Extreme

In the aftermath of the tragedy that claimed 11 lives, the surviving climbers leave K2 behind. As they do, they’re walking into a worldwide media frenzy. Everyone wants to know what happened? What went wrong? And most...

As dawn breaks on a new day, it’s August 2nd 2008. There are nine climbers who are all either trapped, injured…or unaccounted for. Dutch climber Wlico van Rooijen finds himself lost and alone on the mountain. He’s spent...

What was first a tragedy now morphs into a full blown catastrophe. In the aftermath of the avalanche, stranded climbers are battling their way back to Camp. What they don’t know is that they’re searching for a path down...

When Cecilie Skog met Rolf Bae, it was love at first sight. A whirlwind romance quickly followed, as they climbed the world’s tallest mountains, shoulder to shoulder. Now recently married, she and Rolf wanted to tick...

In the chaos of the Death Zone, this group of climbers begins to splinter apart. Some have turned back but others have caught Summit Fever. They want to push upwards at all costs. Even if time is against them. Cecilie...

Once you get beyond 26,000 feet, your body can no longer acclimatise to the extreme high altitude. This is called the Death Zone. Cecilie Skog and her fellow climbers are in the Death Zone, their eyes trained on the top...

The climbers at Base Camp come up with a plan to help everyone reach the top. Professional Adventurer Wilco van Rooijen and his team take one route. Cecilie, her husband Rolf and many of their fellow climbers take...

It’s the summer of 2008. Cecilie Skog, her husband Rolf Bae and their teammates are aiming to become the first Norwegians to reach the summit of K2. When they arrive at Base Camp, they find it full to bursting with...

A mountain of trouble. In 2008, 30 climbers took on K2. Over two disastrous days, 11 of those people would lose their lives. This is the story of what really happened. K2 is a perfect pyramid that pierces through the...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

Muscle Men is season one of Extreme, the podcast from BBC Radio 4 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...