The Big Flop - Slaying the Liver King with Ahmed Al-kadri and Gianmarco Soresi | 26

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Wellness influencer and self-titled “Liver King” Bryan Johnson reigned supreme with 5 million TikTok followers. His followers, known as "primals", believed in his ancestral lifestyle of eating raw meat and biting heads off of fish. His supplement empire grew into a $100-million-a-year business. But the Liver Kingdom was shaken to its rock hard core when it was revealed Bryan's eight pack abs were actually thanks to over $10,000 worth of steroids each month.Gianmarco Soresi & Ahmed Al-kadri join Misha to disect the legend of the Liver King.Follow The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. You're scrolling through TikTok and you have to stop. There's a gigantic, bearded hulk of a man sitting on a golden throne in the middle of a lake. He calls himself the liver king. He has bigger arms than most pro wrestlers. His torso is thick, like so thick. He apparently can't find a shirt to fit him. Otherwise, why is he always half naked? Hold on. Is he trying to catch a fish with his bare hands? And are those bowl testicles on a little table in front of him? After biting the head off a still squirming fish, the muscular

dude gestures to the raw organ meats and pills he's about to consume, you get the message loud and clear. You stop eating processed foods. You empty out your wallet on supplements from this liver king caveman guy. And then you wait for some results. But nothing happens. Except that sick feeling you get whenever you try to eat organs. Then, one day, the truth comes out.

The Liver King is a liver pretender who actually got swole the old-fashioned way. Steroids. And now His Majesty has to own up to his lies. You shut off your computer in anger and dump all your desiccated meat supplements into the trash. A cupcake would really slap right now. The name is Liver King because liver is king. The Liver King thing drives me nuts

because that guy's on steroids. If you don't believe this is possible, then I suggest that you take that self-limiting belief, you put that s*** in a f***ing box, and you bury that next to all your embarrassing s***, and don't open your f***ing mouth about it. Yes, I've done steroids, and yes,

I'm on steroids. We are on a sinking ship. From Wondery and at Will Media, this is The Big Flop, where we chronicle the greatest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time. I'm your host, Misha Brown, social media superstar who always brings a plate of testicles to a party at Don't Cross a Gay Man.

And today, we're talking about Brian Johnson. No, not Brian Johnson, the Silicon Valley billionaire who injects himself with his own son's blood, and not the Brian Johnson who sang for the heavy metal band ACDC. We are talking about Brian Johnson, the liver king, a primal diet influencer who primarily lied about his diet. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy.

OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael.

From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. On our show today, we have Gianmarco Sorezzi,

a comedian with a Netflix special called Verified Stand-Up and a podcast called The Downside. Welcome, Gianmarco. Hello. How are you? I'm doing really well. How are you? I'm excited to talk about this guy. I see him on Twitter all the time, and that's how I know he's on the decline. We also have with us today Ahmed Al-Qadri, also a comedian with a special. But this one's on YouTube, and it's called Special Not Special.

Welcome to YouTube. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Also very excited about Liver King. Been here about this guy for a while. Well, we're about to talk about some pretty gnarly diets and eating habits, so this is just a heads up that if that's a sensitive topic for you, you might want to skip this episode. All right, let's begin. Since around 2021, Brian Johnson, aka The Liver King, has reigned supreme on social medias for his meaty content. His Instagram has 2.3 million followers, and his TikTok has netted over 5 million followers. So how does that compare to your follower counts?

Oh, come on. What the hell? Oh, that's brutal. I need to take my shirt off more. I mean, listen, I'll stoop as low to make crowd work clips, but I don't know about eating raw meats. This is the kind of guy that goes, I'm going to eat two steaks to counter a vegan. At one point, he had like a cup of blood to protest against vegans. So he gets all the people who hate vegans for no reason on his side.

