Testosterone is all the rage

Summary

Podcast Summary: Today, Explained

Episode: "Testosterone is All the Rage"

Date: August 12, 2026
Hosts: Noel King, Sean Rameswaram (absent in this episode)
Guests: Susan Dominus (New York Times Magazine), Rebecca Jackson (The Economist), Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representatives, Unidentified Female Guests

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Overview

This episode of Today, Explained dives into the growing craze around testosterone—commonly referred to as “T”—and its surging popularity among both women and men in the United States. The hosts and guests explore why more people are seeking testosterone prescriptions, what science actually says about its usage and effects, the risks and downsides (especially at high doses), and the political, cultural, and commercial implications of this booming trend.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Boom in Testosterone Prescriptions

• Prescription Surge: Testosterone prescriptions jumped from 7.3 million in 2019 to 11 million in 2024.

  "Medical professionals, your doctors, your nurses, wrote 11 million prescriptions for testosterone in the US in 2024. That was up from 7.3 just five years earlier."
  — Noel King (02:17)

• Unregulated Sources: Many people access testosterone through med spas, wellness centers, and nutritional clinics, often in high, unmonitored doses.

2. Testosterone and Women: Benefits, Side Effects, Unregulated Use

Effects and Decline in Women

• Natural Decline: Women’s testosterone declines sharply with age—by 60, women have about half of what they did in their early 20s.
  — Susan Dominus (03:34)
• Symptoms: Lower testosterone levels are associated with decreased libido, mood changes, and reduced energy, but the science is still developing.

  "We're not exactly sure, to be honest . . . if you restore women to the levels they had in their 30s, research suggests that it restores some libido, mood, energy."
  — Susan Dominus (04:17)

Standard vs. High Dose Experiences

• Standard Doses:
  Minimal but meaningful restoration of libido; women feel “normal” again rather than dramatically changed.

  "I started to feel like I was attracted to my husband in a different way that I haven't felt in quite some time."
  — Rebecca Jackson (05:25)

• High Doses/Pellets:
  Large, unregulated doses can lead to unpredictable and intense side effects:

  • Unusually high sex drive ("almost uncomfortable")
  • Physical side effects: hair loss, facial hair, acne
  • Emotional impact: irritability and rage

  "I once got dosed with a man's amount of testosterone on accident... why do I want to do things with my coworkers?"
  — Rebecca Jackson (06:20)
  "Some women report irritability or even rage...chunks of hair fall out, hair growth on their faces."
  — Susan Dominus (06:36)

Social and Financial Drivers

• No FDA Approval:
  Testosterone use for women is not FDA-approved; insurance doesn’t cover it. This creates a market ripe for exploitation.

  "It's not approved by the FDA even at that level. And so insurance definitely does not cover any of this for women...they can charge women a lot of money...sometimes upwards of $1,000 for high dose testosterone pellets."
  — Susan Dominus (07:17)

• Clinic Incentives:
  Marketing is aggressive, with financial incentives for nurses and spas to administer more testosterone.

Memorable Story

• Notable Case:
  Woman in her 40s—a successful business owner and mom—lost 40% of her hair but gained energy and a transformed sex life. Despite the side effects, she doesn’t regret it.

  "Nothing would have gotten her enrolled in that PhD and nothing else would have really changed her marriage quite as dramatically as it did."
  — Susan Dominus (13:03)

3. The Gender-Politics of T: Feminism, Conservative Women, and Parallels to Gender-Affirming Care

• Cultural Overlaps:
  High-dose use sometimes puts women’s testosterone levels closer to those of transitioning individuals seeking gender affirmation, yet users often don’t recognize the link or reconcile it with their ideologies.
• Political Irony:

  "Many, many women across a political spectrum are also on, frankly, in a way, you could say a transitioning spectrum or a gender affirming care spectrum."
  — Susan Dominus (11:22)

4. Testosterone and Young Men: Demand, Influencer Culture, and Risks

Demographic Shift

• A Younger Crowd:
  The surge is not among older men but younger—men in their 20s and 30s.

