#2421 - Derek, More Plates More Dates

Tell me about this new drink—red gummy fish—first sip and it’s legit delicious; what’s in here?

It’s a drinkable spin on the focus stack I used before podcasts, built for daily use and broad appeal; we leaned on tyrosine for catecholamines and alpha‑GPC for choline since most people don’t get enough from food like eggs or liver.

We set caffeine at two hundred milligrams to keep it impactful but manageable, then added uridine to resensitize stimulant response, theanine to smooth the buzz and help verbal flow, saffron for mood support without SSRI‑style blunting, and huperzine A to slow acetylcholine breakdown so it pairs with the choline source.

How did you land on doses and decide what stayed or got cut?

We iterated off my original capsule formula, balancing years of self‑testing with clinical data to find doses that actually move the needle but still feel sustainable long term.

Did you test pieces one by one then combine them to see what clicked?

Back in university I was that kitchen chemist scooping raw powders, logging effects like a gym journal, cross‑checking forums and studies from the late 2000s until the stack felt locked in.

My first intro was Neuro1 on morning radio, which led us to build Alpha Brain later; your formula feels way more comprehensive—and tastes great.

Flavor with real actives is hard—suspension issues, carbonation weirdness, even black lids heating cans in transit—and we went with sucralose since most tolerate it well at typical amounts despite gut‑sensitivity debates.

We saw a small slice of people get headaches on Alpha Brain, maybe from overdosing; pills are hard to meter.

We once prototyped velvet bean for direct L‑Dopa and it wrecked me and my family with nausea and couch‑lock—that taught me dopamine isn’t a ‘more is better’ game, so we scrapped it.

Drinks are nice because you can sip and dose by feel; how many of these would you cap in a day?

I’ll have two or three, but I tell people one is plenty for a podcast, and to respect total caffeine since the general safety line hovers around four hundred milligrams for most adults.

Performance studies often land around three to six milligrams per kilogram for big effects, caffeine is no longer policed like it used to be in many leagues, and it can boost strength and alertness or mask a bad night’s sleep—but always start low and adjust to tolerance.

I just talked creatine with Chris Masterjohn—higher intakes like twenty grams seem to blunt sleep‑loss drop‑offs for a day.

People hear those headlines and jump straight to maxing out; better to ramp up because big single doses can wreck your gut even if some folks micro‑dose them fine.

I bailed on creatine gummies at twenty grams—they’re candy at that point—so I use powder and keep a few gummies around for convenience.

Gummies are a great on‑ramp for people who’d never touch powder, and creatine likely props up brain ATP and spares methylation, which explains why it helps when you’re sleep‑deprived or traveling.

In the nineties, creatine was treated like steroids—totally taboo.

I hid it as a teenager while stores literally sold real hormones and harsh orals over the counter.

I ran a product called Mag‑10, blew up fast, then crashed with awful side effects and realized it was basically a steroid.

A ton of guys developed gyno from that era with no post‑cycle plan; it was the wild west.

I also tried ephedrine—Ripped Fuel before jiu‑jitsu—and my heart hammered and I gassed instantly; never again.

Great for a one‑rep max, terrible for grappling, and those DMAA pre‑workouts like Jack3d hid behind proprietary blends so you paid for a tub that was mostly stims and hype.

Labels had jacked pit bulls and lightning while bodybuilders pretended their look came from legal powders, which misled a whole generation.

There’s more honesty now, but the old secrecy made guys chase size with ever‑higher stacks and that helped push early deaths.

Today the cost of lying is huge—get caught once and you’re done—so you see people like Mickey Rourke owning it.

Frank Grillo was refreshingly clear about TRT and even Anavar in a recent sit‑down, which you almost never hear in mainstream fitness media.

He trained clean for years with very low T, then went on therapy and everything improved—sleep, mood, performance.

The Rock recently nodded to peptides and he’s trimmed down; maybe it’s health, maybe it’s roles, but you’d expect heavy screening before bulking that hard at his age.

My guess is he’s chasing real acting respect—he was fantastic playing Mark Kerr in that MMA drama—and Batista’s slimming for meatier roles too.

Usually guys shrink to be taken more seriously, which makes his ‘get as huge as possible for art’ approach the outlier while Batista went the expected route.

