The steroid olympics

Summary

Podcast Summary: Today, Explained – "The Steroid Olympics"

Date: May 29, 2026
Hosts: Noel King, Sean Rameswaram
Guest: Chris Gaiomali (Journalist covering health, wellness, and human augmentation)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the first-ever Enhanced Games, described as "the Olympics on drugs," held in Las Vegas. Rather than athletes hiding use of performance enhancers, the event embraced and normalized their use. The show examines the motivations behind the Games, the company driving them (Enhanced), their business strategy, the medical and ethical debates, investor interests, and broader questions about fairness, enhancement, and the future of sport.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are the Enhanced Games?

• An athletic event where competitors openly use performance enhancers—including anabolic steroids, stimulants, and human growth hormone—provided by sponsor-company Enhanced.
• The Games featured ex-professional athletes, mostly in their 30s, "who still feel like they have a little bit more in the tank." (Chris Gaiomali, 00:13)
• The event took place in an outdoor Las Vegas stadium with no roof, leading to extreme heat affecting athletes’ performances, and evoking more of a party atmosphere than an Olympic one. (Noel King, 00:36 / Chris Gaiomali, 00:37)

2. Athlete Experience & Safety

• Enhanced provided robust health checkups and tailored drug regimens, considering each athlete’s biology and potential health risks. (Chris Gaiomali, 02:57)
• Categories of enhancements offered:
  • Anabolic steroids
  • Stimulants (e.g., Adderall)
  • Human growth hormone
  • Metabolic modulators
  • Hormone therapy for female athletes
• Notable exclusion: Peptides were banned due to lack of safety data. (Chris Gaiomali, 03:56)
  • "Peptides, which are sort of everywhere right now, were off the table...that's where they decided to draw the line." (Chris Gaiomali, 04:24)

3. Motivations for Competing

• Athletes cited practical incentives: monthly pay, healthcare, housing, travel, and training support.
  • "The appeal was they got a job, they had healthcare...they were just able to not worry about housing or any...inconveniences that plague being a regular person." (Chris Gaiomali, 06:00)
• Substantial financial incentives, including a $1 million world record bounty. (Chris Gaiomali, 06:28)
• Most athletes did not break world records in their events, except for a last-minute men’s swimming record—much to the relief of organizers. (07:01–07:18)

4. History & Ethics of PEDs in Sport

• Banning of PEDs is relatively recent—World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) only formed after the 1998 Tour de France doping scandal. (Chris Gaiomali, 07:45)
• WADA’s definitions of “enhancement” can be arbitrary and enforcement is seen as invasive and punitive.
  • "They can basically jump out from behind a bush and ask an athlete for a urine test ...whenever they want." (Chris Gaiomali, 10:01)
• Philosophical and practical issues: Some athletes (like Hunter Armstrong) participated without enhancements to protect future Olympic eligibility, facing intense testing during the Games (10:39–11:02).

5. The Enhanced Games as Business

• Founder/Backer: Aaron d'Souza, with links to Peter Thiel and the Gawker litigation.
  • "In the 21st century, the Olympics are going to be the natural sports competition where we’re going to see what the best of a human 1.0 can do. And at the Enhanced Games there will be what can the best unleashed human superhuman can do." (Aaron d'Souza, 16:06)
• Enhanced uses the Games as a marketing funnel for its telehealth/performance drug business—“sort of like Hims or AgelessRx.”
  • Website offers peptides (Sermorelin, NAD, Tirzepatide), supplements, and proprietary performance enhancers, often at high prices with “techno-utopian packaging.” (Chris Gaiomali, 18:10–19:07)
• Customer access lower than the athletes: a brief online survey enables fast, nearly automated access to products, with little meaningful medical screening. (19:28–20:22)

6. Market, Money, and Consumers

• Growing market: Many new companies offer injectable enhancements and “biohacking” products, targeting “normies” who want to feel younger or stronger. (Chris Gaiomali, 20:30)
• Investors: Early backing from Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr. (via 1789 Capital), and others like German billionaire Christian Angermeyer. (21:16–21:45)
• Thiel and similar “longevity” investors believe in enhancing human lifespan and performance at all costs, but this raises concerns about a societal caste system:
  • "Are they worried at all about creating...this caste system where some people would have enhancements and some were not?...He said you know, I think of the enhancements as, like, organic vegetables...it’s a status symbol to buy organic produce...and there could very much be a world where maybe the elite status symbol is, I am not enhanced.” (Chris Gaiomali, 21:16–22:45)