  "The people who are taking to testosterone fastest now are not guys in their seventies, but they're actually men in their twenties and thirties."
  — Rebecca Jackson (19:45)

• Clinic Explosion:
  Game Day Men's Health Clinic expanded from 50 to 375 franchises in just over a year. Clinics are now everywhere and target young men with “gym bro” branding.
  — Rebecca Jackson (18:55); Noel King (19:20)

Influencer Hype

• Podcasters and Social Media:
  Joe Rogan, Dax Shepard, and TikTok influencers push T as the key to being youthful, a “big boy,” and more masculine, regardless of real medical need.

  "Joe Rogan...says that testosterone has made him feel younger."
  — Rebecca Jackson (20:47)
  "I spent my whole life as a medium boy, and now I'm a big boy, and I like it."
  — Dax Shepard (21:22)

Potential Dangers

• Side Effects:
  • Roid rage (aggression)
  • Insomnia
  • Hair loss
  • High blood pressure
  • Most concerning: infertility, which may be only partially reversible

  "Some of the doctors I spoke to told me that they often have young men coming in who are horrified to find out that after taking the stuff that their friend gave them at the gym for a little while, they've seriously hurt their prospects of having children."
  — Rebecca Jackson (22:02)

The Testosterone Business

• Aggressive Marketing:
  Clinics market to alpha males, offer refer-a-friend deals, and sometimes inject clients with testosterone at their first visit—often before a thorough medical evaluation.
  • "It is a place where a gym bro would feel comfortable... makes you feel like if you're not the alpha male that you want to be, we can help you with that." (24:03)
• Secrecy and Stigma:
  Few young men are open about testosterone use, creating stigma and hidden prevalence.

5. Where is All This Heading?

• Parallel to Ozempic:
  Like the weight loss drug, when T works, people love it and struggle to quit—even with side effects.
  • Unlimited business potential: "Like Ozempic, it's an industry that is not going anywhere . . . cash here is just endless." (26:07)
• Testosterone Clinics on Every Corner:
  Growing ubiquity suggests this trend is not fading anytime soon.

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On Restoration:
  “I found my libido. I found it again.” — Noel King (03:07)
• On Unintended Effects:
  “I once got dosed with a man’s amount of testosterone…Why do I want to do things with my coworkers?” — Rebecca Jackson (06:20)
• On Business Incentives:
  “The nurse is highly incentivized to provide it... a very hard sell. They are sort of posing as medical practitioners.” — Susan Dominus (07:54)
• On Infertility:
  “He can restore fertility to about 25% of their baseline, but he can't get a guy back to normal.” — Rebecca Jackson (22:02)
• On Societal Impact:
  “Do you think that we are moving toward a world where there's a testosterone clinic on every corner?" — Noel King (25:32) “To some extent, Noel, I think we're already there.” — Rebecca Jackson (26:07)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:17] — U.S. testosterone prescription surge explained
• [03:34] — Scientific basics of testosterone in women
• [05:25] — Experiences of women on standard testosterone dose
• [06:20] — Effects and risks of high testosterone doses in women
• [07:17] — FDA approval status and financial incentives
• [10:44] — Politics, ideology, and the gender care spectrum
• [13:03] — A personal story: hair loss, PhD, and marriage transformation
• [17:42] — The rise of testosterone clinics for men
• [19:45] — Young men as primary market
• [20:47] — Influencer and celebrity testosterone culture
• [22:02] — Risks: rage, side effects, infertility
• [24:03] — Clinic culture, marketing, and business incentives
• [25:32] — Discussion of market future; comparison to Ozempic
• [26:07] — Rebecca Jackson summarizes the business future

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Conclusion

Testosterone therapy is booming in the U.S., reshaping ideas about gender, health, and sexuality—and creating a lucrative market for clinics and influencers. For both women and men, the promise of renewed vitality competes with a host of potential downsides, medical unknowns, and societal questions. The episode concludes with the sense that testosterone therapy will continue to proliferate, with both its possibilities and perils extending ever further into the mainstream.

