Testosterone | This American Life | Episode 893

Key Takeaway

Before using a hormone score, personality label, or stereotype to judge yourself or someone else, pause and ask: what behavior actually matters here? The workplace test in this episode created anxiety and status competition while revealing little definitive about anyone’s character. Today, replace one label—“aggressive,” “low-drive,” “too quiet,” or “not manly/feminine”—with a concrete observation, then choose one respectful behavior you can control, such as listening longer, holding your tongue, or checking in without demanding disclosure.

Episode Overview

This American Life revisits its 2002 exploration of how much testosterone shapes desire, identity, behavior, and social expectations, prompted by news of proposed military-wide testosterone testing. Through a trans man’s early transition, a workplace hormone-ranking experiment, an account of losing testosterone, and a mother learning to accept her teenage son’s silence, the episode repeatedly complicates simple biological explanations.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Testosterone | This American Life | Episode 893 from This American Life. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

from WBZ Chicago. This is American Life. I'm Eric Glass. Okay, so maybe you saw in the news that Defense Secretary Pete Hagsath has ordered everybody in the armed services over 30 years old to have their testosterone levels tested. That's men and women both. And then anybody who wants to get special shots to get a testosterone boost, they can get them. goal here. Hex social media post about this was titled the high tea, high testosterone department of war. And maybe you saw people had all kinds of reactions to this, including lots of people joking about how Hegath was suddenly embracing gender affirming care.

I personally had a strong reaction to the idea of testing everybody's testosterone levels in a workplace, which was I've lived through that here at my job at This American Life. We did that back in 2002. We did a show where we talked about testosterone and the personality traits that supposedly go along with higher testosterone levels. And as part of that show, all of us on staff got our testosterone levels tested to see who had the highest. And then before the results came back, we all sat down and discussed who we thought might have the highest.

And then we revealed the results. Anyway, today as a cautionary tale to the men and women of the armed services about what it's like for an entire workplace to test their testosterone, we are rerunning that old show. Our staff experiment you'll hear comes up a little ways into the show. It's act two, but the original episode started with one of our producers at the time, Alex Bloomberg, joining me in the studio to explain why we took up the subject in the first place back in 2002.

Hello, Ira. Alex. Yes. What's the reason for this week's show? Well, I've been thinking about that and and for me, the the reason for today's program goes back to a book I read when I was 15 called The Women's Room. Maybe people listening will will remember The Women's Room. It was a it was a sort of a seinal feminist novel from the ' 70s. And um I first came across the the women's room when I when I was digging through my parents bookshelves looking for porn, you know, books with naughty parts in them.

Um you know, like Fear of Flying. And um so I picked it up and I read it cuz the word women was in the title in lipstick probably. Or maybe not. Yes. It's incredibly pmical. like it it describes basically a group of women um sort of going from the 50s through the 60s and uh they sort of all suffer at the hands of the various men in their lives and you know there's there's constantly you know there's like you know um women are slowly being driven crazy by their husband's incessant criticism or they're being called ugly after they get masectomies or they're being stifled by their husband's emotional shallowess and um and I noticed you happen to have brought into the studio with you today a copy of the women's room.

Yeah. Well, I recently reread it just to see just to see, for example, I sort of bookmarked a couple of these things. Um, you know, on page 198, the narrator comes in and she says, "You know, you think I hate men. I guess I do." And then a little bit further down, she says, "Uh, my feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dao, I watched the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach.

And I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. And then a little bit later, my hatred is learned from experience. That is not prejudice. I wish it were prejudice. Then perhaps I could unlearn it. There's not very much pornographic about that. It's an incredibly strange thing to read this book at that age because at that age I felt like, you know, there's one other woman who sort of comes into play at this point. And that's that's uh I probably shouldn't say her name.

Let's just call her, you know, let's just call her Kelly. Um and she was like in 8th grade with me and she sat two rows away from me. And and I remember one time like sitting in home room with her and seeing like the the you know like her button-down shirt was open a little bit and I could catch the bare sliver of her little training bra and and at like and it was like perhaps the most desire I've ever felt in my life maybe. I mean it was just I it was like all consuming and I couldn't I mean I I couldn't concentrate for the rest of the day.

I remember it to this day. And so at at at the time I was reading this book, I felt like, oh my god, this is what this is like I could see myself becoming the people that she was describing, the men she was describing. And it was really terrifying. My testosterone and and how it affects me and how I react to it, I think about on a daily basis all the time. It often feels like there's a there's a there's something in my body giving me instructions that I probably shouldn't follow.

Okay, which brings us to today's program. A while back, Alex tried to convince all of us who work on the radio show that we should do an entire program about testosterone. And I have to say none of us were really buying it, especially the women who found the subject dull. Even though, as Alex tried to point out to them, women have testosterone and it affects them pretty much exactly the same way that it affects men. I think all of us were um fearing a kind of men are from Mars, women are from Venus sort of thing.

How hormones make men be all aggressive and women all non-aggressive in very stereotyped ways, which all seem kind of reductionistic and dumb-headed. And then Alex started reading and calling people. And one of the people that he called was this guy who wrote an article for GQ magazine about what happened to him when because of medical reasons he stopped producing testosterone. And for four months he lived without testosterone before they caught the problem. And the way he described living without testosterone was really incredible. everything that I identify as being me, uh my ambition, uh my interest in things, um my sense of humor, uh the inflection in my voice.

