The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers? Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human. Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate. Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted. Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people. ELIZABETH LESSER is the author of several bestselling books, including Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most. Her newest book Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes will be released September 15th. She is the cofounder of Omega Institute, recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. She has given two popular TED talks, and is one of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul 100, a collection of a hundred leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're excited to have you guys come tune in to the show. We've got a most excellent author. And, of course, we have, I mean, you might have heard this a couple times when you've been on the show we have all the greatest authors in the world on the show we just put it in the google machine and we say uh hey what are the uh most brilliant authors and only the most brilliant authors show up on the show the ones who aren't brilliant they don't show up on the show so just keep that in mind when you're on amazon.com forward slash shop for just christ, seeing all the great books and ordering them there, you can do that as well. So welcome to the show, folks. You can also go to thecvpn.com or for your friends,

neighbors, relatives, online podcast. To see the video version of this show, you can go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Foss, hit the bell notification button. Also find me on Goodreads. You can see the different reviews we put up for books that we read and some of the books that we're currently reading. A lot of people that are on the show are on there as well. And also, we have a book club we're trying to build over there. So find me under Chris Voss at goodreads.com.

You can find the show's newest syndication, Amazon Music. You can find the podcast on there as well. Today we have a most excellent guest with us. She is the author of the book and a multitude of books we'll talk about, Cassandra Speaks, When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes. Elizabeth Lesser is on the show. Let me go through her bio real quick here. She is the author of

several best-selling books, including Broken Open, How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Morrow, Love, Loss, and What Matters the Most. Her newest book, Cassandra Speaks, is released September 15th. It's brand new, just came out. She's a co-founder of Omega Institute, recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. She's given two popular TED Talks and is one of Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul 100. There you go. A collection of 100 leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity, which is what we love to do here on the show. Welcome to the show, Elizabeth. How are you? I'm very good. I'm really happy to be with you. Thanks for having me.

I'm happy to be with you, too. I mean, Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul 100. Oh, my gosh. We're going to learn a lot today, aren't we? Maybe. All right. Well, hopefully we do. So you've got this wonderful book. Give us the plugs on your internet places, dot coms, where people can find you. Yeah, my own website is elizabethlesser.org.

My organization, Omega Institute, is the letter E, omega.org. That's where you can find me and Facebook and Instagram and all those things. Awesome. So what motivated you to want to write this book? You've written several books. Can you tell us how many exactly? This is my fourth. Oh, wow.

Yeah. My first book, The Seeker's Guide, I was aware from this conference center and retreat center that I lead, or used to, I co-founded. You know, like for thousands of years, religion kept people able to search for some sort of meaning about what the heck are we doing here as human beings. But as religion, especially in America, began to lose its grip, although you may not know that at the moment, this new kind of American spirituality is what I called it, diverse, democratic, this idea that we don't have to adhere to a religion to be self-aware, good human beings. So my first book, The Seeker's Guide, was about that.

How do you have, quote-unquote, spiritual life without religion? And second book, Broken Open, is about how it seems for us human beings, difficult times, is what helps us grow. We have to go through traumas to change our intractable, bizarre behavior. We all do that. Before my cancer, I was a jerk. Before my divorce, I didn't know how to be with the opposite sex.

So that's what that book's about. My third book, Marrow, I was my sister's bone marrow donor. And we used it as an opportunity not just to become close through our blood, but also to become closer as friends. It's about that journey we took. And then this last book, Cassandra Speaks, is about the lack of women's values and voices throughout the ages. I went back into the ancient myths, the Bible stories, starting with Eve, how women were second born but first to sin. And that kind of sticks to women and men and the way we think about who women are. I wanted to unpack those stories and imagine what it would have been like

if there had been other storytellers involved. So you write in the book several different stories, and you kind of take this sort of thinking apart, right? Give us an overview of what the stories are in the book. Well, the book's divided into three parts. The first I call origin stories. And so obviously some of the origin stories that have formed the way we think as a human culture are bible stories greek myths some of our earliest literature and then more uh modern literature movies just the story you know

humans learn through stories that's how we learn parables and hero journey stories. We learn what it means to be a valid human being through stories. Second part of the book, I go into the story of power and kind of the formative books and ways we think about what does it mean to be a powerful person? What is power anyway? How do you get it? How do you use it? And the last part of the book I call Writing Brave New Endings, and it's a toolbox of ways of strengthening our voices. This is primarily for women,

