Radiolab - Boy Man

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Could puberty get any more awkward? Turns out, yes. Patrick Burleigh started going through puberty as a toddler. He had pubic hair before he was two years old and a mustache by middle school. All of this was thanks to a rare genetic mutation that causes testotoxicosis, also known as precocious puberty. From the moment he was born, abnormally high levels of testosterone coursed through his body, just as it had in his father’s body, his grandfather’s body, and his great-grandfather’s body. On this week’s episode, Patrick’s premature coming of age story helps us understand just why puberty is so awkward for all of us, and whether and how it helps forge us into the adults we all become. Special thanks to Craig Cox, Nick Burleigh, and Alyssa Voss at the NIH. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif Nasserwith help from - Kelsey Padgett, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, and Alyssa Jeong-PerryProduced by - Pat Walters, Alex Neason, and Alyssa Jeong-Perrywith help from - Ekedi Fausther-Keyeswith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Diane A. Kellyand Edited by  - Pat Walters   EPISODE CITATIONS: Articles - To read Patrick’s own writing about his experience with precocious puberty and to see photos of him as a child, check out his article in The Cut, “A 4-Year-Old Trapped in a Teenager’s Body” (https://zpr.io/athKVQmtfzaN) In her spare time, our fact checker Diane Kelly is also a comparative anatomist, and you can hear her TEDMED talk, “What We Didn’t Know about Penis Anatomy” (https://zpr.io/MWHFTYBdubHj)  Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, it's Latif here. Before we start the show, I'd like you to meet... The other more now. Oh, he's recording. All right, appreciate it. Okay. Diane. Diane Kelly, and I'm part of your team of fact checkers.

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She's like, hmm, how do we know that? Then it's like going on a treasure hunt through the entire internet. For first-hand evidence. About whale milk, mouthfeel, and flavor. She's going to whale experts. Whales dolphins and porpuses. Lives.experts.

A food and agriculture organization for the UN, and milk experts. So into the US dairy export council. She's also looking through books. Book called Whales of the Southern Ocean. My copy of on food and cooking by Harold McGee. Okay. A great reference source.

Okay, along the way she learned. It is very creamy. Good to know. Good to know. But it's still doesn't tell me anything about what it tastes like. Ha ha ha ha. Don't tell me anything about what it tastes like. Jon, tell me you drank whale milk for this story. I did not drink whale milk.

Okay, but she did have to find someone who did. So I kept looking. Until she found... The Japanese Institute for Prints. A scientific, peer-reviewed. Where someone had actually tasted whale milk. No, you didn't. I did. Bingo.

Okay, and what did it say? Mouth feel like butter, taste like fish. Did you recommend any change-stat or what do you- So, I recommended- They're milk, apparently tastes like fishy butter. Fishy butter. Well done. Um, how long approximately were you chasing? recommended their milk apparently tastes like fishy butter fishy butter well done

How long approximately were you chasing that weird little fact? Yeah That's probably about a 45 minute question. It took her more time to fact check those three words Then it does to listen to the entire episode we put into the feed. Yes. That's like so much work. Yeah. I know. You're probably thinking, this sounds like a big waste of time. Is it really worth it? Well.

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And now to today's episode, which Diane fact-checked, enjoy. Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Door listening to Radio Lab.

Radio from WNYC. See? See? Yeah. Hey, I'm LattifNosser here again still. And I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radio Lab. So where should we start this thing?

So the story I want to tell you, it is a coming of age story, but it's a poorly timed one. What is that? It's a coming of age story Oh, okay, what is that? It's a coming of age, or it's that mean. But just at the wrong time, that's what it means. About to be fair, is coming of age ever at the right time.

Uh, well, I think you will have a completely different answer to that question after you hear this story. Okay. So basically, I, you know, I don't remember this, but I got my first pubic hair when I was one and a half. ... Whoa, that's so alarming.

