by 0.02 seconds (80:05).
  • Suits, not drugs, make the difference: “What makes the real difference is…wetsuits. That makes so much more difference.” – Guest 1 (Hannah), (79:07)

• Marketing Sleight-of-Hand:

  • Enhanced Games' real business is selling supplements and ethos, using sport as a branded “shop front.”
  • “What they're actually doing is they're gonna sell us a supplements line tied to the Enhanced Games as an event.” – Guest 1 (Hannah), (83:11)

Debate: Will the Enhanced Games Succeed? (85:06–89:39)

• Opposition & Challenges:

  • Most major sporting bodies warn career death for participants.
  • Trump Jr. and American funding mean some controls sneak in: no heroin, coke, or blood doping; lots of athlete health monitoring (arguably more testing than the Olympics).
  • “If someone drops dead, that's not going to do like great PR.” – Guest 1 (Hannah), (85:06)

• Public Interest?

  • Hosts question whether minor record improvements will entice viewers (“If this is the marketing thing, do ordinary people care this guy swam 0.02 seconds faster?” – Host 2, 81:11)
  • Suggest future of the Enhanced Games may mirror F1/tech arms race, attracting “crypto, biohacker bro” audiences.

• Ethics & Image:

  • Hosts query the message to young people (“...probably to, like, impressionable teenagers who are...willing to smash their faces with hammers to try and get bigger cheekbones.” – Host 2, 88:54)
  • Speculate the whole anti-doping effort is theater: “I am of the opinion they're all still fucking doing it. They've just got better at it...” – Guest 1 (Hannah), (51:41)

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5. Final Reflections & Verdicts (86:10–89:39)

• Divided Opinions: Some hosts express excitement, others skepticism or moral queasiness, but all marvel at the business and narrative spectacle.
• Consensus: If the Enhanced Games truly delivers shocking, visible leaps in human performance, it may become a disruptive (if ethically messy) new sports paradigm—or simply a soon-forgotten oddity.
  • “If you don't [break Olympic records by a wide margin], then it's just like, oh.” – Host 2 (87:29)
  • “Dope, baby. Dope. I think it'll happen…I actually think it has legs.” – Host 1 (87:35)

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “He went around with her putting up missing cat posters around their neighborhood.” – Guest 2 (George), (03:18)
• “That's not a well man.” – Guest 2 (George), (15:16)
• “There's a thing where the more complex the ritual to deliver the placebo effect, the better it works.” – Host 2 (24:40)
• “All of the illegal doping that he did actually made him worse.” – Host 2 (76:00)
• “The Enhanced Games isn’t just a sports day for retired swimmers. It's a shop front stake in the anti-aging and health industry, which is worth trillions.” – Guest 1 (Hannah), (82:08)
• “Dope, baby. Dope. I think it'll happen…I actually think it has legs.” – Host 1 (87:35)
• “If you were not doing it, then you're a mug.” – Guest 2 (George), on systemic doping (50:18)
• “I'm very excited. I've got absolutely no doubts about this thing.” – Host 1 (89:31)

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Major Segments & Timestamps

• (01:11–04:17): Crossover intro: crime meets sports
• (07:23–26:17): Wild history of doping (ancient to 1930s, monkey testicles, placebos)
• (31:00–44:33): Cycling’s Wild West & escalation to real PEDs
• (44:33–51:16): Modern era: EPO, Armstrong, fake urine, systemic cheating
• (54:32–89:39): The Enhanced Games—ethics, funding, clinical trials with swimmers, is it sport or just spectacle?
• (85:06–89:39): Will it take off? Should it? Audience, ethics, and the supplement pipeline

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Overall Tone and Conclusion

The tone is raucous, irreverent, and smart—mixing horror, dark humor, and skepticism. Hosts openly debate the nature of sport, the boundaries between performance and spectacle, and whether the Enhanced Games will upend the world of athletics or just serve as a cautionary neon footnote.

Bottom line: The Enhanced Games fuse Silicon Valley hubris, libertarian bombast, and body-hacking fantasies—a strange, fascinating, and possibly dangerous experiment in pushing the human body as far as money and chemistry can take it. Whether it elevates or dooms elite athletics... watch this space.

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Transcript

[Host 1]

Neighbor game.

[Host 2]

Oo.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

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[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Liberty, Liberty. Liberty, Liberty.

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[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Hello, hello.

[Host 1]

Hi, guys.

[Guest 2 (George)]

How are we doing?

[Host 2]

Hello, hello, everyone. And to everyone listening, welcome. We thought what better than to invite our good friends from the podcast the Upshot when the worlds of true crime and sport collide, which is what we're doing today.

[Host 1]

Yeah, because we've been following the red handed episodes. You guys have done a few sports figures. Yeah, we had O.J. obviously.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

O.J. most recently the Biggie, the Juice, the Shoe.

[Host 1]

That's well worth. I watched your version on YouTube, which is a banger.

[Host 2]

Aww, thank you. Thank you very much. And I have thoroughly enjoyed your more crime angled. I enjoyed your one on Gazza. Let's say Gazza was. Gazza was a standout one.

[Guest 2 (George)]

A lot of the characters that we tell the stories of have sort of crime y elements.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Adjacent elements, which is why we, I mean, huge fans of you. But I'd say our most consistent, like, upshot listening was when we were on tour and we did a road trip around New Zealand afterwards. And Srusi's partner, great guy, not a crimer. Quite sensitive, actually. So usually if it was just Saru and I doing Car Chronicles, it would be like some horrible child rape story. But Sam, just kidding. Quite. So it's a nice crossover for us.

[Host 2]

Absolutely.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

We had a solid two weeks of the Upshot in Life. Car where we got it was like a nice meeting of the West. So hopefully we can do the same today.

[Host 1]

Did you try and smuggle some crime in?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Oh, I whisper it in his sleep.

[Host 2]

You guys did it for us. You guys did it for us.

[Host 1]

Yeah, we had a cat murder cover up Was my favorite crime story.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. Jermaine Pennant, who used to play for Liverpool, if you came across that episode.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Was going out with. What was her name? Jen Metcalf from Holly.

[Host 1]

Oh.

[Guest 2 (George)]

And she had a. This, like, fluffy sort of Siamese cat, and she went away for the weekend. And Jermain had these two pit bulls or some kind of quite. Quite aggressive that, while Jen was away for the weekend, killed her cat, basically. And instead of owning up to what happened, he decided to bury the cat. He had to get, like, professional cleaners around because this cat was an absolute mess all over their cream carpet. And then she got back and obviously was like, well, that was my cat. And he just didn't own up to it. And my favorite scene in the whole story is that he went around with her putting up missing cat posters around their neighborhood.

[Host 2]

How long can you drag out the lie?

[Host 1]

He revealed it in his memoir that came out like 10 years later.

[Host 2]

He's got to hold something back for the memoir.

[Host 1]

Yeah. Jen, if you're reading this, I'm sorry.

[Host 2]

Oh, my God. I think it's not crimey, but one that stays with me. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong because it's animal related. Was it Colleen Rooney who threw her wedding engagement ring into a squirrel sanctuary? Was it that?

[Guest 2 (George)]

It was. That was actually a good memory.

[Host 2]

That was a good one. But also crimey ones. Was there one to do with cannibalism? Am I remembering that correctly?

[Host 1]

Well, I swear, you guys have covered it. The rugby. No, you haven't.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

No. Everyone thinks we have, but we've never done it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

The rugby.

[Host 1]

Cannibals in. It's so good.

[Host 2]

Oh, amazing.

[Host 1]

It gets quite. They start off quite. You know, they're dabbling in cannibalism, and by the end, it's like skulls are soup bowl.

[Host 2]

Once you've started, you might as well go full Ed Gein.

[Host 1]

So doping

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

relentlessly.

[Host 1]

Back to the real world we go. Come on, guys. Know anyone who's done it? I was trying to think, as in,

[Host 2]

like, taken, how they're defining it.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I think roids. I mean, we're gonna get into the origins of it where they were using stuff that I'm not sure was helping.

[Guest 2 (George)]

No, there's some quite questionable substances that

[Host 1]

they're putting inside the recreational drugs. But, I mean, you meet people in the gym, don't you, who are sort of roided.

[Host 2]

Oh, very obviously. Especially when they have, like, the Johnny Bravo look. And I know, like, not everybody's favorite day is leg day, but I'm Also, like, how has this happened and nothing is going on?

[Host 1]

We just did a pod on clavicula. You know, this teenage guy who's like going to insane lengths.

[Host 2]

Oh, the, the looks Max.

[Host 1]

Yeah, looks max. So he bangs his face with a hammer. He takes meth to hollow out his cheeks. He's made himself infertile by his.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Took so many steroids, he's infertile and unable to get an erection. So then he takes. Doesn't he take something like four Viagras a day every morning, be able to get an erection if he wants to?

[Host 2]

That's what I mean. There's a lot of like trade off you have to make for this. And I'm like, the other thing I learned recently, quite interesting, is if you take testosterone, your body stops making it. So then you actually are like making the situation worse because it can make you infertile. If you take artificial testosterone because your body stops making actual testosterone.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I can see that.

[Host 2]

So just like, everything just feels very like you're not seeing the actual consequences of what you're doing. But the look smacks the face smashing stuff. Is that what's actually happening or are they just doing that to sell this weird technique to kids and then they're actually going and getting filler in their face because is it real? If you just smash your face, your jawbones get bigger?

[Host 1]

Yeah, it's a bit of both. I think the hammering, the face thing is probably not doing anything.

[Host 2]

Yeah, I don't think it's like giving you this sculpted, chiseled look. And I think it's just a way to make poor kids on the Internet smash their faces.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So there's looksmax.org, which is basically the forum where they share all of their tips for it and people upload. It's mostly 14 and 15 year olds Uploading pictures and then rinsing each other for how ugly they are and giving each other tips on how they can improve, how they can ascend.

[Host 2]

Ascend Me.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Jack and George, our other colleague, uploaded pictures of ourselves as sort of 30, mid-30s.

[Host 1]

Rape me.

[Host 2]

What did you get?

[Guest 2 (George)]

We got absolutely destroyed. You can probably find our posts on there.

[Host 1]

Lower tier normies.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, we're low tier normies.

[Host 2]

Lower tier.

[Host 1]

We're cooked.

[Guest 2 (George)]

One of the comments was just surgery, bro. That's it.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Well, now you know what it's like to go to an all girls school. Been there, my friend. I have no sympathy. Actually, I'm glad it's happening to everybody now.

[Host 1]

Should we get into some doping?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Let's get into doping.

