The Art of Manliness - How Testosterone Makes Men, Men [Encore]

00:00:00.560 Hey, this is Brett. We're taking a break this week from new episodes to celebrate the holidays and rest and relax, but we're going to rebroadcast episode number 761, How Testosterone Makes Men, Men, with Dr. Carol Hooven. Hope you enjoy it, and we'll see you next week with a brand new episode.

00:00:23.140 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. What creates the differences between the sexes?

00:00:30.000 Now, many would point to culture, and my guest today would agree that culture certainly shapes us, but she'd also argue that at the core of the divergence of the sexes, and in particular of how men think and behave, is one powerful hormone, testosterone.

00:00:43.080 Her name is Dr. Carol Hooven. She's a Harvard biologist and the author of Tea, The Story of Testosterone, The Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us.

00:00:49.780 Today on the show, Carol explains the arguments that are made against testosterone's influence on shaping men into men and why she doesn't think they hold water.

00:00:56.560 She then impacts the argument for how testosterone does function as the driving force in sex differences, and how it fundamentally shapes the bodies and minds of males.

00:01:04.020 We delve into where tea is made, how much of it men have compared to women, and what historical cases of castration tell us about the centrality of testosterone in male development.

00:01:12.680 We then discuss how tea shapes males starting in the womb and going into puberty and beyond before turning to its influence in athletic performance.

00:01:19.420 And we enter a conversation with Carol's impassioned plea for celebrating what's great about men.

00:01:24.120 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash tea.

00:01:39.460 Carol Hooven, welcome to the show.

00:01:41.740 Thanks so much for having me, Brett.

00:01:43.360 So you got a book called Tea, The Story of Testosterone, The Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us.

00:01:48.280 So you have spent your career studying the physiological and psychological effects of testosterone on humans and other animals.

00:01:56.300 How'd that happen?

00:01:58.780 Okay.

00:02:00.100 Wow.

00:02:00.700 I don't know where to start.

00:02:01.740 I guess I could start.

00:02:03.180 I'll just start by saying when I graduated from college, I had no idea what I wanted to do.

00:02:08.780 I just sort of got a regular job.

00:02:11.740 I did that for 10 years and then I decided that I wanted to go work with Richard Wrangham, who I know you've had on the show before.

00:02:19.140 And the reason I wanted to do that is because I had been taking classes and reading books and just trying to, and traveling and trying to figure out what I really wanted to do when I grew up.

00:02:29.820 And I read this book by Richard Wrangham called Demonic Males.

00:02:33.340 And I had really been focusing in on understanding human behavior and I'd gotten really interested in neurobiology.

00:02:41.220 Then I discovered genetics and evolution and got really interested in that.

00:02:45.160 And then I read Richard's book, which used research on non-human primates, primarily chimps, as a way to understand the evolutionary and genetic origins of human behavior, particularly aggression.

00:03:01.000 And I thought that was fascinating.

00:03:03.160 And I thought that was something that I might be able to actually do, especially because Richard was at Harvard at the time.

00:03:09.600 And so I quit my job and applied to the Harvard graduate program and got rejected because I had no relevant experience.

00:03:19.560 And then I really bugged Richard and some other people in the department.

00:03:25.000 And I was like, look, I already quit my job.

00:03:26.640 This is what I want to do.

00:03:27.940 And eventually, because I was persistent and enthusiastic, not because I had any special expertise, I have to say, Richard gave me an opportunity to go out to Uganda and study chimps for a year.

00:03:40.580 I ended up getting evacuated because there was a lot of really awful violence and political upheaval around Uganda in that region of Africa at the time.

00:03:49.340 So I only spent eight months out there, but long story short, it was spending eight months in the jungle with chimpanzees surrounded by a lot of actual human aggression and violence.

00:04:02.940 That got me really interested ultimately in testosterone because anyone who goes and spends time with chimps can see that the sex differences in the chimpanzees in so many ways mirror sex differences in humans.

00:04:20.420 Just in these very broad patterns of status and hierarchy obsession among the males competing, you know, largely for food and the right to have sex with the females who are in estrus, who can get pregnant.

00:04:36.880 So there's a lot of aggression, there's a lot of status obsession in the males.

00:04:41.980 They're also capable, you know, like humans are, of being kind and nurturing and warm and family oriented in a way.

00:04:50.960 And the females, on the other hand, I never saw, although it does happen, I never saw any instances of female physical aggression. 0.99

00:05:00.000 I saw it every single day among the males.

00:05:04.140 And so that was just this very pronounced sex difference where there was a lot of nurturing and caregiving among the females, just much more peaceful overall on, you know, all of this is on average and they don't have any human culture. 0.73

00:05:19.100 So there was nobody who was going to be able to convince me after that experience that these similar patterns of sex differences in humans are primarily due to human culture.

00:05:29.440 They're not.

00:05:30.380 They're molded by human culture.

00:05:32.820 The way they're expressed, you know, is heavily dependent on human culture.

00:05:35.960 But the evolutionary and genetic origins are, you know, in us.

00:05:41.440 We're born that way.

00:05:42.480 And so that's why I got interested in testosterone because there's no more powerful way of explaining human sex differences, which are, you know, male behavior in particular is a really important aspect of our lives.

00:05:56.740 Yeah.

00:05:56.860 One of the goals of your book is to push back some of these popular arguments out there that testosterone really doesn't influence differences between the sexes.

00:06:04.980 There's lots of them.

00:06:05.820 I mean, can you briefly summarize the arguments against T's influences on sex differences?

00:06:09.480 Like, if it's not testosterone, what are they saying is causing the sex differences?

00:06:13.400 Right.

00:06:13.900 I've been asked this before, and I admit I do find it challenging because – but it's a really good exercise, and I try to do this in the book, which is to entertain the best argument from the opposition.

00:06:25.320 So most critics, except for the most extreme ones, will acknowledge that the physical differences, basically from the neck down, are due to testosterone.

00:06:39.640 So it really – you have to be kind of a nutjob to deny that male size and strength overall, although there are nutjobs who are getting a lot of press, unfortunately.

00:06:52.620 But that's just really – it would be incredibly far-fetched to try to deny the science that testosterone at least explains the secondary sex differences in humans. 0.71

00:07:03.740 So that's height, muscle mass, you know, fat distribution, body hair, those kinds of things.

00:07:11.180 So most critics will acknowledge that testosterone is responsible for those physical differences.

00:07:15.700 More reasonable critics – and I think, you know, this can play a really useful role in the science of testosterone and sex differences – most other critics deny that testosterone has any important effects on the brain and thus behavior, and that it is not ultimately sort of the most powerful driving force in those sex differences that I just talked about.

00:07:38.980 So the largest sex differences that exist – and this is not my view, this is fact, I'm not talking about the cause, I'm just talking about the observation – are in sexual psychology and behavior and physical aggression.

00:07:52.280 So those are huge, consistent with non-human animals.

00:07:55.700 We see them across ages, not the sex part, but across cultures, you know, they're just incredibly pervasive.

00:08:03.060 And so those sex differences exist, but the question is, does testosterone influence the brain and behavior in ways that promote increased physical aggression in males and increased desire for variety and number of sexual partners?