Yeah, so this is Patrick. I'm good, sorry. Patrick Burley. Minutes late. Nowadays, he's a writer in Los Angeles, So this is Patrick. I'm good, sorry. Patrick Burley. I'm hopeful. Minutes late. Nowadays he's a writer in Los Angeles, but this story starts many, many years before that. On the other side of the country, out in New York City, it is the early 1980s. Patrick's parents are both actors doing their best to take care of this new baby when

they notice this pubic hair. And as he starts to get older, I was like really aggressive. Like on the playground, you know, I was constantly like punching kids and just losing my temper. And so are these like, like how old are, like these are your first four?

I'm like three, four, yeah. This is like, yeah. And this kid is growing like no kid you've ever seen. I was like three years old, for instance, but I looked like a seven-year-old. Whoa, that is a big cap. And what's happening here, I mean, it might be obvious, but Patrick has a genetic condition

called testotoxocosis, whereas bodies started producing testosterone way earlier than normal, which essentially meant that he was going through puberty as a toddler. Prokosis puberty. You know, obviously this is this is really an extreme story. This is a story about puberty happening earlier and more intensely than it does for the vast majority of us. But hearing him talk about it, I find so relatable. Because, you know, we all go through puberty obviously,

whether you went through a decade ago, whether you're going through it right now, and we all end up facing a version of these two huge questions. How much of the awkwardness and really the kind of agony of that time comes from inside of us? And then also, to what extent does it make us into the adults we become? When I came to the NIH, I happened to join a lab focusing on this particular rare type of percosis puberty. This is Ellen Leschek. I'm a pediatric endocrinologist at the National Institutes of Health. She's spent decades studying kids like Patrick.

So I just asked her like, what was going on in Patrick's body? Well... Puberty is a very important stage in your lives. Normally, what happens in puberty is, when a kid gets to be about, you know, 11, 12, 13 is a little part of our brain. The pituitary gland in the brain wakes up, releases a hormone, and it flows out of the brain, circulates around, makes its way to this receptor, the testicle, plugs into the receptor,

and as a result, the sex glands now increase their own production of hormones. Testosterone is produced. That testosterone swirls all around the body. Going to your muscles. Making you grow body hair. You becare. But also, changing all sorts of stuff in your brain.

This is friend of the show, Robert Sapulski. Neuroscientist and primatologist at Stanford University. And he says when the testosterone makes its way back up to the brain, it takes certain impulses and aggression, it ups the volume, ramps them up. So that's the normal, that's a normal now. For Patrick, with this particular disorder,

the body sort of gets ahead of the brain. What do you mean? Well, the receptor in Patrick's testes, the one that's typically activated by the pituitary gland in the brain, has a mutation, and that mutation, it's a tiny little mutation, it causes that testosterone production to start before it hears from the brain. From day one. So in other words, like as soon as Patrick had testicles, even in utero, they were producing testosterone. Unregulated. And so the physical effects of testosterone

hit Patrick right away. I would get these erections and like toddlers get these, but like these were like erections that were like, go have sex. And when the testosterone doubled back to his brain, it wasn't coming back to the brain of a teenager, it was coming back to the brain of a toddler. I mean, at that point, did you even know what sex was? No, I didn't understand sex. All I knew, it was was the most primal impulse.

It was just this thing is happening in my body and it wants me to have some kind of physical interaction with a girl. Now, precocious puberty, the specific version that Patrick had is super rare. Effects about one in a million people. So I'm actually one in a million. the specific version that Patrick had is super rare. Effects about one and a million people. So I'm actually one and a million.

I mean, that's the silver lining of this all. Yes, you can say that. But also, it's hereditary. So my father had had this. As had my grandfather and my great-grandfather and we've faced it back to my great-great-grandfather. So your mom knew this was coming? Well, they knew that it could happen. But now it was happening. They have a toddler who's going through puberty. You know, they didn't know what to do.

