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...

When bodybuilder William Dillon moved to LA, he dreamed of getting rich quick by selling the promise of big muscles in a bottle. But in the spring of 1987, that dream has come crashing down around him. With the authorities closing in on the steroid dealing ring, and fearing for his life, it’s time for Dillon and the steroid dealing ring to face the music. In the fallout from the investigators’ operation, things get ugly. Loyalties are tested, and Dillon’s life could be on the line. News of...

In the summer of 1986, bodybuilder William Dillon moves to San Diego to leave his steroid dealing days behind him, and live a quiet life of working out and running a gym. Or at least - that’s the plan. When Dillon’s old life comes calling, with the promise of easy money, it’s hard to resist. Dillon returns to the steroid dealing ring he set up with a crew of gym rats and former athletes. But this time, they’re going to do things differently. Keep it professional and stay off the radar of the...

Nobody gets arrested for dealing anabolic steroids. That’s the assumption bodybuilder Dan Duchaine, William Dillon and their fellow ring-members are relying upon, as they build the biggest steroid trafficking operation in America. But that’s all about to change. As President Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs rages in the mid 1980s, the ring find themselves in the crosshairs of a team of dogged investigators leading the fight against steroids. Host Natalia Mehlman Petrzela reveals how a newly...

In the lobby of Caesar’s Palace Hotel in Las Vegas there’s a modern-day shrine to a 2000 year old adonis - complete with perfectly square pecs. Michelangelo’s David. 17 feet of white marble beefcake. This is an ideal that bodybuilders can only aspire to. And in the 80s bodybuilding scene, a particular image of perfection emerges and begins to transform what American culture thinks of as a desirable man - one that’s bulked up and defined. But in the 1980s, the supersized muscular body isn’t...

Prior to the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas Venezuela, the issue of sports doping was largely flying under the American public’s radar. But when 19 athletes are found positive for using banned substances at the games, steroids are thrust into focus. And a stigma starts to grow. At the same time, authorities are cracking down on the manufacture of one of the most popular anabolics in the bodybuilding community - dianabol. It’s the perfect setting for a black market boom. Enter William...

Historian, podcaster and fitness expert Natalia Mehlman Petrzela lifts the lid on the steroid underground - a world of risk-taking and experimentation that lies beneath the glamorous surface of life in the 1980s LA gym scene. It’s all about making it big, at any cost. This is the scene that young bodybuilder William Dillon is initiated into, now that he’s settled into the California lifting community. He meets The Steroid Guru aka Dan Duchaine, a maverick anabolic enthusiast with a chemical...

Meet William Dillon. A young amateur bodybuilder from small-town Illinois, who dreams of getting ripped. It’s the early 1980s and across the USA a fitness revolution is underway. Exercise has become a national pastime and Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking the jacked-up physique mainstream. Dillon is one of many young men with a new kind of American dream - big muscles, and big money. In 1984, a lucky break transports Dillon to star-studded LA, and the world’s most iconic bodybuilding gym,...

Muscle Men is season one of Extreme, the BBC podcast that knows no limits. Each action-packed season tells the story of people who’ve pushed themselves to the very edge of what’s physically or mentally possible – and in doing so, have changed the world... Under the hot California sun, amateur bodybuilders and a former Olympic medallist build the biggest illegal steroid dealing ring the US had ever seen. And America gets ripped. Episodes will be released on Mondays, starting on Mon 29 July. If...