Transcript

[Noel King]

We all have it. Men want more.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Yeah, they do.

[Noel King]

Women also want more.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Oh, yeah.

[Noel King]

You know what I'm talking about. Testosterone.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Testosterone.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Oh, yeah.

[Johnny (Coordination Agent)]

Oh, yeah.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Testosterone. Oh, yeah.

[Noel King]

Big T today on Today explained the hormone of which ladies and germs cannot get enough. Everyone's on T. Should they be? Stay turned.

[KPMG Representative]

Let's bring that bass back.

[Susan Dominus]

Oh, yeah.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Bring the groove. Give them a big T finish.

[Johnny (Coordination Agent)]

This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. Reese, our content agent, wrote the copy based on our best practices, like mentioning Monday.com three times. That was the second. Johnny, our coordination agent, built the timeline and kept everyone aligned. Olivia, our human creative director, stayed in the loop because agents are great, but they don't always know when a joke lands. She had one tell listeners it only takes minutes to build an agent. So make minutes. Create your own AI agent.

[KPMG Representative]

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[Rebecca Jackson]

So the number one thing I think

[Susan Dominus]

that doctors don't prescribe, which is a

[Rebecca Jackson]

shame, is Today explained.

[Noel King]

Medical professionals, your doctors, your nurses, wrote 11 million prescriptions for testosterone in the US in 2024. That was up from 7.3 just five years earlier. That said, a lot of people are also getting tea, sometimes in troubling doses.

[Susan Dominus]

I had to take mine down because I was like. It was like I was humping everything. Yeah, you'll just hump and hump and hump away.

[Noel King]

From nutritionists and med spas and wellness centers. I talked to Susan Dominus, a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine, for a show that first aired last year about a piece she wrote on women who take tea.

[Susan Dominus]

In recent months, I've just been seeing the topic come up much more among influencers. Ladies and gentlemen, low libido, brain fog, depression, anxiety, low testosterone.

[Noel King]

Do you notice a difference with it?

[Rebecca Jackson]

I do.

[Noel King]

Me too. My libido's been.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Yeah, I know.

[Susan Dominus]

And I have more.

[Noel King]

I found it again. I found my libido.

[Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representative]

Right.

[Susan Dominus]

My friend started talking to me about their experiences with it, and I heard some kind of incredible stories about what happened to women when they went on unusually high doses of it. You know, that idea that a hormone could have such a hold not just on how you feel, felt physically, but how you felt emotionally and in relationship to other people, that was a really intriguing idea to me.

[Noel King]

What is this hormone? What does testosterone do exactly, and who has it?

[Susan Dominus]

So both men and women have testosterone. Men have literally 10 times the amount of this hormone that women do. And it is something that declines gradually in men over time. But in women, who of course have much less of it to begin with, it actually diminishes over time even more dramatically, so that by the time they are around 60, they have about half of the amount of testosterone circulating through their body that they had in their, let's say, early 20s. And it's produced by both the ovaries and the adrenal glands in women, but it is only produced by the adrenal glands by that point in women's lives.

[Noel King]

As women have less testosterone over time, what starts to happen? What changes?

[Susan Dominus]

Well, we're not exactly sure, to be honest. You know, it's one of these situations in which we know what happens when you replenish their testosterone, which is that, you know, if you restore women to the levels of testosterone that they had in their 30s, when they are actually, let's say, in their 50s, there's a lot of research that suggests that it restores some of their libido and other things such as mood or energy.

[Noel King]

And in your article, you very hilariously described what happens when women start taking testosterone. It was inspiring. Tell us what you learned.

[Susan Dominus]

So there's, I mean, there's really two very different experiences, right, in the United States, when women take what is considered, I'm just gonna use this, you know, colloquially, a standard dose of testosterone, when it's been approved by various illustrious medical societies, at least in short term use. You know, this is the amount that restores women in their 50s or 60s back to where they were in their late 30s, to that level of testosterone. Those women report a minimal but meaningful, you know, restoration of their libido.