They didn't, you know, my father hadn't been treated and they were totally overwhelmed. And then one day, one of my mom's friends, like this is an incredible coincidence that she saw in the paper, like the National Institute of Health is, you know, looking for test subjects that have like exactly what I had. So when Patrick was three years old,

he and his mom got on a train and went down to the NIH. One of the things that I remember about Patrick is that he was tall. This is Ellen again, she was one of the doctors who helped treat Patrick's puberty. We were trying to stop it. Stop. Stop puberty. But a lot of times you're not able to fully stop and you're really just slowing. She says when Patrick showed up,

the scientists at the NIH were just starting. It was in the early days. To learn how to do this in kids like him. I was like their lab rat, you know, and in exchange for free, I received treatment. He tried lots of different stuff. Like, Ellen said there was one drug called Sparona Lactone, which had been developed as a blood pressure medicine.

But when they started using it for blood pressure, men started complaining about impotence. And it turned out it was because a side effect of this drug was that a block testos defective testosterone. And so you guys were like, this could be a feature, not a bug. Yes. And Patrick says, it kind of worked.

It slowed it down. It slowed it down a little bit. But it wasn't perfect. Like, some of the testosterone was almost like sneaking around the edges, causing his body to keep changing. And so by the time he was in third grade, I was like this eight-year-old, you know, like trapped in like a 16-year-old's body. Like, he had a mustache. He looked like he should be in high school.

Which sometimes was cool. body. Like he had a mustache. He looked like he should be in high school, which sometimes was cool. You know, I was the first one hitting the ball over the fence in Little League. But mostly was not. I was like a freak because I looked so strange. I was so big. You know, I got picked on a lot. Like, what would they do? What would they say? Like, well, yeah. So I, you know, I remember when I was in like fifth grade, I would walk home every day. We didn't live very far from my elementary school and in New York still you were in New York. No, no, no. We had moved to LA.

LA, okay. Yeah. When I was about seven, you know, my dad, he'd been like a theater actor in New York and I was like a New York City kid and then we moved to Santa Monica and I went to elementary school in Santa Monica. That's a pretty big change for any kid. Yeah, yeah, it was a big change.

It was always hard for me to sort of enter a new social environment because of how I looked. Like he was big on the outside, but inside he was still small. So anyway, I would walk home from school every day and I would jump to spend some walk home and every day, there were these kids who were all there probably, like four years older and they would like wait and you know, and they would like push me around and punch me or whatever. Like they knew, despite what he looked like,

he was really just a little kid you could push around. And then there was kind of the reverse when other people who should have known how little he was, treated him like he was much bigger. So one day I'm driving with my dad, and on the bus stop is one of the kids who picks on me. And I sort of like tell my dad, and my dad, he pulls over and he jumps out of the car.

And he's like, you wanna fight my son? Like you think you can fight my son and I'm like sitting in the passenger seat. And I'm like, oh please. And he's like, come on, like look at this like Marshmallowy kid, like you kick the shit out of this kid. You know, I'm like crying and I'm like, come on, like, look at this like Marshmallowy kid. Like, you'll kick the shit out of this kid. You know, I'm like crying and I'm like,

no, dad, like, no, it's not the home pleasing. He's like, come on, like Patrick, get out here. Like, you can take this kid. I don't want to like vilify my dad because he was like a very supportive and loving father. But at that moment, Patrick says. I felt that he absolutely had no idea what I was going through. And this is so ironic because he's like the only other person in the world whom I've ever met who had this condition. Like if anybody should get it, it would be his dad who also had been a little boy who looked like and was forced to act like a man.

You know, like by the time he was 10, like he looked like he was 18 years old. He was like a fully grown man at 10 years old. And he also, his dad, my grandfather, who he had at Pergose's puberty as well, he left. And so my dad, who looked much older, at 12, like he had to, you know, he like went and like worked in a cannery and like supported his mom and like his two sisters, you know,

and like told, you know. So he was the man of the house. He was the breadwinner. Yeah. And yet, like growing up, we never had that kind of hard to heart. He was never like, Patrick, like, I know this is really hard. Like, you're going through this and I went through this. What I've just told you about my dad and his dad.