but I know a lot of men who have enjoyed the book too. Yeah, it seems like a really interesting book as I went through it. I like the toolbox at the end too, because you get, you not only lay the foundation with the stories and everything, but you give people, it's like, here's, here's, here's how to make this work. So how about if we start off with the title, Cassandra Speaks. There's a story behind this. Do you want to tell us more about that? Yeah. Cassandra, I didn't really know much about Cassandra until I started researching. And it stuck in me so much, I made it the title of the book. Cassandra was the most beautiful princess in ancient Greece, in Troy. And Troy and Greece were enemies.

And Cassandra was the most eligible princess, and all the dudes were after her, including the gods. Zeus was after her, king of the gods, and Zeus' son Apollo. And Apollo wooed her by promising her the gift of clairvoyance, that she'd be able to see into the future, predict the future. And she wanted that. I'd like that. If somebody promised me that, I'd say, okay.

But he didn't tell her that what went along with that was he was going to have sex with her. And so she accepted the gift, and then she didn't want to have sex with him, so he was furious. And as the story goes, he spat in her mouth a curse. And that was, you will still be clairvoyant. I'm not going to take it away from you. But no one will believe your predictions.

And so she did predict everything. She predicted the Trojan War. She predicted all of her family dying. She predicted the sacking of her city and the destruction of her land. And nobody believed her. And it drove her crazy. It drove her mad at the end of the story. I can't blame her. I'd be mad too. Yeah, well, that's why a lot of women are mad. And as I was writing the book, it was right in the middle of the Me Too uprising. And I decided to call the book Cassandra Speaks after I watched the televised trial of all the young athletes who had been abused by Dr. Larry Nassar, all the gymnasts, including many Olympic gymnasts,

who for years had told their parents and their coaches and the U.S. Olympic Committee, this guy is abusing us, hundreds of them, and no one believed them. And then at the trial, which they televised, the wonderful judge, Judge Aquilina, she allowed each girl to tell her story. 125 young women told their story, and she made the doctor listen to each one. And it was to me that these Cassandras were speaking and they were being heard and they were being believed. And that became the core of the book for me. Is the mistake in, you know, I remember watching that and the extraordinary thing was how long it went on and so many victims. And so is the issue that you talk about in the book that we don't listen to women individually as enough

or do more women need to come together and speak out as one? Because that's what really happened with, that's what really pushed the Me Too movement was enough people came out with their horror stories. And I was surprised by it too as a man because i don't approach things maybe in the same way uh even though i've dated a lot of them a lot of my life i don't i don't send pictures to women i don't and i guess i have some weird thing if i want to go out with a girl on a date i ask her on a date she says no that's it. But, but maybe it's

because I've dated so many women that I kind of just, and I know, you know, there's certain things you don't talk about or do to women and stuff. But, you know, when we saw the, when I saw the monsters coming out with, you know, all the different ugly things that people were doing, I was just like, wow. And so them speaking out as a group helps. So I'm sorry, I went a little long on the tooth, but back to my original answer. Her question was, is it an individual thing or is it a group thing or both? Maybe, I don't know. I think it's both, and I think it's complicated.

I don't think it's a black and white thing, all women good, all men bad, or all women have been oppressed, all men are oppressors. That's not what the book is about. What I'm more interested in is that the values that our culture has put forward as these are the values to follow have mostly been created by men because men have been the leaders, whether it's because of biology and kind of the brawny nature and the domineering spirit and women being in the home taking care of the kids, or maybe it's estrogen and testosterone. It doesn't really matter to me anymore the why of it.