[Rebecca Jackson]

I started to feel like I was attracted to my husband in a different way that I haven't felt in quite some time.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Think of this, think of not going to bed hoping that your husband doesn't touch you. It's not that you have this crazy high sex drive, it's just that I can lay in bed normal.

[Susan Dominus]

However, there's an entirely different cohort of women who are getting prescribed what are known as pellets, or they're taking a lot more of the cream than their doctors would Advise. And these women are getting into their systems several times the level of testosterone that they ever would have had in their bodies, even as very, you know, young women in their 20s. And those women are having unpredictable but fairly dramatic results. Some women report, you know, really intense, almost uncomfortable sex drives.

[Rebecca Jackson]

I once got dosed with a man's amount of testosterone on accident. And I start looking at my boss and my coworkers and I'm like, oh my God, why do I want to, why do I want to do things with my coworkers? Like, this is making no sense.

[Susan Dominus]

When that testosterone kicks in, I'm bringing sexy back.

[Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representative]

Yeah.

[Susan Dominus]

Some women report irritability or even rage. Some women report side effects like having chunks of hair fall out, hair growth on their faces or elsewhere on their bodies where they're not used to having hair grow.

[Noel King]

So you've got hair on your face

[Susan Dominus]

and you want to know if it can be reversed.

[Rebecca Jackson]

My biggest complaint with taking testosterone is the appearance of zits that I used to never get and now I get them all the time.

[Susan Dominus]

And also a lot of women on those high doses, I mean, it's kind of like a steroid, right? Like, they report having tremendous boosts of energy.

[Noel King]

You know, I've seen this on my own Instagram. Contact this company and they'll run a test for you. But insurance doesn't cover testosterone, right?

[Susan Dominus]

Oh, it's not even FDA approved for women in any dose. So basically a bunch of illustrious medical societies, you know, got together and issued a consensus statement in 2019 and they said, look, we, I know it's not approved by the FDA for women, but we're gonna go out on a limb here and say that the safety data looks pretty good, at least in the short term, at least for postmenopausal women, who are the women who've been studied the most for this. But it's not approved by the FDA even at that level. And so insurance definitely does not cover any of this for women. I think there are a lot of people who stand to make a lot of money off of these high doses of testosterone because, you know, insurance doesn't get involved. They can charge women a lot of money sometimes they get, they certainly don't get addict to it, but they have a hard time walking away from it. And it can cost upwards of easily upwards of $1,000 at a time to take these pretty high dose testosterone pellets, for example. It's not the only way women get high testosterone. I saw a job listing on one kind of aesthetic spa that was offering nurses $100 per shot of testosterone that they gave women in their spa. And then I heard stories from other women that they were basically directed before they even left the spa, like, make sure you get your testosterone shot. You know, so the nurse is highly incentivized to provide it. Women are sort of being told, take our word for it, you're going to love it. Like, go book a, you know, a hotel for you and your husband this weekend. You're going to be so busy, you know, so it's a very hard sell. They are sort of posing as medical practitioners. Some of them are. Some of them are obgyns or urologists who, you know, are trained. But the financial incentives are high. And sometimes women love it. And sometimes they discover midway through, let's say, a pellet which can take three months to dissolve, that they're miserable, but there's nothing you can do about it once it's been inserted underneath the skin of your buttock.

[Noel King]

Why hasn't the FDA approved this as a treatment for women?

