TESTED IS OUT NOW!

                July 15, 2024

            TESTED IS OUT NOW!

            It’s happening! I am in every state of being: shock, awe, joy, terror, pride, chaos. The full kermit flail. You can now listen to the first two episodes of Tested, wherever you get your podcasts.

TESTED EPISODE ONE: THE CHOICE
Would you alter your body for the chance to compete for a gold medal? That’s the question facing a small group of elite athletes right now. Last year, track and field authorities announced new regulations that mean some athletes can’t compete in the female category unless they lower their body’s naturally occurring testosterone levels. In this episode you’ll meet one of those runners, Christine Mboma, a reigning Olympic silver medalist, and hear about the difficult choice she faces.
→ → → LISTEN HERE (or wherever you get podcasts) ← ← ←
For each episode, we’ve published a full, annotated transcript with sources and further explanation for all the things we’re saying. You can find those here.
The Tested website also features a few other goodies, including this timeline of the entire 100+ year history of this topic.
This timeline is a beast, but full of really interesting moments. Explore it at the Tested website!
Behind The Scenes
I’m terrible at documenting things while I’m also trying to report (only so many hands!) but here are some photos from Namibia (including one taken by Christine Mboma).
This is the first thing you see when you get off the plane in Windhoek — that’s Beatrice Masilingi (left) and Christine Mboma (right).

This didn’t make the final cut of the episode, but I went with Henk to this mural in downtown Windhoek. He had never seen it before, and he was… surprised by how his face looks (far left).

Here’s the track Christine trains on. I was there in January, which is summer in Namibia and it was 100 degrees out. 🥵

Me, reporting by the Kavango river — photo by Christine.

I got to hold the freakin’ Olympic medal! Yes, it’s heavy. Yes, I was terrified to drop it. No, I didn’t put it on. I was too afraid to drop it!!
Cutting Room Floor
One anecdote I love: if you look at photos from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, you’ll notice that Christine’s flag is GIGANTIC. Much bigger than the other two women who finished in the top three. Why!? I asked her coach Henk about this, and I think this is probably apocryphal, but he told me that he thinks it’s because they really did not think that a Namibian was going to win. So they didn’t have the correct size flag on hand.
A thing we had to cut: In an earlier version of this show, I went all in on the intro and wrote it like a true, full, fairy tale. There was a king, there were voice actors, it was glorious. It featured a scene with real quotes from 1925, from from men who were part of developing the Olympics that went like this:
Mr. Séîim Sirry: The physical build of women and men is not the same.
Mr. Chryssafis: Women can do all types of exercise, but they must do them in a feminine way, not imitating men… Are men’s muscles not firmer than women’s? Can women make their muscles as hard as men’s by doing the same exercises?
Mr. Weigner: Never!
I’m still really sad that I wasn’t allowed to go with this zany version.
Next time on Tested: we go back to the very beginning of women’s inclusion in sports. Where did sex testing even come from? Why did anybody ever think that some women were too manly to be allowed to compete in the women’s category?

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