00:08:20.140 So those are the biggest sex differences, and those are the ones I really focus on in the book because there's so much clear evidence that testosterone in the early developmental period, like around, you know, prenatally and directly postnatally, and then in puberty and beyond, that those differences in exposure to that hormone and how it acts coordinates the body, the physical adaptations of size and strength with psychological adaptations that enable male animals,

00:08:49.700 including humans, including humans, including humans, to take advantage of their larger body size and the fact that they have sperm in a penis, that they have to be motivated to want to get that sperm into the female reproductive tract.

00:09:01.080 And to do that, especially over human evolutionary history, there had to be physical competition with other males for status or for the resources they need to acquire high status, which enable, you know, and that could be territory.

00:09:13.500 Now it's a lot of that is money and professional status, but doing all of that increases the chances that males will be able to have a higher number of sex partners, ultimately.

00:09:27.300 I mean, and there's different strategies that males can use, and we can get into that. 0.98

00:09:31.240 So it might not be an increased number of sex partners, but it might be using one's body and having the psychology to want to use one's body, or even just one's sort of competitiveness and desire to elevate one's status.

00:09:47.160 That could result in the acquisition of a high quality mate, where if you mate with that single female for life, you could do very well reproductively.

00:09:57.020 It doesn't mean that you have to have 10 kids, but it means you have to acquire that mate and have sex with her.

00:10:03.680 So the adaptation is not the male desire necessarily for children, it's the desire to either partner with one or a few mates and be a good partner, or play the field and have many different partners.

00:10:18.120 There's many different strategies.

00:10:19.540 But sorry, this is a long answer, but the idea is that testosterone coordinates the psychological adaptations with the physical adaptations.

00:10:28.460 And I should just get back to the critics, because I've gotten off the topic here, but the critics are, to me, bizarrely denying that they'll accept that testosterone acts on the body, but then are denying that it acts on the brain.

00:10:42.540 Because they want to assert, and they do assert, that because we live in a gendered society, the default assumption should be that the sex differences that we observe are due to social and cultural influences.

00:10:54.260 But this just doesn't make sense from a scientific and evolutionary point of view.

00:10:59.880 The default assumption is that we are like, you know, all of these other animals, where testosterone does these very same things in males.

00:11:07.780 It's not a coincidence that it does the same thing in humans.

00:11:11.960 It's just that our culture can exacerbate those differences, they can minimize, the culture can minimize or kind of enlarge those differences or just budge the expression around.

00:11:22.220 So it's always gene, so it's always gene-culture interactions.

00:11:26.100 Why do you think the critics are so reluctant to embrace the fact that T influences not just the body, but the mind?

00:11:32.160 Like, what is, like, the apprehension?

00:11:34.180 Yeah, I think it's based on fear, which should not be playing a role in science and our efforts to understand reality.

00:11:44.760 So even if the fear was true, if the fear was based in reality, so suppose the fear is that, well, if men are dominant to women and have power, commit rape, cheat on their wives, if that's because of something in their genes, if that's because their genes code for high levels of testosterone and testosterone promotes these behaviors, the fear might be, well, then there's nothing we can do about it.

00:12:12.820 Then we're stuck with bad male behavior, and it justifies bad male behavior because it's natural.

00:12:20.400 That's called the naturalistic fallacy, by the way, the idea that what is found in nature is good.

00:12:25.920 You know, anyone can see in two seconds that there's plenty of things that are natural, like malaria, that are terrible.

00:12:32.820 So that's just a bad argument, and there's also plenty of evidence that we are definitely, that's biological, the idea of biological determinism, that if something is in our genes, it's immutable and we're stuck with it and we have to accept it.

00:12:46.740 Of course, that's not true either.

00:12:48.480 And all you have to do is look around the world at different cultures and different societies and see what the differences in, say, the rates of murder are, because males commit across the world about 95 to 98% of all murders.

00:13:07.120 But in some cultures, the sex difference in the murder rate and the murder rate itself is incredibly low.

00:13:14.040 And I always use Singapore as an example because it's extremely safe.

00:13:18.900 People, especially women, can walk around feeling safe because the sexual assault is incredibly low.

00:13:26.400 You know, physical aggression committed by males in general is extremely low.

00:13:30.740 And that's because of their culture and harsh penalties for those crimes.

00:13:34.200 So, and that's just one example.

00:13:37.240 And we know that there are examples on the other end, like I was just talking to a grad student in my department who is from India, and he was, and I, you know, know the data on India, but sexual assault is rampant because it hasn't been taken seriously in India by the government there and there, you know, you can get away with it.

00:13:57.980 And so men, if you can get away with it, men are going to do it, and they do.

00:14:01.280 So the idea is that genes and testosterone sort of lower the bar for the expression of those behaviors in the right environmental circumstances.

00:14:13.040 But that doesn't mean that the environment can't shape heavily the expression of those behaviors, right?

00:14:19.860 So males are definitely more inclined to those behaviors, but we know that there's all kinds of things we can do to tamp down the expression of those behaviors.

00:14:28.200 And that's clear from just even looking across cultures or even across time and how we've changed over time.

00:14:34.160 Our genes haven't changed, but the laws have and that social norms have.

00:14:38.360 Okay, let's dig into the basics of testosterone. 0.88

00:14:41.060 I think everyone has a general idea what it is.

00:14:44.320 It's a male, all male and females have testosterone, but males have more testosterone.

00:14:50.180 Kind of like where is it made in the body and like what are the difference in testosterone levels in men and women?

00:14:55.740 So testosterone, first of all, in adulthood, males have anywhere, in puberty, males can have 10 to 30 times the level of testosterone as women. 0.54

00:15:06.800 But in Western kind of well-fed populations, males have about 10 to 20 times as much as females, adults, that is.

00:15:17.360 And there's no overlap in testosterone levels in healthy, normal populations of men and women.

00:15:24.680 And so in men, about 95% of testosterone comes from the testes and the rest of it comes from, mostly from the adrenal gland and there's some other sources.

00:15:38.200 Testosterone is actually made by many tissues.

00:15:42.400 It's even made in the brain.

00:15:44.560 So most of it comes from the testes and then can enter the brain, but it can also be made de novo in neurons, which is really interesting.

00:15:53.940 And I should just, and so in females, about half is made, you know, these very, very low levels are made in the ovaries. 0.99

00:16:04.400 And then the rest is made in the adrenal glands and in fat cells.

00:16:10.160 So also, and I should just say, estrogen comes from testosterone.

00:16:15.240 So testosterone is converted into estrogen in males and females.

00:16:20.940 And males also make estrogen.

00:16:23.040 And males who have more body fat are going to have more of the enzyme, which is called aromatase, that converts testosterone into estrogen.

00:16:32.020 So men who have a high level of adiposity can start to develop some feminine features like gynecomastia, aka man boobs.

00:16:41.360 And that's because the estrogen levels can really rise due to this high activity of this aromatase enzyme.

00:16:49.620 So in females, estrogen can come from conversion of testosterone in various tissues and from precursors to testosterone that are produced in the adrenal gland that can then also be converted to testosterone in other tissues. 0.80

00:17:05.300 And I should just say that testosterone is an androgen and there are different androgens in our bodies.

