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Have We Reached Peak Testosterone?

October 15, 2026 · 40 min

Show notes

Politics has seemed obsessed recently with performing masculinity. If there’s one factor that animated Donald Trump’s reelection and continues to animate the political right in general, it’s “masculinism,” a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men, as the Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis wrote in her June cover story.

As the midterms approach, though, the administration—and masculinism with it—seems deflated. Have we reached “peak testosterone” already?

Hanna Rosin talks with Lewis and her fellow staff writer Sophie Gilbert at a live taping from last month’s The Atlantic Festival about the evolution of the manosphere, why both Republicans and Democrats have put masculinity on a political pedestal, and where that leaves feminism.

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