893: Testosterone

I'm WBZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Okay, so maybe you saw on the news that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 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. The goal here, Hegseth's social media post about this was titled, The High T, High Testosterone, Department of War. And maybe you saw people had all kinds of reactions to this, including lots of people joking about how Hegseth 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 2. But the original episode started with one of our producers at the time. Alex. Blumberg, 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 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 sort of a seminal feminist novel. It was a 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 in them, you know, like Fear of Flying. And so I picked it up and I read it. Because the word women was in the title. In lipstick, probably. Or maybe not. Yes. 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 in their lives. And, you know, there's constantly, you know, there's like, you know, women are slowly being driven crazy by their husband's incessant criticism. Or they're being called ugly after they get mastectomies. Or they're being stifled by their husband's emotional shallowness. And I noticed you happened to have brought into the studio with you today. A copy of The Woman's Room. Yeah, well, I recently reread it just to see. For example, I sort of bookmarked a couple of these things. You know, 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 little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, 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 incredibly strange thing to read this book at that age because at that age, I felt like there's one other woman who sort of comes into play at this point, and that's, I probably shouldn't say her name, let's just call her Kelly, and she was in eighth grade with me and she sat two rows away from me. And I remember one time like sitting in homeroom with her and seeing like 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 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 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 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 fearing a kind of men are from Mars, women are from Venus sort of thing. How hormones make men be all aggressive and women are non-aggressive in very stereotyped ways, which all seem kind of reductionistic and dumbheaded. And then Alex started reading and calling people. And one of the people that he called was this guy. He 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, my ambition, my interest in things, my sense of humor, the inflection in my voice. I mean, the, the, the quality of my voice. 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. I think that the most important thing that I've learned is that I'm not a person who is just a person. I'm not a person who is just a person. - In 2002, when we first broadcast today's show, our producer Alex Bloomberg talked with Griffin Hansberry 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 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 Bryn Mawr 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 leather biker jacket and my big leather belt and my black T-shirts and my Doc Martin boots, you know, my combat boots. And that felt pretty comfortable for a while. And then my sophomore year in college, I was lying in bed with my girlfriend, and I don't know 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. And 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 cc's of 200 milligram strength Depo testosterone, which is fairly high. 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. Yeah. Exactly. That's a lot. That's a lot of tea. And what's amazing about it is how instantaneous it is, that it happens within a few days, really. The world just, you know, changes. What were some of the changes that you didn't expect? The most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido. Libido and change in the way that I perceived women and the way I thought about sex. Before testosterone, I would be riding the subway, which is the traditional hotbed of lust in the city, and I would see a woman on the subway, and I would think, you know, she's attractive. I'd like to meet her. You 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, you know, nice ankles or something, and the rest of her would be fairly unappealing to me. But that was enough to basically just flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another. 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 big, shuddering, warm, inanimate object would just drive me crazy. It was very, very erotic to me. 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 I remember just getting this jolt 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 felt like a monster a lot of the time, and it made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. You know, suddenly, you know, hair is sprouting, and I'm turning into this beast, and I would. I would really kind of berate myself for it. I remember walking up Fifth Avenue, and there was a woman walking in front of me, and she was wearing this little skirt and this little top, and I was looking at 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 walked past her, and this voice in my head kept saying, turn around to look at her breasts. Turn around, turn around, turn around. And 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 fought myself for a whole block, and then I turned around and checked her out. And before, it was cool. 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 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 avant-garde kind of. And I've gotten into a lot of arguments with women friends, co-workers, who did not know about my past as a female. You know, I call myself a post-feminist, and I had a woman say, you're not a post-feminist, you're a misogynist. And I said, you know, 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 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 Limbaugh. I know. That I was not expecting. So I had to relearn how to talk to women. And I had to learn how to. I had to learn how to rephrase things, how to hold my tongue on certain things. And I'm not very good at it, so I get in trouble. That is so fascinating that. Because, I mean, as a man, I think, from the time I went through puberty, I feel like that's something that I've been learning to do, in a certain way, is just figure out 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 experience. I would not 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 altered