I feel women have something in our makeup, in our hearts, our priorities that the world needs now. We've had thousands of years of male-dominated leadership. Some of it's been great and cool and wonderful, inventive, and, you know, we got so much from that. But it's sort of, in my opinion, run its course. And we need a more inclusive, gentler, kinder definition of what leadership and power mean. And I feel women have that in us. And it's time for that to be equally valued. And that's why I'm interested in women becoming leaders, not just so we can have 50-50. I'm interested in what we have inside of us, bringing it out,

no longer having it be like, well, that's good in the kindergarten classroom or the nurse. But no, I want to dignify what women carry inside of us. And I would agree with you. I think men can learn a lot from women because you guys do a lot of things right, and we're kind of messed up in our own little world. There's a reason we're kind of different is the anime and what we bring to, I guess, Mother Nature is a difference there. But there's definitely benefits we can learn from each other. And I remember years ago I went to this play,

and it's a famous play that's chewing around, and it's about the cavemen and cavewomen thing, you know, the hunter-gatherer sort of experience. And I think, like you say, there was probably a reason in medieval times or earlier times when we lived in a society where maybe there were certain roles that were necessary i mean certainly you couldn't send women into battle with swords and 50 pounds of uh metal gear to fight medieval whatever you know and and some of that stuff was probably male created also yeah hello yeah but but now we live in a very different time and and we don't have to

deal with that women can do a lot of stuff that men can do etc so they always could but but you know it's you know i don't have to worry about my my girlfriend you know being attacked by some medieval horseman when she goes to the store you You know, I don't have to worry about that. Like maybe three, four hundred thousand years or whatever. But you talk about a lot of how the literature that's out there kind of maybe pre-programs or kind of creates walls around women and their expectations that they feel they have to live up to. Like, for instance, Eve in the Bible, if you want to discuss that. Yeah.

Well, with apologies to any Bible literalists listening, I don't know who your audience is. Eve, you know, everything was so cool and groovy in the Garden of Eden. It was just Adam and God, and everything was great. There was no sickness. There wasn't even death. It was just heaven, paradise, Garden of Eden. And then God went and created woman to be a helpmate for Adam,

and everything went downhill. She listened to the snake who said, oh no, you can eat that apple. You'll become wise if you eat that apple. You'll become mature and grown up. Go ahead, eat it. So she did. And that was the end of the Garden of Eden

and they were exiled, and the fall. Everything fell from there. Now, there's lots of heroes in the Bible. There's Noah, and Job, and there's Abraham, and there's Jesus. And all of these men actually disobeyed the culture. They all went their separate ways. They all left home. They all had to go on the hero's journey,

which always includes leaving home, being tested, and then becoming mature and grown up, hopefully, through our problems. Eve is the only protagonist in the Bible who is punished for following that same urge to become wise. I look at Eve as the first grown up in the garden. Adam was just like, oh, it's cool. I like it here. You know, God's filling the refrigerator. I'm fine. But Eve was like, no, I want to be wise. I want to grow up. So she left. And Adam went with her. And she's punished. And women have worn that cloak of born second, first to sin. And there's lots of stories in lots of different cultures where that same trope is laid out. There's something fundamentally untrustworthy

about women. You know, I would agree with you. I grew up in religion, and I always used to ask the question because I was that jerk. Like at three years old, I was asking questions. Me too. People were like, don't call it a jerk you weren't a jerk you were you were curious and smart there you go and and i would ask well how come the women can't get the priesthood like why not because well because they need to make quilts they're the women and like but but like why i mean i used to call it the penis hood because i'm like basically that's really the difference as to why they can't have it and we can't and we have it. But still, like, I don't see what the big deal is.

And then just be like, you know, shut up, have some faith. But becoming an atheist, you know, and I try to be a good atheist. In fact, I, you know, if I ask myself value questions, I go, what would Jesus do? Even though I don't believe the Bible is a factual historical record of accuracy. In fact, if anything, I adhere to as a fact of fiction, a fact of fiction, but the work of fiction. But, you know, I'm respectful of other people. Look, I understand life is hard and life is challenging. If that's what you need to hold on to, as long as you don't hurt anybody else or push your beliefs on anybody else,

rock it, have fun. Exactly. I'm with you. If that's the only thing you got to hold on to, I'm going to hold on to my atheists. But what I studied from that experience of growing up in religion was the Eve story. And I've spent a lot of time looking at that, probably not as much as you have, but some of it. And, and gone, you of time looking at that, probably not as much as you have, but some of it. And, Gon, you know, why is that story used? Because I see a lot of stuff in religion and Bibles is there's a lot of good, like, stuff, like, positive stuff. Like, you know, don't steal from people.