I mean, the the the quality of my speech even changed in the time that I was without a lot of the hormone. So, yes, the the introduction of testosterone returned everything. There were things that I find offensive about my own personality uh that were disconnected then you know and it was nice to be without them. envy, um, [clears throat] the desire to judge itself. You know, I approached people with a humility that I had never displayed before. I grew up in a culture like all of us that um divides the soul from the body and that that is your singleness.

That is your uniqueness. And then I go through this experience where I have small amounts of a bodily chemical removed and then reintroduced and it changes everything I know as my self. And it and it and it violates the the sanctity of that understanding, you know. Um, and that's humbling and it's terrifying. I think when it comes to this stuff, most of us do not know what to believe. We're caught between thinking that our hormones and body chemistry can determine so much about our personalities and wanting to believe that they don't.

And so today on our program, we bring you four stories exploring that question. How much does testosterone determine? Act one of our show, Infinite Gent, someone gets pumped up with several times the amount of testosterone that most men have and describe some surprising changes. Act two contestone. In that act, at Alex's suggestion, all of us on the staff of this radio program decide to find out who has the most and who has the least testosterone with lab tests to see how the levels match with our personality traits.

An exercise I have to say u most of us at this point would not recommend that you try at your workplace or with your friends. Act three, life at zero, in which we hear about what it means to lose all your testosterone. Act four, learning to shut up. In that act, a mother asks her teenage son all her questions about what it means to be a boy, which is of course exactly the sort of thing you do not want your mother asking you on tape at 15.

Stay with us. It's just American life act one infinite gend. So, what exactly does an injection of testosterone do to you? What kind of changes do you feel? Back in 2002, when we first broadcast today's show, a producer, Alex Bloomberg, talked with Griffin Hanssbury about that experience. Griffin got massive testosterone shots as part of transitioning from female to male, which Griffin did after he got out of college. I should say that uh because it's been over 20 years since this interview happened, you might notice some ideas about gender and some language that are of its time.

Also a quick heads up to listeners that the interview acknowledges the existence of sex and sexual desire. I went to Binmar College which is a a women's college and uh chose a women's college because um I strongly identified as um as a woman at the time as a feminist um and as a dyke. Um, I had my leather biker jacket and my big leather belt and my black t-shirts and my Doc Martin boots, you know, my combat boots. Uhhuh. Um, and that felt pretty comfortable for a while.

And then my sophomore year in college, I was uh lying in bed with my girlfriend. I don't know if we were talking or or what it was. And it just sort of hit me uh like a bolt of lightning, as they say. And I just knew that uh I had to change my change my body. Um and uh so I started doing the research on it and the only way to do that was to uh take testosterone. Um my first injection was a pretty large one of uh 2 cc's of 200 mgram strength depo testosterone which is um a fairly high amount.

um to to just to just to give you a sense of how much that is. Um the average um amount of testosterone in in an average male body is between 300 and 1,000 nanogs per deciliter of blood. After that shot and after an average shot, my testosterone levels go up to over 2,000 nanogs per deciliter. So that I have the testosterone of two high testosterone men in my body at once. You you have the testosterone of two linebackers. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. That's a lot. It's a lot of tea.

Um and what's amazing about it is how instantaneous it is that it happens within a few days really. Um the world just, you know, changes. What were the What were some of the changes that you that you didn't expect? The the most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido and change in the way that I perceived women and and the way I thought about sex. Before testosterone, if I I would be riding the subway, which is the traditional hotbed of of lust in the city, and I would see a woman on the subway and uh I would think, you know, she's attractive.

I'd like to meet her. you know I what's that book she's reading I could talk to her this is what I would say there would be a narrative there would be this this stream of of language it would be very verbal after testosterone uh there was no narrative there was no no language whatsoever it was just uh I would see a woman who was attractive or or not attractive she might have an attractive quality you know nice ankles or something and the rest of her would would be fairly unappealing to me but that was enough to basically just flood my mind with with aggressive pornographic images just one after another.

It was like it was like being in a pornographic movie house, you know, in my mind and I couldn't turn it off. I mean, I could not turn it off. Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex. I was an editorial assistant and I would be standing at the Xerox machine and this this big shuddering warm inanimate object would would just drive me crazy. It was uh it was very very erotic to me. Um the Xerox machine. The Xerox machine, you know, or a car.

I would see I remember walking up Fifth Avenue one day and this red convertible went by. It was a Mustang. And uh I remember just getting this jolt in my in my pants. This very physical, visceral, sexual reaction to seeing a red convertible. What did you do with that? I mean, what did you think? Well, I I I felt uh I felt like a monster a lot of the time and it and it it made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot.

You know, suddenly, you know, hair is sprouting and I'm I'm turning into this this this beast. And I would kind of I would really kind of berate myself for it. Um, I I remember walking up Fifth Avenue, there was a woman walking in front of me and and she was wearing this little skirt and this little top and I was looking her ass and you know, I kept saying to myself, "Don't look at it. Don't look at it." And I kept looking at it and I I walked past her and this voice in my head kept saying, "Turn around to look at her breast.