It just uses hate. It's easy. It's so easy to get a following. God damn it. It's so easy to get seven million his side. It just uses hate. It's easy. It's so easy to get a following. God damn it. It's so easy to get seven million, whatever. That's nothing. So easy. You know, I mean, what is so alluring about this guy,

as we're alluding to, a big part of it is his look. So we've talked about his muscles. So I'm going to show you both a picture. And if you can just describe this picture to the listeners. It looks like if Santa Claus had gotten into CrossFit instead of helping bring presents. His six pack is gigantic. It's a 10 pack. It's a 10 pack.

It doesn't even have the V shape. It goes out with muscle. And he's holding a big slab of beef that I don't think I could hold with two hands. But he's holding it gingerly with one. You can't tell where the beef ends and his body begins. It looks like his beard. He's never seen scissors in his life. You can only imagine that his pubes are barely contained by the shorts that he is barely wearing in that shot. He looks like the only butcher in his small town. It's giving sentient hemorrhoid. He looks like a white

version of Kimbo Slice. Yes, yes. He also has like the personality of a gym membership salesman and a tow truck driver. Like, this guy, like, I remember when he tries to bite

into raw liver and he's like, this is the real stuff. The first thing I said, I was like, this is bull. This is bullshit. Like, there's no way. No, it was actually bull testicles is what it was. So, you know, by the way, we were talking about his frizzy hair. And that frizzy hair is tangled because according to him, brushing your hair or your teeth is, quote, subprimal. That is to say, unnatural in liver king speak.

He's also wearing a hat. No, hats aren't natural. What the hell? The lines that we draw are insane. Yeah. His whole shtick is promoting living like our ancestors. He has posted clip after clip of himself devouring raw organs like livers, kidneys, and eyeballs, or engaging in extreme weightlifting workouts. He often uses the line,

why eat vegetables when you can eat testicles? I mean, same. That's what they should tell kids when they won't eat their vegetables. They're like, you don't want the Brussels sprouts? Well, here's option number two. Here's option number two. I mean, the videos are shocking and shareable, but make no mistake, for someone aspiring to caveman life, he runs a well-oiled social media enterprise. So here's a typical clip of the liver king.

The name is liver king because liver is king. And here's what I'm having for dinner today. I'm going to have a slab of this buffalo liver filtering blood just hours ago. Wow. And look at the buffalo testicles that we're going to be getting down on like ice cream sandwiches. Oh! I'm telling you. That's so good.

So, yeah, sitting in his picturesque location on top of a mountain just eating raw testicles. I mean, okay, I will say this, why it's good algorithmically, because aesthetically the shot is beautiful. A good landscape shot and then a weird bearded looking dude and then he's eating raw, it's perfect for content. There's no way that's good. There's no way that's good. I refuse to believe that he's enjoying that. But who is the real muscly man under that putrid liver crown? Short answer, it's hard to know. What we know about his life comes mostly from his own statements, website, and social accounts. Are you ready to hear the story behind Liver King as best we can tell?

Are you ready to hear the story behind Liver King as best we can tell? Oh my God, I cannot wait to hear this. I feel like I'm going to talk to the CEO of Fyre Fest. Well, little Brian Johnson grows up in San Antonio, Texas with his mom. His dad dies before he's born, according to Johnson. Brian is smaller and weaker than other kids at school, but things start turning around for little Brian and his mommy when a new man enters the picture. Mommy's new guy friend has a weightlifting set, and Brian starts using it. Thanks to access to this home gym, teenage Brian, he gets in shape. See? Father figures are important. With Brian's newfound muscles, the world opens up to

him. So Brian says his life was changed forever because a classmate compared him to a celebrity. Which celebrity do you think that was? Oh, easy. Lou Ferrigno. Oh, that's a good one. No, it was Marky Mark Wahlberg. What? Dude, I would take that as an insult, bro. Because if it was Marky Mark, this is when he was, well, white rappers were cool. They're still kind of cool now. No, this was his Abercrombie and Fitch days. He's a hot guy.