7. Target Market & Cultural Impact

• The branding and actual customer base seem misaligned:
  • Enhanced targets older, “washed” millennials who want to reclaim youth and vitality.
  • But event marketing and influencers skew Gen Z, raising questions if they know their core customer. (Chris Gaiomali, 24:10–24:33)
  • "If you are marketing this thing to...washed millennials who can’t sleep at night, why are you inviting the kid who’s doing a fortnite dance...?" (Chris Gaiomali, 24:10)
• There is skepticism about whether the business model can succeed in the long run or if young people are truly the market. (Chris Gaiomali, 24:56–25:53)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It was the kookiest thing I’ve ever been to in person...the atmosphere was less the Olympic Games and more like a TAO pool party." — Chris Gaiomali (00:21, 00:53)
• "The Enhanced Games will in fact be a safer sporting event because we’re taking something that’s done in the shadows...and shining a light upon it so that it can be done safely under clinical supervision." — Aaron d'Souza (02:42)
• "It’s actually a pretty recent invention that performance enhancing drugs are seen as cheating." — Chris Gaiomali (07:45)
• "They can...ask an athlete for a urine test and like a blood test, like, whenever they want." — Chris Gaiomali on WADA (10:01)
• "Do you think this succeeds? ...your healthiest market is probably you, the washed millennials, the people who are starting to run marathons in their 50s..." — Chris Gaiomali (25:10)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:02–00:53 – Setting the scene: Enhanced Games as "Olympics on drugs"
• 02:01–04:47 – PEDs used, health protocols, what’s allowed and banned
• 05:07–06:25 – Why athletes participate: pay, healthcare, incentives
• 06:28–07:26 – World record bounties and result of Games
• 07:30–11:34 – History, ethics, and enforcement of anti-doping
• 11:34–12:18 – Philosophical question: Is it about fairness or just selling drugs?
• 15:53–17:43 – Behind Enhanced: Founder Aaron d'Souza, mission, and approach
• 18:10–20:22 – The telehealth business model and user experience
• 20:30–22:45 – Market dynamics and investor motivations, social caste concerns
• 23:07–24:33 – Branding, influencer presence, and target customer confusion
• 24:56–25:53 – Will it succeed? Speculation on the future market

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Conclusion

Today, Explained’s look into the Enhanced Games explores the blurring line between sport and science, ethics and business. The episode deftly reveals both the practical and philosophical stakes: Are the Enhanced Games trying to spark a serious discussion on fairness in athletics, or simply building a capitalist spectacle to sell performance drugs to the masses? The business’s future—and its societal implications—remain uncertain, but its arrival signals that the debate around human enhancement is only heating up.

Transcript

[Noel King]

Last weekend's Enhanced Games in Las Vegas. Think the Olympics on drugs, organized by a company that sells performance enhancers used by the athletes who were in fact real athletes.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Most of them had the bad luck of turning 30, but you know, they still feel like they have a little bit more in the tank.

[Noel King]

It was a mess.

[Chris Gaiomali]

It was the kookiest thing I've ever been to in person. They built this large outdoor stadium in Resorts World, which is this collection of casinos over there, but they neglected to put a roof over it.

[Noel King]

It was over 90 degrees.

[Chris Gaiomali]

The sprinters were just like asked to race on this hot track that I don't think you can put human skin onto. And then the swimmers did fine. You're in the pool and the atmosphere was less the Olympic Games and more like a TAO pool party, I think on today.

[Noel King]

Explained the organizers of the Enhanced Games want to enhance you.

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[Chris Gaiomali]

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[Today Explained Host]

this is today, explained.

[Noel King]

Chris Galli, a journalist who covers health, wellness and human augmentation, says athletes at the Games took performance enhancing drugs or PEDs provided by a company called Enhanced.

[Chris Gaiomali]

They actually like came out of the gate a couple years ago really hot. They were like these we're going to dope up all these people and let them take whatever they want and it's going to be this free for all.

[Aaron d'Souza]

Or building the modern version of the Olympic Games that importantly pays all athletes and does not have drug testing.

[Chris Gaiomali]

But over the course of the next couple of years, they realized that was actually not a very business savvy move. So they moderated their messaging quite severely.

[Aaron d'Souza]

The Enhanced Games will in fact be a safer sporting event because we're taking something that's done in the shadows, in the darkness and shining a light upon it so that it can be done safely under clinical supervision and scientific guidance.

