Freakonomics Radio

662. If You’re Not Cheating, You’re Not Trying

February 6, 2026

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  • The perception of rules being 'stupid' or arbitrary can lead individuals to break them, a concept explored through the lens of sports in this episode of *Freakonomics Radio*, "662. If You’re Not Cheating, You’re Not Trying." 
  • The history of doping in sports, exemplified by Floyd Landis's experience, reveals that the acceptance of performance-enhancing drugs often becomes normalized within elite competitive circles, blurring the lines between cheating and accepted practice. 
  • The debate over performance enhancement extends beyond sports, with figures like Aron D'Souza promoting the 'Enhanced Games' as a platform to challenge cultural taboos and accelerate human enhancement for broader societal benefit. 

Segments

Rules and Societal Chaos
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(00:01:13)
  • Key Takeaway: Widespread belief that existing rules are ‘stupid’ drives people to break them, leading to societal chaos where different groups operate under different rules.
  • Summary: The current political moment’s chaos is attributed to a belief that many rules are nonsensical, prompting people to break them. Successfully breaking a rule builds confidence to continue defying established norms. This divergence in rule adherence creates instability as different groups play by entirely different sets of principles.
Alice in Wonderland Rules Arbitrariness
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(00:01:59)
  • Key Takeaway: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrates developing moral sensibility by questioning arbitrary, constantly changing rules dictated by authority figures.
  • Summary: Louisa Thomas re-read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and realized it depicts a child gaining confidence to question irrational, shifting rules. Alice’s journey is about developing a moral sensibility, contrasting with the Duchess’s buffoonish moralizing. The climax in the lawless croquet game highlights the need for fair and consistent rules, such as not using hedgehogs as balls.
Sports as Rule Practice
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(00:04:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Sports serve as a practice ground for society, teaching tolerance for arbitrary rules, disappointment, and success within a consistent framework.
  • Summary: Sports provide a framework for practicing how to live with arbitrary rules, teaching tolerance for injustices and managing success or disappointment. This framework can be seen as practice for society, or perhaps even a better way of being in the world. Societal values change over time, and sports often reflect or anticipate these shifts, such as the changing stance on cannabis use by athletes.
Doping: Cheating vs. Evolution
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(00:06:57)
  • Key Takeaway: The line between cheating and performance enhancement is thin, prompting an exploration of what constitutes cheating in the context of evolving athletic standards.
  • Summary: Violations of banned substance policies occasionally escalate into global scandals, forcing public reckonings about morality in sport. Floyd Landis’s career trajectory from a clean rider to a doping participant on Lance Armstrong’s team illustrates the pressure within elite cycling. The concept of ‘cheating’ is questioned, with Landis noting he was unsure who was actually cheated by his actions.
Cycling Doping Mechanics
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(00:12:43)
  • Key Takeaway: Elite cycling doping in the early 2000s primarily involved EPO and blood transfusions to game the testing window, a practice understood to be widespread among top teams.
  • Summary: Landis understood doping was likely part of cycling but was not confronted with it until 2002, when he began working with Dr. Michelle Ferrari. The primary substances involved EPO, anabolics, and human growth hormone, used to increase oxygen delivery and recovery. To evade EPO testing windows (6-8 hours), cyclists used blood transfusions immediately before or during races to manipulate red blood cell parameters.
Landis’s Doping Conflict and Confession
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(00:16:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Floyd Landis accepted doping as an unavoidable part of professional cycling to maintain his career, later regretting his denial and book written to fight the charges.
  • Summary: Landis felt immense shame growing up Mennonite but accepted doping as ‘what it is’ to remain competitive, viewing it as breaking internal game rules, not societal ones. After his 2006 win, his denial and subsequent book, Positively False, were attempts to fight the charges and continue racing, decisions he now deeply regrets. He eventually blew the whistle in 2010 to USADA, seeking to expose the systemic nature of the doping, particularly within USA Cycling.
Historical Doping Misattribution
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(00:24:54)
  • Key Takeaway: Media often incorrectly blames athlete deaths on performance-enhancing drugs when the actual cause is frequently environmental factors like heat stroke, as seen in early cycling cases.
  • Summary: April Henning notes that performance-enhancing drugs are a subset of human-enhancement drugs, and stimulants were historically effective and relatively safe. The deaths of cyclists like Knud Enemark Jensen and Tommy Simpson were blamed on amphetamines, but Jensen’s autopsy later showed no drugs, suggesting heat stroke was the cause. This highlights how cultural mores, rather than just science, inform the definition and moralization of doping.
WADA Criteria and Fluid Definitions
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(00:29:29)
  • Key Takeaway: WADA bans substances based on health risk, performance enhancement, or violating the ‘spirit of sport,’ but the line between acceptable enhancement (like caffeine) and banned substances is fluid and culturally dependent.
  • Summary: WADA maintains a list of over 300 banned substances based on three criteria, though the complexity of modern doping necessitated out-of-competition testing. Henning argues the natural/artificial distinction is a trap, as modern life is inherently artificial, and what is considered an acceptable enhancement changes over time and culture. The moralization of doping as ‘clean’ versus ‘dirty’ has been anti-doping’s biggest cultural victory, but it polarizes the issue.
The Enhanced Games Vision
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(00:46:47)
  • Key Takeaway: The Enhanced Games aim to openly permit performance-enhancing drugs to break world records, positioning themselves as a biotech play to normalize human enhancement beyond sports.
  • Summary: Aron D’Souza founded the Enhanced Games to allow performance-enhancing drugs, aiming to expand athletic boundaries and ultimately cure aging by creating a market structure for enhancement technologies. Athletes can compete naturally, self-enhanced, or via supervised clinical research projects authorized by regulators. D’Souza believes the moral complexity lies not in the substance, but in whether the intervention is productive, contrasting athletic enhancement with accepted cosmetic procedures.