Stories of people getting more testosterone and coming to regret it. And of people losing it and coming to appreciate life without it. The pros and cons of the hormone of desire. And we get our testosterone measured, as a staff.
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Prologue
Producer Alex Blumberg explains that he wanted to do this show because of his conflicted relationship with his own testosterone. He tells host Ira Glass that the reasons go back to a girl in his eighth-grade homeroom and the 1970s seminal feminist novel The Women's Room. We also hear from a man who stopped producing testosterone due to a medical treatment and found that his entire personality was altered. (9 minutes)
Act One
Life At Zero
The interview with a man who lost his testosterone continues. He explains that life without testosterone is life without desire—desire for everything: food, conversation, even TV. And he says life without desire is unexpectedly pleasant. The man first wrote about his experiences, anonymously, in GQ Magazine. (8 minutes)
Act Two
Infinite Gent
An interview with a transgender man, who started life as female and began taking testosterone injections several years ago. He explains how testosterone changed his views on nature vs. nurture for good. (17 minutes)
Act Three
Contest-osterone
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 to see if personality traits actually do match up with hormone levels. It turns out to be an exercise that in retrospect, we might not recommend to other close-knit groups of friends or co-workers. (12 minutes)
Act Four
Learning To Shut Up
Novelist Miriam Toews, author of The X Letters (which appeared in an earlier episode of the show), tells the story of a road trip she took with her 15-year-old son. Her most recent book is called All My Puny Sorrows. (11 minutes)
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Working In Another Decade [Retracted]
This episode originally included a story by reporter Stephen Glass (no relation to Ira) about an internship at George Washington's former plantation, which we have removed because of questions about its truthfulness.
Act Five: Break It Down
A man tries to calculate what love costs.
Act Three: How To Increase Your Value As A Person
In which we tackle the biggest possible how-to we could think of: how to make your life worth more.
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