[Host 2]

Let's do it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So I put together a little history, amazing, of doping to kick us off, because history of doping, it basically goes back to the beginning of sport. So back in the Olympics in ancient Greece, they were taking magic mushrooms. They were taking these juice cocktails that were laced with opiates before races. Roman gladiators as well, they took strychenine,

[Host 2]

which isn't that poison.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. So it's now used in rat poison, but it's this stimulant that is found in the bark of the poison berry tree. And they would take this. It's very toxic, but in small doses it acts as a bit like speed thing. And strychnine, it became a bit of an institution in doping really. And it was still popular more than a millennium later when the Olympics was revived and nobody needed a pick me up more than the marathon runners. So the marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, it was particularly brutal. I've got a picture here of the runners on the starting line. Part of the reason it was such a brutal marathon is that James Sullivan, who was the chief of this Olympics and a bit of a sadist, he decided to use this race to test his purposeful dehydration theory. He basically had this idea that taking on liquids while doing exercise was bad for you. It would slow you down. And he therefore decided that his athletes would not be allowed to do that. He'd put one water station at the halfway point of this marathon.

[Host 2]

To run a full marathon.

[Guest 2 (George)]

To run a full marathon.

[Host 2]

And can I ask, I know this. I might be completely wrong. This might be quite controversial. Isn't that also what bodybuilders do, like severely dehydrate themselves in order to make their muscles look more bulging, like before a competition. I think like you shred and you don't drink any water.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Boxers definitely do. For weigh ins and stuff.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

For weight class, cutting.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Maybe he was onto something.

[Host 1]

But the bodybuilders just have to stand there.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, they just have to stand.

[Host 2]

They're like not, you know, and I'm, you know, I know it's like, you know, I'm not saying you're standing there, but when you're being evaluated, I think to get that like veiny.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Hugh Jackman definitely did that in Wolverine.

[Host 2]

But weird. If you're going to run a marathon,

[Guest 2 (George)]

when you're running a marathon, it's not.

[Host 1]

So you get water at how many? What, 13?

[Guest 2 (George)]

At 13 miles. They had one water point. Naturally. They also decided to start the race at 3pm in 32 degree heat. And the course ran over this. It was this dry, dusty track. It went over these seven huge hills and the runners were led around the course by a fleet of automobiles which were pretty new at that point. And that might have been nice for the spectators to marvel at these new cars, but it also meant that they kicked up this cloud of toxic red road dust and exhaust fumes directly into the runners faces. So one of the runners, who was actually the reigning Boston Marathon champion, didn't even make it out of the stadium at the start of the race. Just collapsed, vomiting.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Oh my God.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Another runner inhaled so much road dust that he had a stomach hemorrhage, nearly died. 32 runners started the race. 10 of them had never run a marathon before and 14 of them finished. So it's a pretty, pretty sadistic race that's going on.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Or maybe a marathon's just not that hard is what I'm starting to wonder.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I think I looked up their times and they're actually quite quick.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. So I'll come on to the guy who won. It's the slowest winning time ever.

[Host 1]

But were they on strictly to this?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Some of them definitely were, including a guy called Thomas Hicks. So he's an American guy. He was doing pretty well. He was leading the race at the sort of 2/3, 3/4 mark, but he was severely dehydrated, as you would be, and you know, he'd already passed the hydration station. He was like really struggling and he started begging his trainers who were traveling in a car to give him some water. But you know, they were pretty wedded to this dehydration theory, so you got to try it out. They though, had no qualms with handing over to him a concoction of egg whites, brandy and rat poison strychenine.

[Host 2]

Oh, like a, like a brandy sour. With poison.

[Guest 2 (George)]

With brandy poison. With rat poison. Yeah, it sounds delicious.

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[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

and Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Oh no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual Together we're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Liberty Liberty. Liberty Liberty.

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[Host 2]

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[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

and Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your friend?

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Oh no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Together we're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, the Bird looks out of your league. Anyways.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

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[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

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[Guest 2 (George)]

And it sort of worked in a way. He managed to keep going and he turned up at the stadium, but by that time he was in no fit state to run, really. So one of the race officials gave an interview afterwards where he said that when Thomas Hicks came down the home straight, his eyes were dull, lusterless. The ashen colour of his face and skin had deepened, which.

[Host 1]

He's been poisoned.

[Guest 2 (George)]

That's not.

[Host 1]

And run him out.

[Guest 2 (George)]

That's not a well man.

[Host 2]

And maybe Hassan Manala.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, I'm quite sure. And as he was coming down the home straight, he started hallucinating and thought that the finish line was still 20 miles away. So he lay down on the home straight and tried to get Kyle up and go to sleep, but his trainers caught up with him, lifted up and basically carried him across the line, at which point he collapsed. And apparently after he collapsed, the race was over and he was still on the ground, his legs were still moving like a dog, as if he was running. That is not a well man.

[Host 2]

Can I just. What are they trying to prove?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, he basically thought that drinking water while doing exercise would slow you down. It can be quite uncomfortable.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I mean, if you're consuming that much, if you consume like a bucket of water, then I can see that it's sort of sloshing around inside you. But I would argue it's also quite key. It feels almost 32 degree heat when you're sweating buckets.

[Host 2]

It feels almost like anti doping. It's like, how can we make this even harder for you to do this?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Exactly.

[Host 2]

Would everybody watch that? Instead of the enhanced Games where, like, how far can somebody go if we give them everything they want versus, like, how far can people go if we give them nothing? Absolutely nothing. Like starvation Olympics. I don't know. I don't want to watch that squid game.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Such a monkey squid game.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So he ends up. He does finish the race, they give him a gold medal, which is nice. He finishes in 3 hours, 28 minutes, which actually is pretty fast.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, he got carried.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, he did get carried across the

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

line and it was carried.

[Host 2]

He was running to water. He was like, I have to finish this.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Slowest winning time in Olympic history for a man. It's still quite fast.

[Host 1]

I bet the guys in the cars were just glugging water the whole way around.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, it was pretty cruel. By the 1930s, though, athletes had largely moved on from strychnine I'm sure there was still a bit of it about, but the drug of choice by that point was meth. Methamphetamine, which at that point it was legal. You could buy it over the counter. It was like a nasal congestant. Some good thing, keeps you off for

[Host 2]

two days, but your nose will be clear.

[Host 1]

The Nazis were quite into it, weren't they?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 2]

We did a whole shorthand on how the Nazis invented meth in order to, like, give to all their frontline soldiers so that they would just keep fighting,

[Guest 2 (George)]

just stay away and.

[Host 1]

Yeah, genius.

[Guest 2 (George)]

It's hard to clean the house or.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah. It's hard to beat an army. That is all on meth.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, yeah. Quite terrible.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Managed it.

[Host 2]

Yeah, I was gonna say we did it. Fuck you.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. Actually, alongside the Nazi frontline officers, it was also. The squad of Wolverhampton Wanderers were also on it in the 1930s. Sort of the two big forces of the era, really.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Frank.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So they were on meth until their manager, a guy called Frank the Major Buckley, found something stronger. Monkey testicles.

[Host 2]

So surely harder to get your hands on.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Well, around this time, it was actually surprisingly easy. So the Major had got this idea from a French surgeon by the name of Sergey Voronov, and Voronoff had come up with this theory that basically grinding up animals bollocks and injecting them into humans would help stop aging. And in the 1920s, this became quite popular. He was implanting monkey testicle tissue into his patients, scrotums. He claimed that that improved sex drive, vision, memory and just generally prolonged the life. He had this monkey farm in Italy where these poor monkeys were getting farmed, harvested for their testicles, because obviously at

[Host 2]

that time, we've done a lot of stuff around that era of time when in the west there was this big. Looking to the east for a lot of answers and that Eastern mysticism and spiritual and alternative medicine, obviously Chinese medicine is kind of traditional medicine is kind of chock a block with, you know, suck on a rhino horn and you shall be erect forever or whatever. Was he, like, influenced by something like that or is he just like, I don't know, this is my idea?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. So he tried it with various different animals. He tried it with dogs and. Yeah, no, he basically found that it did work. He tried it, to be fair to him, he tried it first on himself and really felt the benefits.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

What, it gets him out?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

What, just shot it up in his veins or.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I think he was injecting, just picking up on monkeys. Are you aware of the Monkey in Brazil called the English monkey because it looks like an Englishman. Have you seen it?

[Host 1]

No.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

That's why I wasn't texting and being rude. I was trying to find this because it's so important that you see this.

[Host 2]

Aw, he looks so sorry.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Look at his little face.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I think they've harvested the testicle genes from like a bloke in Benidorm and injected it.

[Host 1]

That Fenador Cheltenham races thing where you sit outside all day watching the races.

[Host 2]

So, like, this guy's injecting monkey testicles into people for, like, potency. What was that monkey trying to achieve by injecting himself with a Benidorm?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

It's just going on holiday, man. He's just trying to have. He spent 50 weeks a year working his monkey ass off.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Let him have two weeks in the sun.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. I don't think if I saw that monkey. It's like when, you know, there's some restaurants where you go and you can like pick out that lobster or that

[Host 2]

fish, whatever, would that be the monkey you picked?

[Guest 2 (George)]

And then if you like go down to Sergey Voronov's monkey farm and you sort of. You're looking around. So I think we're gonna do it with this one. Do you have any other monkeys?

[Host 2]

It's on a sliding pay scale. Sliding pay scale. You know, how much you got?

[Guest 2 (George)]

So, yeah, this technique became actually pretty fashionable in high society in the 1920s. Sort of the Ozempic of his day. At one point he actually evolved from monkeys to humans and started implanting the testicles of executed criminals into his wealthy clients. Which it's hard to believe that that

[Host 2]

happened, but it just feels like that episode of the Simpsons when Homer gets snake's hair.

[Host 1]

Oh, yeah.

[Host 2]

And then he becomes a killer. I'd rather have the red faced monkey than some sort of executed prisoner. Testicles, maybe. But I'm not a man. I don't know. What do you want?

[Host 1]

You're getting more testicles then. Do I now have four?

[Host 2]

Probably also easier to get them.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, you have to swap them out. That's a good question.

[Host 1]

Voronoff's got like 20 rattling around in there. Pool table.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. And do you. Is it like there? Like, do you take on the characteristics of the.

[Host 2]

I've seen enough horror films.

[Host 1]

Yeah, it's a good premise.

[Guest 2 (George)]

But will people execute?

[Host 1]

It's a question for you guys. Maybe will people execute it for stuff that wasn't that bad back then?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Oh, yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So I could be like a thief maybe.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

What year this was?