But the Eve story, it even starts out treating Eve as a second-class citizen. And that's what i that's what i always call women in religion i go you know religion really treats women in my opinion like second class citizens and it starts from that thing that man was created first and then his rib is taken out you know so women get left over the residual which i it was a horrible story in my opinion and then and then you, then there's the Eve story. And, you know, even talking with some of the religious leaders that we've had on that have written books that have been calling out white nationalism and sexism and some different things in the church, racism, they've talked about that. How that Eve story has just been the thing that, you know, they used to beat women over the heads

for so many years of religion. And like you say, you look at the leaders of religious organizations and they're always men. In fact, some of them are filled with a lot of gay men, which is kind of interesting how they demonize. There's a lot of stuff about sex in there and fear of sex and hatred of sex and hatred of their own body and fear of pleasure. And it's not a good worldview, if you ask me. And as you say, some of it's wonderful and beautiful and instructive. And I don't hate religion. I take the parts I like and try to rewrite the parts I don't because they were made up by people so we can change them and make up whatever we want to guide us.

So when little girls grow up and they read that, because this is something I've given thought to, how does that, you know, it's kind of like if you're African American and you watch movies and TV, and the good guy is always a white guy, the bad guy is always a black guy. I imagine women see a lot of these stories that you talk about in the book from that angle where they're if you think, I wasn't raised on those stories, and I don't believe those stories. I'm free of those stories. No, it's kind of in our DNA, and it does affect girls and women. And like, it affects us. It isn't just a religious thing. Like, if you say to a girl, let's say, Wow, you're a little tomboy. Girls feel proud.

I was told I was a tomboy as a girl, and I always felt cool about that. But if you tell a boy you're a sissy, you're a mama's boy, what does that make a boy feel like? What would that make you feel like chris it's quite the opposite we feel offended we we we feel like we need to increase our masculinity right so what does that tell a girl a little girl that a boy would never want to be like you but you'd like to be like a boy and then it goes on like especially if you get into the work world. You've got to man up, even as a woman.

If you go into a meeting and you're frustrated and upset and you cry, that is bad. That can affect your whole job. You have to do like the guys. You have to do the locker room talk. You have to be stoic. You've got to swallow it. And that's hard for men, but it's really hard for women,

especially if while we stuff our natural inclinations, you're not getting the best of us. The best of me as a woman, and not all women are like this, but most women, I would say, the best of me has a lot to do with creating community, a feeling of belonging, empowering someone else, not being the person who can't ask for directions or who doesn't want anybody else's opinion. Like, look at what's happening in the world now. The five countries that dealt the best with COVID are all led by women. Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, her TV appearances to her country were so full of vulnerability and requests for help. And we're in this together. It wasn't pitting anyone against anybody else.

That is, if a woman can lead from her essential nature, she would do it like Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand. And it's really hard for women who get into leadership positions. You've got to swallow often your true authenticity. And I think you're right. I mean, there's been a lot of great books written about this. I think Lean In by the Facebook gal, Sandra? Yeah, Sanders.

Yeah. It's crazy I'm not remembering. I'm not happy at the rest of how Facebook deals with everything, but it was a good book, and a lot of women really liked it. It's crazy. I'm not happy at the rest of how Facebook deals with everything, but you know, it was a good book and a lot of women really liked it. But you speak with a lot of different stories to the first part. You've got part one, the origin stories, Eve Pandora.

She's got the whole world in her hand. Listening to Cassandra, the spell of Galatia, Galatea, Galatea. I flunked Greek history or wherever that comes from. I flunked everything. The greatest books, Know Her Name and Leaving the Cave.

And so you tell all these as, I guess, sort of a metaphor to help people kind of understand some of these stories and expectations or way people maybe reflect on themselves. Yeah. And also, you know, we're seeing this right now with the whole, what's going on with race in our country. Like, there's a story in America that allowed us to enslave people. And that story was white supremacy. It just is at the core of America. You know, it's like, how else could you rip people from their homeland and beat them into subservience?

You'd have to believe in a story of that white people are better and black people are there to serve us. If you don't know that story, it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of other people. So we have to know our story as Americans. And I think for women and men to know these old stories and to know that Eve still lives in us, Galatea, which is the story of the sculptor Pygmalion,

thought all women were dirty. Their bodies were full of sin. And he just didn't want anything to do with them. And he decided to be celibate. And he locked himself in his studio and finally creating a pure Madonna-type woman who had no sin, that they had her come to life. And she was Galatea. And I feel women carry with us that idea that there's something wrong with our body. We're not supposed to want pleasure.