Turn around. Turn around. Turn around." And my my, you know, my feminist female background kept saying, you know, "Don't you dare, you pig. Don't turn around. And you know, I I fought myself for a whole block and then I I turned around and checked her out. And before it was cool. I I when I would do a poetry reading, um I would get up and I would read these poems about, you know, women on the street and I was a Butch Dyke and that was very very cutting edge and that was very sexy and raw and now I'm just a jerk, you know?

So, I do feel like I've lost this edge, you know, this nice sort of avantguard kind of and I got I've gotten into a lot of arguments with with women friends, co-workers who um don't did not know about my my my past as a female. Um, you know, I call myself a post- feminist. And um I had a woman say, "You're not a post feminist, you're a misogynist." And I said, you know, that's that's impossible. I can't be a misogynist. And I couldn't explain to her, you know, how I had come to this point in my life.

And to her, I was just a misogynist. And that's that's unfortunate because it's a lot more complicated than that. I'll say, wow. Testosterone didn't just turn you into a man. It turned you into Rush Limba. I know. I That I was not expecting. So, I I had to relearn how to talk to women and I had to learn how to um rephrase things, how to hold my tongue on certain things. And I'm not very good at So, I get I get in trouble. That is so fascinating that that um cuz I mean, as as a man, I think from from the time I went through puberty, I feel like that's something that I've been learning to do is in a certain way is just figure out like how to say things without getting myself in trouble, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's like I would not have thought that you would have had that problem. Mhm. Right. Because I should know better or something or something. Are there other ways that you that you like other than the visual and other than the libido? Are there other ways that you feel like testosterone has has altered the way um you feel or perceive? Um [sighs] something that happened after I started taking testosterone. I I became interested in science. I was never interested in science before. No way. Come on.

Are you serious? I'm serious. I'm serious. Now, you know, you're just setting us back a hundred years, sir. I know I am. I know. I mean, again, I I I have to have this caveat in here. I I cannot say it was the testosterone. All I can say is that this interest happened after tea. You know, there's BT and A. And this was definitely after tea. And I became interested in science. I found myself understanding physics in a way I never had before. It's true. It's true.

[clears throat] Wow. I did. Um how about in um in the way you you feel things and in the way you perceive of your feelings? Is there any change there? [sighs] I [snorts] have a hard time crying. Um, it's very difficult for me to cry. And, um, before testosterone, um, it was great to to, you know, if I was frustrated, angry, or sad, have a good cry, you'd feel better afterwards. And I do wonder if there isn't a chemical component behind it because I now have a hard time doing it.

And it's very frustrating. And I what I will do is when I feel that pressure build up, I'll go into my room. I'll close the door and force myself. I just have I have to force myself to cry. And the quality of the crying is different than the quality of the crying was before tea. It it's it's very dry. I find myself sort of moaning and sobbing, but with very little tears. [snorts] You have answered a lot of questions for us today and reinforced a lot of stereotypes that we've all I know I have.

I know it. Did you have an idea of what kind of of of man you were going to be before the transition? This is this is my model. Who was it? I used to watch a lot of Beverly Hills 90210 and Jason Priestley was like my ideal at least, you know, sort of physically. I mean, I had I wanted sideburns so bad and they were that was the first facial hair that came in. I got these beautiful sideburns. Um, so it was sort of like J, you know, the James Dean Jason Priestley kind of model.

I think um that didn't quite materialize. I was better at that as a dyke than I am as a man, I have to say. And is that how how do you feel about Is that like sort of a It's a bit of a disappointment. Um you know um I often ask people, "What kind of a guy am I? What do you see?" And um unfortunately people people often respond that they see um a nerd, which is which I never was before. you know, I was always really kind of cool and uh and popular and and hip and whatever.

And now I'm, you know, I'm 5'4 and um you know, I work out, but I'm not real muscular and uh I'm pretty small. Um you know, I'm I'm pale skinned and uh my hair is starting to thin and I've got glasses. Um and of course, you know, I'm also um you know, I'm the sensitive guy now. I used to be, you know, the butch dyke and I was seen as very aggressive and I was more masculine in many ways outwardly anyway before testosterone. And now I don't have to prove anything.

So I can sort of lay back and talk with my hands and you know um [clears throat] all that stuff that you're not supposed to do. Um so I'm still very much learning how to be a man in the world. Um, there's a lot to learn. Men, walking the street is a constant battle. It's a constant contest. I began to notice once I started to pass as a man that single men walking alone down the street will veer away from their path to walk towards me, sort of get in my space and then veer back.

And it's very much like a like a a little aggressive move. Um, I've had men just sort of, you know, angry guys walking the street just body check me. So, I really feel like I have to, you know, sort of puff myself up um so that people will keep their distance a little bit. But if I'm if I'm if I'm off guard and I'm walking around and I'm sort of enjoying the scenery, um, it's pretty much guaranteed that somebody will will shove me. Were there specific things that you were hoping for?

I think that um the [clears throat] main thing that you hope for that one hopes for and that I hope for when starting testosterone was uh to pass as male to be perceived by the world as a man. Um but I do have a sort of lovehate relationship with passing that my whole deeper self becomes invisible and my history becomes invisible and you know I think that's hard. It's a hard place to be right. Right. especially because I when I got my first job as a man, they didn't know anything about my past.