00:17:10.800 Testosterone is the main one, but there are other ones like dihydrotestosterone, which is also a product of testosterone conversion.

00:17:20.020 And all the androgens interact with what's the androgen receptor and like a key in a lock, basically.

00:17:27.520 And the androgen receptor is present in many, many tissues, again, also in our nervous system, in our brain.

00:17:33.300 And what's interesting is that the sex steroids, which are estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHT, can all, because they're steroids, because they're fatty molecules, they're lipophilic, they can go into any tissue in any cell.

00:17:51.740 They can just cross the blood-brain barrier.

00:17:53.840 They can get right through cell membranes, inside cells, and they affect gene transcription once they're inside cells.

00:18:01.000 So they're very, very powerful, and they can go everywhere and have these long-term systemic effects on us.

00:18:09.160 I think it's interesting to note that our knowledge of testosterone is relatively new.

00:18:13.860 It wasn't until the 1920s that scientists are able to actually pin down testosterone, the hormone.

00:18:19.980 But before that, scientists, people, humanity had a hunch that the testicles were involved in masculizing men.

00:18:29.020 And there's some interesting, like, I guess we call them, you know, natural experiments that happened throughout human history where we were able to figure out there's something going on with the testicles that cause men to be men.

00:18:41.740 And one of them is this really interesting thing is in Italy, church choirs would castrate young boys, basically, they call the castrati.

00:18:50.720 Can you tell us about that?

00:18:51.340 Like, what did we learn about testosterone from that?

00:18:53.500 Yeah, so this is disturbing.

00:18:55.880 I do talk a lot about castration in the book over the ages and in different cultures, and I learned a tremendous amount.

00:19:02.740 And it was all gross because I did get—it's not funny.

00:19:08.380 I did get into the procedure, and there's also eunuchs in imperial China, and the way that they were castrated was particularly horrific.

00:19:19.860 But most of the history of castration, so if we just start with the castrati in, say, 18th century Italy, these are—this—what happened was there was a lot of poverty, and there were opportunities for kids who were pre-pubertal, who were singers, to gain, you know, fame and fortune by singing in church choirs.

00:19:46.340 I mean, some of them could gain great fame and fortune, but even if they didn't have great fame and fortune, they could have some fortune at least and help out their families.

00:19:55.540 And so every year, thousands of young boys were castrated in the hopes of sort of making it big and making it to a church choir.

00:20:04.220 And this is before there was any anesthetic, so a lot of them died, and most of them did not make it and had to live lives of a eunuch.

00:20:16.160 So what happens is if a kid, a boy, is castrated prior to puberty—so most of the people listening are men who have gone through puberty, and you know exactly what happens when you go through puberty to your body, to your psychology, to your voice, and sometimes to your hair.

00:20:37.680 You know, some people start going bald fairly soon after puberty, but a eunuch never goes bald.

00:20:44.380 And so what happens is if you remove the testes prior to puberty—and again, yes, this is before anything was known about testosterone, but there were these predictable changes where the period of childhood growth continues for a long time.

00:21:01.020 So it's—and the reason is that in puberty, it is actually rising testosterone that is converted primarily into estrogen, even in boys, that causes the growth of the long bones, and that when it plateaus towards the end of puberty, that causes the growth plates in the long bones to seal.

00:21:22.840 And that is why growth—the height spurt stops at the end of puberty—it's actually because of estrogen coming from testosterone, even in boys.

00:21:32.160 But the point is, if you remove the testes, you never have that testosterone increase during puberty, and that growth hormone generated childhood growth.

00:21:43.440 Like, I have a 12-year-old boy, he's still in that sort of growth hormone period.

00:21:48.460 He's transitioning now to testosterone, he's going to be taking over, and—but that period is extended.

00:21:55.380 So you get this longer period of childhood growth, and the castrated men can end up to be very tall because they don't have that testosterone peak where growth ends.

00:22:08.020 So they can be very tall, and they don't get those secondary sex characteristics that most of your listeners will have developed during puberty.

00:22:15.820 So they retain their head hair, their voice does not deepen, and that's the—that's the big point, is that the voice doesn't deepen.

00:22:24.400 They retain a sort of high—they retain a soprano singing voice, but they have a much larger body size.

00:22:32.940 They have larger lungs.

00:22:34.320 So they have a powerful soprano voice, more powerful than a female soprano voice.

00:22:40.700 And females were not allowed in church choirs, so they needed men, basically, to fill those parts in the choirs.

00:22:48.500 So that's what castration did for them.

00:22:51.260 But, of course, what happens is these men have almost no libido, and, of course, they have no ability to impregnate anybody.

00:23:00.200 So that is one of the ways, that's one of the sources of information that castration, even in humans, lowers libido. 0.88

00:23:08.860 So it's something about the testicles is necessary for typical male libido.

00:23:15.480 And this was also known because there was lots of castration experiments on animals, and animals would be castrated to reduce aggression, to reduce libido for various reasons, to, you know, generate certain kinds of meat.

00:23:30.340 Like, like, from a chicken, a castrated chicken has a large body size and more tender meat, and that's called a capon.

00:23:37.160 And so it's been known for ages that castration of male animals reduces muscle mass, reduces and eliminates libido and aggression in some cases. 0.53

00:23:48.760 Yeah, so there was a long, deep knowledge about the testicles and the necessity of the testicles for sort of typical male behavior.

00:23:59.500 But testosterone itself was not isolated until 1935.

00:24:03.600 And so that took a long time, because we've known about this since, like, the 4th century BC, had this information.

00:24:11.140 And, yeah, so it took until the early 20th century to really identify testosterone and start to try to manufacture it.

00:24:19.240 Okay, so let's talk about, like, how testosterone makes boys boys and men men.

00:24:25.340 And I think oftentimes we think, oh, testosterone only has an effect on a male during puberty, because that's when you have this huge spike.

00:24:32.160 But you talk about it's, that, the influence of testosterone starts in the womb, prenatally.

00:24:37.060 So walk us through that process.

00:24:38.120 Like, what happens to a fetus when it's exposed to testosterone?

00:24:43.660 Like, what's going on there?

00:24:44.840 Yeah, so that's super important, that prenatal and directly postnatal period.

00:24:50.640 We don't know as much about what testosterone is doing in little boys, little boy babies, when it goes up right after birth.

00:24:57.980 But we can talk a little bit about that later.

00:25:00.800 But we know a lot about what it's doing in utero.

00:25:04.580 And I should just say that the way that little humans or conceptuses, which are just that embryo, the very early embryo, actually doesn't become male or female because of testosterone.

00:25:22.920 It takes on male and female characteristics because of testosterone.

00:25:28.160 But the determination of male and female is dependent upon the presence of the Y chromosome and the gene on the Y chromosome that is sex-determining region of the Y, called sex-determining region of the Y chromosome, or SRY.

00:25:43.960 So if you have the Y chromosome and it has an intact SRY gene, which almost every male will have that, that is what causes the undifferentiated gonads to differentiate into testes.

00:26:01.320 So before six weeks, the embryo is not identifiable as male or female.

00:26:08.380 You could look at the chromosomes, but there are no structures or physical differences yet.

