The Yak – Episode Summary

Episode: Big Cat and Max Are Starting a New Peptide Journey
Date: February 26, 2026
Host/Cast: Barstool Yak crew: Kyle "KBNoSwag" Bauer, Nick, Brandon Walker, Rone, Lil Sas, Kate, Steven Cheah, Big Cat, Max, and guest appearances by others.

Episode Overview

This raucous, highly improvisational Yak episode circles around two major themes:

• The start of a "peptide journey" by Big Cat and Max, which evolves into a wider conversation about weight loss drugs, gym culture, and medical advice from questionable sources.
• The Barstool Combine, a recurring athletic competition at Barstool HQ, full of self-deprecating humor, locker room ethics, and elaborate roasts—particularly centered on Lucas’s infamous struggle with the bench press.

As always, the crew veers repeatedly into tangents about haircuts, the sociology of bars, American animal life, and meta commentary on their own content.

Notable Segments & Discussion Points

1. Barbershop Talk & Road Trip Reunions

• Timestamps: 01:02–06:10
• Kyle gets his first haircut from Joel, the mythical mobile barber to Chicago sports stars. The crew marvels at Joel's van-barbershop setup (“He has just a van, and he just shows up. He’s got a barber’s chair in his van. He’s got a TV. You can watch TV.” – Mark, 02:10).
• Brief road trip notes: Mark and Stephen Cheah recount dinner in Indy, including Cheah’s awkward but ultimately successful first attempt at ordering wine for a table (“It was a lot of pressure because I didn’t expect to do that...but I thought it went pretty good. People who drank the wine said it was all right...that’s a success.” – Stephen, 04:14).

2. Major Announcements and Mincy’s Poker Weekend

• Timestamps: 06:12–07:04
• Mark announces that his guy Ethan will play in a Chicago poker tournament and stay at Mincy’s apartment, with entry funded by Mark.
• Side debates over whether Mincy deserves a free entry spark friendly bickering.

3. Marathon, Stand-up, and Content Planning

• Timestamps: 07:09–08:52
• Discussion about Mincy’s next content move—maybe a marathon, maybe stand-up.
• Roast of procrastinators and those who dodge physical challenges.

4. Combine Drama: Surgery, Excuses, and Hard-Ass Big Cat

• Timestamps: 07:46–09:49
• Nicky Smokes’ wisdom teeth surgery overlaps with Combine day, but he’s still required to participate (“That’s 25% of what he does this year!” – Mark, 07:57).
• Big Cat goes “hard ass” about attendance: “When the combine happens, you do the combine.” (09:05)
• General ethos: Physical suffering does not get you out of Barstool obligations.

5. Peptide Journey – Open Season on Medical Morals

• Timestamps: 10:19–28:02
• Kyle details quitting gabapentin after seeing warnings about memory loss: “They said the withdrawal’s amongst the worst of all drugs. They said it can give you dementia. It ruins your memory, your cognition. It makes you dumber.” (10:57)
• Beta blockers, kratom, and the pipeline to bodybuilding “peptides” discussed with a mixture of excitement and fear.
• Big Cat and Max agree to try peptides. Max: “I have like four different people being like, I am the king of peptides. But Zach said…he is in contact with a real doctor.” (23:36)
• Skepticism about “internet doctors” and gym-bro medicine abounds.
• Peptide logistics: injection frequency, trustworthiness of suppliers, and how to find a “legit peptide guy” devolve into comedic profiling.
• Memorable exchange:
  • Mark: Do you inject it?
  • Max: Yeah, but I think...someone told me you just take it like a vaccine, almost.
  • Danny: Or do you have to use a needle yourself or is it in its own thing?
  • Max: I haven’t done a ton of research, I’ve just had people DM me...

6. The Social Science of Weight Loss & Gym Fails

• Timestamps: 28:34–35:20
• Max on wedding/fatness: “I just want to be less fat...At no point do I want to be a skinny man.” (30:26)
• Roasting themselves for failed gym routines, cycling classes, and the enduring lure of shortcuts (“Just do the drugs.”—Brandon, 32:54)
• Prepping for the annual “Doug Doug” food challenge.

7. The Barstool Combine: Lucas’s Bench Press Infamy

• Timestamps: 35:20–52:27
• Deep dive into Lucas (Tate)’s legendary Combine bench press attempt: last year he failed utterly (“It’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.” – Mark, 38:44).
• Crew goads and analyzes his psychological preparation and strategies to avoid another viral fail (“You should do ten push-ups, right now. – Mark, 40:32).
• Debates what’s “more embarrassing,” bailing after one rep or failing again.
• Extended roasts expand to the wider office (“You being profoundly weak overshadows all of the people here who are also extremely weak in their own right.”—Kyle, 41:38).

8. General Fitness, Health, and Aging Bits

• Timestamps: 53:04–57:50
• “Sinking spells,” possibly pre-diabetic symptoms, and growing old in Barstool-land (“Any day we’re getting better...most days.” – Mark, 55:04).
• Returns to hard-ass leadership: “The Minces of the world, they need to do the combine.”—Mark (57:38).

9. Movie/Media Review Culture: The Mark Scale for Sports Games

• Timestamps: 62:58–71:00
• Sidetrack into movie rating culture (“Clemmer only uses a four-star scale on a five-star website.”)
• Launch of “Five Star Games”—Brandon to create a website ranking epic sporting events (“Tragedy ranker would be fun…like that baby falling in a well.”—Danny, 108:01).
• If sports game ratings, why not rate every experience? Crew jokes about ranking tragedies and porn.