[Susan Dominus]

Well, the last time that a drug company got it together and actually did some trials of a testosterone patch, it was Procter and Gamble that did show that women were having incrementally more satisfying sex, sexual experiences. Their libidos were restored. But that was right after another study came out in 2002 that caused a big menopausal hormone therapy scare. And so basically, as I understand it, the people on the panel were concerned about cancer risks, you know, breast cancer specifically. And there was even a couple of excess cases in a fairly small sample size, and they just didn't have enough long term data is what they said, to endorse it and give it FDA approval. Now, a lot of feminist followers of medical history, you know, have said, well, that was not required for testosterone to be approved for men. There was no long term data for men required. All that the drug companies had to prove back then was that it restored men to the level of testosterone that, you know, would make them virile and youthful and strong again. To which other people would then say, right, but they don't get breast cancer and women do. So, you know, that's the concern with women.

[Noel King]

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the conversation around this has turned political. You wrote about the parallels between women, often conservative women who are taking testosterone, and gender affirming care for transgender people. Tell me a little bit about what you explored here.

[Susan Dominus]

You know, I just thought it was interesting. One of the most influential testosterone influencers is this lovely person named Marcella Hill.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

To go from Being dead inside, not wanting anyone to touch you, to wanting to have sex at all, having it in your brain at all, is a massive difference in how you show up to life.

[Susan Dominus]

Who was a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, and she was still in the church when she started taking really, really high doses of testosterone.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Want to know what a middle aged woman that feels good has in common with a bodybuilder? Testosterone.

[Susan Dominus]

According to her, there are these aesthetic and wellness spas offering pellets and high doses of testosterone all, you know, Utah, which is largely a Mormon community. You know, I pointed out to her, you know, you were taking so much testosterone that you were approaching the levels that people who are transitioning take. And she said, you know, I never really sat and thought about what I even think about that. It was. She'd never really made the connection. And so it is just interesting because people who are taking testosterone in high doses, which is to say at levels that are two or three times higher than women ever naturally have, and that's to say many, many women across a political spectrum are also on, frankly, in a way, you could say a transitioning spectrum or a gender affirming care spectrum. I think that they feel in a way that testosterone is helping them do gender affirming care in making them feel more sexual and therefore more wifely, maybe. And maybe a lot of them talk about how it tones their arms and they feel like they look great, but it actually is a hormone that has typically been associated with, with masculinity. So it just to me kicks up all kinds of interesting questions.

[Noel King]

There is a woman you wrote about who I will have a hard time forgetting. She's in her late 40s, she's a business owner, she's a mom, she gets on a high dose of tea and she feels amazing. Her sex drive improves, but then she loses her hair. So she scales back her dose. Her hair still has not come back. And you asked her, would you do it again? And she said yes. What do you make of this?

[Susan Dominus]

I think she feels that when she had that initial burst of energy, it is true that she lost her hair, not all of her hair, she lost about 40% of her hair. But that initial burst of energy gave her the inspiration. Even though she, I think, has four kids and was literally helping her husband run three jobs. She then took on getting a PhD and she is so thrilled that she's on her way to becoming a doctor because she works very, very hard and it's tough for her to get respect from the many men in her field and she feels like having a PhD will really help her cause. She's really proud of herself and for her I thought it would have been like the sex that made it because it really completely changed her sex life with her husband. They had had very routine rote sex for years and years. It was not a big part of her life and that really changed on high dose testosterone. But I think she just felt like she could deal with the hair, you know. But nothing would have gotten her enrolled in that PhD and nothing else would have really changed her marriage quite as dramatically as it did.

[Noel King]

Susan Dominus is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine. Coming up, the young men who are taking testosterone and why.

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[Noel King]

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[Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representative]

If you want your body to perform well, I think you should get today explained.

[Rebecca Jackson]

My name is Rebecca Jackson. I cover the south for the Economist and I write mostly about politics, a little bit about culture and economics. And I like to think of the states that I cover as like the former Confederacy, from Texas down to Florida, all the way up to Virginia.

[Noel King]

All right, so in the first half of the show, we talked about how a lot of women are going on testosterone, and for many of them it's working. For some of them there are side effects. You wrote a piece about how men are doing the same thing. Where did the idea come from?