And like, that's like my mom, like told me that. And only when Patrick got older, did he learn other stories, too? My great-grandfather had been the youngest US soldier in World War One. When he was 12 years old, he ran away from home and joined the Navy and fought in Europe. Because he looked on the... Yeah, he looked like he was 19. And nobody figured out how old he really was until he was getting drunk with some other soldiers.

And they like hijacked a cargo plane. Their news articles about this. And they hijacked a cargo plane and took it up joy riding. And yeah, they were all just wasted. And they grounded the plane and they court marshalled my great-grandfather. And only then did they discover that he was 13 years old. They're like, son, you're acting like you're 13 years old.

And he was like, well, I have something to tell you as because I am yeah But when Patrick was a little kid it was just like a big mystery He didn't know these stories so so in some ways I was kind of on my own As Patrick got older he kept going in for treatments. I would spend two weeks every year as an inpatient at the NIH. They tried all kinds of drugs on him. Like there were periods when I was taking 32 pills a day. Like I would take 16 in the morning and 16 at night.

But none of it worked completely. It was very frustrating. And often he'd take that frustration out physically. I would break things, I would punch things, punch people. You know, I felt constantly misunderstood because I looked like a normal child just much, much older. looked like a normal child just much, much older. All of this surface tension had built up and built up

and built up over years, really, of having had precocious puberty, and not knowing how to deal with it, and lying about my age, and acting out because I was hormonal, and getting into a cycle of being in trouble, and then sort of just embracing this kind of bad kid persona that, you know, in many ways had been foisted on me from an early early age because of my behavioral issues as a result of Prokosh's puberty. I was like on the edge of like going from being just like

sort of a bad kid, but on the level of like a class clown to like being like a delinquent and like really getting into stuff like drugs and like other things that like, okay, like now it's like not just like getting into a scuffle in the hallway. It's like, you know, more severe. And so right around 12, my doctors, they took, they were like, okay, he's 12. And we've sort of stemmed the flood for a while now. We think we're gonna take him off his medicine and see how he does and sort of let him finish puberty,

finish puberty, you know, finish, finish puberty. And you know, so it had been almost, it had been nine, almost ten years that I had, you know, been on these drugs that had done, you know, sort of a halfway decent job of, of like keeping, you know, the testosterone really had bay. And it's in all of a sudden I wasn't. When we come back, Patrick finishes puberty and things get worse before they get better. Lulu, what the f? Radio lab.

Today we are telling the story of Patrick Burley, who started going through puberty when he was, basically when he was born. He was treated at the NIH, which slowed things down a bit. But when he was 12, his doctors there, they took him off the medications, so he could finish going through puberty on his own. And when they took me off the medication, there was like a precipitous change in my behavior. I like humbled over that line from just like the,

like the troublemaker in class to like, like a delinquent kid. Fighting, riding graffiti, smoking pot. Did it feel like it was your body carrying you away or did you feel like these were choices that you were making at the time? It felt like I was no match for my body. Like it just had its way with me.

And that spring, something happened that Patrick would look back on as sort of a culmination of everything that had happened before. Right, so I met this girl at the mall. Her name was Marianne and she was 17. How old were you? 12. But I told Marianne that I was 16. Uh-huh. And she believed in me. Pretty soon they started dating. And we didn't have sex. I hadn't lost my virginity yet, but

but it was like close. And so anyway, so Mary Ann, she was living with this drug dealer in Venice. So one night, it's like a Tuesday, it's a school night. So Mary Ann calls me up and she's like, oh, you know, the sky, the drug dealer that I'm living with, like, he just got in like this amazing acid. You gotta try something. Did you know what that was?

No, no, but I was like maintaining this persona, the 16 year old persona, and like in my persona, like yeah, I knew all about acid. Like cool. Oh yeah, white unicorns, I totally, those are awesome. So I like snuck out, it was like 9 o' awesome. So, I like snuck out. It was like nine o'clock at night, I like snuck out. And this guy's car pulled up and she got out and she gave me three tabs of acid.

And I paid whatever, $9 or whatever it was. But I like, yeah. You're milk money or something, exactly. But I like, yeah, you're milk money or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And then, and then, and then, they left and I like, snuck back in.

