893: Testosterone
This This American Life episode explores testosterone's effects on personality and behavior through multiple narratives: a trans man's experience with hormone therapy, a workplace testosterone testing experiment, accounts of living without testosterone, and a mother's observations of her teenage son's development during puberty.
Summary
The episode is framed as a cautionary tale in response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order for military personnel over 30 to be testosterone tested. Producer Alex Bloomberg originally pitched a testosterone-focused episode in 2002, inspired by reading 'The Women's Room' as a teenager and grappling with the tension between believing hormones shape behavior and wanting to believe in individual autonomy.
In Act One, Griffin Hansberry describes receiving massive testosterone injections (2cc of 200mg Depo-Testosterone) as part of gender transition. The effects were immediate and overwhelming: within days, testosterone levels reached 2,000 nanograms per deciliter—equivalent to two high-testosterone men combined. Hansberry reports dramatic changes including an intense increase in libido, where visual perception of women shifted from narrative-based attraction to involuntary pornographic imagery flooding the mind. Additionally, interests changed post-testosterone: Hansberry developed an unexpected interest in science and physics previously absent before hormone therapy. Crying became physiologically difficult despite emotional pressure building internally. Hansberry also notes the social learning component, acknowledging that testosterone alone doesn't explain objectification—cultural messages about masculinity also shaped behavior. The experience was simultaneously alienating (feeling like a "monster") and illuminating about male adolescent development.
In Act Two, the This American Life staff (5 men and 4 women) underwent testosterone testing to compare predictions with actual results. James Dabbs, a testosterone researcher, explained that testosterone correlates with boldness, confidence, and decisiveness, but misconceptions exist: it doesn't necessarily increase sexual prowess, and blue-collar workers have more than white-collar professionals. The staff predicted Julie (a senior producer) would have the highest testosterone among women due to her assertiveness and alpha presence; Julie herself predicted she'd score lowest. Results shocked everyone: David Rakoff, a gay Canadian man who wasn't predicted to rank high, had 274 nanograms per deciliter—twice any other male staff member. Ira Glass and Alex Bloomberg tied at 144, followed by Jonathan and Todd. Among women, Julie did rank first despite being seven months pregnant. Todd and Wendy (lowest-scoring man and woman) expressed disappointment, with Todd noting he hoped to at least be the most manly in public radio if nowhere else. Dabbs cautioned against over-interpreting results, noting individual variation and that low testosterone doesn't prevent competence.
In Act Three, an anonymous GQ writer describes four months without testosterone due to medical issues. During this period, he experienced complete absence of desire—not just sexual, but desire itself. He sat for hours staring at walls without interest or disinterest, had no motivation to engage with entertainment or food quality, and experienced a peculiar automatic thought pattern where everything appeared beautiful in a completely dispassionate, objective way. His thinking became hyper-literal and grocery-list-like: "a brick and a wall," "a pigeon." Paradoxically, this state had an "impossible appeal"—the lack of desire meant lack of suffering from unfulfilled wants. The restoration of testosterone returned all desires, ambitions, and personality traits simultaneously.
In Act Four, Miriam Taves describes her 15-year-old son Owen's development during the testosterone-flooded years of adolescence. Owen has always been taciturn and nonverbal compared to his chatty sister Georgia, but teenage hormones intensify his silence and emotional opacity. Taves attempts various questioning strategies about girls, feelings, and social perception, receiving mostly monosyllabic responses and sighs. Owen's primary outlet is music and guitar; he brought 85 CDs on a family road trip. Taves reflects on the shift from childhood when she could read his emotions through behavioral cues (hiding her shoes when upset at age 3, throwing stones from trees when angry at 8) to adolescence where signs are "harder, if not impossible, to read." A moment of comfort arrives when Taves stops actively pressing for information and instead sits silently upset—Owen responds with minimal communication (just saying "Mom" kindly) that paradoxically creates genuine connection. Taves notes that her children embody gender stereotypes (taciturn boy, chatty girl) but resists fully attributing this to biology alone, remaining uncertain about causation.