It's so nerdy, cringy when I think of Marky Mark with him shirtless. What kind of enlightened celebrity did you think inspired him? They said, oh, you look like Truman Capote. Like it was going to be Mark Wahlberg or The Rock. That was it. That was it. Well, he starts getting attention from girls and he does well enough in school to try med school,

except he drops out during orientation. He does claim to have a degree in biochemistry and finds a job as a pharmaceutical rep, which pays pretty well. In 2004, while snowboarding, Brian meets the love of his life, his bozina, aka Barbara, a dentist in the greater Houston area. They get married and she becomes the future liver queen. The two become business partners, both owning a stake in her dental clinic and real estate properties. The fact that Brian eventually claims to be against toothbrushing

despite his wife being a trained dentist and him being co-owner of her practice is bizarre. So you're probably wondering what this marriage is like. Well, according to the Liver King website, the Liver King and Queen have an affection quota. He says it's because people give more affection to their dogs than their own soulmates. So the Liver King requires his queen to meet an affection quota every day. So John Marco, could you please help us understand the quota per liver king's website?

Sure. Oh, this is the same one I have with my girlfriend. So it's four kisses a day, two hugs a day, six additional touch points a day, shoulders, leg, beard, beard hands it don't matter two hand holds a day one head on heart while sleeping one nope that's where we draw the line some things remain sacred and our sex life is one of them shut the fuck up liver king get out of here get out of here with this being coy all of a sudden other than the sex

thing that was a much more tame list if you told me to guess what the list was i was expecting like three handies a minute yeah yeah i was thinking like sex at least two times a day one in the morning and one at night stuff like that like because that's if if he's trying to go primal, all we did back in the day was fucking. Well, shortly after marrying, Brian and Barbara welcome two boys into the world, Rad and Striker. Oh, man. All is well, except it's not. As Brian claims in interviews, both boys start to suffer from strange allergies and have trouble keeping food down. Brian and Barbara start to do their own research. Uh-oh. Their own research. Uh-oh.

Everything changes for them when they discover the books of Sally Fallon. So, Ahmed, could you please read the titles of some of Sally's books? Nourishing Diets, How Paleo, Ancestral, and Traditional Peoples Really Ate. Nourishing Traditions, The Cookbook That Challenges Political Correct Nutrition. Oh, come on. Politically Correct Nutrition and the Contagion Myth, Why Virus, Including Coronavirus, Are Not the Cause of Disease.

Oh, come on. Here we go. I knew, like, as soon as they said own research, I was like, okay, yeah. Fallon is a big advocate of things like making it legal to sell raw unpasteurized milk, which sounds good until you realize raw American milk is one of the riskiest foods to eat, according to the CDC. Seriously, if your raw milk is poorly sourced, you can lose kidney function, become paralyzed, or die. Wait, wait, wait. So that times I drank expired milk, I was really risking it, huh? Risking it all, living on the edge. Oh, man. I mean, what would it take for you to get into a diet of raw and ancestral foods?

I get the milk thing. Let me be honest. I don't want to lie to be all politically correct for this podcast. Sometimes I see unpasteurized milk and I'm like, I'm curious. I'm curious. So it wouldn't take much, but you would have to test it. I'm not risking it for milk. Yeah.

I'm not risking it for maybe, you know, maybe a bump of cocaine. Not for milk. Yeah. According to Brian Johnson's self-reported life story, the boys are only eight and five years old when Brian and Barbara start doing their own research into more traditional diets. They cut out processed foods and feed their sons bone broth and beef livers.

So let's hear Brian describe how his children reacted to this new diet. You know, once you are hungry, man, you will eat it and you'll love it. And then they wanted more. Pause. He also claims the boys refused to eat at first, and Brian describes them as being emaciated and looking like they have the flu. All of those doubts, all of the efforts that went into it, you know, the return on investment,

we got to see exponential return immediately. And so now you lean in and now you say, how far can I take this? Some parents really view their kids as like rats in a lab. And then they're like, once this works, then I can launch my new social media channel. And he was saying like, they were having the flu. It's like, no, you just didn't give them medicine.