the way you feel or perceive? Something that happened after I started taking testosterone, 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're just setting us back 100 years, sir. I know I am. I know. I mean, again, and I have to have this caveat in here, I cannot say it was the testosterone. All I can say is that this interest happened after T. You know? There's BT and AT, and this was definitely after T. And I became interested in science. I found myself understanding. I found myself understanding physics in a way I never had before. It's true. It's true. Wow. I did. How about in the way you feel things and in the way you perceive of your feelings? Is there any change there? I have a hard time crying. It's very difficult for me to cry. And before testosterone, 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 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 to force myself to cry. And the quality of the crying, is different than the quality of the crying was before T. It's very dry. I find myself sort of moaning and sobbing, but with very little tears. You have answered a lot of questions for us today. You reinforced a lot of stereotypes that we've all missed as well. I know I have. I know. Did you have an idea of what kind of man you were going to be for the transition? 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. So it was sort of like, you know, the James Dean, Jason Priestley kind of model, I think. That didn't quite make sense. materialize. I was better at that as a dyke than 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. 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 hip and whatever. And now I'm, you know, I'm five foot four 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 started 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, which dyke and I was seen as very aggressive and I was more masculine in many ways, uh, 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, 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 a, 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 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 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. 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 Bryn Mawr and I couldn't say I went to Bryn Mawr. Um, what, what college did you say you went? Well, Bryn Mawr's, uh, Bryn Mawr is in a bi-college relationship with Haverford College. And so I would say I went to Haverford, which is kind of, um, I don't want to say anything bad about Haverford. It's some of my best friends went there, but I think Bryn Mawr, I think Bryn Mawr is a superior school to Haverford. I do. And I think it's superior education. And when I have to say I went to Haverford, it's like a little knife in my heart, but no, no, no offense to my Haverford 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 before T, 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. It's 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, it's just so great when people call me, sir, even after seven 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 turn 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 difference. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's an enormous leap. It means that, well, then anything else must be possible too, because this is certainly, you know, unbelievable. Griffin Hansberry 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 in the book. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think this is different right 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 in letters that would soar a thousand feet high to serve with love. Coming up, who has the most testosterone? The slightly femmy host of a public radio program, his staff, or a game man in New York City? Answer in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's his American life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show is one that we're rerunning because of the news that Pete Hegseth 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 and offered extra testosterone to anybody who scores low. 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, contestosterone. 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 Rakoff and Sarah Val, 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 Yerkes 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 just think, like, we're opening a whole can of worms here that we don't want to be doing. It's all very, well, this whole thing's kind of a mess, diplomatic-wise. How so? 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. 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 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 a**hole. And having not enough makes me seem 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 Dabbs of Georgia State University, author of a book called Heroes, Rogues, and Lovers, Testosterone and Behavior. 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 blindsided by accidents and other things going on. What are some of the misconceptions you run into? 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 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 in trials. 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 the game, they found that testosterone goes up when you score a victory at something. It goes down when you 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 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 Starley, and then Sarah, I guess. And then? And then me. Just passive me. Yeah. Just taking it easy. Girly, girly me. She's being feminine over here in the corner. Honestly, who do I think? Yeah. Well, I fear me. What do you think it would mean? 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 hothead. 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 softie 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. I don't know how testosterone, 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 this whole testosterone thing. Yeah, it's making it more complicated. Yeah, because, I mean, I'm just filled with regret. Again, Julie, quick decisions, doesn't look back. Doesn't look back, I know. Same with Sarah. I look back, like, I'm looking, I regret. I look back pretty much every single. Every single second of the day. Every single. Every single. I'm regretting what I'm saying right now. Me too. I'm always here. I'm filled with regret. I regret. You're regretting it? I'm regretting it even as you're saying it. Even as, even now. Even now. Even now. And then there's the question of David Rakoff. 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. 