Rat poison cocktails: an Enhanced Games special (bonus ep with Redhanded podcast)

33:471967, war on drugs. And the first athlete's full foul of those rules at the Olympics was Hans Gunner Lillian Wall, who was caught, he's a pistol shooter. He was caught having two beers beforehand to steady the hand like the darts players. And they banned him. So I guess that was the point where, yeah, even booze. He was breathalyzed because drug testing had begun at this point. And then obviously it's urine tests for 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.

34:22And actually both Maradona and Mike Tyson had prosthetic penises. The Wizenator it was called. Yeah, the Wizenator. Mike Tyson's one. Literally just a plastic knob that you hide clean urine in. You can still get them online. Oh, I can imagine. About 65 quid, I think it was. And are they designed specifically for urine tests? I presume so. I guess what else? 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've talked about doping for ages, but I don't think we've mentioned any sort of modern performance enhancers, right?

35:01It'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 basically don't get don't get as tired in the muscles and um 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 for the tour yeah so they're still doing the amphetamines speed the whiz was still okay that was still the riders it wasn't the steroids for the riders and then the team bosses afterwards they were just up all night and just a guy with a van behind them full of monkeys yeah they had 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 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 um 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 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 wow obviously we know he survived that and thrived he won seven Tour de France's in a row 1990 to 2005 were you guys Livestrong Band people do you remember them I remember them yeah I think I've told you this out before 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.

37:08So I got all the pocket money I had, which was enough to get the Livestrong band, but I had no money for the bus. So I walked to like St. James' you know, like where Buckingham Palace is. Oh, wow. And there was a cycling shop there that had them and I got my fucking Livestrong band and like wore it at school on the Monday and no one cared. But you cared. I was buzzing, yeah. That's the kind of grit that kids don't have these days. Yeah, I was sort of the Lance Armstrong of my school, I guess, in many ways. And I think it's like how, you know, I had to walk blah blah blah to get water or whatever I had to walk to St James to get lift strong must produce silicon band which were widely available about a week later you can tell your child that before you sell them for some shit it was such a strange phase yeah just like every cause imaginable just had these silicon bands and they're probably still strangling turtles today oh yeah because those don't I'm sure they they're going to be around for the next 500 million years the best one was like the anti-racism one which was like the black one and the white one with the hands holding and I think it was just a black silicone band and a white silicone band like that and then you wore both of them and you were like yeah there was a camo army one I think I think so yeah I guess that was everything it became a thing 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 at those Tour de France's 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 so they were like oh that's awesome genius seems kind of easy but word was grudging so is hydrocortisone classed as a performance enhancing drug yeah I think a lot of sports people can't have those creams and stuff because often there's people who accidentally sure yeah wow Paul Pogba didn't he well he claims that he used some kind of cream I think by mistake and various various footballers who've say that's what their get out is yeah was it Kano Toro who took his wife's slimming pills or something no Shane Warne took his mum's diet pills yeah and got banned yeah anyway the the whole team are in on it with Lance in the end he 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.

39:35So it was all pretty nasty. And these journalists who were trying to report it got like hounded, sued. Everyone, you know, the people who were 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. Why did he do it? Was it just like the pressure was untenable? Like he had to at that point. No, I think to win the Tour de France in that stage, you had to cheat because everyone was. Oh no, I mean confessed. oh sorry I think it was too obvious by that but people had come out and said yeah he forced me to the game was up long before I think do you reckon he got money for Oprah maybe that's how the game is played that's how she gets the exclusive she's like I will give you 75 million which is the amount I predict you will today you break even I actually think he's done a right out of it he's still he's got a big podcast I've got a podcast 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 yeah I mean in a way it sort of justifies the fact that he was doping it's just like everyone was doing it he was just the best and if you were not if you were not doing it then and he was good at it yeah yeah yeah do you think he would do Enhanced Games?