Um, it was very corporate. So, I sort of had to let go of any edgy clothing and facial hair and whatnot that I had before. And I became really boring. I mean, I felt like, wow, people must think I'm really boring if they only knew, you know, that I'm so fascinating. Um, you know, throughout those four almost four years, I um I had to conceal a lot. I I would lie about where I went to college because I went to Binmar and I couldn't say I went to BMAR.

Um, what what college would you say you went to? Well, Bidmar's uh Binmar is in a by college relationship with Hford College. And so I would say I went to Hford, which is kind of um I don't want to say anything bad about Hford. Some of my best friends went there. But I think Binmar is a superior school to Howford. I do. And I think it's a superior education. And when I have to say I went to Hford, it's like a little knife in my heart.

But you know, no offense to my Hford friends. What do you feel like the the biggest thing that you that that you do miss is? H maybe the close relationships that I had with women. I still have close relationships with the women I've known since before te, but I don't make close relationships with new new female friends. It's hard. It's hard to do. There's a barrier. So, I kind of miss like being part of a cool bunch of women. I actually like women better than men.

And it just so happens that I fit in more as a man, you know, but I think women are really cool. Um, you know, sisterhood is powerful, all that stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. And what do you think is the biggest thing you've gained? Biggest thing I've gained, um, you know, it's just so great when people call me sir. Even after 7 years, I don't always hear it, but it it still rings a little bell inside my heart, you know, like, "Oh, sir, it's it's it's wonderful." And I, you know, it's something that when I was a little kid, I used to wish for, you know, and turned me into a boy, you know, Pinocchio.

And uh you never really think it's possible, but it is possible. And the night and the other nice thing about it is knowing that that's possible that you can actually make this enormous leap means that well then anything else must be possible too because this is certainly you know unbelievable. Griffin Hanssbury is a psychoanalyst and the author of the novel Some Strange Music Draws Me In. That conversation with Alex Bloomberg happened over 20 years ago during his early transition back in 2002 when we reached out to him today.

He told us that he would describe some of these experiences differently now. The way he talked about gender and also the way he talked about looking at women's bodies in retrospect. He says it wasn't just the testosterone affecting him when he was looking at women. He says he'd also absorbed a lot of very traditional messages about masculinity. Overall, he said he wouldn't want listeners to come away thinking that testosterone by itself explains so much about men's relationships with women and so much about desire. If you wanted the sky, I would ride across the sky and letters.

That's what's so thousand feet high to [singing] coming up. Who has the most testosterone? the slightly fem host of a public radio program, his staff, or a gay man in New York City. Answer in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is American Life. I'm Glass. Today's show is one that we're rerunning because of the news that Pete Hegth is ordering everybody in the military over 30 years old to have their testosterone tested and offering extra testosterone to anybody who scores low.

As I said at the beginning of the show, back in 2002, we did an episode where everyone in our workplace had their testosterone tested in an episode about testosterone and just how much testosterone determines our personalities and fates. We rejoin that episode now with act two of the program. Act two, contest asterone. At some point in putting together this week's radio show, Alex, who you heard a lot of in the first half of our program, suggested that it might be a fun thing to do and might illustrate some interesting principles about testosterone if everybody on the radio staff would get their testosterone level checked.

We could each predict who would come out as number one, number two, and so forth based on their personalities. And then we would compare the results with what each of us had predicted. Since men always have a lot more testosterone than women, we would do two rankings, one for the men, one for the women. We invited two of our regular contributors, David Rackov and Sarafal, to take part with us, making it five men and four women in all. It turns out to be remarkably easy to get your testosterone assessed.

You spit into a little tube twice a day and send it to a lab, in our case, the Yorky's National Primate Research Center. And I think it was Jonathan and Starley, producers in our show, who you sometimes hear doing stories on the air, who pointed out first that the entire enterprise might not be such a good idea. I I just think like we're opening a whole can of worms here that we don't want to be uh doing. It's all very Well, this whole thing is kind of a mess diplomatic wise.

How so? Like either, you know, I mean, either we'll walk away from this finding out that Starly has more testosterone than I do and she'll end up being incredibly upset and I'll be upset and everyone will just be upset, you know? I mean, what do we hope to gain really from all of this? This whole thing is going to lead to heartbreak somehow. I've been thinking a lot about it and and I can't really decide whether I want to have more or if I want to have less.

This is Wendy, another producer. I don't know. Like having more makes me seem um like an [ __ ] and having not enough makes me seem like a like a pushover sucker. For the men, I think it'll be a big deal. This is Julie, the senior producer of our program. I think it'll change all your interactions with each other. You'll know when you're talking to each other who beat you. I think it'll change everything. Nonetheless, we marched toward the abyss. To find out what personality traits actually correlate with high testosterone and low testosterone, we check with somebody who's done a lot of research on the subject.

James Dabs of Georgia State University, author of a book called Heroes, Rogues, and Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior. The most simple thing I would say is it leads to a certain boldness and uh fearlessness and confidence in a person's behavior. Uh they tend to focus upon what they do. uh move forward with less uh conflict. The downside is they don't pay attention to things going on around them. So they get uh blindsided by accidents and and other things going on. What what are some of the misconceptions you run into?