Well, according to the liver parents, the entire family adopts what they call the ancestral lifestyle to stay healthy. And it appears to work. The allergies seem to disappear. The ancestral living that Brian and his family embrace is a mix of so-called primal caveman diets and Spartan workouts that have been trending in the last few years. But Brian adds his own flavor, so to speak, with his nine ancestral tenets. And to understand what these are, let's play a game. So the nine tenets are each a single word meant to encapsulate a piece of ancestral wisdom. There are some concrete actions like sleep and a few more general words like sun. So how about each of you take a turn trying to name the remaining seven tenants.

Whoever is able to accurately name the most tenants wins. And remember, the tenants are only one word long. Sex? No. Earth? Nope. I'm going through the Captain Planet. Fire?

Heat? Wildlife? Like animal wildlife? No no i'll just list them out we failed so bad us little soy boys really failed that one bad so the the nine tenants are sleep eat move shield connect cold sun okay fight, and bond. That's basic human life. How's that ancestral? This caveman. God damn it. I'm sorry.

I should have thought dumber. So, I mean, are you guys ready to embrace the lifestyle? Sure. Yeah, let's do it. Hit me. I've been bulking. I'm at 185 it. Hit me. I'm at, I've been bulking. I'm at 185. I plateaued.

I'm trying to hit 190. Let's do it. Well, Brian Johnson claims he had a moral dilemma. He discovered this great way of living, but he thinks to himself, what kind of piece of shit would I be if I don't model, teach, and preach this to the world? So he hires a social media team to develop a persona and launches his at liver king channels in August of 2021. It's hard to believe,

but the liver king content starts off relatively normal. The first few liver king TikToks just have Brian introducing the nine ancestral tenants and a few videos of his extreme workout routines. But he also does silly bits like him lifting heavy luggage at the airport. And of course, he shows off his diet. At this point, it's almost normal food. Like one example is a meal of maple syrup, yogurt, avocado, onion, some liver, and a pile of burgers. I mean, what do you think about that meal? Muckbang. That sounds fine. I can already just see the trajectory. And someone goes, ew, that liver looks weird. And the social media team's like, okay, so now we make it 10 times the size. We cut the yogurt. No comments about the yogurt. Let's get more liver. Poor guy.

A few months go by and the liver king starts to introduce more raw meat content into his food videos and he sees follower count go up. The foods include raw fertilized chicken eggs and raw marrow bones. Sounds good. His physical feats also get more gruesome. Part of becoming a member of the ancestral lifestyle tribe is an initiation ritual created by the liver king called the barbarian. So to perform the barbarian, one must hold a 70-pound kettlebell in each hand, kettlebell in each hand, strap 20-pound ankle weights on each leg, carry 70 pounds in a backpack, and drag 120 pounds of weights on a sled for one mile. That's actually the secret to being a successful comedian now. You got to just high weight, low reps, ripped body. Yeah, sure. Well, the Liver King posts video after video of himself doing the barbarian,

including across the Brooklyn Bridge. Like, what would you think seeing a shirtless man hauling hundreds of pounds through New York City? I would think, oh, that's the third one I saw today. Why do all of this? Why go through this terrible charade? Well, Brian owns and operates a supplement company that sells freeze-dried animal organs. That's right. The liver king reigns over a

magical supplement kingdom. How do you think a guy who pushes raw foods can sell his supplements? It's literally the whole fitness industry. It's all the same thing can get you there. They all just bullshit on the marketing, you know? And that's just to sell you on this idea. According to the Liver King, real nutrition comes from nose-to-tail eating. Bones, blood, horns, and hooves. Yup. Not into hooves?

Did the grocery store run out of cow lungs? Well, the king and queen have you covered. Just buy some ground-up meat pills from the Liver King website, Ancestral Supplements. The Liver King and fam are raking it in, reportedly as much as $100 million annually. Oh my god. Fuck. All right. All right. I'll do it. I'll get on this bandwagon. John Marco, we chose the wrong industry. We really did.

A hundred million. But while Brian is living like a king, his crown does not go unchallenged. Medical experts are quick to point out that eating the daily feasts of raw organs he shows in his videos would be unhealthy. But the real threat to Brian's kingdom is the growing suspicion around whether his He-Man physique is really all natural as he claims. TikTok viewers are not buying it. So let's just take a quick little look at a snapshot of a comment section. Oh, is this what HGH gut looks like? TRT, Tren, Enhyte, Tim Allen on Royce.