[Rebecca Jackson]

You know, some of the best stories just come from conversations with friends, and this was an example of that. I have a friend who's a med student and he was doing a urology rotation and he told me one day that there were all of these young guys coming in asking for testosterone. And I thought that was super interesting and decided to sort of look into it a bit more and found out that Pfizer had actually reported a shortage of testosterone this year because of rising demand. So I started talking to doctors and people in the pharmaceutical industry and found out that this is actually a huge trend.

[Noel King]

How big a trend is it? Do we know how many men are doing this?

[Rebecca Jackson]

So it's really hard to gauge how many people are doing it because some people are getting at doctor's offices. Others are getting it from a gym. Yeah. One of. One of the things that sort of helped me quantify the rise was I went to visit a testosterone clinic. There are now these. All of these. These healthcare clinics popping up that are devoted to testosterone. I went to Game day Men's health clinic in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta.

[Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representative]

It takes only 10 minutes to measure your testosterone levels. Then we'll create a plan to optimize your health. Kind of anything you need as you get older as a guy and you look in the mirror and that light switch gets turned off, we help you turn it back on.

[Rebecca Jackson]

And they opened in April of last year, and they were the company's 50th franchise. But in the 14 months since they opened another 325 testosterone clinics, Game day clinics opened up across the country.

[Noel King]

That is massive. And that's just one clinic. That's just Game Day.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Jackson]

So Game Day is one of the most popular, but there are tons of these types of clinics. Actually, when I went to game day, I walked out, and across the street, there was another testosterone clinic competing with them.

[Noel King]

Huh. Okay, so your friend, who is a medical student, told you the surprise was it was young men who were coming in.

[Olivia from Ollie]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Jackson]

So I think one important thing to remember here is that lots of health crazes do stem from real medical problems, and testosterone is no exception. So as men age, their testosterone levels tend to drop. That's natural and normal. But for some people, it can dip into an abnormal range, and that causes problems. It can make you, for example, have low sex drive, low energy, weight gain, have trouble putting on muscle mass. And like many medical problems, this is exacerbated by things like obesity and drug use, which has become more common in America. And so, over time, this has become a bigger issue. And doctors have found that they can treat low testosterone and many of the symptoms that come along with it with these injections. But I think the troubling thing here, and the trend that I'm most interested in, is that the people who are taking to testosterone fastest now are not guys in their seventies, but they're actually men in their twenties and thirties.

[Noel King]

Who is telling men in their twenties and thirteties about testosterone? Where are they getting the info from?

[Rebecca Jackson]

Yes, as you can probably imagine, this is not all doctors. The people who are hawking this stuff are podcaster and influencers. So Joe Rogan, who has the biggest audience in America, says that testosterone has made him feel younger.

[Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representative]

It makes your body work way better. You can avoid a host of ailments and conditions that are related to your body breaking down due to age.

[Rebecca Jackson]

And you can look to other celebrities like Dax Shepard, an actor and podcaster. He told a reporter a couple years ago in an interview that because of testosterone, because he's been on testosterone replacement therapy.

[Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representative]

I spent my whole life as a medium boy, and now I'm a big boy, and I like it.

[Rebecca Jackson]

So there are all these influencers, especially on TikTok, that are basically telling, like, young gym bros, that they'll see more gains at the gym, they can have better sex, they'll have more appeal with women if they get on testosterone, even if their doctor doesn't actually think that they need to.

[Game Day Men's Health Clinic Representative]

First off, fellas, you are a warrior. It's embedded in our DNA. How are you gonna be a warrior if your testosterone levels are low?

[Rebecca Jackson]

CRT is not going to directly affect the growth of your johnson, but it will help you out in three ways.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Is

[Noel King]

what's the catch here? What are some of the drawbacks for young men or dangers?