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 Rakoff 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 Rakoff 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, Rakoff is number one and has like twice the amount of testosterone, of anybody in the group. Woo! Wow. Wow. This can't be real. I told you. Correlation with Baldwin. I voted for you, Rakoff. Oh, everybody's trying to get in with him now that he's number one. Then in order, the men are, it's Rakoff, 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 Rakoff has twice as much, as any of us, the gay Canadian Jew living in Manhattan. Okay, we really have to dispense with the Canadians. But actually, that is non-corollary. Believe me. What are the numbers exactly? What is it for, what's Rakoff? Rakoff is 274. You're 144. I'm 144. 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. Oh, that's hard. That's hard, it makes me feel really bossy and, and aggressive. 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 girlier 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 SportsCenter, because then I'd be okay, like, out of all my staff members, or fellow staff members at SportsCenter. 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, SportsCenter? Is it a thing? Now, see, that's not fair. How can he, how can he have the most testosterone and not know what SportsCenter is? I know what SportsCenter is. ♪ ♪ The people in our staff, who scored low, are feeling rather, they're feeling terrible about it. What should I say to them? I hated to measure them. I just knew that would happen. It always happens. I told them that. Well, they are what they are. Are they in any way different? After our test, James Dabbs 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 stuntman 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 stuntman 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 Dabbs. I mentioned before that this is a rerun from years ago. In the years since we first broadcast this, James Dabbs has died. Our friend David Rakoff has died, too. back in 2012. What kind of man are you? Oh, oh, why do I love you so? Yeah, yeah. Fact three, 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 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, 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 three, four hours at a time. Um, if you, you know, if you'd had a camera in the room, you would have thought I was comatose. Uh, I would go out, I would buy some groceries early in the morning, and that would be it. My day had no content. I'm, 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 Wonder Bread with me. 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 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 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 morning walk in this state. It's very quiet at 5.30, 6, 6.30 in the morning. And, yeah, and I would see, you know, a brick and a wall, and I would think, a brick and 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? Yes. Talk about that. Um, which, 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. Mm-hmm. But it was the exact opposite. It was said, it was thought, and sometimes even said, with complete dispassion, with objectivity. Uh-huh. 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, 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, 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, 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. It's in some ways, it's difficult for me to even remember it now. But, it had its allure. Well, I, I, I can understand that because desire often feels like a burden. Like, it often feels like, if you, if you, if, if, if I just didn't want that thing, not having it wouldn't be so painful. There you go. Yeah. All that wanting. Back four. I need 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 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 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 them 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 friend's 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'd 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 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. 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 gotta find someone irrational," or "The sh*t I'm passing by" off his 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 Discman, 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'd tell him to listen to them on his Discman, 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. 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? Um, I like some of the lyrics from the Pixies. 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 The difference between him and Georgia in the music 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, 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 taciturn 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 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'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? No. Nothing? Nothing. 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, 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 said, 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. And then, finally, he got up and took his laundry upstairs. She's a writer in Toronto. Her son Owen is now a grown man, and Miriam tells us it's long past his taciturn days. Her latest book is called A Truce That Is Not Peace. You know, I'm almost grown. Yeah, and I'm doing all right in school. They ain't said I broke no rules. 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. Well, our program was produced today by Alex Bloomberg and me, with Wendy Doerr, Jonathan Goldstein, and Starlee Kine. Julie Snyder was our senior producer for this episode, helping today's rerun from Molly Marcello, Stone Nelson, Ruby Schwartz, and Matt Tierney. Also, thanks to Dr. Martin Miner. This is our last week with Molly Marcello, who is our production fellow here at the show. She has been wonderful to work with. We all wish her the best. Special thanks today to El Jefe, to Buzzy 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 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 Seaton, Cynthia Hill, and Connie, St. Clair. 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 newsletter. We're basically just talking about movies and books that I'm liking and recommend them to you. To join, go to thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks. 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. 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. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. Next week on the podcast of This American Life. 29 days after a local hospital closed its birthing unit, Katie went to 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.