We have to look a certain way. We have to be tiny and thin and quiet. And if we're not that, you know, women carry a lot of shame in our bodies. And that old story really helped me. I got to see like, wow, this has been going on a long time that women have been, you know, held up as on the one hand, we're the Madonna, and on the other hand, there's something wrong about our bodies. So I like knowing the old stories. They make me feel not so alone or like it's all my fault.

I would agree with you, too. I had some Muslim friends, and one of my friends, she told me one time about how when they go to church, if she's on her period, she's deemed as disgusting, filthy, you know, all these horrible things. Correct. And she's not allowed to pray. They let them go to church, but there's like a special section for them in the back, and it's buried. And over my time of being an atheist i've really studied this and

and i know most of your book isn't about religion and all that sort of good stuff but it's about some of these stories and and some of these uh these belief systems that we have and and i was just i was just blown away and i'm like really they make and she was fine with it she was cool but but i'm like why do you accept that Because to me, what all of our bodies do, I mean, there's not a lot of pretty things all of us don't do as a human body, but, you know, that's who we are as humans. We just go, okay, well, you know, that's how humans work. You know, that's what, I mean, women, whatever women are going through,

they bring forth life. They bring forth human life. Without them, our species would go dead. women are going through they bring forth life they bring forth uh human life without them our species would go dead i mean we're we're screwed if we if we lose the women and women's ability to reproduce we're we're just like uh yeah it's over man yeah i once um proposed to someone i had gone i've i'd gone through the uh walk in central park and noticed how most of the statues, all of the statues, were men, either war generals or soldiers. One young soldier carrying a bleeding other soldier in World War I and World War II statues and General Sherman on a golden horse. And everything was about war and warriors.

And I said something to someone associated with the park i'm like hey why don't you have a statue of a woman giving birth and the baby coming out and blood and they were like ah that's disgusting i'm like well what why is it not disgusting to have a statue of a bleeding guy who's dying and a statue of a bleeding woman who's giving life. Like, I'm not saying we should do this, but don't you see the irony here that we, like, worship death? What is that all about? Why is almost every statue all over the world of warriors?

I don't understand. Could you? Do you? Well, it's a male-dominant society that goes back to the military. You know, I think maybe the best way I can describe it is a few years ago, I actually sat down and looked at the photo of the congressional thing. I'm like, why do we have all these wars? Why, you know, we spent $8 trillion or something like that in Iraq.

We're a broke country now. Most people don't realize in debt. And, you know, war after war. And I started looking at the congressional leaders, and I'm like, oh, man, it's a bunch of white guys like me. You know, I'm from in the club. I know what's going on. I'm calling from the house. I know how we are. And hopefully I've become a little bit more enlightened in the club. I know what's going on. I'm calling from the house. I know how we are.

And hopefully I've become a little bit more enlightened over the years and less toxic masculinity. But I looked at that picture and I went, that's not how America looks. That should be 50% women and it should be a mix of people. It's all white. So in 2018, before the election, I started pounding the book and my social media and to my audience and stuff that I'm voting all white. So in 2018, before the election, I started pounding the book, my social media and to my audience and stuff that I'm voting all female. And the reason I'm doing that is because women are more introspective than men. They have more empathy than men. They can multitask better than men. They can multitask. Men can't really multitask. They can do so much more and they care

about children. They care about education. They care about about the future i know how men are we're just like hey we gotta make some money and we gotta fight yeah let's go do that uh you know how we are you should go on my book tour could you please go on my book tour let's go on this together i need your voice in this it's true I mean I just know I know how we are So I voted all women down the ticket And I said I'm voting 100% I think I published my ballot And I've talked about this before Even like judges and stuff

Like even if they didn't have a party I was like yeah all women And we elected in Nevada The largest legislature Of women that would ever have been elected. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. I don't know if it was just me, but I was talking about it, so maybe I helped. But that legislative body has been created some of the best things that I've ever seen come out of a legislature, in my opinion.

