893: Testosterone

Okay, so maybe you saw on the news that Defense Secretary Pete Hegsev is 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. Go here. Hegsev's social media post about this was titled The High Tea, I testosterone, Department

of War. And maybe you saw people at all kinds of reactions to this, going on to people joking about how Hegsev 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 suppose we 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 will hear it comes up. But what a 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 studio, to explain why we took

up the subject in the first place, back in 2002.

“Hello, Ira, Alex, what's the reason for this week's show?”

Well, I've been thinking about that, and for me, 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 remember the women's room, it was a sort of a seminal feminist novel from the 70s, and I first came across the women's room when I was digging through my parents' bookshelves looking for porn, you know, books with naughty parts of them,

you know, like fear of flying, and so I picked up and I read it, because the word women was in the title, in lipstick probably, or maybe not, yes. It's incredibly polemical, like it describes basically a group of women sort of going from the 50s through the 60s, and they sort of all suffer at the hands of the various men and their lives, and there's constantly, and there's like, you know, women are slowly being

popular and crazy, but there has been some sudden criticism, or they're being called ugly, after they get mislected, amaze, or they're being stifled by their husband's emotional shalomists, 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 read it just to see, just to see, for example, I sort of bookmark

a couple of these things, you know, in 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, my feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have a little sympathy for them, like a Jew, just released from DACO, 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 a prejudice, then, perhaps, I could unlearn it. It's not very much pornographic about that.

It's 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 it's, that's the, I probably shouldn't say her name, let's just call her, you know, let's just call her Kelly, and she was like in eighth grade with me, and she said 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 bearer sliver for a little training bra, and, like, and it was like, perhaps, the most desire I've ever felt in my life, maybe. I mean, it was just, it was like all consuming, and I couldn't, I mean, I couldn't concentrate for the rest of the day.

I remember it to this day, and so 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

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, 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 on non-aggressive and 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 hormones he lived without testosterone before they caught the problem.

And the way he described moving without testosterone was really incredible. Everything that I identify as being me, my ambition, my interest in things, my sense of humor, the inflection in my voice, I mean the quality of my speech even changed in the

“time that I was without a lot of the hormone.”

So yes, the introduction of testosterone returned everything. There were things that I find defensive about my own personality, that were disconnected and then you know, and it was nice to be without them, envy, 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 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 myself and it violates the sanctity of that understanding, you know, 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? At one of our show, infinite gent, someone gets pumped up with several times the amount

of testosterone that most men have, and describes some surprising changes. Act 2, Contest, Asterone, in that act, at Alice'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. And exercise, I have to say most of us at this point would not recommend that you try

at your workplace or with your friends. Heck 3, Life at Zero, in which we hear about what it means to lose all your testosterone. Heck 4, we're going to shut up in that act, a mother asked 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.

A quick program note, we just put out this new bonus episode that came out really nicely. These bonus episodes go toward this American life partners, people who've subscribed to support the show, and this particular one is one of the ones where one of my co-workers here at the show brings in a couple other favorite stories to play for me and for listeners.

first place because they're from so long ago, and then we talk about them.

And in this particular episode, a producer Diane Wu picks some stories that just really got to us both, and we ended up in this very personal conversation that got very emotional. Anyway, to hear this, and the many other bonus episodes that we have put out at this point, that you get all kinds of other stuff, subscribe at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners that link is also in the show notes.

It's a American life, act one, infinite gend.

“So what exactly is an injection of testosterone due to you?”

What kind of changes do you feel? Back in 2002, we first broadcast today's show, a producer Alex Blumberg talked with Griffin Hansbury 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 because it's been over 20 years since his 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 Brinmar College, which is a women's college, and chose a women's college because

I strongly identified as a woman at the time, as a feminist, and as a dyke. I had my leatherbiker jacket, and my big leather belt, and my black t-shirts, and my Doc Martin boots, my combat boots, and that felt pretty comfortable for a while. And my sophomore year in college, I was lying in bed with my girlfriend, and if we were talking or what it was, and it just sort of hit me like a bolt of lightning as they say,

and I just knew that I had to change my body.

“So I started doing the research on it, and the only way to do that was to take testosterone.”

My first injection was a pretty large one of two CCs of 200 milligrams, strength, depotestosterone,

which is fairly high amount to just to give you a sense of how much that is. The average amount of testosterone in an average male body is between 300 and 1,000 nanograms per deciliter of blood. After that shot, and after an average shot, my testosterone levels go up to over 2,000 nanograms per deciliter.