[Guest 2 (George)]

1920s, 30s?

[Host 2]

Oh.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

All sorts deserting.

[Host 1]

Yeah. A spy for like the Soviets or something. I'll have here Anthony Blunt, testicles, please.

[Guest 2 (George)]

He was trying that for a little while, but unfortunately the demand outstripped the supply for felon balls. So he was back today with monkeys and the major. This manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers, which is why we're talking about this. There is a sportman.

[Host 1]

Where are we?

[Guest 2 (George)]

He heard about this treatment and decided to try it out on himself. And he did it for three months and loved it. Never felt better. He introduced that to his squad and before long, most of the squad were getting these jabs three times a week.

[Host 2]

Amazing. Can I ask, at the time, where were they in the division?

[Host 1]

They were decent.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Wolves were a decent side.

[Host 1]

They were known to be very aggressive, I think, which. That makes a lot of sense.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, they were a good team, but not. They weren't like top tier in the country. But lo and behold, after these procedures, they began to go on an incredible run. So they smashed Everton 7 0. They beat Leicester 10 1. Some of their opponents did begin to get a little bit suspicious. So one of the Everton players after the game complained that one of his opposite number had this sort of glazed expression.

[Host 2]

Like a monkey.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. After the Leicester game, when they beat Leicester 10 1, the Leicester players complained to their local MP that something was up, but nothing was done about it. And eventually a few other teams decided, you know, this is clearly working for Wolves. We should get involved, Including Portsmouth. And then when the 1939 FA cup rolled around, it was no surprise to those in the know that the finalists were Wolves and Portsmouth.

[Host 2]

No way. Sponsored by Monkey.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Sponsored. So the press dubbed it the monkey gland final.

[Host 2]

So everyone knew what they were doing. This wasn't like a secret. Like, it wasn't.

[Guest 2 (George)]

No. I think it. I think by this point it had got out.

[Host 2]

It's out.

[Host 1]

And it wasn't against the rules.

[Guest 2 (George)]

It wasn't against the rules. Like this point. No.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

They only just survived World War I. There's only about four blokes in the country. Let them have the monkey testicles.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Exactly, yeah. We need all the monkey testicles we can get.

[Host 2]

I'm just like, how could this possibly be working? Is it just the placebo effect? They're like, this has got to like. There's like a thing where the more complex, like the ritual to deliver the placebo effect, the better it works. So, like, versus just giving somebody a pill, if you're like, we're gonna take the juice out of this monkey, we're gonna distill it, we're gonna put it in this little. And then you're gonna inject yourself in this. That's quite like a lot like. So I could see that that could

[Guest 2 (George)]

be quite potent and also quite terrifying for your opponents as well.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Reverse placebo effect. Or I guess it's still a psychological effect.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Well, it worked for both of them. They both made it to the FA cup final. Portsmouth won 41 in the end. But then obviously this is 1939 and Second World War kicked off and sadly after that the practice declined.

[Host 1]

Was it not popular in the trenches?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, I don't know if they had time for that in the trenches.

[Host 1]

Nazi's got their meth. Yeah.

[Host 2]

We've got our monkey testicles.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Hitler. He also injected himself with a ball semen.

[Host 1]

Oh, really? Oh, it was the same idea, surely.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah. Well, only one ball famously so he really needed it.

[Host 1]

Scrotum injection or veins?

[Host 2]

Good question.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Not sure. He had a very discreet doctor, but I'm sure.

[Host 1]

Was he on like everything, all of it. What, like heroin as well?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Heroin? I don't think so. I think he was more an uppers guy.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Okay.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Had a lot to do.

[Host 1]

Part the animal. So the monkey glands then ceased to eat after that? Yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

The Sergey Voronov's technique sort of went out of fashion a little bit.

[Host 1]

A lot of techniques went out of fashion. Has it ever been tested? You know, has anyone ever.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I think it's been disproven.

[Host 1]

Oh, bummer.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. There's only one way to find out really, isn't it?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Were they getting the sperm out?

[Guest 2 (George)]

They were taking basically like tissue samples from. How I understand it, taking like tissue samples from the monkey's balls and transplanting them into any tissue. Yeah.

[Host 1]

At one point you said they ground them. I was picturing a pestle and mortar.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. I. Yeah.

[Host 2]

I feel like this is not a replicatable process that they were running enhanced games.

[Host 1]

Now's the time. This is what it's for, isn't it?

[Host 2]

I would love somebody to be like, I'm on monkey tusks old school.

[Host 1]

Because I guess we're going to come on to it. But it's anything, isn't it? No recreationals.

[Host 2]

Well, nothing illegal is what it's meant to be. So you can use things like. My understanding is like off label stuff for this, but nothing that's illicit.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

But also nobody is telling anybody else what they're on because they don't want protocol stealing in between competitors. So James Magnuson has gone on radio shows or said to the Sydney Morning Herald what he Is taking, but you don't have to declare what it is.

[Host 2]

And they're also not gonna test them, are they?

[Host 1]

Well, quite a fun element if they then reveal at the end.

[Host 2]

Ooh, like a box.

[Host 1]

But I guess that is your key edge.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

I think that's the thing is they want to keep their secret potions of what worked.

[Host 1]

That's gonna get fruity. I could see monkey glands being experimented with.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. Why not? Why not?

[Host 1]

Heard it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So that's a few of the ancient doping stories.

[Host 2]

I just love the fact that they would do, like, poison.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Just poison rat poison monkey testicles. It's quite.

[Host 2]

Give it a shot.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

In order for it to be, like, not allowed at the Olympics, does it have to be proven to actually work well, like, would an athlete be eliminated?

[Host 2]

Good question.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

If they were using something that monkey just didn't work.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

There was a guy at the first Winter Olympic drug ban was a snowboarder who was smoking weed, wasn't it?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

But then they banned him, and then it turned out that actually they hadn't listed weed as, like, one of the banned drugs. I think it is now.

[Host 2]

Yeah. That was actually when we were watching the Winter Olympics this time, and it was like, you talk about, like, the other athletes, and they're like, this is what time I woke up. This is my exercise regime. This is what I ate for breakfast. These are all supplements I take. And then the snowboarders are like, I smoked this much weed.

[Host 1]

Ice cream for breakfast. Monster energy.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I think that was the. It was the first Olympics where snowboarding was included, which I really like, because, like, apparently, like, Winter Olympics was quite. It was quite stuffy. And, you know, the skiers were a bit snobby about the snowboards. It was like, we can't have the snowboarders coming in. And eventually they're like, look, we need to open this up to the kids, like, get some more eyes on the Olympics. And first winner is just like, he's just disqualified straight away for this stank of wee.

[Host 2]

But this is my question kind of coming off. What Hannah's saying is, like, if you can use things that aren't proven to work, but also, what if you're using something that I would feel like, if I'm not a snowboarder, I've never done it in my life, but I can only assume if I did it while I was stoned, I would be worse at it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Why isn't he allowed to do something that would just make him worse, or does it make him better?

[Host 1]

Well, there's Quite a lot of that. There's like, people get caught doing coke and then get banned because I think it sets a bad example, I guess.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, with like, I see darts and snooker in the 80s and they were just necking pints, the whole. The whole game. There was. What was his name, Bill Werbinock or something, who. He drank 50 beers a day or something.

[Host 1]

He could claim five a day against his taxes for work.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Basically it was to, like, because he had tremors, probably because he was drinking 50 beers a pound, but in order to play snooker, he needed five pints

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

to, like, steady his hands.

[Host 1]

It does help a bit, though.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, I think it definitely does.

[Host 2]

I can't say I've ever watched either, but I feel like it's lost its charm.

[Host 1]

Yeah, it's too professional, like all sport. Speaking of ultra professional sports, cycling dopers paradise. I think when you think of doping, running and cycling, often the biggies. But actually cycling started off just as kind of wacky races as the marathon that Zach described. So cycling basically began in the modern sense in the 1890s, when the bike with the pedals and the chain came up. Before that, it's penny farthing harder competitive sport on something that looks like. But the safety bicycle comes out and that's the big moment. And very quickly competitive events start. And the first really popular one was endurance races, which is just indoor laps of a track for six days straight. So you're allowed to get off and eat and sleep, but obviously you're losing pressure. So the cyclists very quickly just devise a cocktail of drugs so that they can do 24 hours a day for six days.

[Guest 2 (George)]

That is surely having a heart attack after one.

[Host 1]

So apparently the poisons were strychnine, as always.

[Host 2]

Classic.

[Host 1]

That was red. And cocaine, because cocaine as well was over the counter, right?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Oh, everywhere.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Yeah. So you just sort of buy it and I guess rub it on your gums or whatever they were doing. So they were just at it for six days straight, basically on like a bender.

[Host 2]

But cycling also, like, what is the point? What is the point of that? Like, I don't want to take away from anybody who's doing endurance cycling, but I'm like, who wants to watch that? Yeah, who cares that much? And to the point that you're, like, driving these people to stay awake for six days and take all of these drugs. I'm just like, is it worth it?

[Host 1]

I think there's two explanations. One is male dick measuring you can never rule out as a factor in anything. And the other is betting. I Think it became a big. Because there was also pedestrianism, which was people walking laps and that got really nasty. People started setting up bookies and then there were brothels and stuff. It got really out of hand.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

And cycling is the most data driven sport, which is why it attracts autistic men. Like, my friend mine is real into it. And every birthday I'm like, I don't want to go. Don't make me sit in the room

[Host 1]

with these men and talk about the Tour de France. Would they happily just do laps for six days straight, then they would happily

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

do laps, never speak to another human being?

[Host 1]

Yeah. That's also a factor, isn't it?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

They just want their whoop. That's all they want. Just want chat whoop.

[Host 1]

Well, anyway, as you can imagine, these cokeheads who are also doing rat poison, a lot of them fell ill. No.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So there were the.

[Host 2]

I feel like got poisoned themselves.

[Host 1]

So there are loads of them who just like fall off the bike, crash. A lot of them were just like full psychosis, hallucinating.

[Host 2]

So this is where people are really watching. It's like when people say they're watching F1 for the cars, but they're actually watching for the crashes.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, they're watching for the people falling off the bikes.

[Host 1]

Yeah, that's a good point. So I think it was the New York Times reporting on it at the time, and they said the riders are becoming peevish and fretful. And then they said the winner was like a ghost, his face as white as a corpse, his eyes no longer visible because they'd retreated into his skull.

[Guest 2 (George)]

This is an elite athlete.

[Host 2]

Classic strychnine poisoning.