I waited for my parents to go to bed and like I took a tab of acid. I just, I don't know. I thought it was just going to make me feel really great. So I'm like, well, lying in my bed and I'm like waiting, you know, and I'm like, we're lying in my bed, and I'm like waiting, you know, and I'm like getting impatient, like nothing's happening.

And I'm like, this sucks, like this stuff, like even work, you know, and so I take another tap. And I fall asleep. 45 minutes later, I wake up and there are like the lag tights coming down from the ceiling. There are like bugs all over me, like all the worst things that are happening to me. And I'm like, up all night, like having like the worst trip imaginable. And I'm 12. It's terrible.

The next morning, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go and like there's no way I can go to school. There's absolutely no way yet. So I went into my parents and I was like, you know, I'm sick, like I really need to not go to school. And they're like, but I was trying not to act, I was trying to act like I wasn't on acid. You know, so that was like counteracting me trying to act sick.

Like I didn't seem sick, because I was trying to act normal, you know? And they were like, you're not sick, you seem fine. You know, they were like, this is exactly the kind of thing they would expect from you. Right, I was like, there's a total boy who cried wolf scenario. And so, so they sent me to school and I like managed to,

like stay in the nurse's office for the morning. But she was really skeptical of me being sick also and I did like, temperature. And so finally at lunch, she was like, you can't stay here anymore. Like you have to go out to lunch. And I had stupidly, I had brought the third tab of acid with me to school

because I was so paranoid. You know, my parents were, they were very, they didn't trust me. And I was afraid that they would find it. Of course. And I was also, I was on acid, I didn't trust me. And I was afraid that they would find that. And I was also, I was on acid. I was still tripping. So I went out onto this school yard

where my friends were having lunch, and I joined them. And they were also amateur delinquents. And I went up to them, and I was like, oh, instead of saying, I had the worst experience of my life last night, never do acid. I was like, oh, you know, instead of saying like I had the worst experience of my life last night, like never do acid. I was like, oh my god, dude, I did acid last night. It was the best thing, man. Like I had this incredible, you know, because like you just, I wanted to see cool. Yeah. And and I was like, you know, I have one more tab. One of you guys want it? And they were all, they were like, had the sense to be like,

oh, no thanks. You know, yeah, maybe, a lot of time. But one of my friends who was like, sort of the instigator of our group, he was like, I have an idea. You should take the acid, the tab of acid, and you should put it in someone's drink and see what's going to happen. Before I could say anything,

he had turned to our friend, this girl, and he had said, okay, can I have a sip of your Coke? And he turned around and we put the tab of acid in her Coke. And she drank the Coke. And so there were two periods after lunch, fifth and sixth period, and sixth period was like computer class. And I had it with this girl, who was our friend. She was like, you know, we hung out with her a lot. So we're sitting at these long rows and you know, practicing like how many words a minute we can type.

And like I look down the row and I'm like watching her. And all of a sudden, she starts just laughing. Moniical, like moniical, like Joker laugh. And then she jumps up and she runs over to me because I'm her friend in the class. And she starts just bawling. And the teacher comes over and takes her down to the nurse's office and I freak out and I run down there and I confess everything because I'm worried about her.

Nambulence comes, and they call the police, and they march me out, and they put me in the cruiser, and they take me to station, and they book me. So what are you thinking when I mean what is going through your mind this whole time? I feel I mean I'm mostly worried about my friend who's at the hospital like having her stomach pumped. I mostly feel like overwhelming remorse. And how long after you had gone off your medications? Was this? Not like a couple months. Yeah. And I don't know. Like, do you think like, is precocious puberty

or is it or to what degree is it responsible for what happened? Yeah, that's a valid question. One that I have often asked myself. And I think that, listen, I don't mean to like, absolve my 12-year-old self of responsibility. It's unquestionably the worst thing that I have ever done. What I will say is that I was this incredible mixture of naivete and, you know, being advanced and really not entirely in control of my impulses. I mean, I had this testosterone just coursing through my body at an age before like I knew how to reason.