[Rebecca Jackson]

Yeah, so if you're not taking it to bulk up, if you actually have a deficiency and you're going through a doctor, then it could be a very good thing. The problem is, as you said, the guys who are taking tons of it and without actually needing it. So people used to think that testosterone was dangerous. People used to think that it could cause prostate cancer or heart attacks. That's proven to not be true. But there are some real issues, especially if you take it at bodybuilding doses. So for one thing, it can cause what's called roid rage, steroid rage, which is basically just guys getting unusually aggressive. And there's also been reporting of other side effects like insomnia, high blood pressure, and hair loss. But more concerningly, if it's not taken with a cocktail of other hormones, preventative ones, it can actually make you infertile. Some of the doctors I spoke to told me that they often have young men coming in who are horrified to find out that after taking the stuff that their friend gave them at the gym for a little while, they've seriously hurt their prospects of having children. One doctor in Houston told me that he can restore fertility to about 25% of their baseline, but he can't get a guy back to normal.

[Noel King]

The loss of fertility seems like a very serious problem for young men, especially at a time when we're all concerned about, you know, too few babies being born in the US you mentioned all these clinics, which makes me think there is a lot of money involved in the sale of Testosterone. Right. Now, tell me what you. You found about the business here.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Yeah, so one of the interesting things is that these businesses obviously serve a real purpose. There are men who really need testosterone replacement therapy, and they're benefiting from the fact that they can now just sort of walk to a men's health clinic that specializes in this stuff in their neighborhood. The problem comes partly in the marketing. You know, some of these clinics, I sat in a lot of the waiting rooms. Let me tell you, it's a bit awkward to be a young woman sitting in these waiting rooms trying to not make eye contact with the guys. But, you know, these.

[KPMG Representative]

These.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Many of these places sort of market themselves as places where a gym bro would feel comfortable, right? They've got these big black leather sofas, they've got a fridge full of cold drinks and a game on. So they. They try and basically make it a place that guys can feel comfortable, but also a place that sort of makes you feel like if you're not the alpha male that you want to be, we can help you with that. And they've got all these systems where you can refer a friend to get money off your next treatment. And I think perhaps most alarmingly, some of these clinics will also inject you with your first dose of testosterone within an hour of coming in.

[Noel King]

Huh. Did you have a chance to talk to any of the men in the waiting room even as you were avoiding their. Avoiding their eyes? Did you speak to anyone who said, like, hey, here's why I'm here. Here's what this is about for me?

[Rebecca Jackson]

You know, I gotta say, Noel, I tried, and it was mostly unsuccessful. The conversations were kind of awkward and stilted, and I didn't have much success. I went around, you know, very. This makes.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Makes.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Makes you win a lot of friends as a reporter. But I went around asking a lot of my guy friends if they were on this stuff. And people were very cagey about it. And I actually got the impression that, you know, probably a lot of people that I know are doing this but didn't want to talk about it.

[Noel King]

All right, so clearly taking testosterone has some pros and some cons. And what we've learned in this show is for the people who experience the pros, it's very hard to give it up.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Up.

[Noel King]

Even when there are negative side effects, it's very hard to give it up. This reminds me to some degree of Ozempic. It is a treatment that when people are on it and when it's working, they really, really, really love it. And it seems to me that there is a lot of money to be made here. Do you think that we are moving toward a world where there's a testosterone clinic on every corner and where we're looking, as we saw with, you know, weight loss drugs, we're looking at shortages because so want to be taking t. Where do you think this is going?

[Rebecca Jackson]

I mean, to some extent, Noel, I think we're already there. I'm inundated. You know, I'm a woman and I'm inundated with testosterone ads all the time. These clinics are everywhere in the city that I live in, and there's clearly a ton of money in it. They're doing very well. I think, also like Ozempic, it's an industry that is not going anywhere like Ozempic unit to continue taking testosterone if you want to see the results. And that means that the cash here is kind of just endless.

[Noel King]

That was Rebecca Jackson. She covers the show for Leading magazine. The economist Miles Bryant originally produced today's show. And Aminah El Saadi edited Adrienne Lilly Engineered with an assist from Patrick Boyd and Laura Bullard. Check the facts. I'm Noel King.

[Rebecca Jackson]

It's Today explained Sam.