00:26:13.400 It's when that gene is expressed that it goes on to cause that tissue, those undifferentiated gonads, to differentiate in the testes direction rather than the ovaries direction.

00:26:27.040 So once that happens, it just takes a couple weeks for the testes to start pumping out testosterone. 0.98

00:26:32.340 So I was pregnant with a boy, and it was just bizarre to know that he was in there with his little testicles in my body, that his little balls are making testosterone. 0.91

00:26:44.840 And that testosterone is what was necessary for guiding his body and to promote the development of all the male reproductive structures and physiology. 0.98

00:26:57.160 So his scrotum, his penis, his prostate, his vas deferens, all that stuff is due to the actions of testosterone directly.

00:27:07.660 And testosterone can do that because, like I said before, it acts on his genes that females share. 0.96

00:27:17.580 Females have the same genes. 0.99

00:27:18.800 It's just that they don't have testosterone to cause the genes to be expressed in a way that grows and maintains the male reproductive structures. 0.90

00:27:27.520 So the little fetus has testes that produce a lot of testosterone, and that's what is responsible for the development of the male reproductive structures and male reproductive function that I just described.

00:27:41.620 But at the same time, evolution has done this amazing thing where testosterone, at the same time prenatally, as it's working on the body to masculinize it, it goes into the brain because, I'm just going to say, it knows that this is an animal that needs to reproduce in a way that females don't need to reproduce.

00:28:05.260 Like, this animal has to compete, basically, for female mating opportunities and is going to be producing sperm.

00:28:11.020 So this animal is going to, as a little kid, need to be, do more rough and tumble play, for instance.

00:28:17.500 And females might have to practice nurturing behavior. 1.00

00:28:21.600 So females don't have exposure to testosterone in utero, or they have very, typically very, very low exposure.

00:28:27.440 Males will have high levels of, very high levels of testosterone in utero that masculinize the body and the brain so that the brain can take advantage of the male body and shape that animal for male reproductive strategies, you know, which are different than what females need. 0.59

00:28:44.200 Because females need to use their bodies to grow their offspring and feed their offspring, and males don't use their bodies to grow the offspring. 1.00

00:28:55.380 They use their bodies to compete for the right to make, to have a female do the work for them, basically. 1.00

00:29:01.180 And that all starts in utero.

00:29:03.060 And then there's a small rise in testosterone.

00:29:06.420 Sorry, it's actually, it's a short-term rise.

00:29:10.120 It's a three-month increase in testosterone shortly after birth that seems to be very important, physically, again, and probably neurologically.

00:29:21.100 But we don't know a lot about it. 0.64

00:29:23.700 But there's some hints that it might have to do, might further masculinize behavior and have something to do with penis development and could have something to do with, ultimately, penis size.

00:29:35.260 But there's not a huge amount of work on that yet. 0.92

00:29:38.540 Right. So, okay, basically, there's kind of like a mini puberty for boys right after they're born.

00:29:44.320 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:29:49.420 And now back to the show.

00:29:51.280 So, basically, this prenatal exposure to testosterone, is it kind of laying the groundwork, like the wiring for later development in puberty?

00:29:58.800 That's exactly right.

00:30:01.480 So, the framework that scientists use to talk about this is called the organizational activational effect or framework.

00:30:09.080 So, this is the idea.

00:30:10.440 And this is actually really important because people think all you have to do is shoot up.

00:30:15.740 And this happens, obviously, in, like, trans men or people who transition their gender.

00:30:21.080 They will take the hormone, they'll block their own hormones and take the hormones of the opposite sex. 0.99

00:30:28.200 So, for instance, if a female transitions to live as a male and takes male levels of testosterone, that testosterone that she's taking as an adult is acting on her brain in a way that's different from how it would act on a male brain.

00:30:46.060 Because a male brain has been met, the neural structures are permanently masculinized.

00:30:51.360 And these are very subtle, these are very subtle effects.

00:30:54.340 These aren't, like, huge differences in structures in the brain.

00:30:57.360 These are widespread, small effects on, like, cell death and synaptic and connections between cells.

00:31:06.280 So, these are small effects that seem to have, small changes that seem to have important effects in adulthood.

00:31:12.660 So, the brain is masculinized in boys prenatally.

00:31:16.780 And then, in adulthood, when testosterone goes up in puberty, that testosterone is acting on those previously masculinized neural structures.

00:31:26.740 So that if testosterone goes up in adulthood, say, in a female whose brain has not been masculinized prenatally, it's going to have a different effect because it's not acting on previously masculinized structures.

00:31:40.540 And this is hard to study in humans, but it's very clear in non-human animals that you cannot activate typical male sexual and aggressive behavior in female animals whose brains have not been masculinized prenatally, if that makes sense.

00:32:00.300 Does that make sense?

00:32:01.360 That makes sense.

00:32:02.100 That makes sense.

00:32:02.460 And so, okay, this prenatal exposure to testosterone is what gives boys their boyish behavior.

00:32:11.320 So, like, what's interesting, so there's…

00:32:12.300 Yeah, yeah, before puberty.

00:32:13.600 Yeah, before puberty.

00:32:14.540 They're, like, tackling each other.

00:32:15.420 Yeah, so there's a lot of rough and tumble play.

00:32:17.540 I think I've heard boys, this is generally, tend to be more object-oriented as opposed to person-oriented.

00:32:24.600 And what's interesting, like, gender differences in toy preferences, you see this even in chimps, they'll give chimps, you know, a toy, and the female girl chimps will, like, play with maybe, like, a doll, but, like, the boys will somehow turn it into, like, a weapon of some sort.

00:32:40.580 Yeah, I mean, the primate toy studies are less…

00:32:47.540 They're interesting, but they're less convincing to me than the rough and tumble play.

00:32:54.060 Like, we don't even need the toy thing.

00:32:55.640 Okay, just the rough housing.

00:32:57.980 Yeah, you can look at all these, just look at, take mammals, and it's not even confined to mammals.

00:33:01.840 But you could look at chimps, you can look at rats, you can look at a huge variety of animals, and you look at the juveniles, and there are clear sex differences in play that are parallel, in many ways, to what we see in humans, where the male, the little boys, say, in chimps or in rats, are tackling each other, they're playing physically, they're, you know, what they're doing is practicing physical competition for status as adults.

00:33:31.520 So, they have to practice their reproductive skills, their survival and reproductive skills.

00:33:35.840 So, that rough and tumble play is fun.

00:33:38.480 It has to be fun, or else they wouldn't do it, and they wouldn't get the practice.

00:33:41.980 But they like that heavy physical play more than females do. 1.00

00:33:46.220 Females are doing other things, and in humans, we see the exact same patterns. 1.00

00:33:50.960 And in non-human animals, you can easily manipulate the expression of that behavior by simply suppressing testosterone exposure in boys or increasing prenatal testosterone exposure in females, in female juveniles, in non-human animals.

00:34:07.100 You can, it looks like it's entirely due to prenatal testosterone exposure.

00:34:12.120 And then in humans, first of all, we have a very large and cross-culturally consistent sex difference where boys like to play physically.

00:34:20.080 You know, I've, again, I have a son, he has friends who are female, I know how they play.