He’s been coy about gear, probably to protect the family‑friendly image, which I get at his level.

I wouldn’t be shocked if the peptide talk eases into, ‘my doctor advised hormone support,’ since he’s artfully dodged a direct yes or no for years.

The first time I met him he looked like a superhero in cowboy boots—just massive.

He’s still huge by any normal standard, and downsizing with age is smart if you want longevity.

Batista today is still a big man, like an Alex Pereira type—leaner but formidable.

Actors yo‑yo for roles—he was enormous in Glass Onion—and then you see extremes like Christian Bale or Charlize Theron transforming their bodies for parts.

Sydney Sweeney bulked for a boxing role and headlines hyped it like thirty pounds of pure muscle, but she clearly took the training seriously.

Tropic Thunder felt like the last unfiltered blast before the woke era; making a wild studio comedy like that now is almost impossible.

Back then you had a stack of easy, hilarious watches; now it’s hard to find anything that freewheeling.

Stand‑up still has that freedom, and if someone self‑financed a no‑apologies comedy, it would crush because audiences know movies are make‑believe.

So what do you throw on when you just want to shut your brain off?

I started a new Apple show where aliens send a transmission and it flips society on its head, and I loved Severance season one even if it got weird later.

My girlfriend’s got me watching Stranger Things and the new It series, but the gaps between seasons are so long it’s hard to stay invested.

Stranger Things is so big they can drop whenever and still win, but the long waits age the kids out of their roles.

You can see them stretching to make the cast look younger, which is a tough trick to pull off.

You can see they used some AI to de-age kids on screen, and we’re getting close to the point where scripts and whole scenes could be spun up fast instead of waiting years.

Feels like you could AI the whole thing now; anyway, are you following F1 right now?

I hit the Austin race and even toured McLaren’s pit last year; the engineering and the obsession with shaving fractions of a second is wild.

This season might end with three drivers in play at the finale, and McLaren’s refusal to back a lead driver could cost them while a Red Bull guy steals it.

Drivers are tested, but it’s nothing like Olympic oversight; they’ll use safe nootropics like creatine or L‑tyrosine that backfill neurotransmitters.

Those races cook you in the suit and guys dump a ton of water weight out there.

Some use glycerol for hyper‑hydration to hold more water and tolerate heat; you might sweat so hard you barely need to pee in a ninety‑minute race.

I stick to sauna before bed and cut water after, then rehydrate hard in the morning with aminos and electrolytes; I’ve even paused cold plunges after getting stem cells for a small Achilles tear from elk hunting, since heat seems helpful and cold may blunt the repair.

For rehab I’m using BPC‑157 and TB‑500, and pinning locally near the tendon feels way more effective than general sub‑q shots.

Big news for women’s health: the FDA rolled back most black box warnings on HRT after years of panic that came from studies using horse‑derived estrogens and synthetic progestins, not true bioidentical hormones.

The breast cancer risk was framed with scary relative numbers, while the absolute difference was tiny, and we’ve since seen strong data for cardio, brain, and bone benefits with properly dosed bioidenticals.

It’s crazy how many women lost quality of life because they were scared off by bad science and headlines.

The prostate cancer panic around men’s TRT doesn’t fit the biology either; once you restore a low‑T guy to normal, prostate growth plateaus and doesn’t keep climbing or bodybuilders would have cartoon prostates.

Women do need caution with androgens though—virilization like a deeper voice can stick, and cowboy dosing is a thing; my mom was put on a level that pushed her into low male ranges and her voice started to change until we stopped it.

Testosterone can spike female libido fast, which people love at first, but that rush can hide long‑term trade‑offs; it’s similar to teens on cross‑sex hormones, where early euphoria doesn’t mean it’s a wise, irreversible move.

Adults should have autonomy, but teens don’t have a finished prefrontal cortex, so the bar for life‑altering drugs should be high.

Parents are even putting short kids on growth hormone, and in the old Soviet system they clearly juiced athletes—look at Alexander Karelin’s folklore as the “experiment.”

Lionel Messi literally needed pharmaceutical growth hormone as a kid or he would not have reached a normal adult height, which likely saved his career even if the performance effects are impossible to quantify.