[Host 1]

Yeah, Six days.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Good news is you could get Valium over the counter back then, so you'd be right as rain in about two hours. Take the edge off.

[Host 1]

Yeah, there was, there was.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Balance it out.

[Host 1]

There was definitely a thing going on as well of like balancing out with the uppers and downers and stuff. But the endurance races end up banned, understandably. And then a lot of the competitive energy shifts to the Tour de France. So the first Tour de France was 1903, and it was pretty savage back in the day. So much like that marathon. It was a lot of people who were just like, yeah, I'll give it a go. So the first stage was 18 hours, which for comparison is in length. It's twice what any stage is now. And a lot of these guys had never.

[Guest 2 (George)]

That was stage one.

[Host 1]

Yeah, stage one of the whole thing.

[Guest 2 (George)]

18 hours.

[Host 1]

Yeah, 18 hours just through the night. They were built dead and apparently originally no one really wanted to do it, but then they put up this massive prize money. It was six years wages for the average worker in France. So suddenly everyone's like, you know, it's a bit of that, like, squid games, energy. People are like, fuck it, I'll give it a go. Among them, the French rider, Hippolyte Ocouturier, who he. I guess he was kind of old school in a sense, because his way of numbing the pain from cycling for 18 hours was to just guzzle red wine and sniff ether.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Oh, nice.

[Host 2]

How French.

[Host 1]

Yeah, that's kind of chic, isn't it? Yeah, the red wine, I think it's. Ether's like an anesthetic. Right.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Dentists used to use it.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

When you just sniff it on a rag.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah. But you have to be very careful, otherwise it burns your face. So you can always tell.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

It's very flammable as well.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, it's in inside a house rules. That's what the guy's addicted to.

[Host 1]

Oh, it's addictive as well. Of course it is. So what's the deal with. What's chloroform? Similar.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I think chloroform's just like less of a nice time. No, like pink cloud. I think you're just out.

[Host 1]

You're just out because we. We always talk about the. The first football World cup. During one of the games, the physio ran on with chloroform to treat a player, but he slipped and it smashed and the physio passed out of it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Oh, my God.

[Host 2]

That's amazing. Yeah. No, I don't think you're having fun on chloroform. I think you're just asleep.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Can you imagine that? Whoever was on the field there, probably with like a broken ankle or something, it's like the physio should be there in a minute. Just look over and it's like, crawl

[Host 2]

your way over to him in the

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

smashed glass to his puddle.

[Host 1]

Anyway, so Hippolyte, he's on the red wine and the ether, unfortunately, he crashes out in stage one, doesn't make it the 18 hours. The winner that year was a factory worker called Maurice Garan, who. He had an interesting story because as a child, his parents had sold him to chimney sweeps for a wheel of cheese.

[Host 2]

So French.

[Host 1]

Yeah. What a life.

[Guest 2 (George)]

What type of cheese?

[Host 1]

I was wondering that.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I think if it's a wheel, it's gotta be a Brie Camembert.

[Host 2]

What would you sell your child for a wheel of cheese?

[Host 1]

Not Blue. Nothing blue.

[Host 2]

Oh, I would.

[Host 1]

Only blue, are you? Only blue.

[Host 2]

I'm just on my own at Christmas eating my blue cheese that nobody else wants. Why does nobody like blue cheese?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, a bit overpowered.

[Host 1]

I wouldn't sell a child for it. I'd nibble on it at Christmas.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I. I think a good. A really nice Camembert. I'd probably swap a child, depending. An annoying child.

[Host 2]

You.

[Host 1]

It's not gonna be cheddar, is it, surely?

[Host 2]

Oh, a cruncher. A crunch is good.

[Host 1]

Wouldn't be in a wheel, I guess.

[Host 2]

Do they not make cheddar?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, you can. You can get the big. The big ones that they're all down the hill.

[Host 1]

Oh yeah. Literally the Jedi rolling. Actually, if it was like Port Salute or Baby Bell, I'd be cheesed off. Did not plan that joke. I just like to make clear. Anyway, so Maurice Garran, really interesting character and he actually emerges as the frontrunner in this first Tour de France. And it's not, he's, you know, he's boozing and all that stuff. But it's not just the strictening and the booze. He's also deliberately just shoving people off their bikes. At one point he's vying with one guy for the whole Tour de France and so he knocks the guy off his bike and then gets off and stamps repeatedly on the guy's wheel.

[Host 2]

I feel like Maurice is from the school of hard knocks.

[Host 1]

Oh yeah.

[Host 2]

And he's also maybe the wheel being sold for a wheel of cheese as a child. Maybe it's all like psychological there for him. He's like, no, take that. Yeah, I could see it.

[Host 1]

Yeah. This is a Freudian analysis of Maurice Garrett.

[Host 2]

This is what we do on red handed day. I really feel like the wheel is.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

You didn't know where you were coming from.

[Host 2]

Representative of his broken childhood.

[Host 1]

Well, he wins it. So he avenges his tough life. He wins that first tour and after that everyone's like, oh, so the deal is you can just completely cheat in the Tour de France. It doesn't matter. So after that it's open season the following year. People are throwing like tacks, nails and glass in front of each other's bikes. They are. Apparently a lot of them are putting itching powder in their competitors shorts.

[Host 2]

Seems like wacky races.

[Host 1]

Yeah. Obviously in the, in the Tour de France, people also taking trains just to. Because you know you're going across the country. So you just take your bike onto a train, cover the whole race, wait it out for a bit, rejoin the pack.

[Guest 2 (George)]

That's Perfectly cool. Why bother cycling?

[Host 1]

Yeah, well, actually our old friend Hippolyte au Couturier cooked up a really good method. So he found a way to get towed by a car for the whole tour. Basically got really thin like fishing wire,

[Guest 2 (George)]

so it's see through, attached it to

[Host 1]

the car and then he had a cork on the other end which he held in his mouth, probably from his red wine, and just got towed the whole way.

[Host 2]

That's amazing.

[Host 1]

But he got found out because he crossed the line at the same time as the judge's car. So they started to clamp down on all these wacky racers style cheating methods.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Wasn't there another one who had their trainers had water bottles that were filled with lead. So they'd have their one that was watching as they sometimes swap things at the top of the hill. They'd hand him a lead thing so he's really heavy going down and then at the end he'd just chuck it off to the side.

[Host 2]

I love that.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I really read that.

[Host 2]

That's a good one.

[Host 1]

I think that one really worked until he got caught.

[Host 2]

That feels like good clean fun.

[Host 1]

Yeah, you know, unfortunately they clamped out on all the good clean fun, but not the drugs. So after that it became much more about actual doping. And in the 1920s, the winner of the Tour de France told a journalist, he said, we have cocaine to go in our eyes, chloroform for our gums and do you want to see the pills? We keep going on dynamite. In the evenings we dance around our rooms instead of sleeping. So they're just fucked.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Wow, cocaine in your eyes.

[Host 1]

Yeah, there's that quicker way, you know, like a tequila shot in the eye. It's probably the quickest way when you

[Host 2]

just can't get drunk quick enough.

[Host 1]

But there was a rock star thing of up the button, wasn't there?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I was just gonna say that. Boofing.

[Host 1]

Is it called boofing?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

It's called tabouf.

[Host 1]

Yes, Strawberry like a. Like a poison dart. I was about to name some rock stars I've heard did it, but I'm not sure that's confirmed. It's probably lifeless.

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[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

and Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Oh no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Together we're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Liberty Liberty. Liberty Liberty.

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[Host 2]

down as soon as you hit the dance floor.

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My personal favorite is the Cloud Embrace bra, a modern wireless T shirt bra with sturdy, light padded foam cups that feel like a cloud against the skin. No more sweating on the tube with a painful wire digging into your ribs. Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20% off [e-mail] redhanded that's honeylove.com redhanded after you check out, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Experience the new standard in comfort and support with Honey Love

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

and Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row At a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Host 1]

So, yeah, so they're doping. They're dancing around their rooms. I get the sense that some of that doping is just for laughs. There's just a bit of a, like, Last days at Rome thing going on. Another rider says that he takes La Bomba, which is a cocktail of amphetamines and heroin. So you're going up, down and every which way? Yeah, actually, I quite like. His main rival is a guy called Gino Bartali. And he said, I just drink 28 espressos a day.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Which somehow that feels worse. Yeah, yeah. The idea of 28 espresso makes me feel anxious.

[Host 1]

Same. Whereas the heroin.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

The heroin would sort you right out.

[Host 1]

Anyway, despite all this, the Tour de France does not ban doping until the 1960s. Wow. It's had, like, half a century. I think that decade was when doping really got clamped down, because the Olympics also did the same. 1967 war on drugs. And the first athletes full foul of those rules at the Olympics was Hans Gunnar Lillian Wall, who was caught. He's a pistol shooter. He was caught having two beers beforehand to steady the hand, like the dance players. And they. They banned him. Wow. So I guess that was the point where, yeah, even booze. Yeah, he was breathalyzed because drug testing had begun at this point. And then obviously it's urine tests for most of. Most of Olympic history, which a lot of people have come up with quite creative ways to get around. So there were athletes who had, like, you'd store clean urine in your armpit, under your armpit and then have a tube down. And actually, both Maradona and Mike Tyson had prosthetic penises. Yeah, the wizard kneader Mike Tyson. Literally just a plastic knob that you hide clean urine in.

[Guest 2 (George)]

You can still get them online.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Oh, I can't imagine.

[Guest 2 (George)]

About 65 quid, I think it was.

[Host 1]

And are they designed specifically for urine tests?

[Guest 2 (George)]

I presume. So I guess.

[Host 1]

What else?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah.

[Host 1]

Or Halloween. But there was also. There was a basketball player who did it and he used his girlfriend's urine and they were like, look, you haven't been doping, but you're pregnant. So we talked about doping for ages But I don't think we've mentioned any sort of modern performance enhancers.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Right.

[Host 1]

It's all been like cocaine and strychnine. But, you know, in terms of actual performance enhancers, that came quite late. And the Tour de France is where it was really pioneered. There was, for at least the first half of the 90s, everyone was at it and there was just a culture of secrecy. The main stuff they were using, obviously steroids and then epo, which is. It basically helps oxygenate the blood that goes to the muscles so that you can. You basically don't get. Don't get as tired in the muscles. That was being widely used with no one really talking about it until the 1998 Tour de France, which became known as the Festina Affair, because the team, Festina, they were caught smuggling a carload of EPO and amphetamines actually over the Belgian border into France. For the Tour.

[Host 2]

For the Tour, yeah.