00:34:25.000 I don't see girls getting together in groups and jumping all over each other for hours. 1.00

00:34:30.380 Like, boys will tend, you know, on average, not everyone does this, and there's overlap in these complex behaviors, but these are broad patterns.

00:34:39.100 And there's a suggestion in humans that it's also apparently, of course, a cultural influences, but that testosterone is the primary driver.

00:34:47.520 Because we know in girls who have different conditions, especially congenital adrenal hyperplasia, that result in their exposure prenatally to abnormally high levels of testosterone, so it's not as high as boys, but even a slight elevation in girls can have a pronounced masculinizing effect.

00:35:07.660 And so girls that have this condition where their, it happens to be their adrenal gland is producing relatively high levels of testosterone, that condition is corrected at birth, at least in places with good medical care.

00:35:21.740 And those girls, on average, end up far more than girls who don't have that condition to want to engage in rough and tumble play. 0.99

00:35:31.460 They want to play with whatever toys the boys are playing with.

00:35:34.940 They're more likely to want to play with boys. 0.99

00:35:36.840 They're more likely to grow up to be lesbians. 1.00

00:35:39.720 They're more likely, even though the rates are very low, to have a male gender identity than females who never had that condition.

00:35:47.180 And the only difference there is that they had increased exposure to testosterone in utero.

00:35:51.940 There's no difference in the adult hormones.

00:35:54.680 So it's clear that that sex differences in that early exposure to testosterone have a huge amount to do with who we become, because this is prior to puberty.

00:36:05.520 So if boys are engaging, you know, more physically active, basically, especially with each other in childhood, that's going to set the stage for later behaviors, you know, almost regardless of what happens in puberty.

00:36:18.620 And this is not all boys.

00:36:20.020 I should say that boys who grow up to be gay are much less likely to engage in rough and tumble play.

00:36:27.260 But those boys, so that's interesting, and that's kind of a mystery.

00:36:30.700 But those boys who grow up to be gay have the same pattern of sexual behavior of boys who grow up to be heterosexual.

00:36:39.940 So being exposed to high levels of testosterone in utero seems to always shape male sexual behavior to be masculine, to shape the desire for a higher number of sex partners, ultimately, and a higher libido.

00:36:52.920 Okay, so we've talked about childhood.

00:36:54.720 So prenatal testosterone sort of lays the groundwork.

00:36:57.240 Throughout childhood, T levels between males and females are pretty much the same.

00:37:01.380 Yeah.

00:37:01.580 And then puberty happens, and there's this spike.

00:37:03.580 And I think we all know what happens during puberty.

00:37:05.000 Like the secondary sex characteristics show up.

00:37:07.620 You get taller, more muscle mass for men, body hair, facial hair, deeper voice.

00:37:13.200 What's going on, though, on the brain?

00:37:14.800 Like how is that testosterone surge influencing the mind and behavior?

00:37:18.840 I've talked to a lot at this point, just in talking about the book, a lot of men, and trans men, which is interesting, you know, people who lived as women and then took high levels of testosterone, about what it feels like.

00:37:31.360 Most men say that they were preoccupied with sex, preoccupied with their position in the status hierarchy and social relationships among boys and then young men.

00:37:44.380 So, again, you know, I have this 12-year-old, and that's what he talks about a lot.

00:37:48.100 He's not the sex part, but the who is popular, what they do, how they behave.

00:37:53.680 And this is all fascinating because it seems all of them are really, really attuned to status hierarchies.

00:38:00.280 You know, and there's a great evolutionary reason for that, and testosterone is promoting that.

00:38:05.200 Girls have their own hierarchies, too. 1.00

00:38:07.220 That's also extremely important.

00:38:09.100 But the way they navigate competition within those hierarchies is totally different.

00:38:14.340 Girls don't use this, like, very direct form of aggression and physical aggression. 1.00

00:38:18.820 They tend to use gossip and passive aggression and backstabbing, I hate to say, and now social media, which I think that's a horrible way to harm people's reputations.

00:38:28.740 Boys are more likely to go up into somebody's face and call them an a-hole or something.

00:38:32.660 And so, they're more likely to get into, obviously, physically aggressive interactions.

00:38:39.740 And, of course, that depends on culture around the world and just within, say, our United States.

00:38:45.920 Like, there's obviously different norms around beating other guys up in different cultures.

00:38:53.500 So, yeah, I think that's what's going on psychologically is sex and status competition.

00:38:58.600 And I think a point to make is, like, there is a cultural, like, so we have this biological thing going on, but, like, culture can kind of direct it, right?

00:39:05.820 So, in the West, it's like, well, how do you get status?

00:39:08.960 It's like, well, maybe you play football or you run for student council or it's like if you're a teenage boy.

00:39:14.300 That's right.

00:39:14.660 You can gain status that way.

00:39:15.540 In another culture, it might be something different.

00:39:18.660 But there'll be a drive for status somehow because the idea is, like, if you get status, the chicks will like you. 1.00

00:39:24.600 Yeah, I mean, but you might not even think of it that way at the time.

00:39:29.380 You just seem driven to gain status over other boys, you know, or young men.

00:39:35.720 And, yeah, it seems like a benefit is that the girls start to pay attention to you.

00:39:40.180 So, culture, people sort of miss this point about how incredibly important culture is.

00:39:46.760 And nobody should resist the facts of biology about, you know, and the role in all of these types of behaviors.

00:39:55.860 They shouldn't resist that because they think that culture is important or culture is more important.

00:40:01.240 It's incredibly important.

00:40:03.040 But what's interesting is how it interacts with our biology in these fascinating ways that have an important evolutionary explanation.

00:40:11.740 Well, I think you made some guy, I forgot who it was, I think it's the guy that wrote The Trouble with Testosterone.

00:40:17.180 I forgot his name.

00:40:17.600 Robert Sapolsky.

00:40:18.480 Yeah, he said, like, if you, talking about the influence of culture and biology, kind of the interplay they have.

00:40:23.660 It's like if you gave testosterone to a bunch of monks, they would start competing.

00:40:29.500 Like, they wouldn't start beating each other up.

00:40:30.960 They would start trying to out-compete each other who can meditate the most or who can do the niceness or something.

00:40:35.440 But if you gave, like, testosterone to a prison gang, you'd probably see just a bunch of, you know, shanks and things like that.

00:40:43.440 Yeah, that's what's fascinating is that it seems to promote whatever is necessary for a man or an animal, you know, in a given environment to gain status or to, you know, avoid, just to avoid being, to avoid losing status, say.

00:41:02.720 So, it sort of increases your attention to those signals of status is how it seems to work.

00:41:09.720 Your vigilance and your attention and your striving for status in whatever way is necessary.

00:41:15.520 And in our deep history and still in many parts of the world, that was physical aggression.

00:41:20.760 So, that's why males are larger than females and still are, you know.

00:41:25.160 So, there's still those cues and women are still attracted to big, you know, tall, say, muscular, assertive men, even if there isn't any actual reproductive benefit.

00:41:39.160 That's how women are wired. 1.00

00:41:40.540 So, males are also still wired to, yeah, really care about status and be responsive to those cues in a way that women, you know, are responsive to different kinds of cues.