[Chris Gaiomali]

They had very rigorous health checkups. They met with doctors who were supplying them with this menu of options that they would be able to take. And it was all tailored to sort of their own unique biology. Like, if you had something that would make you susceptible to, like, heart problems or something, maybe some of the drugs were precluded from your regimen. And so it was uniquely tailored to, like, each of the athletes specifically. And it kind of like fell into a couple of baseline categories. The big one was anabolic steroids, which is kind of the big bread and butter. And the one that you've probably heard of before, stimulants like Adderall, basically, day of, to help you perform and focus. Human growth hormone was another big one, Metabolic modulators, which sort of help with energy and recovery. And the women were able to take some drugs that helped with hormone therapy. So I thought that was really interesting.

[Noel King]

Was there anything that was off limits? You're not allowed to take this?

[Chris Gaiomali]

Yeah. So this guy named Guido Piles, He's a cardiologist and a professor at the University college London. He was the one who heads up the sort of. I'm using air quotes here, independent medical commission, figuring out what the athletes are going to be offered. And what I found fascinating, what is. He said peptides, which are sort of everywhere right now, were off the table, enhanced.

[Today Explained Host]

And we, as scientific and medical commissions, draw the line we will not use

[Chris Gaiomali]

them because not enough data has been put out there to say that they're really safe. And so I thought it was interesting that that's where they decided to draw the line, because to my mind, peptides are the thing that everyone wants to buy right now and that they weren't capitalizing on. That was really interesting to me.

[Noel King]

If I were a professional athlete. I hear you when you say, like, they had the misfortune of turning 30, but believing I got one more rodeo in me. But I don't know, even if I were 30, an ancient 30, I'd still be skeptical. So when you talk to the athletes, what did you hear about why they did this?

[Chris Gaiomali]

Yeah, you know, there were all sorts of personal reasons, but the big one was that nhanced treats this like sort of like a normal job for them, like, they receive a monthly paycheck. I was able to fly out to Abu Dhabi and stay at the luxury hotel where a bunch of them were training, and they basically were able to wake up, train hard, eat, like, amazing healthy gourmet food, have all, like, the recovery treatments that they wanted, and basically not worry about anything else in Life.

[Today Explained Host]

The Nhanced truly sort of saved me here because I have so much more to give to this sport. And Nhanced was able to put me in a position where I can still compete.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Nhanced is offering athletes money to be professional athletes. That has never been on the table before.

[Noel King]

They're.

[Chris Gaiomali]

I'm just gonna say it.

[Noel King]

They're paying me a lot of money.

[Chris Gaiomali]

I have no shame in saying that. And so in some ways, it's just like, the appeal was they got a job, they had healthcare. Both of, like, the futuristic and like the pedestrian. Like, everyone deserves to, like, have healthcare variety. And, you know, they were just able to not worry about housing or any of the other, like, inconveniences that, like, plague being a regular person. And so I kind of see the appeal of that.

[Noel King]

Yeah, you've convinced me.

[Chris Gaiomali]

And also, like, for a couple of the events, if they broke the world record, they were dangling a million dollars in front of them. So, you know, that's nothing to sneeze at.

[Noel King]

Did any of them break any world records?

[Chris Gaiomali]

You know what was really funny? The whole night we were just watching all these events. Weightlifters in the hot sun.

[Today Explained Host]

It looks a little bit slow is all.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Not coming close to the world record. Sprinters misfir. Not coming close. False start. And then the very last event, which was the men's 50 meter freestyle, like that very last race, that last thing in the night.

[Noel King]

Control col coming now.

[Chris Gaiomali]

They broke the world record. And you could see this sigh of relief, like, overcome all the executives who were invested in this thing. There was like, yes, we got one world record out of this thing.

[Noel King]

New world record.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Yeah. It was kind of hotly contested online whether the record, like, mattered or not, but I think they were just, like, excited that someone broke it.

[Today Explained Host]

In the final events, we have our first world record.

[Noel King]

We have an idea that performance enhancing drugs are cheating, and therefore it has always been against the rules to use performance enhancing drugs. And yet I realize as I say this, I have no idea if that's true. Has that always been the case?