Education, women's health, health care uh everything for the future of nevada they've you know they're they're not sitting around in nevada going who can we start a war with you know um you know this kind of crap they're they're they're doing stuff about the future women care about children there's a reason women are the caretakers of children because men are good at you know we're good at things. Do you think men can learn how to be good at it? Now, women, you know, women learned stuff we just did not know. You know, I felt it in my own life when I started entering the business world, and I had to start looking at spreadsheets and thinking about budgets. It was like the gears going like this.

And I wanted to, though. I wanted to. I needed to. I needed to have a job. Do you think men can want and need to change enough so that, and they can stop caring that it's emasculating to become more emotionally intelligent? And do you think men can? Do you think they will?

I think men can and will if they're willing, like you say. You know, we can all learn new skills. I think there will be some limits to men, though. There's something innate in women's brains that make you guys multitask. I don't think we can ever learn that. I think that's something you guys are just, that's genetic to you guys. We just suck at multitasking. Well, you know, my husband is a good case in point.

He ended up, when his son was four, he became his main parent. He got divorced and he was the main parent. He got divorced and he was the main parent. And he said that the sort of enforced intimacy and the having to both work and parent and do everything at the same time just felt so painful and difficult. But over the years, he had to develop some skills

that included multitasking and the things that women have had to develop some skills that included multitasking and the things that women have had to develop because of the roles we were put into for nature or nurture i don't care whatever um i think men could if men you know there's that joke how many therapists does it take to change a light bulb one but the light bulb has to want to change it's impossible it could be wrong i don't know like what if it was what if you decided that the very best thing is to be more caring and to multitask like that's it man that's what makes a hero i'm gonna learn that maybe you could i i i don't know i now the caring part the empathy the being more human getting in touch with the uh what some people call the feminine side but sometimes they they use that as a as a looking down term but getting bit getting

into that that more yin and yang phenomenon part of your side. The feeling function. The feeling function. And I think we can get there. I think we can get a lot of stuff. One of the other things I think that women have that men don't have is you guys have a microscopic, molecular look at dirt, and you guys can see stuff that we can't see. Bullshit. I call bullshit.

Really? I don't want to see that stuff. I've had to see that stuff. But you can see it. We can't. Yes, you can. No, I got to tell you that. Clean that toilet.

Maybe you're right. Maybe it's a focus thing that we just need to learn to focus. You don't want to. Who would want to? Well, I don't know. I've had girlfriends sit down with me and i go can you see that there and i go i can't what are you and i i i've been trying and i go i i can't see the molecular i really think that sometimes women are given these gifts

genetically because because they have to make a clean nest for their for their children they have to make sure there's not bacteria and different things like that. I don't know. I could be wrong. I don't know either. We all work to be better, right? Yes, we all can work to be better. Yes, we can.

It is not a zero-sum game here. I just think women are better than men. That's my opinion. I don't think so. I don't think that at all. I think men are better people than we are. Well, I don't. But I think we all complete

a puzzle. But if we allow the female nature to be as... If we dignify it and make it as valid as the male, then we'll just help each other out. We'll become more whole, all of us.

Rising tide lifts all boats. Correct. So in the second part of your book, you get into power stories. And these are stories, I'll go through some of the titles here. The old story of power, women, power in the shadows, scars and praise of fathers, doing differently the first first responders uh there's something i think in french here i won't bother trying uh killing a day without war metaphor and revolution of values tell us a little bit about what you get into in the second part of your book well um one of my sons went to a college called saint john's College and it's this great book school. They read a hundred books

in the original languages for four years. That's all they do. And they call it the dead white man curriculum. And I went down into my basement one day, like when I start writing a book, I try to find every reason not to write the book, you know, and cleaning. Now I'm going to contradict myself from our last conversation about cleaning toilets. Cleaning is something I love to do instead of writing. So the minute I start writing, I'm like, oh my God, must clean car or must go in the basement and organize those boxes down there. So as I was starting to write this book, I went down in the basement so as not to write the book. And there was a box of books from my son's college. And it was a box filled with books about

power and leadership, going all the way back to Sun Tzu in China, The Art of War, and Machiavelli, The Prince. All sorts of books, about 50 of them. And I started reading them in the basement, and I was shocked. I was amazed. I felt so naive, because there was actually a method to the madness of male abuse of power. You know,

