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Retatrutide vs Semaglutide: October 2026 Trial Results · The Peptide Research Podcast

• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Todd, my brother and I have been arguing about this for 19 years.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: We both passed our driving test first time.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: He got a higher score.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: He has never once let it go.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got a problem with the scoring.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a problem with the whole comparison.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Different examiner, different test center, different Tuesday.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Both results are completely correct, and the gap between them is worth nothing.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the most misunderstood sum in this entire field.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is part of our ongoing series on how to read peptide research.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hit follow so the next one lands in your feed automatically.us podcast.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Todd Collins is with me.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Today isn't a compound and it isn't a cell, it's a sum, one that people do constantly and shouldn't.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The compounds are peptides, and a peptide is a short chain of amino acids, the little building blocks your body makes all its proteins out of.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there's news to hang it on.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: A direct comparison between two of them got reported.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, Todd, what does somebody walk away knowing?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Why you can't subtract one study from another, what changes the moment both things sit inside one study, and the question to ask of any comparison you ever read.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: One note before we start: all peptides discussed in this podcast relate to research use only.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Any references to data from animals, cells, or human studies relate exclusively to scientific literature and not to products from energy biolabs.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: These compounds are not approved drugs or dietary supplements and are not for human consumption.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing in this podcast is medical advice.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Start me at zero.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Two studies, two numbers.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't I just take one off the other?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the simple version, because both numbers can be exactly right, and the gap between them can be made of something neither compound did.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Say more.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Different people went into each one.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Different places ran them, different instructions, different year, different everything you didn't write down.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: All of it sits in the gap, and nothing pulls it back out.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the gap isn't a measurement of anything.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: The gap isn't a measurement.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing hiding in it has a name.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that differs between your two groups and could explain the whole result on its own.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Researchers call that a confounder.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's two sprint times from two different afternoons.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Same track.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: One of them had a tailwind.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the stopwatch has no idea.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: The stopwatch is perfect.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It just can't tell me which run had the wind behind it.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my follow-up.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: How do you ever get rid of that?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: You stop running two studies.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: You put both things inside one.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And how does that help?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Same clinics, same stretch of calendar, same instructions read off the same page.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Everything you forgot to write down now sits in both groups equally.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Except who ends up in which group?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Which is the last hole.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it gets closed by handing the decision to chance.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody chooses.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Researchers call that randomizing.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's dealing cards instead of picking teams.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: If I pick the teams, I'll pick my mates, and I won't even notice I did it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody can argue with the deal.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody can argue with the deal.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Second question though, how would anybody prove that even works?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And here's what that looks like on a bench.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Put the identical material in both groups, same stuff on both sides, hand out the assignment by chance, and don't tell the people doing the measuring which group they're looking at.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the two sides come out the same.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: The two sides never come out the same.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: They come out close, and the distance between them is pure noise with no compound in it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that's your yardstick.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's the whole yardstick.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Any real difference has to be bigger than the gap you get from nothing.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So a head-to-head is the good version.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Does it answer everything?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: It answers one question, the one somebody chose, and a comparison is only ever as wide as the thing sitting in the other group.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning what in practice?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: The thing you measure against has a name.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Researchers call it the comparator.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Change the comparator, and you've asked a different question, even with the first compound untouched.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's my nephew being tall.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's tall.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Tall for a nine-year-old.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Put him in a room of grown-ups, and the same boy is short.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing about the boy moved.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing about the boy moved.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the bench version of that one?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Run a compound against one comparator and get an answer.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now run it again against a different comparator with everything else identical.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: The verdict moves, and nothing about your compound changed.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So where does that leave the actual news?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Two of these three went into one study together.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Redatrutide, the triple one that works on three different signals, against semaglutide, the one that started this whole category.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And terzepitide?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wasn't in it, which is the complicated point landing in real life.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: That study can't tell you anything about terzepitide.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody failed, it just wasn't in the room.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And what came back?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Retitrutide came out ahead on both of the things that study was built to watch.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: The same report also said more of the people in those groups stopped before the end.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Both directions in one announcement.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Both directions, which is what an honest report looks like.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the part worth sitting with.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: That is the group who ran the study announcing its own headline.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: The working hasn't been published and picked over by anybody else yet.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a real result, and it isn't the final word.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Those two things are allowed to both be true.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's hiding a verdict.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: The verdict isn't in yet.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Todd, tell me you've got one of these.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I spent a month certin' a new batch of material behaved differently from the old one.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I had the old results in a folder, I had the new results on my desk, I compared them line by line, and the difference was obvious.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Go on.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Then somebody made me run the old one again alongside the new one.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Same week, same hands, same everything.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: The difference vanished.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing I'd measured was wrong.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I just never measured the two of them on the same day.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And a folder doesn't come with a tailwind warning.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: A folder never does.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And all of this only holds if the two things you lined up really were what the label said.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's why NRG Biolabs is the foundational partner behind the show.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Third-party testing, batch documentation, certificates of analysis.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: See the COAs and the lab standards at peptidesearch.us.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the quiet thing a page like that gives you.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Everything else in a study you'd have to run again to question.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: The paperwork is the one part somebody else can check standing still.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Let me pull it together.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Two studies run apart can't be subtracted.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Both numbers can be right, and the gap between them can be made of people and places and years.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The thing hiding in that gap is a confounder.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Putting both compounds in one study at one time closes most of it.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Handing out the groups by chance closes the rest.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's randomizing.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer you get belongs to the pair you chose.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The other side of it is the comparator.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and one last thing that's easy to overlook.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: We argue about which of these is better, as though better is something a compound carries around.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing carries it.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Every comparison you'll ever read answers one question somebody picked.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: This thing against that thing in those people that year.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Change any one and you've asked something else.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the habit worth building is asking what the other side actually was.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so there's no such thing as better on its own.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd sooner have this at reading pace than talking pace, the comparison write-up is at peptideresearch.us, limits and all.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if today's breakdown on reading ahead to head was useful, follow the show.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: The feed behind this one runs deep, one piece of this field at a time.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this podcast and want to stay up to date on all the latest peptide research, you can find links to our website, Facebook page, and even our Discord channel in the podcast description below.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can even sign up for our newsletter and get notified every time a new episode rolls out.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's our show, and tell my brother the tailwind counts.