BONUS PREVIEW: Enhanced masculinity crisis

July 1, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Steroid Olympics That Could Change Everything

Peter Thiel's libertarian "Enhanced Games" happened, and most people barely noticed. A journalist named Sam Egan has been covering it for a year, and he's trying to convince a skeptical host that this weird, niche event actually matters—not just as a spectacle, but as a potential turning point for the transhumanist movement and the way we think about drugs, aging, and masculinity.

The pitch is simple: take former Olympic and elite athletes in track and field, swimming, and weightlifting, give them a cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs, and let them try to break world records. The parent company, Enhanced, has been training these athletes for months—first in Las Vegas, then in Abu Dhabi, where the pharmaceutical regulations are essentially nonexistent. The athletes are being used as advertisements for the drugs themselves, which Enhanced sells direct-to-consumer on a website, like Hims or Roman for anabolic steroids. The idea is that if Ben Proud, an Olympic silver medalist, breaks a world record on their stack, you'll want to buy that same stack.

The Athletes as Guinea Pigs

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What you'll learn

1 (00:02) **Episode Introduction** - Host explains this is a bonus preview from the Patreon, recorded around a holiday, featuring a conversation about steroid athletes and the "Enhanced Games."
2 (01:54) **Guest Introduction: Sam Egan** - Sam Egan introduces himself as a reporter covering sports, politics, and masculinity, and the creator of the show "Superhuman" about the Enhanced Games.
3 (02:59) **What Are the Enhanced Games?** - Egan explains the core concept: a sporting event for ex-Olympic and elite athletes in track, swimming, and weightlifting, who are given performance-enhancing drugs to break world records.
4 (06:20) **The Athletes' Perspective: Guinea Pigs in on the Deal** - Egan discusses the athletes' motivations, comparing them to artists funded by Peter Thiel who are aware of being used but accept the mutual benefit.
5 (09:33) **The "Study" and the Transhumanist Project** - The Enhanced Games is framed as a deeply flawed study on performance-enhancing drugs, but also a transhumanist project to normalize enhancement.
6 (12:38) **What Would Success Look Like?** - Egan predicts the games need a world record to be considered a success, but finds the "longevity" angle more compelling.
7 (17:06) **The Clean Athlete: Hunter Armstrong** - A gold medalist swimmer, Hunter Armstrong, is competing in the Enhanced Games clean, hoping to use it as a financial stepping stone to return to the Olympics.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Did you catch Peter Thiel's Enhanced Games in Las Vegas on May 24th? You know, the libertarian-minded, steroid-fueled, biohacked Olympics. No? Still nothing?

After recruiting mostly ex-Olympic athletes from track & field, swimming, and weightlifting, parent company Enhanced trained them for months in Abu Dhabi — while also loading them up on a cocktail of drugs to see how many world records they could break.

Reporter, producer, wrestling coach, and also Grant’s trainer Sam Eagan talks with Grant about the intended goal of the games (read: transhumanism is involved), and their deep connections to the right-wing and perhaps a little toxic masculinity, plus a recap of how the attempted record-breaking went.

Our guest Sam Eagan covers the intersection of masculinity and politics. You can follow his work here, and also check out his podcast SuperHuman — which goes into even more detail about the Enhanced Games — here and wherever you listen to podcasts.
This episode is an unlocked preview from our Patreon. To hear the whole conversation, join us at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld — for just five bucks a month, you get exclusive content like this, extended and bonus episodes, Discord community access, and more. Join us so you don’t miss it!
For Apple Podcast users, you can also find all of our bonus content — plus other great COURIER shows — with a subscription to COURIER+.

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