[Host 1]

Yeah. So they're still doing the amphetamine speed. The whiz were still.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Okay, that was still the riders. It wasn't the storage for the riders. And then the team bosses afterwards, they were just up all night and just

[Host 2]

a guy with a van behind them full of monkeys.

[Host 1]

Yeah, the monkey glands that can cross the border. But basically these border guards catch them, they're like, right, so then within about three days, they raid all the team's hotels and they find like loads of these drugs. They find written plans on how to dope. Basically, like everyone's just doing it without even covering it up. And suddenly all these riders start dropping out of the Tour. So that year only half the riders who entered the Tour actually crossed the finish line at the end. And there were loads of convictions as well. So loads of like big names in cycling basically got taken out by this, except a little known Texan by the name of Lance Armstrong, who. He was there that year. I mean, he'd had an amazing story already because he'd been diagnosed with cancer in 1996. The doctors gave him a 20% chance of surviving, but apparently they only told him that to give him hope.

[Ad Voice 2]

Wow.

[Host 2]

Oh, wow.

[Host 1]

Obviously we know he, he survived that and thrived. He won seven Tour de France's in a row. 99 to 2005. Were you guys Livestrong band People remember them.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I remember that era.

[Host 1]

So I said, I think I've told

[Guest 2 (George)]

you this out before.

[Host 1]

Really embarrassing stories. I really wanted one. I think I was like 14 or 15 and I like phoned around all the cycling shops in London and found one that had it and I walked. So I didn't have. I got all the money in pocket money I had, which is enough to get the Livestrong back. But I had no money for the bus so I walked to like St. James's you know like where Buckingham palace is. Oh wow. And there was a cycling shop there that had them. And I got my live strong bad and like wore at school on the Monday and no one cared.

[Host 2]

But you cared.

[Host 1]

I was buzzing.

[Host 2]

Yeah, that's. That's the kind of grit that kids don't have these days.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I was sort of the Lance Armstrong of my school, I guess. Anyway.

[Host 2]

And I think it's like how, you know, our parents thought I had to walk, blah blah blah to get water or whatever. I had to walk to St. James again trying to get a mass produced

[Host 1]

silicon band which were widely available about a week later.

[Host 2]

You can tell your child that before you sell him for some.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, it was such a strange phase.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Just like every cause imaginable just had these silicon bands.

[Host 2]

What was booby.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Probably still strangling turtles today.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Oh yeah, because those don't.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I'm sure though they don't look very. They're going to be around for the next 500 million years.

[Host 2]

The best one was like the anti racism one which was like the black

[Host 1]

one and the white one with the hands holding.

[Host 2]

No, I think it was just a black silicon band and a white silicon band like that. Then you wore both of them and you were like.

[Host 1]

Yeah, there was a camo army one, I think.

[Host 2]

I think so.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

I guess that was everything.

[Host 2]

It became a thing.

[Host 1]

But Lance kicked that off with his charity. So fair play. He raised a lot of money for charity. Of course behind the scenes he was using EPO and steroids to cheat in those Tour de Frances. And he actually failed a drug test in 99 the first tour. He won but his team doctor covered it up. They wrote him, they backdated a prescription for bum cream. Saddle sores, common problem on the tour. And they basically wrote a prescription because this has steroids in it.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So they were like, oh, toy, sure, genius.

[Host 1]

Seems kind of easy. But word was gradual.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Hydrocortisone classed as a performance enhancing enhancing drug.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I think a lot of sports people can't have those creams and stuff because often there's people who accidentally.

[Host 2]

Sure, yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Wow.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Paul Pogba, didn't he. He. Well, he claims that he used some kind of cream, I think by mistake and various.

[Host 1]

Various footballers who've say that's what they're get out is.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah. Was it Carlo Toro who took his wife's slimming pills or something? No.

[Host 1]

Shane Warne took his mum's mum's one.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Yeah. And got banned. Anyway, the. The whole team are in on it with Lance in the end. Apparently, a lot of them didn't want to be and were basically blackmailed into not only covering it up, but taking drugs with him so that they were implicated. So it was all pretty nasty. And these journalists who were trying to report it got, like, hounded, sued everyone, you know, the people who are adamant that he'd never cheated. But, of course, as we all know, it eventually unraveled and he confessed on Oprah. Where else in 2013. Apparently, that day he lost $75 million of sponsorship deals.

[Host 2]

Why did he do it? Was it just like, the pressure was untenable? Like, he had to at that point?

[Host 1]

No, I think to win the Tour de France at that stage, you had to cheat because everyone was.

[Host 2]

Oh, no, I mean, confess.

[Host 1]

Oh, sorry. I think it was too obvious by that. But people had come out and said, yeah, he forced me. The game was up long before.

[Host 2]

Oh, okay, okay.

[Host 1]

Do you reckon you got money for Oprah? Maybe one half.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

That's how the game is played. That's how she gets the exclusive.

[Host 1]

Right. So naive.

[Host 2]

Now she's like, I will give you 75 million, which is the amount I predict you will lose today.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

You break even.

[Host 1]

I actually think he's done all right out of it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Like, he's still.

[Host 1]

He's got big out.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

He said, yeah, yeah. It's popular because, to be fair, everyone was doping. So in a way, he's still. So apparently that all his seven titles are still unclaimed because apparently every other rider was doping. Like, there's a Vice article where they try and work out who the true honest winner would be of the 99 title. If it's not him, and they rule out, like, the top 20, in a

[Guest 2 (George)]

way, it sort of justifies the fact that he was doping. It's just like everyone was doing it. If you were not doing it, then you're a mug.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

Do you think he would do Enhanced Games?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Surely he should. He'd be the face of the Enhanced Games. Surely he can claw back more than 75 million in that. Has he really?

[Host 2]

I think that's a smart move. I think if he's on this, like, rebrand, I've got a podcast. Like, I've done my time. I atoned for my sins, even though everyone was doing it. And then I'm Starting again. I think if he goes back into the Enhanced Games, he's gonna.

[Host 1]

I'd love him for that.

[Host 2]

I think he thinks it will drag him down.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, I think just at this point, go full baddie.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Just.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Just embrace it.

[Host 2]

Give yourself a bit of net it.

[Host 1]

The BBC asked him, like, five, 10 years ago, would you. If you were back in 1995 and you could do it again, would you? And he was like, absolutely. I'd definitely. I'd dope again.

[Host 2]

Not.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Because otherwise he'd have just been sort of middling cyclist he's ever heard of.

[Host 1]

No one would have bought your bracelets, mate.

[Guest 2 (George)]

No one would have bought your bracelets. You wouldn't have a podcast now, would you?

[Host 2]

True.

[Host 1]

Well, yeah, sort of. Sort of the greatest doper of his time, I would say.

[Host 2]

Yeah, that we know about.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, that we know isn't that there's stat of the top 20, 100 meter times of all time, and all of them, except for three, have been ruled out for doping. And those three are Usain Bolt.

[Host 2]

Oh, wow.

[Host 1]

That would break my heart if Usain Bolt was a cheat. I love him.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

This interests me.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I am of the opinion that they're all still fucking doing it. They've just got better at getting away with it, gaming the system. The system can't keep up with the athletes developing ways to get around it.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Right.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So I actually think that the reason the Olympics, et cetera, are so against the Enhanced Games is because if they're all doping and they're actually not much better than the Olympians, they're going to have to be. They're exposed, aren't they? Because they're all fucking doing it. So I really think that the Enhanced Games will be the same level. And then the International Olympic Committee are going to have to be like, so what?

[Host 2]

They're.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

That's why they're so against it. It's not because of sportsmanship. It's not about fairness. It's not about the nobleness of the game. It's because they've been caught with their fucking pants down with a needle in their butt.

[Host 2]

I love doing it.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So if you were to find out that Usain Bolt, for example, had been doping, you just said you'd be gutted.

[Host 1]

Oh, yeah. There's a dishonesty to what you're actually seeing. It's like someone telling you that wrestling is screwed. That's gonna go down badly with some listeners, but you know what I mean? It's like, oh, I'm being had here.

[Guest 2 (George)]

It's Actually a vanity. I don't know. I think it's more to do with, with people dining out on this clean image of them as like, you know, I am this like this role model who's just done every like.

[Host 2]

And I'm doing my way to the

[Guest 2 (George)]

top from the bottom and.

[Host 2]

And I'm succeeding because I take this supplement or because I eat this way rather than because I'm also supplementing.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So we could OBG doping.

[Host 1]

Yeah. Especially because sport has such a clean image now. It's more grating.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I would love sport to just have those old school, like Tour de France, that kind of cheating. That kind of stuff is fun and it's creative. It's like work smarter, not fast, not harder.

[Host 2]

Yeah, no, it is like fill your

[Guest 2 (George)]

water bottles with lead.

[Host 2]

It is.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Have a cork in your mouth.

[Host 2]

Do you think that the negativity is what comes back to what you're saying about like the image? Right. So it's like kids watching and things like that. It's like, oh, look, they're taking drugs. And like, they may not understand, like what you just said, Hannah. Which like, they still have to be incredibly good to do it. But it's this feeling of like you can cheat your way to the top or like there's a quick fix or like a magic bullet that will make you better rather than just like working really hard. And maybe that's why it feels off.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Especially Olympic sports. The only way they're making money is via sponsorship. And what brand is going to sponsor you if you're cheating?

[Host 1]

That's probably the best explanation.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

And I think that in itself is a farce. You know, like, it's all about finance, it's all about money. So smoke as much crack as you want.

[Host 1]

Amen.

[Host 2]

Well, thank you very much. That was. I feel like I've learned so much. Thank you guys. That was great. Really, really interesting stuff. So hot off the heels of us saying we don't think the Enhanced Games are actually going to happen, Hannah and I are going to talk to you about the inaugural Enhanced Games. Let's see.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

They have launched the Enhanced Games, which is just Steroid Olympics, basically. Kind of. Not quite, but that's the easiest way of explaining it with an Apple style launch event. It's how that's been described internally. So there really are. It's about the spectacle. It's nothing to do with the sport. And the question they're asking is what would happen if all of the rules of sport were stripped away? What could we achieve as a species if our Hardest, fastest and strongest were allowed to chemically amplify their bodies without limit or recourse. I honestly have thought about that before. Like, if that truly was possible, which it isn't for reasons we'll go into. Is there a problem there to, like, just see how far we could go ethically?

[Guest 2 (George)]

It's a scientific sport, really. It's basically the, the. The athletes are much like an F1. Like the, the skill of it. A lot of it comes down to like the engineers for the car.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

The most, obviously. I'm not saying the drivers are also amazing. They're great. But like, a lot of it comes down.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

You still have to be a good athlete. Yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

The sort of aerodynamics and everything. Like, there's so much like science that goes into it. And this is basically the equivalent for doctors. Right?