00:41:51.240 And status just is not quite as important for female reproduction, of course, as it is for men.

00:41:56.860 It still matters because females want to compete for the high-status males, and there aren't that many of them. 0.99

00:42:03.500 Well, let's continue on this status strain here.

00:42:06.320 So, I think it's interesting, you talk about studies that testosterone can, I mean, okay, influences this driver status chronically, systemically.

00:42:15.220 So, it just kind of wires you for that.

00:42:16.520 But there's these, like, acute things going on if a male experiences an increase in status or a decrease in status, there can be these sudden drops of testosterone or increases in testosterone.

00:42:31.100 Like, what causes such a rapid change?

00:42:33.260 Because, I mean, the production of testosterone takes a while.

00:42:35.100 It has, like, the pituitary gland, it's a signal.

00:42:36.800 Very good.

00:42:37.460 So, like, what causes that super fast?

00:42:39.840 Like, I mean, it's even, like, it's so weird, like, a guy can watch his favorite sports team lose, and, like, his T levels will drop immediately.

00:42:46.760 So, like, what's going on there?

00:42:48.580 Yeah.

00:42:49.040 So, I don't want to overstate the prevalence of this phenomenon.

00:42:53.600 However, it does exist in humans and in non-human animals.

00:42:59.420 And I think it'll be helpful just to say what happens in non-human animals.

00:43:02.700 So, the Syrian hamster has been studied heavily regarding these testosterone changes, which I think are very important in humans.

00:43:11.640 And, again, it's not so much how much testosterone you have as a guy in general, as long as it's within the normal range.

00:43:18.260 Your sort of baseline level seems not to be super predictive of much.

00:43:23.400 What does, to me, seem to be important is prenatal testosterone and these changes that you're talking about in social, that are a product of social interactions.

00:43:32.860 And this, to me, is absolutely fascinating.

00:43:35.960 So, in Syrian hamsters, if a Syrian hamster has a fight with another male for territory.

00:43:43.440 So, territory is the equivalent of any kind of resource in humans, because you need territory to get females.

00:43:48.260 Because females will feed on the territory that a male can guard, basically. 0.96

00:43:53.780 So, high-status males will have larger territories in the wild, anyway.

00:43:57.620 And the outcome of, if you think about it from an evolutionary point of view, or even think about it from today.

00:44:03.200 So, if you're fighting physically with another guy, if you lose, you need to know on some level that you're a loser.

00:44:11.340 Like, you can't go, if you're losing consistently against other males in physical competitions, you need to stop, you need to run away, basically.

00:44:21.260 If somebody's in your face, you need to run away.

00:44:23.560 You shouldn't be challenging them.

00:44:24.700 Because you want to survive to try to win some other competition in the future so that you can mate, right?

00:44:30.140 So, how do animals make those decisions about, how do they know, well, I need to, you know, fight or I need to flee, right?

00:44:39.620 Those are decisions that animals have to make.

00:44:41.500 So, when you're, when someone's threatening you, it may trigger in you the feeling that they're threatening you physically.

00:44:48.460 Even if it's just a chess game or a tennis match, definitely in a football game, or just some guy is in your face, there's all kinds of situations where two males are competing for status in humans in some way, right?

00:45:02.760 So, in the, in the hamsters, if a male loses a physical fight and he submits, right, he ends up by going on his back and getting on his back and submitting, his testosterone will tank.

00:45:16.520 So, first of all, when they're facing off, they're, both of them have an increase in testosterone, the loser will have a pronounced decrease in testosterone, the winner will maintain high testosterone, or it will get higher.

00:45:29.780 And if you, and then the loser will fail to defend itself or defend its territory against a future threat, because he's lost, he's, that, that reduction in testosterone is somehow telling him he should be scared and run away. 0.99

00:45:45.580 So, if you block that, that reduction in testosterone after he loses, he'll continue to defend his territory and challenge other males, and then he'll get his ass kicked and he could die, right? 0.92

00:45:58.460 So, it seems like the testosterone drop is adaptive for losers, a testosterone rise is adaptive for winners, because it's a way of signaling, shaping the animal for future encounters. 0.97

00:46:11.380 So, if you're a winner, so if you're a winner, you know, in the face of threat that you're a winner, you act like a winner, you don't back down, you take on the challenge.

00:46:19.720 If you have lost, you're fearful and anxious, and you retreat from confrontation.

00:46:24.980 So, we have all varieties in humans of those responses to competition, but it seems like testosterone changes in the moment, in the face of competition, are playing a role neurologically to set people up for reaction to future competitions,

00:46:42.400 and may help to account for different, even, you know, ways that people engage in competition in general, and just feeling like they are fearful or feeling like confident in the face of competition.

00:46:58.540 So, yes, there's all kinds of examples in the human literature where, either from sports or, again, from competitions that are not physical, even.

00:47:10.800 And then there's all these competitions that we don't measure, which are just males getting each other in each other's faces in some way, having subtle competitions, where there are these testosterone changes.

00:47:21.160 It's tough to pin down experimentally, like, exactly when they happen and who they happen in and exactly what the function is.

00:47:28.060 But from the literature on non-human animals, it seems clear that we do know that when testosterone rises in these social situations, it can increase dopamine, which is a hormone that is rewarding and promotes the same behavior in the future.

00:47:47.780 So, it increases motivation for the same behavior in the future, because it felt good last time.

00:47:53.740 And cortisol is a hormone that is associated with stress and anxiety, and that can be paired with the testosterone drop, and that can possibly motivate the animal more towards a retreat strategy in the future.

00:48:07.000 So, there's like a Matthew effect going on, right?

00:48:09.420 He who has will be given more, who doesn't have will be taken away from.

00:48:14.360 Yes, I think that's right, but it's adaptive for all.

00:48:17.780 Basically, based on, but it's a way to, you know, if you're in a stressful situation, it's possibly a way to condition males about how to respond very quickly so they don't have to stop and think about it.

00:48:32.940 And I should just say, you raise a really interesting question, how does testosterone change in these situations?

00:48:39.120 Because, like you said, the signal to produce testosterone in the testes comes from the brain.

00:48:45.800 It comes from the hypothalamus and pituitary in the form of luteinizing hormone, and it takes an hour for that hormone to get from the brain to the testicles and to result in a pulse of testosterone, essentially.

00:48:59.120 Then that testosterone would have to go through the blood and alter gene transcription, which, you know, theoretically should not have immediate effects on behavior.

00:49:08.100 So, the answer is we don't know how social interactions can cause these testosterone rises.

00:49:15.120 It may be that it's not coming from the testes, or it may be that it's not coming from LH, luteinizing hormone.

00:49:21.940 It may be that there's an increase in adrenaline, and that somehow adrenaline acts on the testes to release testosterone that's kind of hanging out there.

00:49:30.920 But we don't know, and this is something that I've been obsessed with a long time, what is the mechanism here.

00:49:38.180 Okay, so testosterone makes teenage boys, young adults, young adult males, preoccupied with sex, preoccupied with status.

00:49:46.240 Well, I wouldn't say makes, but yes, heavily influenced.

00:49:48.460 Heavily influenced, yeah, right.