Well well well they think it makes them manly and uh heroic and uh virile and sexual and uh which is not really true. It doesn't take much testosterone to have sex. So uh that I mean that's sort of beside the point. What scientific studies can tell us is that in general more testosterone does not mean you're a more successful person. In fact, blue collar workers tend to have more testosterone than white collar workers. And unemployed men have more than either group. Actors and trial lawyers, people who basically go on stage in one way or another, tend to have very high testosterone levels.

Higher testosterone correlates with baldness and with bigger muscles. And researchers say that people with lots of testosterone have a wolfish smile. And people with less testosterone have a kinder smile. And they smile more often, as if to say, "Don't hurt me." Testosterone goes up when you score a victory at something. It goes down when you suffer a defeat. In one study of World Cup soccer fans watching a match on television, testosterone dropped in fans of the losing team and rose in the fans of the winning team.

For people, there's not a lot of difference between being in the contest and watching the contest, we can empathize with it so well. So, what would all this mean for our radio staff? Well, when it came to predicting which of the women would have the highest testosterone, there was a clear majority in the voting. Here are Sarah Val, Todd, our production manager, and Wendy weighing in. Julie will win. Julie's tough. She can certainly push me around sometimes. I think Julie is has the most because she is the boldest of all of us, right?

Like she says the boldest things. When we're all together in the same place, it is clearly Julie who is the alpha of the whole group. Though at some point in putting together this week's radio show, Alex and Julie sat down in a studio and he asked her to predict which women would have the highest testosterone. And here's how she lined it up. Wendy first and then Starly and then Sarah, I guess. And then and then me. Just passive me. Yeah. Just taking it easy. Girly girly me.

just being feminine over here in the corner. Honestly, who do I think? Yeah. Well, I fear me. What do you think it would mean if you won? Well, then that would it would confirm all my worst like suspicions about myself that I'm really aggressive and pushy and sort of a hotthead. I fear me. Among the men, there was no favorite. You could kind of make an argument for any of the men on the staff. Todd likes sports and he isn't such a bookworm softy like the rest of us on the staff.

Alex plays a lot of sports and he gets into fights on the basketball court. Jonathan is balding and he has a lot of muscle corresponds with testosterone. I host a national radio show which must count for something, right? But when we sat down to talk about it, it wasn't really clear exactly what else should be taken into account. Here's Jonathan. I don't entirely understand how this whole testosterone thing works. It's like who can yell the loudest, right? Who has the most rage? I have rage. I mean, unfortunately, it's like impotent rage.

And I don't know how testo like how that's going to rank. And then if the main thing the testosterone corresponds with is decisiveness, how does that swing the whole rating? I didn't realize that the whole decision-making thing came into uh is it making testosterone thing? Yeah, it's making complicated. Yeah, because I mean I'm just filled with regret again. Julie, quick decisions. Doesn't look back. It doesn't look back. I know. God. Sarah, I look back like I'm looking I I look back pretty much every single every single second of the day.

Every single I'm regretting what I'm saying right now. I'm I'm filled with regret. Regret. You're regretting it. Even as you're saying even as Even now. Even now. Even now. And then there's the question of David Rackov. He's gay and a fan of Martha Stewart, but he's also balding and he's worked as a professional actor, which both correspond with high testosterone levels. So, how do you figure that one out? The one thing I do worry about the testosterone is um Alex told me um to when I did my spit that I had to have some extra spearmint gum to activate my salivary glands, but the only thing that I could find was extra polar ice, which has flavor crystals.

Mhm. And I worry that my sample might have flavor crystals in it. So in fact, I might just simply be the most refreshing. One notable difference between the men and the women, although none of the women wanted to have much testosterone, Alex, Todd, and I very, very much wanted to win. Jonathan claimed he did not want to win, but none of us believe him. And Rakov also said that he had no interest in winning at all, but then proceeded immediately, I mean immediately, to talk smack about his opponents in a very competitive way.

And that was the state of things when we got our results from the lab just two days ago. All right. Well, it is uh 2 days before our broadcast day as I record this. Our entire staff is on mic plus contributors David Rackoff and Sarah Val in New York. Hello all. Hello. Hi. And now for the results. I am opening the envelope. Wow, that's fascinating. Wow, that's just incredible. Okay, among the men, uh, Rackov is number one and has like twice the amount of testosterone of anybody in the group.

Wow. Wow. This can't be. I told you correlation with B. I voted for you, Rackov. Oh, everybody's trying to get in with him now that he's number one. Uh then in order, the men are um it's Rackoff, then Alex at number two. Uh then me, like a point behind you, Alex, then Jonathan, and then Todd. All very closely grouped together. Wow. But Rackov has twice as much as any of us, the gay Canadian Jew living in Manhattan. Okay, we we really have to dispense with the Canadian but actually that is noncorlary.

Believe me, what what are the numbers exactly? What what is what is it for? What's rackoff and rackoff is 274. You're 144. I'm 14. Oh my god. When I looked at the women's results in the envelope, even though she is seven months pregnant, Julie was on top, as we all suspected, that's hard. That's hard. It makes me feel really bossy and and aggressive. Um, and did they say that the that the pregnancy would affect it at all? She says trying to make sure you get in that whole girly pregnancy thing.