[Host 2]

Yeah. It's like the ultimate biohacking.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Right.

[Host 2]

Instead of just like, oh, how can I make myself concentrate a little bit harder at work or do a little bit, it's like, yeah, take that, but then apply it to Olympians. So I can totally understand the appeal of something like this, theoretically speaking, for sure.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

And also the side of it is like, could, because a lot of the, A lot of some of the athletes who are competing are retired and have been for ages, and then they're coming back to see if they can be as good as they were. So that's also very marketable as a, like, could. Could a 60 year old.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Do the drugs not make somebody too mental like Chris Benwari? Because that would be my only concern.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Avoid rage, all that stuff. Can't you go like, pretty, pretty mad?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah. And I think that is like a criticism of the enhanced games being like, what are the healthcare concerns?

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

But I question whether that's what they actually care about.

[Guest 2 (George)]

It's all happening among consenting adults, is

[Host 2]

what I was gonna say. And I think it comes back reference of like the F1 cars. It's like the faster they go and like, you know, all of that, but then is it harder to control? And does that lead to you crashing it?

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, kind of.

[Host 1]

All sport now is like a bit of that, like, Faustian pact of like they're performing ponies and people just want people just treat them like that anyway, so.

[Host 2]

Absolutely. I mean, there was the really, really good podcast series, I don't know if you guys have listened to it, called American Gladiator. And it was about Aaron Hernandez, who was the NFL player who basically just like, you know, all of the brain injury stuff that was coming out of that and then he kills someone and then kills himself. I think that's what happened with him. And yeah, it's basically like making the connection between like, how really far have we come from like gladiator times where it was like, who cares about the well being of these people as long as there's a spectacle and as long as there's like entertainment to be had. And yeah, I thought that was quite interesting. So, yeah, in June 2023, the enhanced games website, enhanced.com launched. And it launched with this like quite odd 34 second video clip that genuinely looks like it was shot in a primary school. You know when it's like sports marketing and it's all very like epic and grand. And in a similar way it has this like booming voiceover talking about this like proud enhanced athlete, that's what they call them, describing them as a true libertarian who has finally been given the arena to compete in, unshackled by all the pesky arbitrary rules of the International Olympics Committee. They're positioning it, as you can see, quite like a maverick domain that feels like the angle they're going for and it makes sense. So just to clarify exactly what the Enhanced Games are and what's allowed. Basically, participating athletes can take all performance enhancing drugs they want, they can take as much as they want and they don't even have to say which ones they're on. And that's because the board of the Enhanced Games are much more concerned with protocol stealing than they are about the competitors literally dropping dead. And I get that to an extent because it's kind of like if you're going to say it's going to be all out, like you can do whatever you want and they'll be like, oh, but you can't do this, this and this. It kind of undermines the like full force freedom that they say that they're going for. So currently on the Enhanced Games website there's this trailer. Like we said, it looks very strange, but they are promising a superior spectator experience for those who will be watching, as well as millions in prize money for any victorious athletes.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, so the International Olympics Committee and just about every sporting body under the sun have made it very clear that taking part in the Enhanced Games would be a career ending move. So to push such a controversial event to actual fruition takes a special kind of stupid blind arrogance and loads of other people's money, which are things that Aaron d' Souza has more than enough of. The brains behind the Enhanced operation is an Australian born career venture capitalist. Is there a Worse, hypercenter. Like all 1 percenters, Aaron D' Souza has dabbled in fintech, philanthropy, and he's also an honorary Moldovan consul. There's not much to say about him until about 2022, because he didn't actually do anything. Just had all of these sort of projects flopping around, not really going anywhere. But that all changed when one day, he claims he was in the gym thinking about all of the rippling biceps surrounding him.

[Host 2]

And despite the stigma around taking steroids in the 80s and 90s, Aaron D' Souza apparently realized that everyone around him was totally juiced anyway. And he does a little bit of digging around, and he says that he discovers a couple of stats that 14.83% of American men were taking anabolic steroids, and 95% of the NFL were also doing the same. Now, I do have to say that these stats are actually pulled from astonishingly flawed studies. But it's like the rationale that he uses that everyone is doing it anyway, so, like, what's the big deal? And he basically figures that someone's gonna capitalize on this at some point, so why not? Why not me? Why not little old Aaron? And so, yeah, it seemed like the perfect time for him to pull the trigger on it.

[Host 1]

Is he the money?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Oh, no, no.

[Host 2]

He's the brains.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Never invest your own money. Come on. Aaron d' Souza decided that he was going to celebrate all things doping to find out just how far the human body could be pushed if the rules were taken away. After this brainwave over the next few months, d' Souza developed the concept of the Enhanced Games and shouted about it to anyone he could find. But he did have real trouble getting investors interested in his drugs. Athletic jamboree hitching to Lance Armstrong may strike us as tone deaf, but I genuinely think that because a conversation with Aaron d' Souza has been likened to talking to a bar of soap, Aaron d' Souza probably didn't notice. I can understand trying to get Lance on board, like, when it's more of a concept, but to pitch it to Lance on, like, you know, that thing that ruined your life?

[Host 2]

How about, have you considered being the face of it?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Making it your whole brand?

[Guest 2 (George)]

It sort of already is, really.

[Host 2]

You might as well lean in.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

So that didn't work. It was a no.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

It was a no matter. Rejection at every turn. But d' Souza knew he was onto something. He also has a real problem with the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti Doping Agency. His argument is that, like, they're rotten to the core. They're all cheating. And I'm kind of with him. I don't think he is genuine in that belief. I think it makes a good soundbite. So he says he's on a campaign to expose the hypocrisy of those bodies and he was going to take them down on his own with the help of his very, very, very rich friends.

[Host 2]

So, yeah, Aaron d' Souza very much like, paints himself as sort of like the Robin Hood of doping in the sporting world. He's like, they're all doing it. They're a bunch of hypocrites. I'm gonna like democratize this and we're gonna be real about it, we're gonna be honest about it. And that's like Hannah said, that's like his whole shtick. That's like his spiel about like how this idea came to him, like taking down on big sport. But it's much more likely that he actually just probably stole the idea from a 2004 Wired article called Steroids for Everyone, which made a case for an enhanced Olympics. And this theft is one of the many reasons the Wired magazine is very much against Aaron d' Souza and the whole Enhanced Games situation. Which is actually quite ironic when you discover that what Aaron d' Souza did to one of their biggest competitors, a magazine called Gorka. Basically, when Aaron d' Souza was a mere fresher at Oxford, he was asked if he could show a friend of a friend around the, you know, historic university town. And that friend of a friend just so happened to be co founder of PayPal and Facebook board member Peter Thiel. And apparently Peter and Aaron d' Souza hit it off straight away. And they stay in touch, spending many subsequent New Year's Eves together, which sure,

[Host 1]

like an age gap in that huge, yeah, yeah, 20 years sort of thing.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Noted.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah. This story is full of people who are so unbelievably rich that there's only about 16 of them in the group and they all just go to each other's houses for New Year.

[Host 1]

Sounds great.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

In the late 2000s, it just so happened that Peter Thiel had a big gay axe to grind with snarky New York based online publication Gorka. The site had a magazine dedicated exclusively to the dastardly dealings of Silicon Valley, which is called Valleywag.

[Host 2]

It's quite a hard word to say.

[Host 1]

Valleywag.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Well, now I have to say it again and it's going to be even harder. Valiwag hated Peter Thiel and he hated them right back, going as far as to compare them to Al Qaeda, referring to meetings with Gawker editors as negotiating with terrorists. Fatal blow came in 2007 with the headline Peter Thiel is totally gay people. Which was true and completely legal to publish, but left Peter Thiel totally fuming. The writer of the article insisted that Thiel's people had told him that there was no problem with the Post. And Peter thiel even donated $250,000 to the committee to Protect Journalists the same year, stating that he was a true believer in the critical importance of free speech. Except when you call him gay.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I mean, publishing it on the COVID of your magazine, it's very. It's mid 2000s even then.

[Host 1]

Like a British tabloid wouldn't out someone for being gay. Even then. Yeah, that's like 80's 80s, son.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So when little snotty law student Aaron D' Souza presented Peter Thiel with a plan to take Gorka down, he was all ears.

[Host 2]

It's a revenge story. At its heart, this is a revenge story.

[Host 1]

Love it.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

The plan was simple. If you have millions of dollars lying around and a spare afternoon. The problem was that Gorka hadn't done anything illegal. Peter Thiel can't sue them himself, but that doesn't mean he can't fund other people who do have a legitimate case against the publication. So all Aaron d' Souza needed to do for Peter Thiel was find a high profile person with an actual case against Gorka. And then they could pay the law firms to pursue the online journal into the ground.

[Host 2]

Enter Hulk Hogan and his sex tape. Times were tough for the the Hulkster in 2006, so his radio DJ buddy, Bubba the Love Sponge. I don't know if people remember this story. This will all be ringing all sorts of horrible alarm bells. Bubba decides that what Hulk Hogan needs to, you know, get him out of this 2006 rut that he's in is a good old fashioned shag. And that shag was going to be with Bubba's own wife. So, like, I don't know the ins and outs of this, but bizarrely, Hulk Hogan agreed to this cucky adulterous arrangement. But he said, I'm only doing it. I'm only going to fuck your wife if it's not filmed. That's if it's not. His only stipulation. It was, however, absolutely filmed. And six years later, Bubba the Betrayal Sponge leaked the sexy footage to Gorka. And Aaron De Caesar, known then as just Mr. A, met with Hogan's attorney, armed with instructions on how to take Gorka down and also fistfuls of Peter Thiel's cash. D' Souza was so discreet that Hulk Hogan himself had no idea that it was Mr. PayPal himself, Teal, who was basically bankrolling his legal fees to take Gorka down to the tune of like $10 million.

[Host 1]

He was just like, I've got an anonymous sugar daddy. Yeah, it's a Hulkamaniac. He does basically think everyone loves him, doesn' this whole thing.

[Host 2]

It's like a level of, like, self assuredness and confidence. You would have to be like to ask no questions about who is giving you $10 million to mount this legal defense.

[Host 1]

Or are you like, I don't want to know. It's probably Bubba some weird kink.

[Host 2]

So, yeah, he asked no questions. He doesn't know. But the plan worked. And in 2016, a Floridian judge did award Hulk Hogan $114 million in damages, forcing Gorka to file for bankruptcy. Now, most of Gorka's assets were bought up by Univision, and Peter Thiel has also made some bids to buy up the leftovers, just to really rub it in, as you would.