00:49:50.220 And then also, we've talked about this a little bit, aggression.

00:49:53.140 Like, it causes or influences males to be more aggressive.

00:49:56.860 And what's the advantage of that?

00:49:59.240 I mean, what's the advantage of being aggressive?

00:50:00.720 Because that just helps you get access to mates and resources? 0.97

00:50:03.700 Is that the idea?

00:50:05.840 So, there's actually not a big sex difference in aggression.

00:50:10.560 Okay.

00:50:11.240 Just broadly.

00:50:12.440 It's really physical aggression.

00:50:14.340 Okay, physical aggression.

00:50:15.700 So, using – and what's interesting is if you think about the strategies over human evolutionary history that males and females would use to maximize their reproduction.

00:50:25.500 And that's what natural and sexual selection acts on is, you know, the traits that animals possess that allow them to maximize reproduction.

00:50:35.220 So, for females, taking physical risks is a bad idea because you need your physical integrity. 1.00

00:50:41.940 You need energy.

00:50:42.900 You need safety.

00:50:44.160 You need a long, healthy life.

00:50:47.100 That's what – because you don't have to worry about fighting for mates, right?

00:50:49.880 You have to worry about having the energy and health that you need to bear and feed your children, and you have to care for them.

00:50:58.160 So, it doesn't pay off for females to take physical risks, and they don't have that need to compete physically for mates. 1.00

00:51:07.020 Although, they compete for mates, but in ways that don't put their physical selves at risk typically, right?

00:51:13.300 So, males are relative to females over evolutionary history have benefited from physical aggression because they – that's what their bodies are, in a sense, built to do relative to females.

00:51:26.720 That's where they're putting their reproductive energy budget. 1.00

00:51:29.760 That's why they have bigger bodies and more muscle. 0.50

00:51:32.440 That's the only reason relative to females. 1.00

00:51:35.480 So, that muscle – that's a history of using their bodies to compete physically for mates. 0.99

00:51:40.920 So, we retain that in a modern environment.

00:51:44.200 And that's a – you know, again, that's attractive to females. 1.00

00:51:47.420 It's not the case that they have to compete physically anymore.

00:51:52.040 So, in different cultures, women are going to prefer men who have high status, whether it's gained physically or not.

00:51:59.600 Like, I'm married to a philosophy professor, and he's definitely never gotten into a fight, but he's super attractive to me, partly because – you know, partly.

00:52:10.000 Because of his status.

00:52:11.620 But it's not – you know, he got that with his brain, not with his body, but it depends on the environment you're in and what pays off.

00:52:19.420 So, we have this evolutionary history of physical aggression paying off, but it still plays out in the extremes.

00:52:27.100 Yeah, I mean, you can see the propensity for physical aggression in males, just like crime reports.

00:52:31.820 If you look at murders, physical assault, sexual assault, it's pretty much all dudes.

00:52:36.800 You know, there's women there every now and then, but it's mostly dudes. 1.00

00:52:39.640 But then if you look at crimes like fraud, shoplifting, et cetera, there's still more men, but, you know, women, that's more of where they kind of do their crime if they're going to commit crimes. 0.93

00:52:49.380 Yeah, that's where the sex difference is reduced.

00:52:51.060 So, women are going to commit crimes, but they're not going to – they're just much less likely to put themselves physically at risk to commit those crimes. 1.00

00:53:00.440 Males are much more likely to put themselves physically at risk to commit crimes and to do everything else, like to show off, to, you know, thrill-seeking. 0.97

00:53:09.880 Men are just far more likely to do that physically.

00:53:12.960 Okay, so we've talked about testosterone's effect on behavior in males.

00:53:18.100 Something that's been getting a lot of press lately is the role of testosterone in athletic performance.

00:53:23.200 What do we know what's going on there?

00:53:26.800 So, there's a lot of controversy and confusion around this area, but I'll just say that the science is clear.

00:53:35.780 It's not confusing, and people who try to make it seem confusing, from my point of view, have a political or ideological agenda.

00:53:46.700 It's totally clear that in the – almost all sports, there are some exceptions.

00:53:55.300 Males, men – so if you're looking at the elite level, if you're looking at, you know, comparing highly trained people, you know,

00:54:01.340 who are all taking care of themselves, all healthy, eating well, sleeping, training, you know, et cetera, men blow women out of the water. 0.99

00:54:09.180 It's no – there is no competition.

00:54:12.460 There are – in many sports, even at the Olympic level, there will be thousands of men who will be better than the number one female, 0.96

00:54:23.540 and that's almost the case across the board.

00:54:25.680 In some endurance sports, there are some exceptions to that.

00:54:28.800 The reason is testosterone.

00:54:32.480 Like, it is – again, this is abundantly clear that this is, in effect, a consequence of males going through puberty.

00:54:41.640 Like, for all the reasons that I – you know, all the things we've been talking about physically,

00:54:46.860 never mind what might be happening psychologically, which is a question,

00:54:50.900 but the physical advantages are immense in terms of the – what happens that is irreversible, first of all, in puberty.

00:55:00.140 So there is some aspects of pupital changes that are reversible, and – but there's others that are not.

00:55:05.920 So the ones that are permanent are obviously the bone growth, so the height.

00:55:10.900 Bone density, to some extent, is irreversible.

00:55:13.380 Testosterone causes increase in bone density, and that happens because of the increased muscle during puberty

00:55:20.560 that exerts forces on the developing bones that causes them to increase mineralization and density.

00:55:28.340 So you have stronger, taller bones.

00:55:30.600 So you have larger bodies, and those larger bodies have much more muscle.

00:55:37.500 And testosterone causes stem cells during puberty to differentiate into muscle, preferentially over fat.

00:55:46.600 So those don't reverse, so that in adulthood, if you suppress – if you're a man and a male,

00:55:54.620 and you suppress your testosterone, you will not lose all of that muscle advantage you would have over a typical female.

00:56:02.600 So there's height, there's bone density, there's larger hearts and lungs, there's increased hemoglobin.

00:56:11.660 So males have significantly more hemoglobin.

00:56:14.120 That's a direct effect of testosterone, and hemoglobin carries oxygen around the blood,

00:56:20.660 so you'll have more oxygen fueling the greater amount of muscle mass.

00:56:27.060 You have massively higher upper body strength.

00:56:30.300 Males – again, the upper body strength just blows away the upper body strength of females. 1.00

00:56:36.700 You have greater throwing capacity.

00:56:39.480 You have greater grip capacity.

00:56:43.560 I mean, I could go on and on.

00:56:45.160 And you have more power.

00:56:46.880 So sports that emphasize power, like weightlifting, like Laurel Hubbard, for instance,

00:56:53.200 was a – is a trans woman who competed in weightlifting in the Olympics recently. 0.66

00:57:00.620 And there was a lot of controversy and questions about whether she – because she was a person who

00:57:07.540 was male, who transitioned to living as a woman and had stopped her testosterone and taken estrogen.

00:57:17.860 And the question was, would she have an advantage in weightlifting over natal women? 1.00

00:57:24.480 And the answer is yes, because she went through male puberty.

