Peter Attia, M.D.

This is a topic that we talk a lot about on the podcast, but usually from a pretty narrow lens, which is in the form of replacement.

We talk about hormones, both in men and women, sex hormones, and we talk about how they wax and wane as an individual ages.

We obviously then talk about the medical use of them, but I don't think we've spent any time understanding the more basic fundamentals of these hormones, the role they play in our evolution.

And anecdotally, I'll just share with you kind of the observation that any parent probably has if they have male and female children.

My first child was a girl and my wife and I very, very stupidly and arrogantly thought we were the perfect parents.

Because like she was so well behaved and we were like, what do all of these other parents with their boys running around misbehaving, like what are they doing wrong?

How could we teach them how to be as good as we are?

I mean, we didn't actually say that, but there was undoubtedly an annoying smugness to us.

And if you believe in a God, that God smacked us into our place with two boys that followed who were, for all intents and purposes, treated the same way, socialized the same way.

And there is a level of aggression in them, a fury in them that I've never seen, probably unless I were to go back and hear stories of what my mom said I was like.

Eight and almost 11.

I wouldn't say they're a different sex.

I would say they're a different species.

Yeah, I was just going to say that.

Yeah.

So all of that is to say, I don't feel we did anything different and yet they couldn't be more different.

And I appreciate that that's not going to be the case for every parent.

what I hope to learn is how much testosterone has to do with that.

Because I also am under the impression that at this age, the testosterone levels wouldn't be that much different.

And I understand, and we'll probably talk about the differences in testosterone levels during the embryologic phase, because obviously that led to the differences.