So that I have the testosterone of two high testosterone men in my body at once. You have the testosterone of two linebackers. Exactly. Exactly. That's a lot.

It's a lot of tea.

What's amazing about it is how instantaneous it is that it happens within a few days, really.

The world just changes what were some of the changes that you didn't expect. The most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido and change in the way that I perceived women in the way I thought about sex. Before testosterone, I would be riding this subway, which is the traditional hotbed of lust in the city, and I would see a woman on a subway, and I would think, "She's attractive.

I'd like to meet her." I know 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 stream of language, it would be very verbal. After testosterone, there was no narrative. There was no language whatsoever. It was just I would see a woman who was attractive, or not attractive.

She might have an attractive quality, nice ankles, or something, and the rest of her would be fairly unappealing to me. That was enough to just flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another. It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind, and I couldn't turn it off.

I could not turn it off. Everything I looked at, everything I had touched turned to sex. I was an editorial assistant, and I would be standing at the Xerox machine, and this big, shuddering, warm, inanimate object would just drive me crazy. It was a very, very erotic to me.

Xerox machine.

“The Xerox machine, you know, or a car, I would see, I remember walking up 5th Avenue”

one day, and this red convertible went by. It was a Mustang, and I remember just getting this jolt in my pants. It was a very physical, visceral, sexual reaction to seeing a red convertible. What did you do with that? I mean, what did you think?

be understand, adolescent boys a lot.

Suddenly, hair is sprouting, and I'm turning into this beast, and I would really kind of break myself for it, I remember walking up to that Avenue, there was a woman walking in front of me, and she was wearing this little skirt, and this little top, and I was looking her, her ass, and, you know, I kept saying myself, "Don't look at it, don't look at it, and I kept looking at it."

And I walked past her, and this voice in my head, I'm saying, "Turn around, to look at her breasts, turn around, turn around, turn around."

“And my, you know, my feminist female background, I'm 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, when I would do a poetry reading, I would get up and I would read these poems about, you know, women on the street, and I was a bunch of 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 avant-garde kind of. And I kind of, I've gotten into a lot of arguments with, with women, friends, co-workers, who, um, don't, did not know about 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 misogynist. 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 did just turn you into a man, it turned you into a rush limba. You know, I, that, I was not expecting, that I was not expecting. So I, I had to relearn how to talk to women, and I had to learn how to, um, refresh things, how to hold my tongue on certain things, and I'm very good at it, so I get, I get in trouble.

“It, that is so fascinating that, um, because 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, it's 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, right, because I should know better, or something. Or something. Are there other ways that you, like, other than the visual, and other than the libidinal,

are there other ways that you feel like testosterone has, has altered the way you feel, or perceive, um, something that happened after I started taking testosterone, I, I became

interested in science, it was never interested in science before.

No way. I'm serious. I'm serious. I'm serious now. No.

“You're just setting us back a hundred years, sir.”

I know I am. I know. I mean, again, I, I, and 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 T, you know, there's B T and A T, and

this was definitely after T, and I became interested in science.

I found myself understanding physics in a way I'd never had before.

It's true. It's true. Wow. I did. Um, happened in, um, in the way you, you feel things, and in the way you perceive

of your feelings. Is it any change there? I have a hard time crying. Um, it's very difficult for me to cry. And, um, before testosterone, um, it was great 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 not 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 T. It's, it's, it's very dry. I find myself sort of mowning and sobbing, but with very little tears. You've answered a lot of questions for us today.

I know. I know I have, I know.

“Did you have an idea of what kind of, of, of, of man you're going to be before the transition?”

This is, this is my model, what 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. So it was sort of like, Jay, you know, the James Dean, Jason Priestley kind of model, I think.

I didn't quite materialize. I was better at that as a die because I am as a man, I have to say. And is that, how do you feel about it? Is that like, sort of a, it's a bit of a disappointment, it's a bit of a disappointment.

“You know, I often ask people, what kind of a guy I am, what do you see?”

And unfortunately, people, people often respond that they see a nerd, which I never was

before. You know, I was always really kind of cool and popular and hip and whatever. And now I'm, you know, I'm 5 foot 4 and, you know, I work out, but I'm not real muscular and I'm pretty small, you know, I'm pale skinned and my hair started thin and I've got glasses. And of course, you know, I'm also, you know, an assensitive guy now.