like Machiavelli, it's better to be feared than to be loved. And every book had to do with war. Leadership and war were sort of, they were the same thing. was all about domination fear uh win lose never no could never just be win win it always was win lose and so um i decided to make the whole second part of the book be about how these stories about what it means to be heroic and powerful. It's just one side of the coin. There are other ways to lead, to be powerful, to share power. So I go into lots of old stories about that. And probably a lot of men should read that part as well because there was another quote I think I saw

in one of the videos I did research on from Machiavelli that wasn't very good towards women, if I recall rightly. No, it was something like, you know, fortune is like a woman, and in order to always gain your fortune, you must beat her, something like that. Wow. That's not cool. But, you know, of course we don't go around knowing that that's in us, but it's in us.

Yeah. And it's good to read it and to think, oh, that's how we got into this mess. Okay, let's write some new stories about how power could be brokered. And I'm like, I'm into, somebody needs to be leading. Someone needs to be the authority. I'm not like into chaos. But there are ways to lead that don't involve the maxim, it's better to be feared than to be loved. Yeah.

I think you can lead with love. And I really think, you know, we need to identify what you're talking about, where we don't live in this caveman medieval society anymore. We live in a world where we don't have to worry about women getting attacked by, like I said, people on horses and armies and, you know, stuff like this. We live in a very sanitized sort of life. And so it's time to address and hopefully

me too, and your book and different other things that we could learn from, uh, will kind of open our minds to start going, you know, we've had some discussions on the show. Some authors have written about toxic masculinity, uh, sexism, of course, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, and there are different things where we have to try and learn to balance uh uh what's going on inside uh men um you know there's lots of things that men can really learn how to cry how to be better in touch with their emotions i think women are i think women are better in touch with their emotions um they're they're steep more deeply in motion than we are. But, you know, I just want to put a plug in for how hard it also is to be a man right now in these times.

And I go into this a lot in the book about how we're all still functioning under these old stories. So women, we ask our men like to be more sensitive, to be more talkative, to share the vulnerabilities. But we're still looking in many ways for our men to be strong warriors. And so we kind of like screw with men's heads. It's like, be soft, be open, be kind, be communicative, be vulnerable. But it scares us because we're still under the influence of men should always be strong and men shouldn't cry and men shouldn't show their weakness. I don't want you to be weak. I need you to be strong.

So women have a lot of work to do too. If we want our men to be more balanced and just like we want to be both strong and soft, they do too. We got to own up to the mixed messages we give and work on ourselves. Yeah, you know, I would agree with you. And that's the first time I've heard that from that perspective. And I'm learning from that. You know, that's the challenge I always have as a man, because, you know, women always want you as their protector.

You're the guy who moves her uh as you're walking down the street you move her from the street to the to the walk so that you would get hit by the car first you know a lot of the chauvinistic stuff uh you know it's important that people like but then but then you know she wants you to share your feelings but if you do she might attack you for being weak sometimes. Right. You know, and you're just like, wow, which way do you want it? But I think, like you say, everybody's got to work on this. So let me ask you this. The way a lot of these stories and narratives play, a lot of people don't think about, but I think also it plays in our male-dominant society and, like, advertising.

Like, they talk about how especially young women are really affected by our advertising. Much of it's very sexist. Much of it puts forth this ideal woman that I think one time they tried to figure out if they could make a Barbie into a woman. It's not possible. Right, right. Anatomically impossible. Yeah.

But young girls grow up with this, and they see the advertising. They see these stories, and then they're left with this introspection. I think women are more introspective than we are. And one question I had for you is, and this came from watching a lot of your videos, and was recently, a few years ago i became aware of self-ego and uh that car toll and it kind of saved me from the edge that i was on at the time and but i'm i'm wondering now if women just aren't in more touch with their their ego and maybe that's why they suffer some more self-criticism.

I don't know. I'm asking you that. Yeah. Well, there's a beautiful passage in Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth, about women and the ego. You might want to go back and read it. It's so fascinating. I've done a lot of work with him.

I helped Oprah produce a webinar that was watched by many, many millions of people with him. And Oprah, have you ever watched that conversation? It's really worth watching. I'll look it up on the- It's a 10-part series. So I've spent a lot of time in his work. And men and women suffer from over-identification with the ego. I mean, this is a whole other subject. If you want to have me on this show again, we can talk all about the ego, because the ego