For the update, so we've been here a year before and like so many things have happened, but you are kind of still betting millions on a future where biology is not a limit but a starting point. Tell us about the Enhanced Games which are kicking off this year.
Okay, so yeah, so my most exciting project this year, so you all need to put it in your calendar. It's going to be on May 24th live in Las Vegas but globally televised. It's called Enhanced Games. Think about the Olympics. So we do the core disciplines running, swimming and weightlifting. Just that performance-enhancing drugs colloquially called doping are not just allowed but actually actively endorsed. So we want to show with the Enhanced Games what the human body can do with the help of science. Where's the limit or positively said how much can we excel like with the support of science? I mean we are obviously in a time where a lot of ideas around enhancement our bodies are changing anyway. Like I remember a year ago nobody knew what a GLP-1 was and now like everybody's doing it.
So but still at the moment there is still criticism for these Enhanced Games. Like the IOC calls it morally bankrupt whereas younger athletes are saying it's morally bankrupt the way they are treated in the old system. Can you talk to this a little bit?
I mean, first of all, the great thing with the IOC is that they're so old and stupid that they don't understand social media. So, every single time they say something which they think is bad, it's actually amazing for us because obviously for a global sport event, the one thing you really want is attention. And we have spent zero dollars on marketing so far and we just did a survey with thousands of people in the US and without having the first event because the first event is going to be as I said on May 24th and without having spent anything on marketing we have a 61% rate of people at least who have heard about us. So for us, for a sport event or for any in general life event, any form of publicity is good publicity. But also it's like it's really dumb what they say because like the problem is it's first of all by the way to clarify because some people think doping is illegal. Yeah. Which is not. So doping is called when the IOC or any other sport league makes a private contract with their athletes and defines what is allowed or not. For example, we had this discussion last year. I'm very against alcohol. So, I've never tried alcohol in my whole life. If I would say in my personal apartment at any dinner I'm hosting or whatever, alcohol is not allowed, let's call it, it's banned, wouldn't make it illegal outside my apartment. So, it's very important. The IOC wants you to believe doping is illegal like legally in terms of the government tells you so it's not. It's a private contract. And by the way, most of the substances which are on the WADA anti-doping list are things you might take. By the way, there's 25% you can buy free sellable in a pharmacy. Like till some years ago actually coffee was not allowed on the day of any sporting event. What's up? It's a complete random list. So what we are saying is very important is not everything goes but it needs to be an FDA approved medication. So you can't take crystal meth because crystal meth is illegal from the government side. You cannot take also experimental drugs because they're not approved. So the only thing but that's a wide range of medications available but sort of our rule is like it needs to be an FDA approved medication. You need to take it with a doctor and you need to go or undergo very sort of thorough health testing with this sort of baseline. If you look at Olympics or any other sports, they are a farce because like the IOC is actually admitting themselves, it's not my number, that 44% of all athletes in the Olympics are secretly doping, which makes the Olympic completely meaningless because you see something on TV and you're like, 'Okay, is this guy or woman winning now because they really good or are they winning because they secretly cheated?' And for me cheating is when not everybody has the same transparent sort of starting position. Again with us it's very transparent. People can do whatever is medically available to them. So it makes it extremely fair and extremely transparent. The other point which you alluded to which I think is actually more important than everybody knows us for oh performance-enhancing drugs are allowed and endorsed but what is equally or even more important is that the IOC and every other by the way athletics sport league is treating their athletes like shit. So, the average Olympic gold medal winner makes $25,000 a year all-in including sponsoring and whatever which is I think we all would agree very little and for that they spending their teens and 20s 100% because they love it. If you talk there was a great interview with one of our German athletes Mario Kusch. Yeah. He's like, 'Hey, I had an offer from a hedge fund.' And he kind of knows that he kind of ruined his life by not going into finance, but he loves swimming so much. But also he knows in a normal sort of setting or in the old world, yeah, he would be finished with 30, no money saved again because they make 10, 20,000. So we are paying the athletes hundred thousands of dollars base salary and then we have very high prize money for breaking a world record whatsoever because we want to make the athletes the superstars they really should be but that also means they should be paid properly like soccer players are like whatever basketball players are whatsoever and that actually brought us even for the ones who not participating brought us a lot of sort of sympathy from the athletes community.
But I mean it's also in a context where this happens of a broader really big change in the understanding of healthcare because people start to become more like you know individually try to take care of the health until way until to wait until the state would say oh now you're allowed maybe in 150 years. So same goes with psychedelics that most people make that personal decision. And I found it very interesting that there were many athletes in the last years specifically somebody like Aaron Rodgers who really had even a TV show on Netflix saying how a psychedelic experience or many have kind of helped him with his sports and with his trauma that he experienced when he lost or he had an injury. So, and he really openly talks about it how he became a better team player. He became a better kind of person that could go more into the training. So, you're also obviously very engaged in the psychedelic world and industry. So, what is your take on the things that happened last this like 25 because a lot of things have happened.