00:57:28.000 She's going to have a huge advantage because all of her muscle mass that she gained as a result of male puberty 1.00

00:57:34.020 doesn't disappear even when testosterone is stopped for something like even five years.

00:57:39.880 So there's enormous advantages to going through male puberty,

00:57:43.600 and those do not disappear when testosterone is suppressed in trans women.

00:57:49.740 And that's just indisputable.

00:57:52.560 There's just no – it's not that women – some people are saying women aren't trying hard enough, 0.99

00:57:57.280 and that's why they're losing.

00:58:00.260 That's just a joke.

00:58:01.420 That is a joke.

00:58:02.260 So, I mean, when people finish this book, like, what do you hope they walk away thinking?

00:58:06.580 Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things.

00:58:08.460 Of course, I'm incredibly interested in testosterone and the power of testosterone and how it shapes who we are.

00:58:15.620 But I think one of my overarching values in life is that science and knowledge is – it's crucial for us to have clear views about reality

00:58:28.780 and to not fear the truth and to do whatever we can to find and communicate the truth.

00:58:34.820 That's what I see my job as a science educator.

00:58:37.020 And that when you learn how things work, you have more power to make the world a better, safer, more equitable place.

00:58:47.280 And so that is one thing I want people to come away with.

00:58:50.160 I want them to see that it's possible to be clear and honest and open, but also sensitive and compassionate.

00:58:56.660 And then the other point is, of course, about the hormone.

00:58:59.680 There's just so much evidence that this one molecule shapes our society in these really profound ways

00:59:07.860 and that the more we understand about how it works, the more we can capitalize on the positive aspects of being a man,

00:59:14.900 which we didn't even talk about.

00:59:16.500 We didn't talk about toxic masculinity, which I really don't like at all.

00:59:20.820 I don't like that term.

00:59:21.740 I don't like the concept either.

00:59:23.280 I don't want him to be exposed to that idea.

00:59:25.440 He already is, and I don't like that at all.

00:59:27.860 I want him to be, I'm tearing up here.

00:59:31.000 I want him to be, you know, proud.

00:59:33.300 Sorry.

00:59:33.980 No, it's fine.

00:59:36.660 Sorry.

00:59:37.300 I feel so deeply about this.

00:59:39.960 Nobody should be ashamed to be a man, to be masculine.

00:59:43.440 And we didn't talk about heroism.

00:59:45.740 And if you look at the news and who's risking their lives to save the lives of others, it's men, typically.

00:59:51.420 You know, there are really brave women who are doing that too.

00:59:54.580 But over, I don't know why I'm getting so upset.

00:59:56.620 I'm sorry.

00:59:56.920 No, you're fine.

01:00:00.400 It's men.

01:00:01.220 And I think there are a lot of struggles that we need to acknowledge that men are facing.

01:00:07.080 And I wish we could just be open.

01:00:09.220 And some of those struggles are around puberty and adolescence.

01:00:11.980 And I wish that more people felt they could talk about their struggles and have support.

01:00:17.460 And that this ultimately is the way to making the world a better place.

01:00:20.980 And there's so much positivity around masculinity.

01:00:24.900 And that should be celebrated and encouraged.

01:00:27.240 And this whole narrative about toxic masculinity that seems to be increasing, I wish it would end.

01:00:35.060 No, I think that's – I like how we ended on that.

01:00:37.940 Because I think it's true.

01:00:39.520 I'm tired of the toxic masculinity discourse.

01:00:41.460 I don't think it's helpful.

01:00:43.000 I don't even know what it means anymore because it gets bandied around so much.

01:00:47.120 But then we also forget about all the great things men do.

01:00:50.600 And I think that's – I think men need to hear that as well.

01:00:52.820 Because I think you're just kind of scolded all the time in the popular culture.

01:00:56.020 And it can get you down.

01:00:58.660 Yeah.

01:00:59.000 And I'm – you know, you're – I assume working hard and being a great dad.

01:01:03.720 I mean, to me, having that involvement in the family and having that kind of support.

01:01:09.120 And men bring something to the family that women just don't. 0.99

01:01:12.460 And I watch this in my own family, the way that I am with my son and the way my husband is –

01:01:17.560 with my son is very different.

01:01:18.860 And he needs that.

01:01:20.580 I'm not saying that people won't – that every family has to have a male and a female or a mom and a dad.

01:01:26.940 Because, of course, they don't.

01:01:28.300 But there is something that is so important that dads are bringing to the family.

01:01:34.200 And, again, and also I have to – people aren't going to like this.

01:01:37.020 But to the world, there is a different way of being in the world that – I'll just say quickly.

01:01:43.000 And that I asked my students at the end of class, I usually ask them, what would the world be like without men or something like that?

01:01:51.540 And just a couple years ago, a student said, I don't think we'd have tall buildings.

01:01:55.700 Or I think I said, what would happen if we castrated men? 0.99

01:01:57.820 Or some other student said, you know, we should castrate all men or something ridiculous. 0.98

01:02:01.260 And this other student spoke up, which was great. 0.96

01:02:03.740 I don't think you'd say that today.

01:02:05.200 He said, I don't think we'd have tall buildings.

01:02:06.960 I don't think we'd have the kind of innovations that we have.

01:02:10.080 And that's controversial, of course, but there is something to it.

01:02:13.340 That competitiveness, that drive for status sometimes can be destructive but can also be incredible motivation for innovation.

01:02:22.860 And that's something that remains to be explored.

01:02:25.300 It's sort of too politically incorrect probably to study it seriously, but I wish we could.

01:02:30.820 Well, Carol, this has been a great conversation.

01:02:32.220 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

01:02:34.680 Okay, so I have a website, carolhooven.com.

01:02:38.500 I'm on Twitter at Hoovlet and H-O-O-V-L-E-T.

01:02:44.140 And my book is on Amazon and wherever you like to get your books.

01:02:49.000 And if you do get it and like it, I never ask people to do this.

01:02:52.340 I keep forgetting.

01:02:53.160 Just if you could review it on Amazon, that really helps.

01:02:56.200 And yeah, so I'd like to get more reviews.

01:02:59.040 Fantastic.

01:02:59.400 Well, Carol Hooven, thanks for your time.

01:03:00.380 It's been a pleasure.

01:03:01.420 Thank you so much, Brett.

01:03:02.740 I've enjoyed the conversation.

01:03:04.960 My guest name is Carol Hooven.

01:03:06.280 She's the author of the book, Tea, The Story of Testosterone.

01:03:09.340 It's available at Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

01:03:11.520 You can find out more information about her work at our website, carolhooven.com.

01:03:14.980 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash tea, where you can find links to resources,

01:03:19.160 where you can delve deeper into this topic.

01:03:27.420 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

01:03:30.080 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com, where you find our podcast archives,

01:03:33.560 as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you think of.

01:03:36.740 And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium.

01:03:40.500 Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code MANLY to check out for a free month trial.

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01:03:47.540 and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast.

01:03:50.100 And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review

01:03:52.800 on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

01:03:53.940 It helps out a lot.

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01:04:01.160 Until next time, this is Brett McKay.

01:04:02.580 Remind you not only listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - December 26, 2022

How Testosterone Makes Men, Men [Encore]

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