Yeah. The fact that I'm that I'm able to bear children. the greatest gift a woman can have. I have to say Wendy and Todd, the lowest scoring woman and man on the staff, really did not seem very happy about this whole thing by the end. Todd, like most of the men on the staff, had never been seen as especially manly during his life. But he thought maybe here, maybe here in this group compared to the rest of us, he might at least stand a chance. Someone would be girier than I.

If I can't be the most manly in public radio, where the hell can I be the most manly? Like I kind of wish this was sports center because then I'd be okay. Like out of all my staff me or fellow staff members at Sports Center. Okay, I could be the one with the least testosterone. But in public radio, we should get them to spit. Is it a real place sports center? Is it a thing? Now see, that's not fair. How can he have the most testosterone and not know what Sports Center is?

I know what Sports Center is. The people in our staff who scored uh low uh are feeling rather um they're feeling terrible about it. What What should I say to them? I hated to measure them. I just knew that would happen. It always happens. I told him that uh uh uh tell well they are what they are. Are there in any way different? After our test, James Dabs reminded me that it was important to remember that any individual person might not conform to the stereotypes of who has higher testosterone.

It's not the final answer as to what you're like. I tested a stunt man in a movie set once and he came out low in testosterone. Was terribly unhappy about being low in testosterone. The fact is he still was a stunt man and did all the work that other people couldn't do. So he shouldn't have been focusing upon that testosterone. I think to focus upon the testosterone is the wrong thing to do. Now when you tried to convince him that he shouldn't feel bad about it, did he find that persuasive at all?

No. No. He was just unhappy. James Dabs. I mentioned before that this is a rerun from years ago in the years since we first broadcast this. James Dabs has died. Our friend David Rackov has died too back in 2012. What kind of [singing] man are you? Oh, [screaming] why do I love you? What kind [singing] of man are you? Yeah. Three. Life at zero. Okay. Okay, so a life with very low testosterone. What might that mean? Well, the most extreme case imaginable is described in the GQ article that Alex read that was one of the inspirations for today's show that he talked about at the beginning of the program.

The GQ writer very much describes testosterone as the hormone of desire. And by that, he doesn't mean sexual desire. He just means desire, period. He wrote about his experiences anonymously. Here's more of Alex's interview with him. When you have no testosterone, you have no desire. And when you have no desire, uh you don't have any content in your mind. You don't think about anything. And during those months, how were you behaving? What was different? It wasn't that I was behaving. It was that I was not behaving at all.

I was when I was awake literally sitting in bed and staring at the wall with neither interest nor disinterest for 3 four hours at a time. Um if you know if you'd had a camera in the room you would have thought I was comeomaos. Uh I would go out I would buy some groceries early in the morning and that would be it. My day had no content. Um I had no interest in even watching TV much less reading the newspaper or a book. um food. I didn't want my food to taste good or interesting.

And when you're blessed with that lack of desire, you can eat a loaf of Wonderbread with mayonnaise and that will be your day. And um you know, I only saw my girlfriend on weekends since she was living in New York and I was living in Philly. So I could get away with it 5 days at a time. And you know, needless to say, there was absolutely no desire. You know, people who are deprived of testosterone don't become spock-like and, you know, uh, incredibly rational. They become nonsensical because they're unable to distinguish between what is and isn't interesting and what is worth noting and what isn't.

describe your thoughts on your on your morning walk in this state. It's very quiet at 5:30, 6:30 in the morning. And yeah, and I would see, you know, a brick in a wall and I would think a brick in a wall. I would see a pigeon and think a pigeon. It's it's the most literal possible understanding of the world. So in in this time when you're without testosterone, you're walking down the street, you're just sort of ticking things off, just making these very simple observations, like a grocery list.

Yeah, like a grocery list. Exactly. You also have a thought that comes to you all the time, right? Talk about that. Uh- which is a very strange sounding thing, which is that is beautiful. Everything I saw, I thought that is beautiful. which is odd sounding I know because that sounds like the judgment of a person with passion but it was the exact opposite. It was said, it was thought and sometimes even said with complete dispassion, with objectivity. Uhhuh. And you see, I was looking at absolutely everything, the most mundane sight in the world, you know, a weed in the sidewalk and thinking, "Oh, that's beautiful." The the surgery scars on people's knees, um you know, the the bolts in the hubcaps of cars, all of it, it just seemed to have purpose.

and and it was like, "Oh, that's beautiful. Everything is beautiful from the bugs to the cracks in the sidewalk to the faces of other people." And it was automatic. Um perhaps to see things objectively is to see them all of them as beautiful but in the most you have to understand that the thought was expressed in the most flatline boring way possible. Oh yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. You know, you would think that this would be a terrible thing, a terrible state to to be in, and for most people it is.

Uh, but it was weirdly pleasant. And there is a certain appeal, an impossible appeal to that. Rip Van Winkle existence of being without testosterone. Uh you just have to remember that um it doesn't matter if you have nothing if you want nothing. Very tricky to get inside that mindset. In some ways it's difficult for me to even remember it now. But it had its allure. Well, I I can understand that because desire often feels like a burden. Like it often feels like if you if you if if I just didn't want that thing, not having it wouldn't be so painful.