I used to be, you know, the Butch diek, 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, all that stuff that you're not supposed to do. So I'm still very much learning how to be a man in the world, just a lot to learn.

A man walking through just a constant battle, it's a constant contest. I began to notice once I started to pass as a man that single man 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. I've had men just sort of, you know, angry guys walking through just body check me.

So I really feel like I have to, you know, sort of puff myself up. So the people will keep their distance a little bit. But if I'm, if I'm off guard and I'm walking around and I'm sort of enjoying the scenery, it's pretty much guaranteed that somebody will shove me where there's specific things that you were hoping for.

“I think that the main thing that you hope for, that one hopes for and that I hope for when”

starting testosterone was to pass as male, to be perceived by the world as a man. But I do have a sort of love hate 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, you know, right, especially because I, when I got my first

job as a man, I didn't know anything about my past, 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, you know, throughout those four years, I had to conceal a lot.

I, I would lie about where I went to college because I went to Britain more and I couldn't say I went to Britain more, what, what college would you say you went to? Well, Brimmar's, Brimmar is in the by college relationship with Haberford College and so I would say I went to Haberford which is kind of, um, I don't want to say anything bad about Haberford.

It's some of my best friends went there, but I think Brimmar, I think Brimmar is a superior school to Haberford. I do and I think it's a superior education and when I have to say I went to Haberford, it's like a little knife in my heart, but, you know, no offense to my Haberford friends. What do you feel like the biggest thing that you, that you do miss is?

Maybe the close relationships that I had with women, I still have close relationships with the women I've known since the beforety, but I don't make close relationships with new

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.

“It just so happens that I fit in more as a man, you know, but I think women are really cool.”

You know, sisterhood is powerful, all that stuff. So, yeah, yeah, what do you think is the biggest thing you've gained? Biggest thing I've gained, you know, it's just so great when people call me sir, even

after seven years, I don't always hear it, but 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, a Pinocchio, and you never really think it's possible, but it is possible. And the other thing about it is knowing that that's possible that you can actually make this enormous leap means that well, and anything else must be possible, too, because this

is certainly, you know, unbelievable.

“Griffin Hansberry is a psychoanalyst and the author of the novel "Sum Strange Music Draws”

Me in."

That conversation without Splimberg happened over 20 years ago, during his early transition,

back in 2002, when we reached out to him today, he taught us to be able to describe some of these experiences different right now, the way he talked about gender, and also the way we talked about cooking young women's bodies. He writes your spec, he says, "It wasn't just the testosterone effecting him, and he was only a young woman." 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." It's plain so much about men's relationships with women, and so much about desire. Coming up, who has the most testosterone, the slightly feminine host of a public radio program, his staff, or a gay man in New York City, answer in a minute. I'm Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

It's his American life, I'm out of glass. Today's show is one that we're re-running, because of the news that Pete Higgseth 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 faiths. We rejoin that episode now with Act 2 of the program, Act 2, Contest, Ostrone. At some point, I'm 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. It 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 Rackoff and Sarah Valle to take a 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 Yorkie's National Primate Research Center. And I think it was”

Jonathan and Starley, a producer tonight show, who you sometimes hear during stories on the air, who pointed out first that the entire enterprise might not be such a good idea. I just think we're opening a whole can of worms here that we don't want to be doing. That's all very, well, this whole thing kind of a mess, diplomatic lies. Like, either, you know, I mean, either we'll walk away from this finding out that Starley

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. What do we hope to gain from all of this? This whole thing is going to lead to heartbreak somehow. I've been thinking a lot about it, 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 like an asshole. And having not enough makes

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 march 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 Dabes 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 fearlessness and confidence in a person's behavior. They tend to focus upon what they do, move forward with less conflict. The downside is they don't pay attention to things going on around them, so they get to blindsided by accidents and other things going on. What are some of the misconceptions you running?

“Well, they think it makes them manly and heroic and virile and sexual, which is not really”

true. It doesn't take much testosterone to have sex, so 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 color workers tend to have more testosterone than white color workers, and unemployment 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 boldness, 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 an end to contest and watching the contest we can emphasize 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 several taught our production manager and Wendy, weighing in. Julie will win. Julie's tough. She can certainly push me around sometimes.

“I think Julie has the most because she is the boldest of all of us, right? Like she says”

the boldest things. When we're out together in the same place, it is clearly Julie who is the alpha of the whole group. Though it's on point and putting together this week's radio show, Alex and Julie set down on a studio and he has heard predict which women would have the highest testosterone. And here's how she learned it up.

