How the success of Liver King was propelled by male-led, “grindset” podcasts

Reading about the Liver King story now, his downfall almost seems like it was always inevitable - a muscle-bound, shouty man who claimed to have achieved his bodybuilder physique only by ingesting liver and bull testicles and nothing else. Really?

The answer is yes, people really believed this. But why wouldn't they? After all, some of the biggest podcasts in the world got Liver King on to tell his "inspirational" story, with very little pushback on his outlandish claims. For example, the very cool (we mean very cool) 'No Jumper' podcast got Liver King on to talk about his fitness journey, which was as embarrassing as it sounds. There was some talk of steroid accusations, but this took more than an hour to address (after plenty of talk about how his physique was actually achieved by doing bench press underwater, or something like that) and was quickly glossed over.

Elsewhere, on the Mark Bell podcast, the idea that Liver King was on steroids was put forward as being utterly preposterous, and on this episode Liver King refers to Joe Rogan's claims that he was on steroids as "dangerous", whatever that means.

There's more, lots more, but we're bored of scrolling through these conversations. All you need to know is that these podcasts all have one thing in common - they're male-led, and their audiences are predominately made up of young, impressionable men who are trying to better themselves.

The podcasts that had Liver King on and allowed him to spout his nonsense should be ashamed of themselves and should issue groveling apologies, but they won't. We live in times of zero consequences for things like this, and that is worrying. But it's too late anyway. The damage has already been done, and now we just wait for the next Liver King to get propelled by these clowns.