41:00I'm sure he should he'd be the face of the enhanced games surely you can claw back more than 75 million on that has he I think that's a smart move though for him I think if he's on this like rebrand I've got a podcast like I've done my I atoned for my sins not 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 I'd love him for that he's gonna I think he thinks it will drag him down yeah I think just at this point go full baddie yeah just embrace it give yourself a bit of an edit the BBC asked him like 5-10 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 good because otherwise he'd have just been sort of middling cyclist nobody's ever heard of nobody bought your bracelets mate nobody bought your bracelets you wouldn't have a podcast now would you true true well yeah sort of sort of the greatest doper of his time I would say yeah that we know yeah that we know good point isn't that there's a stat of the top 20 100 metre times of all time and all of them except for three have been ruled out for doping and those three are Usain Bolt that would break my heart if Usain Bolt was a cheat I love him this interests me right 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 right so i actually think that the reason the olympics etc 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 going to they're exposed aren't they because they're fucking doing it like so the 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 they're that's why they're so against it's not because of sportsmanship it's not about fairness it's not about the nobleness of the game it's because they'll be caught with their fucking pants down with a needle in their butt yeah so if you were to find out that usain bolt for example had been doping you just said you'd be gutted oh yeah there's a dishonesty to what you're actually seeing it's like someone telling you that wrestling is that's gonna go down badly with some listeners but you know what I mean it's like oh I'm being had here so it's actually a vanity but I don't know I think it's I think it's more to do 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 everything like fought my way to the top from the bottom and I'm succeeding because I take this supplement or because I eat this way rather than because I'm also supplementing yeah it's like we could all be cheating doping especially because sport has such a clean image now it's more grating i would love sport to just have those old school like tour de france that kind of that kind of stuff is fun and it's creative it's like work smarter not fast not harder yeah no it like fill your water bottles with lead it is have a cork in your mouth 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 is 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 maybe that's why it feels off I also I think because so much of 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 that's probably the best explanation and I think that in itself is a farce you know like it's all it's all about finance it's all about money so fucking smoke as much crack as you want I think Amen Well thank you very much that was I feel like I've learnt so much thank you guys that was great 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 they really are It's about the spectacle.

45:19It'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? 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 cars the most obviously i'm not saying the drivers are also amazing they're like they're great but like a lot of it comes down to like 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 scientists yeah it's like the ultimate biohacking yeah 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 take that but then apply it to olympians so i can totally understand the appeal of something like this theoretically speaking for sure and also the side of it is like could because a lot of the at law 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 yeah do the drugs not make you mental like sort of chris ben larry because that would be my only concern yeah void rage all that stuff can't you go like pretty pretty mad yeah and i think that is like a a criticism of the enhanced games being like, what are the healthcare concerns?

47:09Yeah. But I question whether that's what they actually care about. It's all happening among consenting adults. That's what I was going to say. And I think it comes back to your 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? Yeah. Or something. Kind of all sport now is like a bit of that, like, the impact of like they're performing ponies and people just want that. Yeah. You know what I mean? People just treat them like that anyway. Absolutely. I mean, there was the really, really good podcast series.

47:38I 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 um and yeah i thought that was quite interesting um 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 um but it has this very like you know when it's like sports marketing and it's all very like epic and grand.

48:30And in a similar way, it has this like booming voiceover talking about this like proud athlete, 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. So they're positioning it, as you can see, is like quite like a maverick domain. that feels like the angle they're going for and it makes sense so just to like clarify exactly what the enhanced games are and like 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 uh 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 but yeah so uh the 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 um takes a special kind of stupid blind arrogance and loads of other people's money which are things that aaron de souza has more than enough of the brains behind the enhanced operation is an australian-born korea venture capitalist is there a worse type of person like all one percenters uh aaron de 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.

50:46But that all changed when one day, he claims, he was in the gym thinking about all of the rippling biceps surrounding him. And despite the stigma around taking steroids in the 80s and 90s, Aaron D'Souza apparently realised 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, 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?

51:33And he basically figures that someone's going to capitalize on this at some point so why not why not me why not little old Aaron and so yeah it seemed uh it seemed like the perfect time for him to to pull the trigger on it is he the money oh no no no he's the brains never invest your own money come on Aaron D'Souza uh 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.