Wendy first, and then starly, and then Sarah, I guess. And then me. Just passive me. This

is taken it easy, girly, girly me. She's the same feminine over here in the corner. Honestly, who do I think? Yeah. Well, I fear me. What do you think would mean if you won? Well, then it would confirm all my worst, like, suspicions about myself that I'm really aggressive and pushy and sort of a hot head. 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 have got for something, right? But when we set on 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 impident rage. I don't know how testosterone is 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

that. Is it making the whole testosterone thing? Yeah, it's really complicated. Yeah, because I mean, I'm just filled with regret. Again, Julie, quick decisions doesn't look bad. That doesn't look back, I know. Same with Sarah. I look back like I'm looking, I look back pretty much every single

second of the day. Every single, I'm regretting what I'm saying right now. Yeah, I'm filled with regret.

You're regretting it even though even though even though even though.

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 Alex told me to when I did my spit that I had to have some extra

“spearment gum to activate my salary glance. But the only thing that I could find was extra polar”

ice, which has flavor crystals. 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 taught an I very, very much wanted to win. Jonathan claimed he did not want to win, but none of us believe him. And Rackoff 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 two days before our broadcast day as I record this, our entire staff is on mic, plus contributors David Rackoff and Sarah Valle in New York. Hello, all. Hello, all. All right. And after the results, I am opening the envelope.

Wow, that's fascinating. Wow, that's just incredible. Okay, among the men,

Rackoff is number one and has like twice the amount of testosterone of anybody in the group. Wow, I told you. I voted for your Rackoff. Oh, everybody's trying to get him out of the number one. Then in order, the men are, it's Rackoff. Then Alex at number two, then me, like a point behind you, Alex, then Jonathan and then Todd. All very closely grouped together. Wow, but Rackoff has twice as much. As any of us, the gay Canadian Jew living in Manhattan.

Okay, we really have to spend a little bit of that actually, that is non-corner, believe me. What are the numbers exactly? What is it for? What's Rackoff in this? Rackoff is 274. You're 144. I'm 100. 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.

“Well, that's hard. That's how it makes me feel really bossy and aggressive.”

And did they say that the pregnancy would affect it at all? Alex, you said, trying to make sure you get in that whole girlly 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 girly or the night. 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 members, or fellow staff members at sports center. Okay, I could be the woman, the least testosterone, but in public radio.

We should get them to split. Is it a real place? Sports center, is it a thing? Now see, that's not fair. How can he? How can he? Are the most testosterone and not, no, it's sports center, is. I know it's sports center, is. The people in our staff who scored low are feeling rather, they're feeling terrible about it.

What did I say to them? I hated to measure them, I just knew that would happen. It always happens.

They are what they are. Are they in any way different?

“After our test, James Dabes 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 the movie set once and he came out low-interest testosterone was terribly unhappy about being low-interest testosterone. The fact

been focused at the moment that testosterone. I think to focus upon the testosterone is the wrong thing to do. No, when you tried to convince him that he shouldn't feel bad about it, did he find that persuasive at all? No, it was just unhappy. James Dabes. I mentioned before that this is a rerun from years ago

in the Earsensory First Broadcast this, James Dabes has died.

Our friend David Rackoff has died too, back in 2012.

“Exactly. Life at zero. 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 Red 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. But that it 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, you don't have any content in your mind. You don't think about anything.

“And during those months, how are 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 three or four hours at a time. If you'd had a camera in the room, you would have thought I was

comatose. I would go out. I would buy some groceries early in the morning, and that would be it.

My day had no content. I had no interest in even watching TV, much less reading the news paper, or a book, 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 wonder bread with mayonnaise, and that will be your

“day. And I only saw my girlfriend on weekends since she was living in New York and I was living in”

Filly. So I could get away with it five 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 spotlight, and you know, incredibly rational. They become non-sensical because they're unable to distinguish between what is and is an interesting and what is worth noting and what isn't. Just grab your thoughts on your morning walk in the state. It's very quiet at 536-630 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 the most literal possible understanding of the world. So, in this time, when you're with that 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? You talk about that, 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. And you see, I was looking at absolutely everything, the most mundane sight in the world, you know, a weed and the sidewalk,

and thinking, oh, that's beautiful. The surgery scars on people's knees, the bolts and the hubcaps of cars, all of it, it just seemed to have purpose. 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. Perhaps to see things objectively is to see them, all of them, is beautiful.