That was a good one. Yeah, so TRT stands for testosterone replacement therapy. HGH is, of course, human growth hormone. Even the kids on TikTok, they still believe in Santa Claus, but they're like, something's fishy about this. There's no way this is natural. Well, on the liver king's frequent podcast appearances, he has asked the steroid question repeatedly, and he categorically denies the allegations.

Here's what the king has to say when confronted about performance enhancing drugs or PEDs on the podcast, Pardon My Take. You definitely take PEDs. You know what? F*** it. I'm going to be honest. All right, here we go. I take PEDs on the podcast, Pardon My Take. You definitely take PEDs. You know what? F*** it. I'm going to be honest. All right, here we go. I take PEDs.

Yeah? I prioritize, execute, and dominate. Every one. He should run for president. That's a great political answer, honestly. Yeah. There is one glaring bit of incongruity nobody seems to discuss. So let's take a look at a photo of the Liver King's family posing with some assault rifles in front of an

army tank, as you do. Oh my God. I mean, could you describe what they look like for the listeners? I could beat all of them up. I could kick all of them on. They can keep the guns. I'll outrun them. The kid on the right does not look like any different from someone his age. He does not even look like he's like a super athletic kid. He looks kind of frail. And then the little kid looks just like a little kid. And his wife is very attractive. But that's it. They look like preppers. Like they're just waiting for a civil war to happen. It looks like the dad is about to shoot his own son in the foot. Sometimes my dad and I will play mercy.

Like we'll squeeze each other's hand to see who's stronger. If he did this with his sons, they would be dead. That's the difference in strength. So eventually, the Great Liver Kingdom is threatened by an evil podcast empire ruled by the terrifying Joe Rogan. The steroid question is flung in front of millions of listeners when on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, comedian Bert Kreishner mentions he ate some raw liver with the liver king. Rogan doubts that liver king's body is all natural saying, quote, test that guy. Now, Rogan should know steroids because he's discussed using HGH and TRT openly. I completely agree. Like Joe Rogan has been pretty on point with who's who's natty and who's not but yeah i

kind of believe him on that point and and joe rogan's also part of that whole like oh yeah you gotta eat your meat i'm all about carnivore diet so i i believe him i don't know both both bert and the the liver king need to put on a fucking shirt every once in a while you know what i mean i we get it we get it we get. You got to have it on sometimes for it to feel special when it's off. It can't just be off the whole time. It is not a thing anymore. But while speculation has reached a fever pitch, it's not Joe Rogan that leads the downfall of the king. Another force threatens to unseat the almighty meat monarch from his iron rich throne, to unseat the almighty meat monarch from his iron-rich throne, a YouTuber.

And this YouTuber has his hands on something that he thinks will expose the liver king as a fraud. What do you think he has? A Nutrition 101 book? I think the real answer is he probably got his test results from somebody. An order, an order number. Like, give me one billion steroids, please.

Yeah. Fitness YouTuber Derek Monroe has been watching the Liver King for years, get more and more attention online. And he actually agrees with a lot of the Liver King's advice. Monroe eats an ounce of liver a day. But what drives him crazy is that the King is implying he built his body through workouts and his, quote, ancestral tenants alone, and vehemently denies steroid allegations. Remember, the king claims to be pulling in

$100 million a year off of the companies he's promoting. So Monroe believes he has every incentive to lie about it. What he doesn't have is proof. I just think it's wild, because I remember when I was younger, who was that baseball player that was so popular they found out he did steroids? Mark McGuire. Mark McGuire. That's it. Yeah, that guy. Yeah. There was

a time where steroids was like, this is bad. You should never do steroids. And now we're at this place where everyone's like, no, everyone's doing steroids, and they've all been lying to you for forever. Arnold Schwarzenegger did a documentary, and he's like, yeah, we did steroids. Are you fucking nuts?

Yeah. Also Lance Armstrong. There was like a whole interview about it. Yeah. That was like the biggest thing. Did you know that the liver King actually was the one who ate one of Lance's testicles? Jesus. Oh, Jesus.