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. This is a Bulski again, and when I told him about this, he said that the reasoning part of Patrick's brain is the area called the frontal cortex, whose job it is to tell you like, hey, maybe let's not put acid in our classmates' drink. It makes you do the right thing when that's the harder thing to do. That part of his brain was not really online yet. It's the last part of our brain to fully mature,

not until you're about 25 years old. There's this lag time. Between when Patrick's body matured and when his brain did. And the fact is, we all experienced some version of this lag time. Like even if you go through puberty at a typical age, it's still gonna be way before you turn 25.

And this is why... Juveniles behave in juvenile ways. It's so weird to see it spelled out so clearly clearly, we have humans have this built-in decade, at least, where they have a fully mature body, full of fully mature impulses, and a little pea brain that doesn't know how to wrangle with them, like that feels like a glitch in the design,

like that feels like a problem. Yes, but according to Sapolsky, there's a reason that we're set up this way. If you're trying to get this part of the brain that tells you to do the right thing, even though it's the harder thing, it takes a hell of a long time for you to learn what counts as the right thing. It's complicated. That will not kill. On the other hand, if you kill one of them, we're going to be really nice to you. Never, ever lie. But if you're like harboring refugees and you're addict and the guys in the

brown suits, or they're coming for them, you should lie to them. That's it. That's messy stuff. And over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, there's been selection to delay frontal maturation to give the brain time to learn the rules. But the downside is you come up with adolescence and adolescent behavior because there's this mismatch for quite a few years. For all of us, that gap is big. But for Patrick, it was enormous. When you went to, I mean, they booked you, the police did. Did they, did they file any charges or anything? They didn't file charges.

They didn't file charges, luckily. You know, I should say we reached out to the girl who's drink Patrick and his friends put the LSD in, she's grown up, she has a successful career, she did not want to do an interview with us. And because of that, we don't really know what the aftermath of that event was like for her. But Patrick, after this incident, he did not go to jail, but he did get expelled.

From the entire school district. And in 1993, his parents decided to send him off to a military school in Indiana. Thinking that separating me from my friends in LA and from the things I was doing in LA and that world would, you know, would help me. But it didn't. They told me that I had amassed more infractions in like the six months that I was there than any cadet in the history of the school. Things didn't really turn around for Patrick

until weirdly he went back to where he kind of bottomed out. Yeah, so then I came back. So Santa Monica and they let me back in. When Patrick was in the ninth grade, so he's 15 years old now, his parents convinced the school district to take him back and he transferred to this big public high school.

And when I came back from Indiana, like I was still smoking pot every day, I was still hanging out on the street, but I was I was older now and there was a different feeling about it. And I started to like have these glimpses of what it looked like, you know, down the road, because I would like hang out with these people, you know, like on Venice Beach or like, you know, like I would encounter these people, I would like get high with them or skateboard with them or whatever. And I just had this moment, like where I remember coming home from school and I had Spanish homework to do.

And I was too stoned to do my Spanish, like there was just no way that I couldn't, I could barely read. I was like, and I had like a minor panic attack. And I was like, like, I'm gonna end up homeless. Like, I'm gonna end up, you know, on the street, if I don't, if I don't make a change, you know. And, and so it, it almost was overnight. He stopped cutting class, started going to school. And when he did, he noticed something. The other kids were catching up physically to me. I no longer stuck out. And I just, I don't like the,

for my entire life, I had been under a microscope. And so when I finally ended up at this big anonymous, just kind of factory of a school, So when I finally ended up at this big anonymous, just kind of factory of a school, like I was like in the pond with everyone else and sort of swimming at the same pace, you know, and it was very, it was liberating. And in that last stretch of high school, he did a complete 180.