I mean two things remind me of the athletes and psychedelics but if you go one step back and what is the bigger picture like does anybody or have you ever thought about what when we call something a medicine or we say what is a medicine what is an illness so when did we actually define that? We don't think about it because that's just like the system how it is. It was actually defined sort of the current sort of setup of our medical system and also by that the current sort of or the thinking how we all instinctively approach medication whatever was defined in the 1920s. What happened in the 1920s was that till then in America there was zero definition meaning everybody could call themselves a doctor and this was the time when people were traveling around and selling snake oil and whatever and said oh these cures are from everything. Yeah. Everybody could call themselves a doctor. Everybody could say anything about because they sell water and say this whatever cures cancer whatever there was zero regulation which is obviously bad. So the US government commissioned a so-called later called the Flexner report because the guy who wrote it the lead guy was a guy called Mr. Flexner in order to sort of invent or structure the medical system. So what this guy Flexner defined was first of all that a medication need to be a provenly efficacious which I think check we want that and obviously you need to know does it do any harm are there any side effects which is again the basis of the current system. Then doctors need to have a minimum of an education yeah so in order to call yourself a doctor you need to attend certain universities have certain education also check. Great. But then the third one is where it starts to be a little bit tricky because he called an illness the negative deviation from the norm and then said and a medicine is only something which should be given when there is a negative deviation from the norm in order to bring you back to the norm. So there are many sort of illnesses where I think we all know what that means. If you have cancer, it's clearly bad and it's a negative deviation from the norm because the norm should be you have no cancer. If you have a viral infection or whatever, again, virus shouldn't be in your body. It's a negative deviation from the norm. But for example, back then being gay was defined as a negative deviation from the norm. Hence, being gay was defined as an illness. Yeah. And I think we all would agree it's not. So what I want to say that term norm at least for some issues is a very slippery slope. If you look for example at mental health which is more subjective where does depression start? Yeah, I think we can all say look if somebody is very like in a bad state but like are we all super happy? What is the norm? Whatever. So that is the tricky thing and unfortunately though that prevailed and sort of in the western world since then we're only few medication again which is given when there is a negative deviation from the norm and only then meaning we completely also ignored any form of preventative treatment only when sort of the when the shit is hitting the fan is like only when the problem is there yeah then you're allowed to give medication. And this is I think what should be changed and what we also working on changing with many companies because I think we enter an era where we understand science better. By the way again I want to say again for the 1920s it was a huge positive thing that they sort of at least define something as a baseline. But now that we understand biology better, now that we understand the human body better, we should actually look more and more obviously still curing illnesses which we all agree are bad like cancer or whatever, but also looking more in a libertarian view on the body and say hey why should we wait for example till somebody becomes depressive if psychedelics meaning we've proven in the last year yeah with clinical data phase three for psilocybin that psychedelics do cure depression anxiety and all of that. But actually, I would tell a lot of people if you're going through a bad phase in your life, why would you wait till you become depressive? If we know these substances have very little side effects and an enormous upside, why not say, 'Hey, I'm going through a phase in my life. I think I feel a little bit at risk becoming depressive. Why should I not take a psychedelic session sort of preventatively?' The same like for other things. But then also like again there are many subjective things. Let's think about sex. Yeah. By the way, who wants to have more sex? I think at least I don't want to ask you now and raise your hands, but like a lot of people would say, 'Hey, I want to have more sex.' Yeah. Who want to have more sensual sex? Like there are great drugs in development which sort of increase that thing. Who wants to be more smart? By the way, one thing we never think about is like how unfair is it if we talk about unfair things in life like that we accept that people are sort of born with a certain IQ wouldn't it be better we help people increasing that.
Okay and do you think it's now time also to let's say release psychedelics from a purely medical like you were just described earlier kind of norm this is a if you feel this you have a disease kind of so is it time to introduce it now in let's say a bigger lifestyle context of course in a safe way. Is this now the time also to think about this so people can take their kind of like you say like prevention into their own hands and not wait until like again a government says you hold it another.
I would say this term lifestyle and medical is not at odds with each other. I think that's exactly the point. So when people always ask me I would say I'm kind of a conservative libertarian. I think we should give people the freedom especially when it comes to medication to use them much more individually but based on knowledge. So it's not like the same if you think about sports enhancements the one thing we tell people with Enhanced Games we have the best medical team I would really say in the world for performance-enhancing drugs. So the athletes who sign up with Enhanced Games they have the best advisory team so to say. So within again the medical defined base of like the drugs which are medically available to find the best for them. So I would always say all these things should be done with a doctor because again they also sometimes very individual again if I stay with sports enhancements it's not the same for everybody. It's like if you take as a man I can tell you yes it's good if you take testosterone but like what's your baseline how much should you take whatever it's very individual and you have to do it with a doctor but that doesn't mean that you only should take it when you have an illness that's my point I think we should not distinguish between lifestyle and medical but we should open up the medical use case and allow doctors which by the way which they kind of a lot of them are doing but they kind of doing it still like for example if you're a man and you want testosterone replacement therapy, then the truth is, by the way, I would tell every man over 35, do it every year a little bit. It's one of the most proven facts to slow down aging to make you feel better. You can have it because most doctors start giving it, but they will say, 'Oh, he doesn't sleep well. Oh, his sexual appetite has gone down.' Whatever. The truth is in the future, they should be allowed just to say he wants to feel even better. Yeah. But that is happening. So I think so sort of the medical that's what I said before the definition of what is a medically treatable issue is opening up and not only this negative deviation from the norm but preventative and actually enhancement whatever you sort of personally want for yourself and GLP-1s I want to say that the biggest sort of driver of all of that are these so-called GLP-1s like you know that under the brand names Ozempic whatever all these weight loss drugs because the truth is on paper they still only approved for clinically I mean for diabetes anyway that's where they coming from but they are approved for clinically obese people to lose weight. So I am on GLP-1s because it's great outsourced discipline. Hopefully nobody thinks I'm clinically obese but yeah it works. Yeah it's amazing. So, and actually I think that the number is 80% of Americans who use GLP-1s are not clinically obese but just want to look even better, want to be thinner, whatever. So, this is actually the first global enhancement drugs for everybody.