So in 2022, someone forwards Monroe what appear to be leaked emails that the Liver King exchanged with a bodybuilding coach. Brian mentions he has hired a team to build the Liver King brand. He writes, quote, I am pouring ridiculous resources into making this happen, including hosting a film crew that will be filming seven days a month. He adds, quote, I have to stay in great fucking shape. The back fat fucking kills me. I mean, relatable, right? So Brian also includes results from a blood test, like you were saying,

and spells out what performance-enhancing drugs he uses. And he says that it costs him $11,000 per month. On November 28th of 2022, Monroe publishes a YouTube video called The Liver King Lie. In it, he shares the emails, and the video quickly earns millions of views. After this smoking gun goes public, the liver king has no choice but to fess up and undergo the time-honored tradition of posting a YouTube apology video. Let's listen to a clip. Primals, I'm making this video to apologize because I f***ed up, because I lied, and I misled a lot of people. No, wait. Pause for a second.

Can you describe the scene here? Does this, like, mise-en-scene say contrition to you? It straight up looks like a sex dungeon. Can I just say, this goes back to my earlier point of why you need to put on your shirt sometimes. Because the fact that he's not wearing a shirt is insane it's it's because he's still like he's in character giving the apology you gotta be like hey here's a different atmosphere there's on the left side it's terrible framing the left side is like stairs i don't know if he like walks up the stairs after and it's a metaphor of him going to a higher elevation point. He's sitting on like a king's chair. It's awful.

Yeah. Well, let's listen to a little bit more of this apology. Yes, I've done steroids. And yes, I'm on steroids monitored and managed by a trained hormone clinician. Liver King, the public figure, was an experiment to bring awareness to the 4,000 people a day who kill themselves. What the hell? Our people are hurting at record rates with depression, autoimmune, anxiety, infertility, low ambition in life. Man. Oh, I'm so mad. I'm so mad.

You're really going to bring up men's mental health, you piece of shit. Just own up to your fucking. Oh, my God. I'm so mad. He doesn't apologize for more than 15 seconds before he tries to say the liver king, who he, again, who he currently is in that video, is an experiment. It is bad. This is a great downfall because it's, it's,

it's listen, this is the age we live in of these made up personas and this, like this, this idea of, Oh, this is just a character, but you embody a 24 seven. Then it's not a character.

Yeah. That's a Michael Scott. Well, that was a character on a show. This is who you are. Yeah, you're a bad person. It's like, oh my God, how are you going to fucking do that? I'm so like really annoyed where it's like, I do all these bad things.

And it's like, this is why I hate women. It's like, why do you hate women? Hey, you know, men, like men's mental health, bro. It's at an all time low. What the fuck kind of gaslighting tactic is this? So many claim they trusted that Johnson was being honest about his lifestyle and believed they could achieve their goals using his products and advice. Others criticized Brian for promoting body dysmorphia in young men who may not have had

the knowledge base or support to sift through lies obvious to folks like Derek Monroe or Joe Rogan. And body dysmorphia is a very real problem, and online marketing can obviously be a cause. So finally, the world knows the truth. Sort of. And it's time for the liver king to face the liver guillotine. In late December of 2022, a class action lawsuit was filed in New York against Bryan's companies. The suit was seeking $25 million in damages. But fortunately for the liver king and supplement pushers everywhere, the lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in March of 2023. Unfortunately, there were basically no repercussions for misleading the public and profiting off of their naivete. Even his apology video has at least 4 million views, raking in the cash. So really, the only comeuppance that

Brian personally experiences besides possible stress is unrelenting dunking from his fellow fitness influencers and internet celebrities. Let's listen to a couple of reactions from some of the biggest online personalities in the world. PewDiePie, Logan Paul, and Joe Rogan. The liver king, no! What? He's not natural.

He's been exposed. I can't believe it. We all knew that he was lying. And then he got exposed for being on a fuckload of shit. Like a lot of shit. Like my man could probably eat a cheeseburger for every meal every single day, not work out and still look like he does. Hey, Derek, you know how I got so jacked?