[Chris Gaiomali]

It's actually a pretty recent invention that performance enhancing drugs are seen as cheating. There's kind of this line that I was interested in investigating between what is an enhancement and what isn't. And in my research, I learned that the World Anti Doping Agency, which is wada, they actually came to fruition, like, after this debacle at the 1998 Tour de France. Basically, what happened is French officials found a car full of peds from someone associated with the French racing team. And in doing so, the cops were in this weird position. It was like, do we enforce this? Do we not? And so the ioc, which is the International Olympic Committee, they were like, all the countries were like, we don't want this to happen to us in the future. Doping was kind of like an open secret at this point. Everyone was like, everyone does it, but we don't want to be in a position where, you know, the rules and regulations are very unclear to us and what we can and what can't have. And so a bunch of these international organizations and countries sort of pressured the IOC into creating the World Anti Doping Agency, which is the governing body that develops regulations for what doping is and isn't.

[Noel King]

Okay, Seems fair that there's one arbiter of what's right and what's wrong. But you could make the argument, and I'm sure people have that, like somebody who's born in a wealthy area has, you know, has access to, like, tennis courts or a pool, something that you're not gonna find in a poor area like, that is a performance enhancer. And therefore that young person is always gonna have an edge over some young person who doesn't have that advantage. Do you think that the organizers of these games, were they trying to nod to that at all? Like, every person, maybe it's like Michael Phelps with his hollow bones and his 60 foot wingspan. Like, everybody has some form of advantage. So we're just gonna like, put it all out on the table and be like, go for it, guys.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Yeah. That was actually like one of the big ideas underpinning this thing. Like, you could take all the enhancements in the world, but you probably wouldn't score a point in a game of one on one baske with like, Victor Wembanyama or something like that, you know?

[Noel King]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chris Gaiomali]

So, you know, But WADA's like, WADA's very interesting because their definition of what is and what isn't an enhancement is actually really, really confusing and also very invasive and punitive. Like, they can basically jump out from behind a bush and ask an athlete for a urine test and like a blood test, like, whenever they want. And one of the athletes who actually competed at the games this week, his name was Hunter Armstrong, and he's a men's back. He made the decision to compete without enhancing at all because he wanted to keep his Olympic dreams alive and still be able to compete in, like, sanctioned sporting events.

[Commentator]

What would the USA rather? Would they rather him not race here? And then he ends up retiring from the sport, becomes a Teacher and gets on with his life. Does he race here? Maybe break a world record, get half a million dollars, funds him to go to la and he's winning gold.

[Chris Gaiomali]

So doping officials were following Hunter Armstrong around all week before the games to solicit random drug and urine tests from him.

[Commentator]

He's been drug tested three times here in Vegas already. So they're on him and he wants a piece of it. He's fine with that.

[Chris Gaiomali]

It's interesting that, you know, these athletes don't have a very high view of wada, but they've been like, they've had like the fear of doping instilled in them very early on. Like, a lot of them have spent their whole careers like not even taking aspirin or something like wow. Or something like creatine because they've been scared of it infecting their blood test and vomiting, violating their ability to compete.

[Noel King]

So was the point of the Enhanced Games to actually force us to confront some of these big philosophical questions around what is fairness, what is enhancement? Or was this actually as dumb as it could be?

[Chris Gaiomali]

You know, they would love it to be this big philosophical argument, but really it's just an effort to sort of normalize their use even a little bit in the eyes of consumers and like, be able to like, sell drugs that are widely available on their website that. That you can try.

[Noel King]

Journalist Chris G. When we return, the company that brought us the Enhanced Games wants to make money off of you. How they plan to do that is coming up next. Support for Today Explained comes from Ship Station. When your company is growing fast, order fulfillment can make or break your success. That's where ShipStation comes in, says Ship Station. Shipstation says their intelligence driven platform helps take the pressure off by bringing order management, rate shopping, warehouse systems and powerful analytics into one place. With ShipStation, everything you need to manage getting orders to customers is in one place you can connect to. You can connect to over 200 sales channels and instead of five to seven disconnected tools, you've got one. Shipstation says they can share tracking details to reduce customer service inquiries by up to 12%. While their returns management gives you insight into what's coming back and why. Their analytics show where you're saving, where you can optimize. They also say they can select the best carrier, find competitive rates, print labels in bulk. So much more you can try Shipstation free for 60 days with full access to all features. No credit card needed. Go to shipstation.com and use code today for 60 days. Free. 60 days gives you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're saving on every shipment. That's shipstation.com code today. Shipstation.com code today.

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[Chris Gaiomali]

in lane five, Shakoria Wallace comes up lame now in lane three.

[Today Explained Host]

Today explained to the finish line.

[Commentator]

Today explained.