Like I really sort of lost myself in books and reading, like that was like my escape. Got his grades up. I like started playing sports again, which I hadn't done for years. Made new friends. Who were just more conventional, not in a bad way. They were just, they were like going to go to college. And eventually, Patrick does that too. He applies to and manages to get into Dartmouth College. He goes to an Ivy League school. And he says once he got there, he would walk around on campus,

just kind of marveling at how unremarkable he felt there. You know, just like, oh, I'm like a high-achieving, like Dartmouth student, you know, who's like, you know, I'm just like a normal male. This precocious puberty, this thing that it defined his whole life to that point, just felt like it was gone. She felt like it was gone. You know, because it's not like I have like a deformity on my face because of what I went through as a child, there's no outward sign that I had this very unusual childhood. It's interesting because like so many disability stories I've heard don't work this way. Like you're,

you're, it's like it usually goes like either you come out and you are disabled and you come to some form of acceptance or whatever or like you are nonabled and then you become disabled. And this is a story where it's like early, early, someone becomes, like has a kind of disability or a different. You're so right, usually the story is like, and then I came to terms with my disability and I learned to find a way to live my life in my way.

And this is like, no, he gets a free pass back to Normie land, you know? Yeah, no, I think that's that's that's very astute, you know, I could kind of like go under the radar. And that's how it stayed. A secret about his past. Until many years later, almost by surprise, Patrick was confronted with a decision that forced him to dredge it all back up. Lulu. Lutthiff. Radio lab.

So, where else do we go? It feels like you're your protagonist, your guy, Patrick, came of age. Where are we going? Okay, so there's one more part of the story. So, okay, so let's fast forward to several years ago. Patrick is an adult at this point. He's become, he's a writer. He's a successful screenwriter.

Has even written on a Marvel movie or two. Which one? The one that I know is Eternals. Which was the movie that Chloe Zhao directed for Marvel. It says it actually had this one character. There's a character named Sprite who in a weird way sort of reminded him of himself. She is, you know, there are these immortal creatures who have come to Earth and Sprite is trapped as a teenager,

but she's 7,000 years old. And so, in many ways, it's the inverse of sort of what I went through, but I always, like, her plight made sense to him given what he'd been through. And I'm not saying that I was a superhero as a kid, you know, but I, I, you know, I, I definitely bring my experience of, of feeling different and, and feeling other, and yet also sort of having, you know, abilities that, that my peers didn't have. So, you know, abilities that my peers didn't have.

So, you know, Patrick wrote some of that into the movie, but for most of his adult life. I didn't talk about Prokosha's puberty and I didn't want people to think of me as different. And that's how it was, as he finished college, started his career, met his future wife. My name is Meredith Brower. Was there a thing that drew you to him

that you felt like this was the guy? I mean, Patrick is obviously very handsome. I can objectively say, and if this is a radio, I can objectively say he's a very handsome guy. So he's like, got? Yes. But also as he and Meredith fell in love and got married and started to build the life they wanted to have together Igradually became clear to Patrick that that thing that made him different

Wasn't actually gone interestingly when we started to try to get pregnant on our own we didn't have many frank conversations about the possibility of having a son with precocious puberty, but we ended up having a really hard time getting pregnant. My wife and I, we had to do in vitro fertilization. And it was at that moment where they were like, oh, wait a second. Maybe like we should go in and like biopsy these suckers to like see if which ones have precautions purity. So the thing about IVF, which you may already know and which they definitely knew because by coincidence, Meredith herself is an IVF doctor.

But so the thing is that when you do IVF, doctors typically create several embryos. And you actually have the choice. You can choose which ones you want to use. The technology is available that you could have screen for the mutation in an embryo. And just pick one that doesn't have it. I really did feel like it was his decision to make. You know, I was worried about it. Patrick says he was pretty split.

It was like gonna cost a bunch of money and it was, you know, it's like an invasive procedure like you don't know. But on the other hand, his childhood was rough. You know, why would I roll the dice and sort of chance that it might happen to my child? Like, isn't my job as a parent to kind of prevent hardship for my child?

So he's trying to figure out what to do. And then one day, he's like driving home, pulls up to his house, and his dad calls. Now, remember, his dad does not like to talk about precocious puberty, which is why he didn't talk to us, to be honest. It's like the era of which we do not speak. It's like the dirty war in Argentina or something.