52:16But he did have real trouble getting investors interested in his drugs athletic jamboree. Pitching to Lance Armstrong may strike us as tone deaf, but I genuinely, genuinely think that because a conversation with Aaron D'Souza has been likened to talking to a bar of soap, Aaron De Souza probably didn't notice I think I can understand trying to get Lance on board like when it's more of a concept but to pitch it to Lance on board like you know that thing that ruined your life how about have you considered being the face of it making it your whole brand it sort of already is really you might as well lean in yeah so that didn't work it was a no it was a no for that reason rejection at every every turn but De Souza knew He knew he was onto something and he also has a real problem with the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

53:12His argument is that like they're wrong to the core. They're all cheating. I think, yeah. And I'm kind of with him. I don't think he's genuine in that belief. I think it makes a good sound bite. So he says he's on a campaign to expose the hypocrisy of those bodies and he was going going to take them down on his own with the help of his very very very rich friends so yeah Aaron D'Souza very much like paints himself as sort of like the 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 we're gonna be real about it we're gonna be honest about it and that's like 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 big sport, if you will.

54:02But 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 Aaron what Aaron D'Souza did to one of their biggest competitors a magazine called Gawker and 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 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 there's like an age gap in that huge yeah 20 years noted 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 sounds great yeah 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 Gawker.

55:30The site had a magazine dedicated exclusively to the dastardly dealings of Silicon Valley, which is called Valleywag. It's quite a hard word to say. Valleywag. Valleywag, yeah. Well, now I have to say it again and it's going to be even harder. Valleywag hated Peter Thiel. And he hated them right back, going as far as to compare them to Al-Qaeda,

55:58referring to meetings with Gawker editors as negotiating with terrorists. The 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 Teal's people had told him that there was no problem with the post and Peter Teal 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 I mean publishing it on the cover of your magazine it's a bit it's very it's mid 2000s I actually think even then like a British tabloid wouldn't out someone for being gay even then.

56:48Yeah. That's like 80s. 80s sun. So when little snotty law student Aaron D'Souza presented Peter Thiel with a plan to take Gorka down, he was all ears. It's a revenge story. At its heart, this is a revenge story. Love it. 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 Gawker and then they could pay the law firms to pursue the online journal into the ground.

57:32Enter Hulk Hogan and his sex tape. Times were tough for 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 basically Bubba decides that what Hulk Hogan needs to 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.

58:24That's his only stipulation. It was, however, absolutely filmed. And six years later, Bubba the Betrayal Sponge leaked the sexy footage to Gorka. and Aaron D'Souza 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 Thiel who was basically bankrolling his legal fees to take Gorka down to the tune of like 10 million dollars So he was just like, I've got an anonymous sugar daddy. Yeah. It's a hulker maniac. He does basically think everyone loves him, doesn't he?

59:13That's his whole thing. It's like a level of 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 defence. Or are you like, I don't want to know. It's probably Bubba, some weird tink. So yeah, he asked no questions, he doesn't know. But the plan worked. and in 2016 a Floridian judge did award Hulk Hogan$140 million in damages, forcing Gawker to file for bankruptcy. Now most of Gawker'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.

59:54So hang on, so obviously Hulk's flawed Gawker, Aaron's the broker, and what, so he and Peter Thiel have now proven themselves as a force? and then more importantly Aaron D'Souza has proven to Peter Thiel that he's a little bitchy bum boy who can get stuff done yes so and 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 of Peter Thiel Peter Thiel's all in and that brings with it some explosive press coverage and a lot of criticism as well as we're talking about uh concerns ranging from health risks to sportsmanship i didn't know this um but maybe you guys are a bit more uh fair with like levels of doping apparently testosterone can cause your muscles to grow so much that they separate from and then crush your bones that's happened to an Olympic weight list yeah so it's not like i thought people were just worried about like heart problems and stuff like that but it's apparently well and then And you just sort of fall apart.

