Thane Campbell @thanec26

This guy tried to convince he doping is good for sport. It's the first time i've lost my cool on the podcast. Aron D'Souza, president of the Enhanced Games, just spent an hour trying to convince me that doping should be legal in sport. He's polished, he's persuasive, and he's got answers for everything. As someone who lives and breathes cycling – a sport that's watched people die from this exact vision – I should have been able to dismantle his arguments immediately. The problem is, he sounds reasonable. And that terrifies me. Because D'Souza isn't some fringe lunatic. He's an Oxford-educated lawyer who's raised serious money and has elite athletes already signed up. He asks compelling questions about fairness, about athlete welfare, about why we accept some technologies but not others. And if you're not paying close attention, you might actually believe him. He's really selling a sanitised version of the same underground doping culture that's destroyed careers, ended lives, and corrupted sport for decades. He calls it "medical supervision" and "transparency," but it's still asking young athletes to chemically modify their bodies to compete. He talks about "choice," but once the Enhanced Games exists, every athlete who wants to see their full potential will face impossible pressure to participate. His economic argument sounds good on paper. Elite swimmers making $30,000 a year is shameful, and he's right about that. But the solution isn't to create a pharmaceutical arms race with million-dollar prizes for whoever's willing to push their body furthest. That's not fixing the problem – it's exploiting it. D'Souza kept comparing performance enhancement to other technological advances. We don't limit surgeons to 1950s techniques, he said. We don't cap engineering progress. But sport isn't surgery or engineering. The entire point of athletic competition is testing human limits within agreed constraints. Remove those constraints and you're not watching sport anymore – you're watching a biochemistry experiment with human subjects. He promised comprehensive health monitoring, professional medical teams, elimination of dangerous self-experimentation. But who's monitoring the monitors? What happens when an athlete's health markers start declining but they're three weeks from a million-dollar payday? What happens when the medical team is employed by the same organisation that profits from record-breaking performances? We've seen this movie before in cycling, and it ended with body bags. The most insidious part of his argument is how he frames the current anti-doping system as bureaucratic and hypocritical. Sure, anti-doping has problems. Yes, there's hypocrisy in what we allow versus what we ban. But the answer to an imperfect system isn't to abandon all limits – it's to fix the system. D'Souza isn't interested in reform. He's interested in profit. And make no mistake, this is about money. He talks about athlete welfare, but he's creating a product for spectators who want to see superhuman performances without caring about the cost. He's banking on our collective inability to look away from a car crash. Faster times, bigger performances, world records tumbling – all while athletes mortgage their long-term health for short-term glory and financial survival. What really bothers me is his vision of "different tiers" of competition coexisting. That's not choice – that's segregation. Within a generation, you'd have "natural" sport as the minor leagues and enhanced sport as the real competition. Every young athlete with Olympic dreams would face a simple calculation: stay clean and stay poor, or enhance and maybe make a living. That's not freedom. That's coercion with extra steps. D'Souza kept asking what we're protecting. Here's my answer: we're protecting the kid who discovers they're talented at cycling and wants to see how far that talent can take them without having to become a chemistry experiment. We're protecting the fundamental idea that sport should test what your body can do, not what your pharmacology team can do. We're protecting athletes from having to choose between their dreams and their health. I left that conversation more convinced than ever that the Enhanced Games is exactly what it sounds like: a game. But the stakes are real athletes' lives, and the house always wins. D'Souza is charismatic and his arguments sound sophisticated. That's what makes this dangerous. Because somewhere, a young athlete is going to hear his pitch and think it sounds reasonable. And that might be the decision that destroys their life. So no, I'm not convinced. I'm alarmed. We need to share this and push back against this worrying trend. Don't watch it, support it or celebrate it. These aren't our champions!

Exactly 25 years ago, on January 1, 2000, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles published “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles.” This is the original document: ChurchofJesusChrist.org/study/scriptur…. I am one of four living Apostles who signed my name to this landmark document, along with Presidents Dallin H. Oaks, Henry B. Eyring, and Jeffrey R. Holland. Over the last quarter century this testimony has been read, studied, and even memorized by countless disciples of Jesus Christ. My study of this testimony increases my desire, every day, to be more like Him. As I celebrate my 101st New Year’s Day, I continue to love the opportunity it provides for fresh starts, new perspectives, and new and renewed resolutions. May I extend an invitation to you as you consider what your resolutions will be this year? I invite you to come to the temple as often as your circumstances allow. In the house of the Lord, we focus on Jesus Christ. We learn of Him and His gospel. We make covenants that bind us to Him and to our Heavenly Father. Through these temple experiences and others, we are strengthened to achieve our New Year’s resolutions. My dear friends, may this new year be filled with the light, love, joy, and power of our Savior and Redeemer, who is the Living Christ.

@iamnot_elon A

@FitFounder Did this study normalize against things like economic status? It could be that the average tennis player may possibly have different economic advantages over the average jogger - and that has greater cause and effect that the form of exercise

@laurencelkins Ugh, then I'd have to read... My understanding is that a PCR test correlates with being contagious but due to the extreme sensitivity of PCR you may not have high contagiousness

Russ said this fan was telling him to take the 3 because Gobert’s the best defender in the league. Then this happened 😤 (via @LeopoldDelaunay)

@SpeedyPetey26 A7B

@RexChapman That is the most gentle vomiting I've seen

@laurencelkins @NateElkinsSLCSD You shouldn't directly compare the two burger joints. Just look at the price difference between them. In-N-Out is a great, CHEAP, burger - you gotta take that into account

@barstoolsports BZE positive for sure

@SpeedyPetey26 And his grammar is poor. It's 'either...or' not 'either...or...or' you only get one 'or'

@SpeedyPetey26 I wish the Niners thought this way with Alex Smith...

@RobinhoodSnacks Ghosted WeWork employees?

@laurencelkins Yeah, not his greatest moment

@RobinhoodSnacks Tom Cruise circa early 2000s

@RobinhoodSnacks Curbside Closet

@SpeedyPetey26 You gotta lose the gloves

List of athletes sanctioned for failing a drugs test as part of the Beijing 2008 retests Credit: @insidethegames