[Noel King]

We're back with Chris Gamali. Chris, in the first half of the show you told us that the Enhanced Games were much about making money for companies that sell performance enhancements. Fair enough. It was capitalism all along, as they say. Where did this all start? Who's behind the Enhanced Games?

[Chris Gaiomali]

Okay, so the guy who came up with the idea for the Enhanced Games, his name is Aaron d'. Souza. He's this Australian who's good friends with Peter Thiel. He came up with it a couple of years ago.

[Aaron d'Souza]

In the 21st century, the Olympics are going to be the natural sports competition where we're going to see what the best of a human 1.0 can do. And at the Enhanced Games there will be what can the best unleashed human superhuman can do.

[Chris Gaiomali]

He had recently come out from his last big project, which was he was the litigator that helped Thiel take down the gossip website Gawker. So d' Souza is kind of a scary dude if you're a journalist. I reached out to them little over two years ago, or maybe two years ago at this point. And then in February 2025, I got, like, this mysterious invite to come to this apartment on the east side of Manhattan on Valentine's Day, freezing morning. And it was like, do you want to meet with Aaron? And I was like, this sounds interesting. So let's go. He talks in these, like, long, florid, perfectly composed paragraphs.

[Aaron d'Souza]

I'm a philosopher by training, and my job is to imagine how the world should be.

[Chris Gaiomali]

I think the term I use in the GQ piece is his skin is so immaculately poreless that he looks batty filtered. But truth be told, as a journalist, I was, like, so scared that, I don't know, a trapdoor was gonna open under me at some point. And my goal that day was to basically sell him on being the guy to write a big magazine piece on the Enhanced games. And here's my bonafides. And he liked me enough that they opened the door and let me into their world for a little bit.

[Noel King]

What does he want this business to be? Does he want it to be like Amazon, but for stuff that seems only adjacent to Legal? And I'm gonna ask you, is this legal?

[Chris Gaiomali]

Yeah. So I think they, like, thrive off playing in this gray area of what isn't and what isn't, like, technically legal.

[Noel King]

No apologies, no permission, no going.

[Chris Gaiomali]

The future of human performance has arrived. So the guys behind Enhanced are basically building this, like, telehealth business, which isn't so different from, like, Hims or agelessrx. The games themselves are sort of this, like, huge marketing spectacle that funnel you back to their site. And if you go on the site now, like, you know, they have peptides like Sermorelin, nad, which is like this Coenzyme that helps helps with cellular energy. Tirzepatide, which is a GLP one, and a ton of supplements that are quite frankly a little overpriced, but come in really beautiful techno utopian packaging. And so their goal is that this sort of bolsters their business and they're able to scale this to a point where they are the company that everyone buys their peptides from at some point.

[Noel King]

The athletes who are taking this stuff, they're gonna be monitored. You said they actually have really good medical care. Were I to go on the website and start throwing testosterone into my cart, I would not get the same kind of medical care. So this strikes me as potentially a little bit dangerous. Do they nod to that at all? Do they acknowledge that at all?

[Chris Gaiomali]

You know, for normies and myself, I'm very normie. I went on their website last night to try. Try out one of their products, and I ended up ordering Semorelin, which is this peptide that supports sleep and recovery. A lot of people talk about it. A lot of people try it. And I was a little curious to see what their sort of telehealth funnel looked like. Basically, you just fill out a survey. You're like, I have anxiety. And you click a few things. You're like, I'm allergic to this. I'm allergic to that. You input your credit card or use Apple Pay or whatever, and you get a brief window where they're, like, consulting with our doctors to see if you qualify. And within, like, you know, 20 seconds, they're like, you qualify. We're gonna ship this out soon. I could use better sleep and some muscles. So we'll see what happens.

[Noel King]

I wish you luck. I wish you all the luck in the world.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Thank you so much.

[Noel King]

Is this a growing market? Like, are there other companies trying to get in on this?

[Chris Gaiomali]

Yeah, it's a huge market. You know, if you. If you just, like, goog Google, like, nad, for example, and then at the top of your search bar, there'll be, like, any number of companies that are trying to sell you stuff. Let's see. Right now, there's, like, AgelessRx, Ready Rx, a company called Fridays. I've never heard of Willow Good Life Meds. It's like there's all these companies that serve tiny injectables and glass bottles, and it feels like it's kind of a new normal in some way.

[Noel King]

All right, this all smacks of one Peter Thiel, who you said is, in fact, involved in this. Who else? Where's the rest of the startup money coming from?

