Testosterone

An Unauthorized Biography

By: Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, Katrina Karkazis

Narrated by: Emily Durante

Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Testosterone is a familiar villain, a ready explanation for innumerable social phenomena, from the stock market crash and the overrepresentation of men in prisons to male dominance in business and politics. It's a lot to pin on a simple molecule.

Yet your testosterone level doesn't in fact predict your competitive drive or tendency for violence, your appetite for risk or sex, or your strength or athletic prowess. It's neither the biological essence of manliness nor even "the male sex hormone." This unauthorized biography pries T, as it's known, loose from over a century of misconceptions that undermine science even as they make urban legends about this hormone seem scientific.

T's story didn't spring from nature: it is a tale that began long before the hormone was even isolated, when 19th-century scientists went looking for the chemical essence of masculinity. And so this molecule's outmoded, authorized life story persisted, providing a handy rationale for countless behaviors-from the boorish and the belligerent to the exemplary and enviable. Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis focus on what T does in six domains: reproduction, aggression, risk-taking, power, sports, and parenting. At once arresting and deeply informed, Testosterone allows us to see the real T for the first time.

©2019 the President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2019 Tantor

An Ironically Political Take on the Politics of T

I appreciated the authors insistence that we not over simplify T...but as the book wore on it was clear that the authors' own bias and agenda was at work...they set out, like so many radicalized liberals, to obfuscate, complicate,, and cast doubt over one core element of gender physiology, which is part of a broader attempt to eliminate the biological basis of gender all together...I am a liberal but this was tediously woke at times...too much for me to enjoy it unfortunately.

Great content.

I don’t agree with all of the conclusions, but loved the data that she presented

Went from one good chapter to a woke lecture

The first chapter was awesome and had some stuff about the history of testosterone I didn’t know. Then it’s almost like a new author came in and copied and pasted an academic paper from a sociology class. Truly awkward and not useful or listenable. I really wanted to like this book. “Bio–social entanglements of sex/gender roles” Is Not a how to explain things in a meaningful way to anyone, even in a college paper.