Muscle Men: 8. The Genie Is Out

Extreme · 2024-09-16

In the wake of the steroid ring’s downfall, the headline-grabbing prosecutions combine with sports scandals and anxieties about steroids making it into high school locker rooms. Lawmakers decide to take action. The Steroid Control Act of 1990, spearheaded by none other than then-Senator Joe Biden, promises to deal with steroids once and for all.

But the USA already had a taste of what it felt like to get ripped - really ripped. And it’s hard to stuff the genie back in the bottle once it weighs 240 pounds of pure muscle.

Today, as millions of Americans take steroids with the aim of bulking up, host Natalia Mehlman Petrzela reckons with the enduring legacy of the steroid ring, and an era which transformed our ideas about fitness and beauty.

Featuring former bodybuilders William Dillon, Shawn Ray and Sandra Blackie; Mike Zumpano, co-author of The Underground Steroid Handbook; Professor of Sports Studies at Stirling College-Chengdu University, Daniel Rosenke; Dr Harrison Pope, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; and Daniel Supnick, a former special agent with the US Customs Service.

Presenter and Executive Producer: Natalia Mehlman PetrzelaProducer: Caroline ThornhamAssistant Producer: Mohamed AhmedEditor: Katherine GodfreyProduction Manager: Cheree HoustonSound Design and Mix by Daniel KempsonOriginal Music by SilverHawk, aka Cyrille PoirierExecutive Producer: Max O’BrienCommissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Novel production for BBC Radio 4

Featuring clips from:Nightline, ABC Special for Monday, Nov 20, 1989 - ABCOlympic Games History, Seoul 1988 - BBCSenator Joe Biden remarks on Democratic Anti-Drug Legislation, July 31 1989 - C-SpanHouse Session, September 22, 1988 - C-SpanInterview with Philip Halpern - Professor Daniel Rosenke

Episodes are released weekly on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode, a week early, first on BBC Sounds https://bbc.in/3ybDcHO

Extreme

Peak Danger is Season 2 of Extreme, the BBC podcast about those who chase the impossible... who strive for superhuman status and refuse to accept that life has any limits. Every season tells an unforgettable, action-packed story about people who’ve pushed their minds and bodies to the very edge – but at what cost?

A mountain of trouble...

In August 2008, around 30 climbers took on K2. Over 2 disastrous days, 11 of those people would lose their lives. This is the story of what really happened.

Sitting on the border between China and Pakistan, K2 is a perfect pyramid that pierces through the clouds. It looks like a kid’s drawing of a mountain…but this terrifying peak is anything but child’s play.

Newlyweds Cecilie Skog and her husband Rolf Bae loved climbing mountains almost as much as they loved one another. In the summer of 2008, they embarked on a honeymoon like no other, when they decided to climb K2. What happened next would change their lives and the lives of everyone around them…forever.

A devastating avalanche scatters high altitude climbers across K2’s steep slopes. Life and death rescue missions quickly get underway. Who can be saved… before time runs out?

Historian and podcaster Natalia Mehlman Petrzela returns with a sky-high story of human vs nature, and of survival against all the odds.

What does it really take to push yourself to the brink of human possibility? How does it feel to stand with the whole world at your feet? And is it ever worth risking death… in order to feel alive?

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