Yoel Romero is the biggest athletic mutant I’ve seen, with tendons like cables and freak healing; the Cuban system fed and trained by tier, and he still carried that explosion into his late forties even if his gas tank held him back.

Elite wrestlers like Bo Nickal close distance like a spring—Yoel mastered that, and it’s why Israel Adesanya had to fight him from far out and make it tactical.

Chimaev is the other end of that spectrum—relentless pressure and chain wrestling that you know is coming but can’t stop, which made that recent beatdown hard to watch.

If Chimaev stays disciplined and doesn’t fall in love with trading, I don’t see many beating him right now; Bo might be the style test once he rounds out.

Heavyweight needs fresh blood, and Gable Steveson looks like the problem—Olympic gold, freak speed, KO power into instant takedowns, backflips after fights, training with Jon Jones at only twenty‑five.

He looks soft at a glance but moves like a cat, which is scary at that size.

Pereira hits like a truck in a way you can’t teach—his machine score was off the charts and even refs say the sound of impact is different; some power is just baked into your frame and mechanics.

Impressively, his chin seems better now despite age.

That’s because he stopped death‑cutting to 185 and fighting a day later at two‑twenty‑plus; brain fluid doesn’t rebound like muscle, which is why I want more weight classes and real hydration policies instead of rewarding extreme cuts.

Protecting the brain after a knockout and managing cuts smarter is going to define longevity in the sport.

Dream cards for me are Jones versus Pereira, McGregor versus Chandler, and Islam versus Ilia—Topuria has that touch‑of‑death timing even though he’s not a big framed guy.

But airing out personal drama and Miami‑club vibes on social media is a career trap, especially when you’re a two‑division level talent who needs calm at home.

The internet is already speculating about his marriage and the timing, which is why keeping relationships offline is almost always smarter.

Fame plus feeds is nitroglycerin—you chase likes, read hate, and start believing your own sizzle reel, so I’m moving to a post‑and‑ghost setup with no social apps on my main phone, do‑not‑disturb on, and tight circles whitelisted.

I get more done late at night because the phone quiets down and the world finally stops knocking.

Night is when my mind spins on big scary stuff, but weed flips the switch for writing—edibles are a creative cheat code even if they sharpen danger signals; for new users five milligrams is plenty, while maniacs like Joey Diaz treat 250 like a snack and used to prank co‑hosts with it.

Some folks chase chaos for creativity, but the real trap is the phone; I’d rather get sent a few wild clips from friends than lose forty-five minutes to dead scrolling when I could’ve trained or written.

Nothing feels dumber than burning your sharp hours on feeds; even casual browsing gives me a faint buzz of anxiety, and plenty of fighters still peek at comments or training clips even when they swear they won’t.

Bodybuilding is brutal for that because your look is your brand, and washed-out stage lighting can make a shredded physique seem soft while a comment section piles on with bad takes.

It really is the sport of ego, and it tricks you into thinking muscle equals menace; then a guy like Benavidez, who looks ordinary next to a carved-up guy like Yarde, walks him down and wrecks him with pressure and craft.

Huge muscle can tax oxygen and limit endurance, and when there’s also a skill gap, the prettier frame often fades first.

Half the NHL looks like frat dudes but they skate forever and party hard, which keeps reminding me you can’t read performance off a face or a six-pack.

Soccer guys are all engine and legs with small uppers, while Ronaldo is the outlier who maximizes everything; genetics decide a lot more than people want to admit.

You can have round, photogenic muscle bellies yet poor mitochondrial density, so you look the part but can’t translate it into power or stamina.

I’ve seen brick-house bodies hit a bag like pillows, and the really bulked-up types rarely move with the silky flow you see in fighters built like Benavidez.

That’s training specificity and flexibility; if you don’t actively keep range, big delts literally block motion.

Jocko’s so packed with muscle his archery release can’t swing back the way a pro archer’s does, and his body is just built to grab you and break things.

When I was two sixty-five trying to teach swim strokes, I sank and couldn’t get my arms fully overhead, which was a great lesson in how size can steal function.

Arman Tsarukyan’s a good counterexample, doing strange mobility drills to keep strength in weird grappling angles, though he’s paid with back issues from the grind.