10. Bizarre Social/Biology Segues: Venus Flytrap Life, Animals, and Coyotes

• Timestamps: 101:03–105:48
• Would you want to be a Venus flytrap? (“So basically I just sit there yawning...food’s in your mouth. That’s you, dude.” – Mark to Brandon, 102:23)
• American wildlife: underappreciated scariness of bears, wolves, and moose; Steven Cheah’s coyote problem and the idea of a “coyote whistle.”
• Classic Yak hypothetical: could a person beat a coyote in a fight?

11. Nightlife/Psychology Tangent: Companion Bars and Chicago Dudes

• Timestamps: 83:06–89:48
• Hank and Jay explain Japanese hostess bars (“Bars where like you pay for your drink and a built-in friend drinks with you. Nothing happens after that; just built-in company.” —Jay, 84:16)
• “Rent a dude” for watching sports; what if Bumble for friends gave you no matches?
• Jay relays: “All the dudes in Chicago are pussies now…they won’t come up to girls and hit on them.” (87:44)

12. Paparazzi Reflection and Celebrity Culture

• Timestamps: 96:55–100:23
• The ethics, lifestyle, and thrill of the paparazzi—scummy but possibly “like catching marlin” (97:07).
• Steven Cheah thinks he’d develop a “working relationship” with the paps as a celebrity, to much crew derision.

Notable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• On Combine Attendance:
  • "When the combine happens, you do the combine."
    —Mark (09:15)
• On Gabapentin:
  • "They said the withdrawal is amongst the worst of all drugs…It ruins your memory, your cognition. It makes you dumber.”
    —Kyle (11:00)
• On Peptide Shopping:
  • “A guy who is legit when it’s lab coat...when it comes to drugs he has a backpack, he’s kind of chubby, kind of ugly, he has a weird looking girlfriend that’s always with him.”
    —Kyle (26:36)
• On Max’s Fatness & Motivation:
  • “I don’t want to get thin, I just want to be less fat...At no point would I ever want to be a skinny man.”
    —Max (30:23)
  • “She did say yes at your current weight.”—Mark (31:05)
• On Lucas’s Bench Press:
  • “It would make me—the happiest boy in the world—if you had an entire year and STILL can’t get one.”
    —Mark (42:26)
• On Movie Ratings:
  • “Clemmer only uses a four-star scale, apparently, on the five-star scale.”
    —Kyle (63:47)
• On Peptides & Doctors Online:
  • “Doctors wear quarter-zips on Instagram.”
    —Danny (28:19)
• On American Wildlife:
  • “We take bears for granted…I think bears are scarier than anything in Australia.”
    —Brandon (103:24)
• On Companion Bars:
  • “It’s a bar where a woman comes to your table so you’re not alone. It’s like you pay for a drink and a built-in friend.”
    —Jay (84:16)
• On Paparazzi:
  • “You and I agree on a lot, Che, but this one, I don’t know…”
    —Mark, in response to Che advocating for being nice to the paparazzi (99:18)
• On Venus Flytraps:
  • “Basically I just sit there yawning, and at certain points, people drop chicken nuggets into my mouth. I close, eat it, open back up again...That’s you, Brandon.”
    —Mark (102:23)

Flow & Tone

• Tone:

  • Unscripted, rapid-fire, friendly-derisive, obsessed with both big ideas (medical ethics, gender roles, American exceptionalism) and extremely low (poop, snacks, who can’t bench press) culture.
  • Constantly riffing, often at the expense of each other’s dignity.

• Flow:

  • Segues are organic but chaotic—just when a peptide discussion peaks, the topic will hop to Benching Lucas, then to rating sports, then to coyote fights.
  • Advertisements (skipped here per instructions) and callbacks to previous bits (e.g., “Doug Doug,” last year’s combine) punctuate the banter.

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Joel the Barber and Trip Debriefs: 01:02–06:10
• Mincy, Poker, and Marathon Possibilities: 06:12–08:52
• Hard-ass Combine Rules & Nicky Smokes: 07:46–09:49
• Peptide talk and pseudo-medical adventures: 10:19–28:02
• Max’s relationship to fatness and wedding preparations: 28:34–35:20
• Lucas’ Bench Press Redo — Combine Hype: 35:20–52:27
• General health, “sinking spells,” diabetic jokes: 53:04–57:50
• Movie rating and Five Star Games idea: 62:58–71:00
• Wildlife, coyotes, and animal toughness: 101:03–105:48
• Hostess/Companion bar riffing: 83:06–89:48
• Paparazzi, celebrity encounters: 96:55–100:23

Conclusion

In classic Yak fashion, this episode is a whirlwind of inside jokes and willfully digressive riffing. The main through-lines—Big Cat and Max’s dive into peptide injections and the ongoing saga of the Barstool Combine—link together a community of friendly humiliation, pseudo-expertise, and genuine camaraderie. As always, the show rewards more for the tone and relationships than for a strict narrative or topic, and fans eat it up.

Memorable Moment: The entire peptide saga, full of gym-bro sourcing, Instagram “doctors,” and willingness to gamble with their bodies for content, is peak Yak—and the relentless roasting of Lucas for his bench press fail is instantly classic.

For listeners who missed it:

• Expect plenty of banter, zero actual medical advice, and an unrelenting, unfiltered look at what it's like inside the Barstool content factory on Combine Day.
• If you’re here for the peptide confessionals, Lucas’ bench press shame, or just expert-level group chaos, this episode delivers.