There you go. Yeah. All that wanting four, learning to shut up. Okay, so we started today's program with my coworker, Alex, remembering what it was like to be a 15-year-old boy. And we're going to end it now with another 15-year-old boy. Someone who's experiencing the years when a boy's body is flooded with 10 or 20 times the hormones he has in early childhood or more. And so much of the story is about his mother's questions about what that's like for him. His mom, Miriam Taves, tells the story.

First off, his hair is red and shaggy and longish, and he's pale and slim and 6 feet tall. Music is everything to him, which makes sense because he's 15. I was 22 when he was born. I'd never had brothers or any close male relatives, and I'd always dreamed of having a brother or a son. The idea of having a boy in my family was strange and exotic. When he was born, it was like I had given birth to a llama or something. All my girlfriends came to visit me and him in the hospital, and I took them down to the second floor nursery, and we stared at him in awe from behind a glass window.

"That's him," I said with the orange fuzz on his head. He was lying naked and spread eagled under a bright heat lamp. He seemed very content. My friend Carol gasped and said, "Oh my god, he's got the biggest balls I've ever seen in my life." We all started laughing our heads off and then the nurse came and told us his scrotum would shrink to normal size in a few days. I haven't seen him naked in years, but it still often feels when I look at him that I'm gazing at an odd creature from behind a glass.

So, do you think about girls? Yes. And um like what do you think about them? Um I don't know. Some of them are cool. Yeah. Like so what makes him cool? I don't know. All his life Owen's been a quiet kid. Not sullen, but just rather silent. When he was a baby and I'd be pushing him around in his stroller, people would stop and crouch down and talk to him and expect him to laugh and smile. And all he'd do was sigh and stare at them.

When he got a little older and went over to his friends places to play, and it was time for him to go home, he just got up and walked right out the door to the car. He didn't say, "Hey, thanks for having me." or "Next time we'll play at my place," or even goodbye. We'd be driving home and I'd be trying to explain to him that it seemed rude and that sometimes we just had to say certain things at certain times. It was polite and expected.

He just sigh and nod and kick the dash or stick his head entirely out the window. But back then, I could kind of figure out what was going on in his head, even if he didn't come right out and say it. Like when he was three and he didn't want me to go out, instead of grabbing my leg or having a tantrum or something, he'd hide my shoes and then sit on the couch pretending to read the newspaper while I searched all over the place. When he was eight and angry and sitting in a tree and throwing stones at the car or something, I'd go outside knowing it would be a matter of minutes before he'd start to cry and then slowly spill his guts about whatever series of events it was that led to his meltdown and that the whole scene would end with hugs and apologies and probably a large muscled activity like him cheerfully taking shots at my head with a soccer ball.

Now though, the signs are harder, if not impossible, to read. I'm not sure there are any actually and I have no idea where to begin my search. What do you think girls think about you when they think about you? I don't know. Nothing. You think like no girl ever thinks anything about you? Maybe. I don't know. He brought 85 CDs with him for a family road trip that would last 11 days. He also brought a sketchbook which started out as an art class project and has since evolved into a kind of diary.

I think he tends to write things down like Jesus I got to find someone irrational or the I'm passing off as writing is slowly killing me. The first day of our road trip through North Dakota to South the music war started. His 12-year-old sister, Georgia, claimed the very backseat of the minivan and was content to lie there surrounded by nail polish and beads and thread and Hershey kisses and Archie comics and listen to her music on her discmen, mostly R&B stuff, Destiny's Child, and the Save the Last Dance soundtrack.

My husband Cassidy and I sat in the front and Owen sat on the seat right behind us so he could listen to his CDs on the stereo. We tell him to listen to them on his discmen, which he did sometimes, but then he'd miss out on our sporadic conversations, which he enjoyed either participating in or mocking. Sometimes he'd give us a choice of his CDs to play. Nirvana, he'd say, "You guys like Nirvana, right?" "Yeah, but the unplugged one," we'd say. "Oh Lord, help me now," he'd say.

He'd pop a dozen CDs into the player. They will know us by the Trail of Dead, BlackRebel Motorcycle Club, at the drive-in, other stuff. and we'd listen to half a song from each one and go, "Nope, nope, nope." I had wanted to learn more about him from his music. I was pretty sure his lyrics would tell me more about him than he would. But the problem was I couldn't understand most of the lyrics, and none of his CDs, which he'd bootlegged, had liner notes. We asked him if he didn't miss having liner notes.

And he said, "Man, liner notes. You guys have this unnatural relationship with your liner notes. What are some of your favorite lyrics? I like some of the lyrics from the Pixies. Can Can you say some of the lyrics from the Pixies? Um, you're so pretty when you're unfaithful to me. So, like, what does that mean to you? I don't know. I just thought it was funny. When Owen was little, I discovered I could get him to do anything by timing him. "Go get your jacket," I'd say.

Or, "Clean up your toys quick, I'll time you." He loved competing with himself and beating his old records, even if I just made up times. And it evolved into a huge competitive sports loving thing that I still don't really understand or enjoy. That timing thing didn't work at all with Georgia. She'd just look up at me and say, "What do you mean time me? What for? The difference between him and Georgia in the talking department is huge. Georgia will come home from school and literally reenact her entire day so that she's telling me about it almost in real time hour after hour.