1:01:01I think so. Like your frame can't support, like the human skeleton can't support that much. That's interesting. Yeah, I never thought about that, but it makes sense. It's like if you weren't taking enhancing drugs, your body can only grow, like a cup, can only grow to the size that it's in. But then if you take a bunch of drugs and your body's like, ah, and the tank cracks. Can't you bone max? Can you not like, because Clavicula does the osteoporosis meds, doesn't he, to grow his bones as well. Maybe that's why. Oh, wow. King Clough The other criticism was that Aaron D'Souza had like completely missed the point of sport Has he?

1:01:40I think that's what I really struggle with is like what is point of sport? You know? I feel like he's missed 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 he's missing the point of. I'm just a sport is entertainment guy. And 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.

1:02:14But apart from that, I've got no issue with it. And 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. I wondered when that was going to come up. And started adopting LGBT language in his copy, describing his athletes as coming out as enhanced. I guess they kind of are.

1:02:42Are they just being discriminated against as a group, though? Top level sporting people. Are they really, you know, fighting for representation? He also said, 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 sovereignty. He's really trying to reframe as hard as he possibly can. Language matters. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. So all of this was a bit dicey, even from the start, but it wasn't enough to scare off another Australian, James Magnusson. now the world-class swimmer Magnussen uh was well past as 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 a very very specific and high dollar condition that D'Souza would give him a million dollars for breaking the 50 meter freestyle world record which like fair enough I'm like, that's a good, that's a decent bet.

1:03:50And he, apparently, Magnuson bragged on a podcast that he would, quote, juice to the gills and break the record within six months. And was that more than six months ago? Surely we're due a record, aren't we? Oh, are we? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because as soon as he said that, Magnuson 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 more like a 25 meter yeah and just like him and the like little kids are looking at the apartment like splashing about in there so is it even a 50 meter pool like I actually don't know but I can't imagine that it is because like an apartment complex pool is probably gonna have limited space it's like one of those like kidney shaped pool and he can probably just walk along the whole of it and it's like they turn the wave machine on every half an hour um so yeah can't train on tuesday because there's aerobics 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 ball occasionally people would come and watch but you know but his whole thing during this uh training that he's doing 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 your little black book right the the magic potion that you figure out that's going to work for you um but apparently he told a former apparently he did um spill to the sydney morning herald that he was quote a full of testosterone bpc157 thymocin imma ipamoralin ipamoralin and cjc1295 i feel like he's giving away the protocol i was like why are you saying all this um so i don't know 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 that's quite a lot it's working that's a lot it's working it's doing the job that's a shitload isn't it that's like more than two stone yeah like yeah that's like yeah two stone is it 14 pounds in a stone um Yeah, that's like a lot.

1:06:10Like a big dog. Big dog's worth. A lot of muscle. Is that good when you're swimming? No, it's not. You're going to be 30 pounds heavier. You have definitely. It would be good if you were like, you know, clutching some lead bottles and going down a hill on the 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 did.

1:06:45I guess maybe if it's all muscle, then maybe it counteracts itself by how strong you are. Maybe. The real expert views. 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 Magnusson actually missed the world record by two seconds. But that is 1.2 seconds slower than his own personal best. After doing all of that. 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.

1:07:30but still he was saying I've never been stronger and then he actually is slower than his past because he was pretty good right when he was legit yeah like I recognise the name and I'm not like you know big into yeah three goals I think I really think so wow didn't he 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 yeah 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.

1:08:03So yes, big sad for the first enhanced athlete who came out to the world and got worse. I'm surprised that he let that time get out. Surely you want to hush that up. Was he doing it around the edge of his round four? So when it comes to him, because he's positioned himself to be the face of the enhanced games, right? so his protocol he's working with them for this record attempt to happen 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 so it's very much trial by error and he's a lot more of a guinea pig than a flagship because they've like hyped it and they've been like this is the thing and if you're doing a world record attempt aren't there like people there who were like watching or like doing that kind of stuff.

1:08:58Guinness. Yeah. People in the hotel bar were just watching. He's not done it, has he? Some kids with some floaties waiting for that go. They bring in Greek-Burgarian Christian Goklumiv who had just missed out on qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics by less than three-tenths of a second. So he had a point to prove. But what I actually learned while reading about this is that all of the doping and like EPO, etc., 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 different.

1:09:38But 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 Magnus then actually ripped one of them because he's so fucking huge. So not only are they, you know, blood doping, doing whatever, etc. All of all this growth hormone, they're also wearing illegal swimming costumes. Which makes a larger difference. I love that that's actually the whole thing. Just wear those shoes that got bad at 100 metres. Exactly.

1:10:15And also I think they sort of saw the mistakes they'd made with Magnus then. They made him too big too fast. so they kind of they don't give away exactly what they did with he's just like their monster yeah back into the window this time for you just in his ripped up wear suit yes exactly poor Magnus you're just going to find him like wandering through the Swiss mountains it's like terrorising terrorising local villages he falls in love with a local girl it's like terrorising being chased with pitchforks yeah oh poor guy And it worked because Christian was swimming faster than Magnuson in just weeks in the pool in North Carolina.

1:10:57And after three months of the enhanced protocol, he snatched Magnuson's million. He broke the record. He beat the world record by 0.02 of a second. He's done it. He's done it. It doesn't count. Why? Because he's doping. And he's in the illegal swimming costume. But it counts in reality, doesn't it? That's the whole point. He gets his million dollars, right? He gets his million dollars. And he's quite rightly said, why would I go back to the Olympics? I've already made more than I would in 10 careers as an Olympian. That's true. Because the other sort of prong to Aaron D'Souza's argument is that Olympic athletes don't get paid fuck.

1:11:40So come over to the Enhanced Games and actually make some money. So what now can you go again? If you beat it again, do you get another mil? Well, I believe he has beaten it again by slightly less, but in normal trunks. Oh, okay. So he has still done it without the fish suit. That's pretty cool. That's great, he's done it. Though I will say, the whole point of the Enhanced Games is to see some superhuman shit. And this is the marketing thing for it. Do ordinary people actually care that this guy swam 0.02 seconds faster? Isn't it like you want to see someone do it like 20 seconds faster? Yeah.

1:12:16Which I know is not possible, but it just feels like, oh, is that it? Yeah, because someone might do that time again at the next Olympics. Yeah. It's a good test kit. Swimming's quite a boring watch anyway. Yeah, it is. And also, unless it's like Papua New Guinea, I'm just fucking crying. 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 happen. Anyway, the money behind the Enhanced Games isn't just coming from Peter Teal's revenge pot. But also a psychedelic loving Christian Angermeyer, who's another VC who had his life changed by psilocybin and he wants to sort of commercialise it and bring it to the...

1:12:56So this is where this is all going. It's just going to be giving us drugs. He's got the psychedelics company, that guy. Yeah. So he's a big funder and also Donald Trump Jr.'s investment firm which is called 1789 Capital because the Enhanced Games isn't just a sports day for retired swimmers. It's a shopfront stake in the anti-aging and health industry, which is worth trillions. And that's what they're actually investing in. Right. 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, or, 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.

1:13:43but 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 it's quite a big jump yeah so what they're actually doing it's not actually about the record it's all marketing what they're actually doing is they're gonna sell us a supplements line with it's tied to the enhanced games as an event they're gonna suck us in with the spectacle and then sell us the shit genius i like it more now yeah i'll buy a supplement so de 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.

1:14:19Do you guys know who this is? Why would you? Apparently he's a former member of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee who has now joined up. He's got some defectors. Yeah, yeah. It's like, 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 it will just be it will be the game yeah it already is so de 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 uh where a 60 year old could be running a four minute mile that would be pretty impressive that would that that i would like to see um 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 um maha maha make america healthy again campaign.

1:15:29And De Sousa 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, they're also way more ubiquitous. More people are eating McDonald's than people are eating animal steroids. And also, do I 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. And yeah, D'Souza also told the New York Post that the Enhanced Games is now a very American project. Surely you're China into this shit?