You know, it's like, like they, but it's all Patrick and think about right now. You know, so I told him I was like, look, you know, I'm concerned about puberty and, you know, explained how because they were doing IVF, they could test the embryos, pick one that doesn't have it. And my dad, he was kind of like, why the hell are you gonna do that?

He was sort of like, like, what the hell's wrong? You know, he, it's like a mix of kind of being defensive You know, it's like a mix of kind of being defensive about, like, or being sort of too proud to admit that, like, this is a difficulty that, like, he had and then he passed on to me and that I could pass on, like, I think there's like, some shame in there and and and and some denial. But then he he also said something to me that kind of resonated.

You know, which was that like this is like this definitely shaped me like more than anything else shaped me like more than anything else in my life. And he's like, you know, I don't know, he's like, you know, in a way, in a way, you know, testing for Prokosius puberty, like testing these embryos for Prokosius puberty and selecting them out is, you know, in a sense kind of like rejecting my own experience. So your father was saying, this is the thing that formed you, that defines you.

That defines you. Yeah, and so why would you reject it? Yeah. Why would you deny your child the thing that shaped you? Right. And why would you stigmatize the thing that is this thing that is such a part that makes you want an a million? Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. that is such a part that makes you one in a million. Yeah, that's exactly right. And it came, like him saying,

it's to me, it came out of love. He's like, I love you. So much like why, like everything about you, like why, like everything about you, like why would you deny that as hard as it was? Yeah. So, oh, yeah. So, yeah. So we didn't do that test and we kind of just got, you know, we prepared for the scenario in which our baby would have that and, you know, kind of hope for the best A few weeks ago I went to meet up with Patrick and his son

He's eight years old now showed off some of his skateboard tricks And when I asked him about puberty, I would say he said, I don't know. Kind of exactly what you would expect an eight-year-old who is not going through puberty. Whoa. To say.

I know this. It's when you get a little older. Mm-hmm. You have a little, little older. So that means he does not have the mutation, he doesn't have precocious puberty? That's right, he does not have it. Precocious puberty?

He knows what it is though. It means that you get puberty when you're really young, like two or three years old. Patrick has talked to him about it. Well, I felt very, very surprised. It was just crazy. He told his daughter about it too. It's just crazy. He told his daughter about it too. It's just crazy that that actually happened.

She's six. Also doesn't have precocious puberty. The condition Patrick has only affects boys. Forget it could be her or something. Girls can be carriers though. And Patrick says there is a test for that. Early to my dad. But it feels like doing that might be a bit premature.

We can go to the skate park and then like 20 minutes. It's okay. I was thinking maybe we could play a game of go fish. Yeah. How about a little one? In like 20 minutes. Like 20 minutes. Like 20 minutes. It's like 20 minutes long.

Where are the cards? Daddy, did you know I had a very bad day today? You had a bad day? Yeah. I was born a bad student. I was born a bad student. I was born a bad student. I was born a bad student.

I was born a bad student. I was born a bad student. I was born a bad student. I was born a bad student. This episode was reported by me with help from Kelsey Paggett, Aketty Foster Keys, and Alyssa Jung Perry. It was produced by Pat Walters, Alex Niesin, and Alyssa Jung Perry with help from Aketty Foster Keys. Mixing help from Arianne Wack, fact-checking by Diane Kelly, and edited by Pat Walters.

Special thanks to Nick Burley, Alyssa Vos at the NIH, and to Craig Cox, who was the one who first introduced me to Patrick and his story. To read Patrick's own writing about his precocious puberty and to see photos of him as a child, check out his article in the cut, which is linked on our website. That's it from us.

Thank you so much. Ready Lab was created by Chad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler, Lulu Miller and Lotto Fnasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Aketty Foster Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gabel, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanosambadam, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesin, Alyssa John Perry, Saurakari, Sarah Sambak, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster,

with help from Timmy Broderick. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Tamara from Pasadena, California. Leadership Support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative,

and the John Templeton Foundation. Dundational Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.