About this episode
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered everyone over 30 in the military to have their testosterone tested. That inspired us to rerun this classic episode where everyone at This American Life tested their testosterone and compared results. It did not lead to workplace harmony. Visit <a href="https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners</a> to sign up for our premium subscription.<ul><li> Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks with producer Alex Blumberg, who explains that he wanted to do this show because of his conflicted relationship with his own testosterone. He tells Ira that the reasons go back to a girl in his 8th-grade homeroom. We also hear from a man who stopped producing testosterone due to a medical treatment, and found his entire personality was altered. (10 minutes)</li><li>Act One: What’s it like to get injected with testosterone? When Griffin Hansbury transitioned, he got massive shots of it and was surprised at the effect it had on him. (17 minutes)</li><li>Act Two: The men and women on staff at This American Life decide to get their testosterone levels tested to see who has the most and least, and whether personality traits actually match hormone levels. (13 minutes)</li><li>Act Three: What happens when a man suddenly loses all of his testosterone? We return to Alex Blumberg’s interview from the top of the show with a man who that happened to. He says life without testosterone is life without desire. By that he doesn’t mean sexual desire. He means any desire. (6 minutes)</li><li>Act Four: Novelist Miriam Toews interviews her 15-year-old son, someone at an age when boys experience a jolt of ten or twenty times the testosterone they had as children, about all the things she doesn’t understand about what he’s going through. (11 minutes)</li></ul>Transcripts are available at <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/893/transcript" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">thisamericanlife.org</a><a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">This American Life privacy policy.</a><br /><a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Learn more about sponsor message choices.</a><br /><br />🎬 SEE THE STORY UNFOLD:<br />Want to see the original photos, documents, and the faces behind this week's acts?<br />👇 View the visual archive for this episode here:<br /><b><a href="https://goo.su/XwNQm" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">https://goo.su/XwNQm</a></b><br />(Updated for each story)
Key Insights
- Griffin Hansberry experienced an overwhelming shift in visual sexual perception after testosterone therapy—involuntary pornographic imagery flooded his mind when viewing women, contrasting sharply with his pre-testosterone narrative-based attraction
- Hansberry became interested in science and physics after starting testosterone, an interest he attributes to the hormone despite acknowledging he cannot definitively separate hormone effects from social absorption of masculine cultural messages
- Hansberry found it physiologically difficult to cry after testosterone despite emotional pressure building internally, suggesting hormonal influence on emotional expression mechanisms
- The This American Life staff's testosterone test revealed David Rakoff had 274 nanograms per deciliter—twice that of any other male staff member—contradicting predictions and challenging stereotypical assumptions about testosterone and personality expression
- Researcher James Dabbs emphasized that testosterone correlates with decisiveness and boldness but doesn't necessarily increase sexual prowess, contradicting common misconceptions about the hormone's primary effects
- An anonymous subject living without testosterone for four months experienced complete absence of desire manifesting as literal, grocery-list-like thinking where he observed 'a brick and a wall' and 'a pigeon' without emotional content
- The subject without testosterone automatically perceived everything as beautiful in a completely dispassionate, objective way—suggesting that objective perception of beauty may require absence of evaluative desire
- The anonymous subject found an 'impossible appeal' in the desireless state because lack of desire eliminated suffering from unfulfilled wants, revealing a paradoxical appeal to testosterone deprivation
- Miriam Taves could read her son Owen's emotions through behavioral cues in early childhood (hiding shoes when upset) but found his adolescent silence and emotional opacity nearly impossible to interpret or penetrate through direct questioning
- Owen responded with genuine connection when his mother stopped actively pressing for information and instead modeled silent emotional expression, suggesting indirect communication may be more effective during male adolescence
- Taves resists full biological determinism regarding her children's gender-stereotyped traits (taciturn boy, chatty girl), stating 'I don't want to think it's because he's a boy and she's a girl' while acknowledging the pattern is real
- Alex Bloomberg's teenage experience reading 'The Women's Room' at age 15 created simultaneous terror of becoming the misogynistic men described and overwhelming sexual desire, illustrating the conflict between behavioral autonomy and hormonal impulse in adolescence
Topics
Transcript
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 Hegzeth was suddenly embracing gender-affirming care. I personally had a strong reaction to the idea of testing everybody's testosterone…
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