How? I followed the nine ancestral tenants. Oh, I heard that works really well. It's the best way. Yeah. I mean, for $100 million, that doesn't seem like such a big consequence to me. He can afford the therapy to deal with Joe Rogan

making a mean comment. I mean, it's funny. He pops up on my Twitter. I don't know why. And it said, I never brush my teeth. He said, I rarely wipe. And then all the comments are, you're steroids, you're fake.

But clearly he's thriving. You know, you can make a lot of money in this world. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that brings us to where are they now? You probably guessed it, but Brian is still eating or giving the impression of eating truckloads of organs. Liver King rang in the new year 2024 by sharing a video where he shows off his meal. It was a heart, four testicles, four marrow bones, a kidney, a spleen, a beef meat platter, a carb platter with three different potatoes, and a can of surstroming.

He doesn't eat any of it in the video, FYI. Also, surstroming is fermented herringfish in a can and is often described as one of the most unpleasant smelling foods on the planet. He claims to have stopped steroids for an extended period of time, but wanting to keep his strength, he's admitted to using them again. The Liver King is still adding to his kingly treasure vault, selling organ meat pills. That's still around. And according to the Liver King's website in 2024, he has plans to launch another 12 supplement brands, including one aimed at gamers, whatever that means.

Oh my God. At this point, I'm just impressed. Why doesn't he sell steroids? I'll buy the steroids. Give me the Liver King steroids. That makes sense. Hey, you really want to look like me? Here's this thing. That makes sense hey you really want to look like me here's this thing

that makes sense oh my god but why is this guy like teflon is it the liver meat i mean this how easily manipulatable guys are earth and soil a fire truck pew pew it's pew, pills. Like, we're so lame. We're pathetic. So here on The Big Flop, we try. We try our hardest to be positive people. So we always like to try to ask, are there any silver linings that you can think of? As a performance artist, again, you know, if I'm viewing this from my artsy-fartsy,

I go, this guy, per your point about Fear Factor, he eats crazy things and it's fun to go, oh! That's why I would watch the videos. And so for me, that part is fun. And I think if we take any upside, it's that over the course of recording this, he probably died from a heart attack from all the steroid use. And so, you know, we can take comfort in that. He got caught exposed for using steroids, but everybody already knew that he was

already using steroids. Does that make sense? It's like, I'm a straight man, but if I were to come out as gay, people would be like, yeah, we knew that. Just like the liver King, you were already putting testicles in your mouth. I was just going to get out of bed.

But if anything, it's kind of just sad with how easily men are manipulated. Now, more younger men are just be like, Oh, I want to take steroids. I mean, it's so normal. Fuck it.

Let's just take steroids. Why not? And then they're going to be risking there. It's a lot of health issues, I don't understand. And it's a lot of money too. Why would you want to spend so much money on steroids? You know, I do think that like does lead to one real silver lining, in my opinion, that more fitness influencers

are having the natty or no conversations in their channels and being more open about steroid use, which just, I guess, makes people more informed before they make that decision. Well, now that you both know about the liver king, would you consider this a baby flop, a big flop, or a mega flop? I gotta go big, big leaning into mega

because the whole thing is a lie. He will never be able to be on social media without people commenting, you lied, you do steroids. And so in a way, the permanency of that following him makes it a big, if not a mega flop because the brand cannot recover

unless he does, as I've suggested, start branding steroids directly. I'd say it would be a big flop. It can be a mega flop if two things, if he is dead broke or he died from a heart attack, you know, that will get people's attention. But it's definitely a big flop because he's still going. He still has dumb people who still follow him.

You know, it's kind of like Trump supporters, honestly. After seeing people who would be like, yeah, man, Trump, no matter what, you know, like it just proves that no matter what you'll do, you'll always have fans. Well, thank you so much to our guests, Gianmarco Soresi and Ahmed Al-Khadri for joining us here on The Big Flop. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week with one of the biggest flops in TV history, Magic Johnson and the Magic Hour. Bye!

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