[Chris Gaiomali]

So Peter Thiel is one of the first investors in this, but one of the other notable ones is Donald Trump Jr. S 1789 capital. They kind of flouted him as, like, one of the big investors in the enhanced games. It's actually, like, a publicly traded company now, so they have a lot of of shareholders. I'm told Christian Angermeyer, that German billionaire, is one of the big investors in it. It's like all these billionaires who have a much different relationship to money than you or I probably have. So you know, they're very concerned with longevity and extending their prime years for. For much longer than the ordinary person, which is something that I confronted them about a couple times. And if they were worried at all about creating sort of this caste system where some people would have enhancements and some were not. And Aaron actually brought up this metaphor that I found quite confusing where he said, you know, I think of the enhancements as, like, organic vegetables. And I was like, oh, say more about that. And he was like, you know, it's a status symbol to buy organic produce. And I was like, okay, I get it. Erewhon. And all of that. That's cool. But then he was also like, and there could very much be a world where maybe the elite status symbol is, I am not enhanced, and I don't like touching any of this stuff. And I was like, isn't that counterintuitive to the business you're trying to build? But, you know, he wouldn't expand on that one.

[Noel King]

This is very much like the Silicon Valley mindset, right? Some people are gonna get wildly rich selling a thing, creating a thing, the rest of us will use the thing, but will not ever be trillionaires. And that just is the way of the world right now. Am I misreading who these. Who these guys are, who they belong to?

[Chris Gaiomali]

No, no, that's exactly it. And you have to imagine that, you know, the enhanced target audience, right, is a guy who goes on YouTube. He's maybe he's in his, like, late 30s, feeling some knee pain, and he's Googling around for, like, ways to feel younger, and gets served an ad, then goes down a rabbit hole and it's like, huh, Huh. I would very much like to try this thing out and order something like I did in the middle of the night just to see if it works. And what was interesting about it is at the games themselves, it was invite only. You couldn't secure a ticket even if you wanted to attend this thing. And half the people that Enhanced invited, I kid you not, were like Gen Z content creators who looked very much to be teenagers in some ways. Guys, I'm getting ready, going to the Enhance games. So, so excited. I made it. I'm here in Vegas. I'm excited to show you guys every step of the process.

[Noel King]

Here is the arena. It was so cool. Don't be fooled though. It was like 90 degrees, I think. So I was melting.

[Chris Gaiomali]

And I was like, if you are marketing this thing to, like, washed millennials who have. Who can't sleep at night, why are you Inviting the, the kid who's doing a fortnite dance, like on the right outside the pool and like getting filmed by all his buddies, like, that's just an affront to being a wash dad. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[Noel King]

But it makes you wonder. Yes, this is a very good observation on your part. It makes you wonder whether they know who their customer is and whether they will in fact succeed. Because all of the beauty and the maxing and the mogging people are very, very into it right now, especially young people. Washed millennials are just trying to get

[Today Explained Host]

out of bed in the morning.

[Noel King]

That's where I'm at.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Same same. My God.

[Noel King]

And so do these guys know who their target audience is? 1 and 2, do you think this succeeds? Do you think this business, this type of business becomes the next big thing?

[Chris Gaiomali]

When I've posed this question to them several times over the last year, the goalpost was always moving. The short answer is like, it's for everyone. And to my mind it's like your healthiest market is probably you, the wash millennials, the people who are starting to run marathons in their 50s, like that sort of thing. But maybe there is a market for like some 18 year old lost soul who, you know, watches clavicular twitch streams or whatever and is Peptide curious himself. Like maybe that is, maybe that is something that has some money attached to it. I don't know why you wouldn't just go on Reddit and order it cheap from China if you're like a broke teenager. But, you know, who am I to say?

[Noel King]

Who are any of us? Chris, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

[Chris Gaiomali]

Cool. No, thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.

[Noel King]

Chris Gaiomali is a journalist. Ariana Esputo produced today's show and Jolie Meyers edited. Gabriel Donatov checked the facts and David Tadashore is our engineer. The rest of the team, Hadi Mwagdi, Danielle Hewitt Bridger Dunnigan, Kelly Wessinger, Miles Bryan, Peter Bellinon, Rosendon, Justin De Soto, Avishai Artsy, Miranda Kennedy, Sean Ramis from Brickmaster Cylinder does the music. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC and the show is a part of the Vox Media podcast network. For more award winning podcasts, check out podcast.voxmedia.com you want to skip the ads, sign [e-mail] members I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained.