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TechStuff

The ‘Steroid Olympics’ Brought to You By Big Tech - The Story

20 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 3.763 Unknown

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

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5.228 - 21.81 Jonas Brothers

Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.

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22.09 - 33.345 Jonas Brothers

Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but you know. Tired and sick. Tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.

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33.713 - 49.073 Unknown

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart.

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49.053 - 67.753 Oz Veloshian

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy? Not quite. On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between-songs banter.

67.733 - 72.681 Unknown

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

72.902 - 79.734 Oz Veloshian

Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

79.754 - 97.122 Keir Gaines

Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Keir Gaines. This space is about Black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit of armor?

97.402 - 110.363 Keir Gaines

It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability, that does not mean that you need to. Listen to Learn the Hard Way on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Chapter 2: What are the Enhanced Games and how do they differ from the Olympics?

462.551 - 478.499 Oz Veloshian

That's what shines through to me in the podcast. I'd love you just to tell our listeners what they can expect when they tune into Superhuman. But what I love about it is You are a 41-year-old. Is that right, 41-year-old? 41, yeah. Got a kid. You do Mai Tai five or six times a week.

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479.941 - 494.742 Oz Veloshian

You're an athlete who is not a looks maxer per se, but who, I think, frankly, as most people do, when I hear about, oh, my God, if I could just inject myself and feel better and look better and all these things, it's very tempting. Yeah.

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494.722 - 514.806 Oz Veloshian

You approach it very much from a place of empathy with these athletes who are 30 plus, whose best days as athletes are behind them, who probably never made enough money by any means to retire, but don't have any other real obvious transferable skills. And you kind of, you put yourself, I mean, you're not...

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515.478 - 520.312 Oz Veloshian

becoming an athlete for the enhanced games, but you kind of imagine yourself into the space of being one, right?

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520.553 - 542.695 Chris Gayomali

Yeah, yeah. You know, in some ways what they're doing is sort of like what we all kind of want to do. We want to extend our prime years like just a little bit longer. Um, for them, you know, especially like we talked to a lot of swimmers for, for the podcast and for them, you know, their, their options are somewhat limited after, after they, their swimming careers.

542.715 - 562.617 Chris Gayomali

And it's like coaching, maybe like teaching some kids how to float around. Like, it's like, you know, not a very lucrative post-career endeavor. And so for them, if they can take some drugs, I feel 10 years younger and extend that window of them being able to compete at a high level for just a little bit more. It's like, isn't that what we all kind of want?

562.637 - 576.413 Chris Gayomali

Like, don't you just want to feel your best for as long as possible to be able to do what you love doing? And basically all they've been doing their whole lives, which is train and, you know, rest and show up to these events and try to do their Smash the World records.

576.773 - 583.501 Oz Veloshian

What was the... You talked to Aaron. Did you talk to Peter Thiel as well? I have not, no. He didn't. He politely declined.

584.101 - 586.864 Chris Gayomali

He's a hard man to reach.

Chapter 3: How does the Enhanced Games plan to handle performance-enhancing drugs?

936.193 - 951.87 Oz Veloshian

There's a Ukrainian swimming champion who basically loses his business. He still could be an Olympic athlete and could be a gold medal winning Olympic athlete, but he says, I need $10,000 a month to train properly.

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951.89 - 952.611 Unknown

Mm-hmm.

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952.81 - 966.131 Oz Veloshian

where am I going to get that? And if I could get that or anything could get half of that, I would spend it on my family. So, you know, and then he's applying for grants and I said, we can't give you a grant because you haven't demonstrated performance. And he said, well, I haven't had a chance to compete because I've been in a war zone.

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966.792 - 970.758 Oz Veloshian

And so he is one of the people who decides to become an enhanced athlete.

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Chapter 4: What financial incentives are driving athletes to participate in the Enhanced Games?

970.778 - 981.566 Oz Veloshian

And then you mentioned Abu Dhabi. He's with the advanced athlete group at the hotel in Abu Dhabi where the bombs start falling. And he kind of becomes the godfather of the group, being like, guys, hold steady. This is fine, right?

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981.586 - 993.33 Chris Gayomali

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Andrei, he's a wonderful, wonderful dude. He had to escape from Ukraine during the war. And when the bombs started falling, he was like a very...

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993.31 - 1016.014 Chris Gayomali

serene sort of calming voice among the group and it's an interesting dynamic because they're all competing against each other uh they're all trying to you know win money over the other person but they all are really pushing each other to be better like having uh the coach brett hawk told me that having this caliber of athlete uh in sort of the same practice it's it's unreal.

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1016.234 - 1034.794 Chris Gayomali

It's sort of like a just rarefied air in there of excellence. The second best guy is to your left, the third best guy is to your right, and it pushes you to train harder. But when the bombs started falling, Andre was just like, oh yeah, I've been there. He's like, do this, pull out some cash. If you need some, I got some for you. Have your IDs all in one place.

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1034.874 - 1038.218 Chris Gayomali

And he was just a real sweetheart to the rest of them.

1038.383 - 1064.374 Oz Veloshian

interesting though i mean you also there's a scene where you go to one of the pools where all of the swimmers are training and you talk to the lifeguard who is a college swimmer who is who is i mean he probably on the college campus is you know basically a looks max god but compared to these guys there's another normie like us yeah and then you say to him he and one of one of the swimmers ben proud english swimmer he's an absolute hero and you say to the lifeguard well

1064.354 - 1069.38 Oz Veloshian

But what do you think about him, you know, doping essentially? And he kind of almost can't really give you an answer, right?

1069.521 - 1090.007 Chris Gayomali

Yeah, yeah. So this lifeguard, I felt bad for him because it's like, you know, I think the metaphor I used in the GQ piece was it was like Frodo minding the Avengers during practice. It's like, yeah, go corral the Hulk over there, buddy. Like, good luck with that. But yeah, Ben Proud was sort of his swimming hero.

1089.987 - 1110.798 Chris Gayomali

And knowing that he was taking drugs and trying to like take new records, he was really sort of not mystified, but just really conflicted about it. I don't think he had like a real conclusion that he could articulate about how he felt about these guys. But I could tell that he was like a little disturbed. Because if you are an athlete, you're told from like day one.

Chapter 5: What ethical concerns arise from the Enhanced Games and athlete safety?

1273.869 - 1298.446 Chris Gayomali

And, you know, a lot of them are already on enhancements themselves. There's the CEO of it, Maximilian Martin. He's 29, already on testosterone. He feels awesome. He says he sees it as a moral responsibility to him, not only himself, but it functions as also birth control for him and his girlfriend. And he's like a super jacked, very handsome man.

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1298.586 - 1309.618 Chris Gayomali

And, you know, they all just want to be the best version of themselves to feel the best, to feel young forever. And that sort of undergirds everything that they're trying to accomplish with this.

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1313.598 - 1340.609 Oz Veloshian

After the break, how the enhanced games could trickle down into our everyday lives. Stay with us. We talk a lot on this show about protecting your data, especially in the age of AI, and how scary it can be when it's breached. And I want to tell you today about NordVPN, which really covers all the bases when it comes to privacy. I travel a lot, and I use Wi-Fi when I'm flying all the time.

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1340.909 - 1355.248 Oz Veloshian

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1355.228 - 1375.903 Oz Veloshian

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1375.883 - 1392.222 Oz Veloshian

To get the best discount of your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash tech stuff. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. And there's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box.

1394.581 - 1412.381 Jonas Brothers

Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nick? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Yeah, a pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special.

1412.781 - 1432.826 Jonas Brothers

So how did we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it, and... Well, we were thinking of originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this.

1433.227 - 1452.651 Jonas Brothers

We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.

Chapter 6: How do the Enhanced Games aim to normalize the use of performance-enhancing drugs?

2543.371 - 2563.245 Chris Gayomali

Like the dosing is very minimal. They took a lot of learnings from an earlier experiment where they, with a swimmer named James Magnuson, where they actually gave him too many PEDs and he put on like... He claims to have put on like 40 pounds of muscle mass. And, you know, if you're a professional swimmer, being heavier is not necessarily the move.

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2564.366 - 2589.201 Chris Gayomali

Instead of becoming a speedboat, he came like an ocean liner. So his times actually suffered for that. But, you know, I think I've grown a lot more sympathetic to the plight of these athletes over the course of reporting it. You know, just like... They're just trying to make it work like like all of us. And this place is giving them a steady, stable job, basically.

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2589.362 - 2600.438 Chris Gayomali

And they're treating them very much like a job. Like I'm going to do the best that I can at this trying to go for that gold. But if I don't like if I can get close to who I used to be, that's that's enough for me for for a lot of them.

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2600.418 - 2602.782 Oz Veloshian

What can listeners expect from the podcast?

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2602.802 - 2626.577 Chris Gayomali

Yeah, it gets weirder. I promise you that. Six episodes, eight episodes? Yeah, six just episodes. We're still like figuring it out on the go. We have a lot of reporting, a lot of kooky characters in this world. You know, the libertarians were actually very open with us about like what they were hoping to get out of it. And they are some weird, like, you know, not weird, but like,

2627.182 - 2643.745 Chris Gayomali

Dudes that are like outside of my usual orbit as a Brooklyn-dwelling New York City journalist. One of them collects T-Rex fossils as his hobby, which couldn't be me. But, you know, if I had a billion dollars to spare, why not?

2646.589 - 2656.463 Oz Veloshian

The podcast is Superhuman. You can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Highly recommend it. And Chris, thank you for joining on Tech Stuff today. Oh, thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

2664.762 - 2682.564 Jonas Brothers

Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nate? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Yeah, a pretty wide range of podcasts are out there. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special.

2682.964 - 2703.016 Jonas Brothers

So how did we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it, and... Well, we were thinking of originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this.

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