I don’t miss being that big; I learned I wasn’t responding enough to the drug load it would take to advance, and even if you do, some people’s hearts, bloodwork, and sleep just implode on heavy androgens.

I knew monsters in the gym who died young, and the TRT window in MMA gave us terrifying versions of guys like Vitor and Overeem until it closed.

On the safer enhancement side, melanotan can darken your skin, spike libido, and even curb appetite; I used it back in the day and the tan jumped fast, though nausea reminds you when you overshoot.

Your back in those pics was like a wingsuit, which makes it funny how little that kind of strength transfers once you leave the bread-and-butter lifts.

I still train like a bodybuilder but do it with health in mind, because chasing max loads the Ronnie way can wreck you long term.

Do you ever tell someone they just don’t have the genetics for the big leagues?

I have, and education helps people accept it sooner; now we check response, bloodwork, and cardiac structure so you know if you’re a fit from both performance and safety angles.

Where does genetic engineering land in this world?

Myostatin inhibitors and similar ideas are being explored, and pharma is trying to pair potent appetite drugs with muscle-preserving agents so weight loss doesn’t strip lean tissue.

People stacking GLP-1s with IGF and lifting can blunt bone and muscle loss, but if you starve yourself without protein and weights, you just shrink everything.

That’s especially risky for people who already under-eat protein and avoid strength work, which turns appetite control into malnutrition.

I’m for GLP-1s in severe cases, but Jelly Roll did it the hard way—ditched his phone for a long stretch, trained daily, cut the junk, and dropped over two hundred pounds.

Willpower matters, but some folks have a genetically loud hunger signal; the reverse exists too, like guys who hate eating and stay shredded without trying.

I watched a guy go from out-of-shape to ultramarathons and an Ironman in one hundred days by leaning into Goggins-style discipline, then he kept going and now runs hundred milers.

There’s also that old case of a man fasting for over a year on vitamins and zero-cal drinks; wild outlier, but it shows how different hunger tolerance can be.

He supposedly didn’t end up with the classic loose-skin look, which sounds hard to believe, and anyway that kind of extreme isn’t something I’d endorse.

Some physiques read leaner because of how they store water and fat; a guy like Helmut Strebl is painfully diced, but people forget the dehydration and blackout risk on show day.

I’m trying to remember that early internet shredded guy with the horseshoe haircut, but while we dig, what do you make of all these miracle hair regrowth headlines?

Every week there’s a new silver bullet and none of them hold up; it’s wild how we can treat major disease pathways yet still can’t reliably fix hair loss.

And now there’s the leg-lengthening craze; how’s that giant you followed doing?

He’s walking but not perfectly, and he got sued by the clinic after speaking about complications, which says a lot about how uneven those outcomes can be.

I was watching an Instagram clip of a skinny guy who did limb lengthening; he spent about a year on crutches and roughly eighteen months before he moved somewhat normally, and it gives me anxiety because it looks like his legs could snap.

For some people the trade-off still feels worth it, but this was an extreme case with a questionable clinic and a heavy patient trying to go from tall to very tall, with tiny legs under a big upper body and steps that look unnatural, even though he’s stayed optimistic about recovering fully.

Two years on, he can walk, but outrunning danger seems doubtful, and the new leg length changes his mechanics so the knees and everything take different pressure.

His update was bones mostly healed with lingering weakness, and as strength returns, pain and spasms ease.

He still needs more before he can jog or run, he’s applying to see a US doctor to fix remaining issues after a Thailand surgery, and steroids are a double-edged help that aids healing but adds load.

Sounds like a bargain hunt gone wrong; did he basically chase a discount?

There are legit reasons too; one guy nine years out did it to correct a big leg-length mismatch, so it’s not always about vanity height.

Give it time and genetic engineering will churn out people built like Thor, and whether folks like it or not, science moves and can turn rough genetics into tall, model-tier looks at some clinic in Turkey.

Plenty of people root against this stuff, but the context matters more than the snap judgement.

Wait, he’s hitting himself in the face with a hammer?

Some think quick trauma can spark bone changes or a short-term pump, so they tap or even punch their cheeks before going out, like chasing a pre-club pump, which is as bad as it sounds.

There’s so much nonsense out there; anyway, congrats on the wins and the new thing, I’m in on it, this was great—alright, buddy, see you.