1:16:09Yeah, Russia and you guys are right. Why is Russia not in this? 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? We're going to pass verdicts at the end. Yeah, all right. I think what the bringing in of the Trump dynasty and the sort of Americanness 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.

1:16:48So they're not allowed. So there are drugs that are off the table and there isn't like blood doping testing but athletes have to undergo like brain scans, heart scans and 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. Would you watch it if it's on? I barely watch the Olympics, man. It's a one day event at least. that's true i could probably manage that i think with the olympics it can be a bit of a slog um but i don't know i think i don't want to say that all olympians are joking 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 like you were saying they're like testing for different things and it's like what you can get away with um but i think this is such a like a thought experiment that lots of people talk about so i feel like it was inevitably gonna happen um somebody was gonna do this like nobody's gonna to show it like where are they going to stream it i think the stigma around it is so much that i don't know how they'll like overcome the monetary side of it like someone's going to constantly have to be bankrolling it because i just don't think any brands are going to want to be associated with it um but i don't know 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 i don't know 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 guy yeah they've got to blow them out the water for it to be worth this is what i mean and i think if you don't then it's kind of just like a bit of a...

1:18:50Yeah. Oh, I think it'll be good. Okay. So you think it will happen? Dope baby dope. Yeah, I think it will happen. How have they not used 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, you know, these things take a few years to get good. I mean, that's certainly true. I don't think they'll stop trying I think you've got to do yeah you've got to do four or five and then let's see so I hope they stick to that and I hope no one dies 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 biohacking like internet forum like people who spend too much time in their mum's basement there's enough of that there's enough of those kind of people who would be invested in this kind of thing that I can see it working and and it's and I could kind of see it sort of if it if it like 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 weird superhumans whether like ethically it's a good thing to do to humans is like another question and yeah hopefully no one 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 um i guess that's maybe where the ethics question yeah i don't have a lot of faith in the ethics of people who are trying to do that yeah uh but in a in a in a twisted world i can see it take you off okay i'm gonna watch we should do a live watch along yeah you should yeah it's only a day yeah take some math watch it marathon run um so to to end we're all slightly conflicted and some of us are excited i'm very excited i've got absolutely no doubts about this thing amazing when everyone's super no one will be well there you go that is that's everything you need to know about the enhanced games yeah yeah about doping no yes thank you guys for sharing that was very informative i feel like i've learned a lot likewise yeah yeah thank you guys if you enjoyed that and uh you've heard us plug 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 and 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 here and um you guys should definitely go listen to them thank you that's very kind and likewise red-handed which is the biggest biggest podcast in true crime it's the only true crime podcast you should listen to and now i guess i would dip your toe in with like an oj where it's like it is quite a nice crossover because i was looking at your um all your episodes and like there are lots of crimes they do do crimes yeah yeah we were trying to think about you're like 40 % true crime podcast yourself yeah we had the the Hanraoi one as well but the you guys did I, Tonya as well that's another really good sports one yeah but pretty soon you just find yourself sucked into to the gnarly world of like a proper American murder you know how George Orwell was like there's like the the classic British murder which is like a poisoning the cosy murder I feel like you guys do the proper American murder so well it's like it's often a small town as well isn't it For me, that's the canonical.

1:22:32I listened to your Suffolk Strangler one. Oh, yes. Which was good. It was quite weird listening to one that I actually remember. Yeah, we found that with them in the recordings. Oh, I remember that on TV. Yeah, there's something more sinister about it. I prefer true crime in a podcast like yours to watching on TV. Do you? Thank you. Yeah, because it's just like you and the narrative. It's quite, I don't know. I think that's why true crime podcasts are having a moment because documentaries are all well and good obviously Netflix jumped all over that and they do their big big uh produced 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 um and it's working and yeah thank you for the um 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 yeah that's those are like the ones that everybody seems to love yeah yeah you just can't decide which way round whether they did they're my favourite if that's not too so that's Red Handed Podcast check it out if you haven't already thank you excellent thank you very much and thank you for doing this collab we've really enjoyed it thank you it's been great thank you and we hope you guys did too and we'll see you next week but something else where we won't be together bye