How Peptides Conquered the Internet
Search Engine
PJ Vogt
4.8 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Two decades ago, bodybuilders on niche internet forums started injecting peptides. Now they're in the secret mini-fridges of some teenage boys. How did they get there? We track their crooked path from Silicon Valley to jaw-smashing influencers.
Check out Jasmine Sun's work (and her piece on peptides)
Check out Ezra Marcus' work (and his piece on peptides)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vote. Each week on the show, we answer a question we have about the world. |
| 0:05.7 | No question too big, no question too small. This week, we are trying to understand the sudden surge |
| 0:11.7 | in Americans self-experimenting with peptides, gray market Chinese peptides, injectable compounds that |
| 0:18.3 | promise to change your body in all sorts of possibly desirable ways. |
| 0:22.5 | That story, plus some help deciding how to feel about it, after these ads. |
| 0:28.7 | This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Mooby, the global film company |
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| 1:24.9 | That's Mubi.com slash search engine for a whole month of great cinema for free. This is a good. This week, we are covering peptides, not as a medical story. |
| 2:09.0 | This is not about whether you, dear listeners, should take peptides. |
| 2:11.6 | Who do you think I am, Andrew Huberman? |
| 2:14.3 | We're covering it as anthropology, meaning we want to know how so many disparate groups of Americans |
| 2:20.3 | in such a short time went from not having heard of these drugs to buying them online from |
| 2:26.0 | Chinese factories and injecting them into their bodies. |
| 2:30.0 | This is a story about the internet and how it connected some unlikely communities. |
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