[Host 1]

So hang on. So obviously Hulk's flawed Gorker, Aaron's the broker, and also he and Peter Thiel have now sort of proven themselves as a force.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

More importantly, Aaron d' Souza has proven to Peter Thiel that he's a little bitchy bum boy.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Love it.

[Host 2]

Who can get stuff done. Yes.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So, and Aaron. Aaron d' Souza has proved to himself that he's not a failure and he can do things. And it seems people will give him literally unlimited money in order to make that happen. So the Enhanced Games gets pitched to Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel's all in. And that brings with it some explosive press coverage and a lot of criticism as well. Concerns ranging from health risks to sportsmanship. I didn't know this. Maybe you guys are a bit more au fait with, like, levels of doping. Apparently any testosterone can cause your muscles to grow so much that they separate from and then crush your bones. Yeah. So it's not like I thought people were just worried about, like, heart problems and stuff like that, but it's apparently.

[Host 1]

Well, and then you just sort of

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

fall apart, I think. So, like, your. Your frame can't support, like, the human skeleton can't support that much because. I don't know, like.

[Ad Voice 2]

Yeah, I never thought about that.

[Host 2]

But it makes sense. It's like if you weren't taking enhancing drugs, your body can only grow like a carp can only grow to the size that it's in. But then if you take a bunch of shrugs and your body's like, and the tank cracks, can't you bone Max?

[Host 1]

Can you not like, because clavicular does the osteoporosis meds doesn't need to grow his bones as well. Maybe that's why.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

King Clav.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

The other criticism was that Aaron d' Souza had like completely missed the point of sport. Has he? I think that's what I really struggle with is like, what is point of sport? You know, I feel like he's missed

[Host 2]

the point of sport, but not the point of like elite level competition maybe, but like sport at the level of like what it's meant to represent, I suppose is like sportsmanship and working hard and resilience and fair play and all of that. And maybe that's what they're saying.

[Host 1]

He's missing the point of I'm just a sport is entertainment guy and those, those concepts are just devices to make the entertainment work. But I think therefore it's fair game. I'm a bit worried they're all going to go completely loopy, but apart from that, I've got no issue with it.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Aaron d' Souza has a different tactic. Rather than sort of defending the medical repercussions for his athletes, he actually says that enhancing and the right to enhance your performance is actually a human rights issue.

[Host 2]

I wondered when that was going to

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

come up and started adopting LGBT language in his copy describing his athletes as coming out as enhanced.

[Host 1]

I guess they kind of are.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Or are they just being discriminated against as a group though? Top level sporting people. Are they really, you know, fighting for representation? Oh, this is it. So on his website there was for a while, it has been taken down now, a section dedicated to articles where the word cheated was swapped out for fought for science and bodily suffering. He's really trying to reframe as hard as he possibly can.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Language matters.

[Host 1]

Yeah, that's really good.

[Host 2]

So all of this was a bit dicey even from the start. But it wasn't enough to scare off another Australian. James Magnussen. The world class swimmer was well past at this point, like past his Olympic prime, I think we can say was the first to publicly announce that he would be an enhanced athlete. On the condition, it's very, very specific, high dollar condition that d' Souza would give him a million dollars for breaking the 50 meter freestyle world record, which lies. Fair enough. I'm like, that's a good, that's a decent bet. And he apparently Magnuson bragged on a podcast that he would quote juice to the gills and break the record within six months.

[Host 1]

And was that more than six months ago? Surely we're due a record, aren't we?

[Host 2]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So because as soon as he said that Magnussen was, as Hannah said earlier, banned pretty swiftly from using any sort of professional sports pool in the entire world. So he basically has to train for this million dollar world record attempt in an apartment complex pool in North Carolina. So it's just like 25 meter.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

And just like him and the like little kids apartment like splashing about in there.

[Host 1]

So is it even a 50 meter pool?

[Host 2]

Like I actually don't know but I can't imagine that it is because like an apartment complex pool is probably gonna like it if you have limited space.

[Guest 2 (George)]

It's like one of those like kidney

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

shaped pools and he could probably just

[Host 2]

walk along of it. It's like they turn the wave machine

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

on every half an hour.

[Guest 2 (George)]

So yeah, can't trade on Tuesday because there's a right bix.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

He says in his interview in like some interviews that like, well actually the weather was quite bad so there wasn't anyone else in the pool. Occasionally people would come and watch.

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[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

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[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

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[Host 2]

But his whole thing during this training that he's doing is. Is jealously guarding the protocol that he's using because, again, that's where the money is. It's kind of like, I guess, like your little black book, right? The magic potion that you figure out that's going to work for you. But apparently he did spill to the Sydney Morning Herald that he was, quote, full of testosterone. Bpc157, thymosin, ipamorelin and cjc1295.

[Host 1]

I feel like he's giving away the protocols.

[Host 2]

I am. I was like, like, why are you saying all this? But by taking this particular protocol that he is doing and no doubt training in his North Carolina pool, James Magnuson put on 30 pounds of muscle in just a few months. I feel like that's quite a lot.

[Host 1]

It's working. That's a lot.

[Host 2]

It's working. It's doing the job.

[Host 1]

It's a shitload, isn't it? That's like more than two stone.

[Host 2]

Yeah, like. Yeah, that's like. Yeah. Two stone. Is it £14 in a stone. Like a big dog. Big dog's worth muscle.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Is that good when you're swimming? No, you're 30 pounds heavier.

[Host 2]

It would be good if you were, like, you know, clutching some lead bottles and going down a hill, cycling. But here he was the strongest he has ever been. That's what he said. And he was squatting more than he had ever squatted. And he said, like, you know, he was in really, really good shape. But as you say, being super heavy isn't, like, the best thing for a swimmer. So, yeah, it doesn't really feel like, why did you. It feels confusing as to why he chose that specific protocol to do what it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I guess maybe if it's all muscle, then maybe it counteracts itself by how strong you are.

[Host 2]

Maybe this is real.

[Host 1]

Expert views.

[Host 2]

I don't know. And I will take into account the fact that when he's doing this world record attempt, he has passed his Olympic prime, but he attempts the record attempt. And James Magnussen actually missed the world record by 2 seconds, but that is 1.2 seconds slower than his own personal after doing all of that shit. So, yeah, it doesn't work. Embarrassingly, all of the illegal doping that he did actually made him worse. And again, I'll say, like, control for the fact that he had also aged and he wasn't in his Olympic prime, but still, he was saying, I've never

[Host 1]

been stronger because he was pretty good. Right. When he was legit.

[Host 2]

Yeah. Like, I recognize the name and I'm not, like, you know, big into. Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Three goals, I think.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, I think so.

[Host 2]

Wow.

[Host 1]

Didn't he get in trouble with the Aussie team for, like, the night before a big race? He was, like, knocking on people's doors and running away. I swear, there's a thing, like, he did it, and he did it to the relay team, and the relay team lost the next day by a second. Oh, no. And so he's like, he's quite unpopular in Australian sport already.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So, yeah, it's big sad for the first enhanced athlete who came out to the world and got worse.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I'm surprised that he let that time get out. Like, surely you want to hush that up. Was he doing it around the edge of his, like, round ball?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So he's positioned himself to be the face of the Enhanced Games. Right. So his protocol is what he's working with them for this record attempt to happen. Right. So, like, they really, really, really want him to do it. And the protocol is made by them and given to him. They're working in conjunction and they don't pull it off. And they bring in Greek Bulgarian Christian Gokhloomi, who had just missed out on qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics by less than three tenths of a second. But what I actually learned while reading about this is that all of the doping and like, epo, et cetera, that might add or take off, depending on what you want, fractions of a second. What makes the real difference is you remember those wetsuits they were allowed to wear? That makes so much more difference. But because they're illegal now, nobody makes them anymore. So the enhanced team and the coach and these two rival swimmers are all trying to find the last of these wetsuits in the whole world and having arguments about who can wear which one. And Magnussen actually ripped one of them because he's so fucking huge. So not only are they, you know, blood doping, doing whatever, et cetera, all of all this growth hormone, they're also wearing illegal swimming costumes, which makes a larger difference.

[Host 1]

I love that. That's actually the whole thing in where those shoes that got banned. 100 meters.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Exactly. And also I think they sort of saw the mistakes they'd made with Magsman. They made him too big, too fast. So they kind of, they don't give away exactly what they did with

[Guest 2 (George)]

them.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Back into the windowless turret for you.

[Host 2]

Just his ripped up wetsuit.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Magnuson, you're just going to find him, like, wandering through the Swiss mountain terrorizing, like, terrorizing local villages, falls in love with a local guard.

[Host 1]

It's like

[Host 2]

being chased with pitchforks. Yeah. Oh, poor guy.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

And it worked because Christian was swimming faster than Magnussen in just weeks in the pool in North Carolina. And after three months of the Enhanced protocol, he snatched Magnussen's million. They gave it. He broke the record. He beat the world record by 0.02 of a second.

[Ad Voice]

World record.

[Guest 2 (George)]

He's done it.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

He's done doesn'.

[Host 2]

Why?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Because he's doping and he's in the illegal swimming costume.

[Host 1]

But it counts to me.

[Host 2]

It counts in like reality, doesn't it?

[Guest 2 (George)]

That's the whole point.

[Host 1]

He gets his million dollars, right?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

He gets his million dollars.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

And he's quite, you know, rightly said. Why would I go back to the Olympics? I've already made more than I would in 10 careers as an Olympian. Because the other sort of prong to Aaron de Souza's argument is that Olympic athletes don't get paid far. So come over to the Enhanced Games and actually make some money.

[Host 1]

Yeah. So what now? Can you go again? If you beat it again, do you get another mil?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Well, I believe he has beaten it again by slightly less, but in normal trunks. So he has still done it without the fish suit.

[Host 2]

That's pretty cool.

[Ad Voice]

That's great.

[Guest 2 (George)]

He's done it though.

[Host 2]

I will say, if the whole point of the Enhanced Games is to, like, see some, like, superhuman shit, and this is the marketing thing for it, do ordinary people actually care that this guy swam 0.02 seconds faster? Like, isn't it like you want to see someone do it like 20 seconds faster? Which I know is like, not possible, but like, it just feels like, oh,

[Guest 2 (George)]

yeah, because someone might break that, do that time again at like, just the next Olympics.

[Host 2]

Yeah, you just be like, oh, okay.

[Host 1]

Swimming's quite a boring watch anyway.