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 be, and and for most people it is. But it was weirdly pleasant. And there is a certain appeal, an impossible appeal, to that rip-van winkle existence of being without testosterone.

“You just have to remember that 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 can understand that because desire often feels like a burden. But it often feels like if I just didn't want that thing, not having it wouldn't be so painful. There you go. Yeah. All that wanting. Like for, wanting 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. I'm gonna 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 an early childhood, or more. And so much of the story is about his mother's

“questions about what it's like for him. His mom, Marion Taves, tells the story. First off, his”

hair is red and shaggy and long-ish, and he's pale and slim in six 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 lama or something. All my girlfriends came to visit me in 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 in spready gild under a bright heat lamp.

He seemed very content. My friend Carol Gaston 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

throat and 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 like, what do you think about them?”

I don't know. Some of them are cool. Yeah, like, so what makes them cool? I don't know. All his life, oh, and's been a quiet kid. Not selling, 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 is 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 in 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 spills gets 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 muscle 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, last time. Do you think like no girl everything's anything about you? Maybe. I don't know. He brought 85 CDs with him for a family road trip

and has since evolved into a kind of diary, I think. He tends to write things down like

“"Jesus, I gotta 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 was started.

His 12-year-old sister, Georgia, claimed to vary back seat of the minivan, and was content to lie there surrounded by nail polish and beads and thread, and her she kisses and archie comics, and listened to her music on her disc min. Mostly R&B stuff. Destiny's child and the saves 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 disc min, 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, black rebel motorcycle club, at the drive-in, other stuff, and we'd listen

to half a song for me to want to go, nope, nope, nope. I'd 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?”

Hmm. I like some of the lyrics from the Pixies. Can you say some of the lyrics from the Pixies? You're so pretty when you're unfaithful to me. So, 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 just looked up at me and said, "What do you mean, time me? What for?" The difference between him and Georgia and 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, and I don't know, kind of sound. And then he'll head down to the basement and play his guitar.

“So, like, 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, how would they describe you to their friends, do you think? I don't know. Do you think you do know about 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 wonder 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 on zage, 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 finger's blood. And he seems really happy now.

I realize my kids sound like boy and girl stereotypes. Oh, and his taciturn and into sports, and Georgia's 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 faced 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 said 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?

What about their themes? Their ability to talk about how they feel about things easier. 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 and fields, stiff with their legs in the air, and a 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 to 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 sheds 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 sigh 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, "Oh, 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.

[Music]

“Miriam Taves, she's right there in Toronto, so no one is now a grown man, and Miriam tells us”

it's a long past, it's time to turn days. Forget his book is called "The Truths That It's Not Peace." What, what, what, what, you know I'm almost grown. What, what, what, you know I'm doing all right in school. [Music] Well, our program was produced today by Alex Bloomberg and me. We went to the door

Jonathan Goldstein in Starry Kine. Julie Snyder was our senior producer for this episode. Helping today's rerun from Marley Marcello, Stone Nelson, Ruby Schwartz and Matt Tierney, also thanks to Dr. Martin Meiner. This is our last week with Marley Marcello, who is our production fellow here at the show.

She has been wonderful to work with. We are always really fast.

Special thanks today to El Hefe, Debussy Goldstein, to Robert Powell, to Jim Nelson, and GQ, Daniel Foster and Sarah Val. Alex Bloomberg, who produced this week's show, and did two of the stories in it. These days, he has out of the radio game. He's running a building electrification and decarbonization platform called Daisy, Chain, Energy, a huge out of them through his website. I'll tell you all about it.

Thanks also today to this American Life Partners, Michael Seaton, Cynthia Hill, and Connie St. Claire. 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. I invite you to please consider subscribing as a Life Partner. It helps us keep the show going. And as thanks, we've made dozens of bonus episodes. I've just been trying out doing a weekly news

letter. We're basically just talking about movies and books that I'm liking and recommend them to you. To join, go to thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. 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 a program's co-founder, Mr. Troy Malatia, who owns a very, very,

very big radio. This is what he says about it. This big, shuddering, warm, inanimate object would just drive me crazy. It was a very, very erotic to me. I'm out of glass. Back next week with more stories of this American Life. Next week on the podcast of the American Life, 29 days after a local hospital caused its birthing unit, Katie went to labor. So that's not great, right? And then something

the baby to die. One doctor doing incredible things, so many of them. Think she has never done before. That's thanks to the podcast on your local public radio station.