Owen, on the other hand, might tell me that his day was good, even if it was bad. But usually, he just shrugs and makes an I don't know kind of sound. And then he'll head down to the basement and play his guitar. So, like, do some of your friends have girlfriends? And do you ever think that you'd like to have a girlfriend? Yeah. What do you think they think? Like, what how would they describe you to their friends, do you think? I don't know. Do you think you do know, but you just don't really want to talk about it with me?

I think that Yeah, I think so. I can dig it. I've learned over time not to worry too much about his silence, although it used to drive me crazy. I wondered if maybe he'd turn out to be a psychopath, although I'm not sure why I associate evil with silence. Anyway, I'm getting better with it. Cassidy often reassures me by saying stuff like, "It's a guy thing." Or, "He's a 15-year-old boy. What do you expect?" He told me that when he was Owen's age, he sat in his bedroom by himself for hours on end, typing page after page of angry vitriol against the world on an old manual typewriter until his fingers bled.

And he seems really happy now. I realize my kids sound like boy and girl stereotypes. Owen is tasset turn and into sports and Georgia is chatty and prone to the occasional crying jag, but it really just is that way. I don't know why. It's not like we planned it. I don't want to think it's because he's a boy and she's a girl. But if it is, who cares? When Georgia was upset about something at school the other day and face down on the couch, he sat on the floor beside her and said, "It's hard being a girl, isn't it?" I'm not sure that it's any easier being a boy.

And I don't know what he does exactly when he's sad other than listening to music. Except for once. It's been years since I've seen him cry. I'd kill to read his notebook. Is there anything about girls that you envy? M nothing. Nothing. Well, what what about their It seems their ability to kind of talk about how they feel about things easier. Uh sure. Yeah. You envy that? I definitely envy that. We were all pretty quiet as we drove up to Colorado Springs on our way to Denver.

The sun was shining, but it was raining a bit, and we saw not one, not two, but three dead cows in fields, stiff with their legs in the air, and it bothered us. After the third dead cow, I played my favorite song of the summer, Jillian Welch's Elvis Presley Blues. It's a wistful song about the king as a 15-year-old boy just starting out with a big rock and roll dream in a shirt his mother made. And it was kind of miraculous because Owen actually liked it, too.

For me, it was a song about a boy becoming a man and leaving home. And it made me a little sad. I think Owen was probably hearing it as a song about a cool 15-year-old who was about to conquer the world. But really, I haven't got a clue how he heard the song or how it made him feel. All he said was that it had a decent pop sensibility. And then he was quiet. These days, the more I press him for information, the faster he shuts right down.

The other day I tried a new approach, his I was annoyed by a bunch of things and rather than broadcast it all over the house, I sat on the couch and glared at the TV and sighed periodically. And strangely, Owen responded. He observed my weirdness for a while and then left. Then he came back and looked at me again and said one word, "Mom." But in such a nice way that I smiled and said, "Owen." And that was it. And then we sat there for a while silently.

I was surprised by how completely comfortable it felt. And then finally, wordlessly, he got up and took his laundry upstairs. Miriam Taves, she's a writer in Toronto. Her son known as now a grown man and Miriam tells us is long past his tacetern days. Her latest book is called A Truth That Is Not Peace. You know, I'm almost grown. Yet I'm doing all right in school. They ain't said I broke no rules. [singing] I ain't never been in Dutch. I don't browse around too much. Don't bother me.

Leave me alone. Anyway, I'm almost grown. Our program was produced today by Alex Bloomberg and me with Lendy Door, Jonathan Goldstein and Starly Kin. Julie Snyder was our senior producer for this episode. Helping today's rerun from Marley Marcelo, Stone Nelson, Ruby Schwarz, and Matt Tierney. Also, thanks to Dr. Martin Miner. This is our last week with Molly Marcelo, who is our production fellow here at the show. She has been wonderful to work with. We all wish you the best. Special thanks today to Elfe, to Buzzy Goldstein, to Robert Pow, to Jim Nelson and GQ, Daniel Foster and Saraveal, Alex Bloomberg, who produced this week's show and did two of the stories in it.

These days, he is out of the radio game. He's running a building electrification and decarbonization platform called Daisy Chain Energy. If you reach out to him through his website, he'll tell you all about it. Thanks also today to This American Life partners, Michael Seatin, Cynthia Hill, and Connie Sinclair. If you are somebody who enjoys our show and here you are listening all the way through the credits. So maybe that does describe you. Um I invite you to please consider subscribing as a life partner. It helps us keep the show going.

And it's thanks. We've made dozens of bonus episodes. I've just been trying out doing a weekly newsletter where basically I just talk about movies and books that I'm liking and recommend them to you. Uh to join go to thisamericanlife.org/lifeepartners. That link is also in the show notes. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tory Malatia, who owns a very, very, very big radio. This is what he says about it. This big shuddering warm inanimate object would would just drive me crazy.

It was uh it was very very erotic to me. I'm Glass back next week with more stories of this American life. Hey, next week on the podcast of This American Life, 29 days after a local hospital closed its birthing unit, Katie went into labor. So, that's not great, right? And then something else happened. I said, "Sasha, then get a chainsaw and cut the wall down because I didn't want the baby to die." One doctor doing incredible things. So many of them, things she has never done before.

That's next week on the podcast or on your local public radio station.