[Host 2]

Yeah, it is.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

This is the point I'm making. It doesn't make that much difference. It just doesn't. And that's why the Olympics don't want to top pounds. Anyway, the money behind the Enhanced Games isn't just coming from Peter Thiel's revenge pot, but also a psychedelic loving Christian Anger Mayer, who's another VC who had his life changed by Psilocybin and he wants to sort of commercialize it and bring it to the. So this is where this is all going. This is just gonna be giving us drugs.

[Host 1]

He's got the psychedelics company, that guy.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Mm. He's a big funder. And also Donald Trump Jr. S investment firm, which is called 1789 Capital. Because the Enhanced Gain isn't just a sports day for retired swimmers. It's a shop front stake in the anti aging and health industry, which is worth trillions. And that's what they're actually investing in.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Host 2]

Yeah, because I think the thing is with this, like, he failed to qualify for the Olympics, but then with the drugs, did break the world record. So I think the thing is, if you believe like everyone in the Olympics is doping anyway, but if you don't believe that everyone in the Olympics is doping anyway, I guess the real test case would be to see Usain Bolt take a bunch of drugs and see how fast he could run. But because of the, like, stigma around it, we'll never get to see that. So it's like this guy didn't qualify, but then he broke the world record. So it does make a difference.

[Host 1]

It's quite a big jump.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Yeah.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

So what they're actually doing, it's not actually about the records, it's all marketing. What they're actually doing is they're gonna sell us a supplements line tied to the Enhanced Games as an event. They're gonna suck us in with the spectacle and then sell us the shit.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Genius. I like it more now.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I'll buy a supplement.

[Host 2]

So d' Souza has managed to pull in some very legitimate sounding people other than the Enhanced athletes who are already committed to the event. Like a man named Rick Adams. Do you guys know who this is? Why would you? Apparently he's a former member of the U.S. olympic and Paralympic Committee who has now joined up.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Got some defectors.

[Host 2]

Yeah, I'm coming over to the dark side. And he has said, and this is a very confident statement, he has said, I am confident there will be a moment when people forget there was a time before the Enhanced Games. Big talk, big talk.

[Host 1]

It will be the game.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, it already is.

[Host 2]

This link, d' Souza is convinced the cultural impact of the Enhanced Games will change the world as we know it. And it could create a world, according to him, where a 60 year old could be running a 4 minute mile.

[Host 1]

That would be pretty impressive.

[Host 2]

That I would like to see. So, yeah, this whole, like paradigm shift, this, like, it's bigger than just the Games. It's like going to change the world. Plus, obviously, Trump Jr. Backing it all has placed the Enhanced games deep in MAGA country. And it's also aligning itself with RFK's Make America Healthy Again campaign. And this is producer often argues that the most harmful drugs are actually fast and processed foods, having done way more damage, according to him, than performance enhancers, which, like, yeah, okay, but like, they're also way more ubiquitous. More people are eating McDonald's than people

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

are picking out more steroids.

[Host 2]

And also, do you have to say that McDonald's and Coca Cola are like lead sponsors, often at like, basically every sporting event in the world and nobody has a problem with that? D' Souza also told the New York Post that the Enhanced Games is now a very American project.

[Host 1]

Surely you're China into this shit. They talk.

[Host 2]

Yeah, Russia in.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

You guys are right.

[Host 2]

Why is Russia not in this?

[Host 1]

You guys have done a really good job of taking us on a journey where I'm like, do I like the Enhanced Games or do I not? Will you pass verdict at the end?

[Guest 2 (George)]

No.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah.

[Ad Voice 2]

All right.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I think what the bringing in of the Trump dynasty and the sort of American ness of it all, I mean, it's brought them a lot of funding, but also because it has sort of aligned itself with the United States government, it has actually got quite a lot more parameters than it originally advertised. Because baby Donald Trump can't really just be like, yeah, coke and heroin, fine. So they're not allowed. So there are drugs that are off the table and there isn't like blood doping testing, but athletes undergo like brain scans, heart scans, stuff like that to check they are actually fit to compete. Because if someone drops dead, that's not going to do like great pr. But ironically, it does mean that athletes will be tested more than they are in the normal Olympics, just for sort of slightly different things.

[Host 1]

Would you watch it if it's on?

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I barely watch the Olympics, man.

[Host 2]

Yeah, it's a one day event at least.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

That's true.

[Host 2]

I could probably manage that, but I don't know. I think I don't want to say that all Olympians are doping because I feel like I don't want to take away from the ones that aren't. I think they're all doing something like you were saying, they're like testing for different things and it's like what you can get away with. But I think this is such a thought experiment that lots of people talk about. So I feel like it was inevitably gonna happen. Nobody's gonna show it. Where are they Gonna stream it. I think the stigma around it is so much that I don't know how they'll overcome the monetary side of it. Someone's gonna constantly have to be bankrolling it because I just don't think any brands are gonna want to it. I don't know. I'm not that bothered. I think, you know, consenting adults, if they want to take a bunch of drugs and do it, but then is that right, that they should?

[Ad Voice 2]

I don't know.

[Host 2]

And I do think it sets a precedent because I hear what you're saying about sport being entertainment, but it also means more to other people in terms of like that good fight. And this feels wrong, but I also don't know. I don't know if I care that much. I think if a guy broke the record at the Enhanced Games by like two seconds and somebody did two seconds less at the actual Olympics, I would be more like, I'm impressed by that. Yeah, by the Olympics. Than by the guys.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, they've got to blow them out the water for it to be worth it.

[Host 2]

This is what I mean. And I think if you don't, then it's kind of just like a bit

[Host 1]

of a. Oh, I think it'll be good.

[Host 2]

Okay.

[Host 1]

Dope, baby. Dope. Yeah. I think, I think how they not use that line, I think it will happen. I think probably it'll be a bit too much swimming and the margins will be a bit thin versus clean competition. But you can see it picking up now. I understand the business model, Hannah. I actually think it has legs. So I think. I know, you know, these things take a few years to get good.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

I mean, that's certainly true. I don't think they'll stop trying.

[Host 1]

I think you gotta do. Yeah, you gotta do four or five and then. Let's see. So I hope they stick to that and hope no one dies.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think. I don't know. I can see there's such a world of like, people who are this like, crossover of like crypto, bro. Like, like online biohacking, like Internet forum, like people who spend too much time in their mum's basement. There's enough of those kind of people who would be invested in this kind of thing that I can see it working. And if they do start to make some records and it gets some sort of like, legitimacy, that it does become a sort of Formula one esque thing where, like, there are like teams of doctors and scientists or whatever working to create these. These weird superhumans. Whether, like, ethically, it's a good thing to do to humans is like another question. And yeah, hopefully no one.

[Host 2]

And what's in those supplements that they want to sell? Yeah, probably to, like, impressionable teenagers who are like, you know, willing to smash their faces with hammers to try and get bigger cheekbones. I guess that's maybe where the ethics question.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah, I don't have a lot of faith in the ethics of people who are trying to do that.

[Host 1]

But.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

But

[Guest 2 (George)]

in a twisted world, I can see it taking off.

[Host 1]

Okay, I'm gonna watch. We should do a live watch along. Oh, yeah, that'd be quite good.

[Host 2]

You should. You should. Yeah. It's only a day.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Take some math. Watch it all. Marathon run. So to end, we're all slightly conflicted and some of us are excited.

[Host 1]

I'm very excited. I've got absolutely no doubts about this thing.

[Host 2]

Well, there you go. That's everything you need to know about the enhanced games.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

How about doping?

[Host 2]

Yes. Thank you guys for sharing. That was very informative. I feel like I've learned a lot.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Likewise.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah. Thank you guys.

[Host 2]

If you enjoyed that. You've heard us bug the upshot before. If you do and you want lots more, like, scandals from sports. Because that's the thing. I don't want to sell you guys as like a sports podcast because some of our listeners, I don't really care about sports. In fact, I know they will say that it's not what it's about. It's about, like, the scandals in sports. And I've honestly been hooked on this show for a very long time. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Genuine fans hate. You guys should definitely go listen to them.

[Host 1]

Thank you, that's very kind. And likewise, red handed, which is the biggest. The biggest podcast in true crime. It's the only true crime podcast you should listen to. And there are. I guess I would dip your toe in with like an OJ where it's like.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

It is quite a nice crossover because I was looking at all your episodes and like, there are lots of crimes they do do. Crimes. You're like 40% true crime podcast yourself.

[Host 1]

Yeah, we had the ham raui one as well, but you guys did I. Tonya as well. That's another really good sports. But pretty soon you just find yourself sucked into the gnarly world of like a proper American murder. You know how George Orwell was like, there's like the classic British murder, which

[Host 2]

is like poisoning the cozy Marat.

[Host 1]

I feel like you guys do the proper American murder so well. It's like a small town as well. Isn't it? That for me, that's the life canonical.

[Guest 2 (George)]

I listened to your stuff extraglar1.

[Host 2]

Oh, yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Which was good. It was like. It was quite weird listening to one that I actually remember.

[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, we found that with them in the recordings. Oh, I remember that. On tv, actually.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Guest 2 (George)]

There's something more sinister about us.

[Host 1]

I prefer true crime in a podcast like yours to watching on tv.

[Host 2]

Thank you.

[Host 1]

Yeah, there's like. Because it's just like, you and the narrative. It's quite. I don't know.

[Host 2]

Well, I think that's why true crime podcasts are having, like, a moment, because documentaries all well and good, and obviously Netflix jumps all over that and they do their big, big produce ones. But I think people just kind of like unsolicited, like, opinions from people like us who were just like, you know, what was it in that one? Simping, not pimping or whatever. Like, they just want that kind of more homegrown feel, I think. And it's working. And. Yeah. Thank you for the American stuff. I feel like they are. They're just like the true connoisseurs of a good murder these days. I love a good. Like. And we are really doing a lot of these where it's like, spouse kills other spouse and then pretends they didn't do it.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Those are like the. The ones that everybody seems to love and.

[Host 1]

Yeah. And when you're. You just can't decide which way around whether they're my favorite.

[Host 2]

If that's not you.

[Host 1]

So that's Red Hat podcast. Check it out if you haven't already.

[Host 2]

Thank you.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Excellent.

[Host 2]

Thank you very much. And thank you for doing this collab. We really enjoyed it.

[Host 1]

No, thank you.

[Host 2]

Thank you. And we hope you guys did too. And we will see you next week for something else where we won't be together.

[Guest 2 (George)]

Bye.

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[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

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[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

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[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Host 2]

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[Guest 1 (Hannah)]

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