2350 FBF: John Gray - NY Times Bestselling Author of 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus'

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Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host Jason Hartman and we are at episode number 270. And those of you regular listeners know what that means. That means we are going to go off topic today. We're going to talk with famous author John Gray, the author of the Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, New York Times best selling book series and other books as well in addition to those Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus books. But yeah, we'll have a great talk with him about relationships and health and vitality and a little bit about economics actually, believe it or not. So we will have that here in just a few minutes. Before we get started though, you know, I read an interesting article at lunch the other day. It was in, it was in the Scottsdale Republic, a little local newspaper here. And it was interesting because in the opinion section Jerry Gettinger, he wrote an article entitled misuse of public's money and Trust are the same thing. And this is a Wall street guy who started back in 1962. And you know, I've many times that I think Wall street is riding on a reputation, a reputation that it earned during a much cleaner, more legitimate time in its history. And I think it really all changed in the 1980s. That was the big, big shift on Wall street when it became much more about speculation and much less about the concept of dividend or cash flow investing. You know, the big question Investors used to ask years ago was, you know, when they were looking at a stock they would say, how much does it pay? That was the question. How much does it pay? In other words, what is the dividend? Nowadays all they want is a good story and it's just a speculative gamble. It's a casino. It is. You know, I've said it. I think it's the modern version of organized crime. It's just ridiculous what Wall street has become. And my best advice is stay away from it and be a direct investor. Of course you know that, but I'll just share with you this article here. It says one of the newspapers I read published an article about a person the paper described as the last, the last of the true financiers. As I read it, it occurred to me that it was someone I knew, though I had not seen him for several years. I put down the paper and opened my emails. My youngest son asked if there was much corruption on Wall street back then as there is now. Is he just asking this question about my conduct or does he want to know if the atmosphere was different back then? I started back in 1962 when we called customers men. Now isn't that funny? The code of conduct was rigid and unyielding. There was a six month training program before we were allowed to talk to customers and solicit sales. The code of conduct was such that my supervisor resigned to to join another firm and was expelled from the New York Stock Exchange for soliciting customers from his previous firm. These days he would have received a bonus. If that doesn't tell you something right there folks, that's my comment. That was Wall street then. I retired in 1988. It was as if I had traveled through a time warp. As I read my paper I noticed that a well known international company admitted manipulating interest rates to its advantage and and to its customers disadvantage. Hmm. Could that be the Libor scandal? We're going to talk about that by the way, on an upcoming show or an upcoming episode. Another company lost $6 billion of customers money. Hmm. Could that be JP Morgan? Another page reports that a commodity Firm has lost $150 million of customers money. Hmm. Could that be MF Global? Okay, enough of my snarky comments. The article details how well companies principal was considered quote a wonderful man, unquote. A neighbor said, I can't help but wonder how many of those quote, bankers are losing other people's money. So I emailed my son back. Yes, there was corruption on Wall street then. I was there, but not to the extent there is today. Reputation was important to a firm. Customers would stay away from one with a bad reputation. Not so today. Not just on Wall street either. My local paper has story after story about malfeasance. Thousands of dollars spent concerning the president's birthplace. Taxpayers money wasted, legislators lie or speak half truths. It isn't money that's being misused here, but the truth that has been misappropriated. Companies that have existed for 100 years admit to misusing customers money. It's the same as our political institutions misusing the voters. Trust difference is the medium. Aren't money and trust the same? I tell my son, yes, there was corruption on Wall street when I worked there, but it was not accepted. And by the way, your father didn't accept dishonesty, and I don't expect you to either. And that's a retired Wall street guy who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's really true, though. I mean, the whole world has changed. You know, I remember back in the old days of my traditional real estate career, and I'll tell you, I may have mentioned this on a prior episode, but what really seemed to happen is when the multiple listing service regionalized and opened up. You know, there's a lot to be said for the concept of community, isn't there? Because in the old days of real estate back in Orange county, there were a few bad apples and unethical people, and everybody kind of knew or suspected who they were. The people that would do wrong things. They would lie to customers, they would lie to other agents. They would not present multiple offers as you're required to do so by law. You know, they would do all sorts of tricky things and inappropriate, unethical things, and people knew who they were. And eventually those people lost business because of this. But then I remember back when the multiple listing service became bigger. And instead of just being for a city like Irvine or Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, the MLS regionalized to where it was for all of Southern California or a big area of Southern California. And when it regionalized, that whole sense of community was lost. Today we have Flashback Friday and a 10th episode show. All of you regular listeners know that every 10th episode we do a topic of general interest. It always seems to relate to finance and success in life and success with our portfolios. But the topics are More General. Every 10th episode show, and today we combine a Flashback Friday with a 10th episode, and it became a much bigger place. You know, I think that that's one of the problems nowadays with our society in general. Maybe you'll agree with me on this. And it is that now we live in a big, big interconnected world. And that has many, many benefits, of course, but also it makes it easy for people to kind of hide in the crowd, doesn't it? And it makes society much more transient and certainly society is much more mobile. You know, I'll bet you, although I've not experienced this personally, but I'll bet you in the old days or people even nowadays who live in small towns, you know, recently on July 3rd, I saw a great concert here, Miranda Lambert and Darius Rucker. And it was just really a great show. I like both of those musicians a lot. Those are country musicians for those of you who don't know. And Miranda Lambert has a song called Everybody Dies Famous in a small town. And you know, it's how everybody kind of knows your business and so forth. And that's not all good, I'll be the first to say. But in a small community where things are less transient, where people are less mobile, people I would say probably have to be a lot more honorable, don't they? Where when you have a big world, people kind of feel that people are disposable and they can just go on to the next deal. And I think that's what's happened to many industries. I think it's happened in the real estate industry. I, I think it's most certainly happened on Wall street. And it's really a shame in a lot of ways. But in terms of being an investor, the way to protect yourself is be a direct investor and maintain control over your own financial future. Don't put it in the hands of anybody else. Now before we go to our our guest today, John Gray, the very famous John Gray. I want to remind you to join us for our Atlanta Creating wealth in Today's Economy boot camp and our property tour. And that's coming up at the end of September. Register@jason hartman.com in the events section or early bird pricing still available at only 197. We've still got some room blocks, I know because the hotel hasn't emailed me yet to say the room block is full for only 1:29 per night at the beautiful Grand Hyatt Atlanta in gorgeous Buckhead. If you haven't been to this area, it's really a stunning area. Great restaurants, beautiful architecture, just a beautiful area. I love Atlanta. You know, when I was thinking of leaving Southern California for so many years, the places on my radar were Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, which is where I obviously ended up. But Atlanta is a really, really great city. I just really like it there a lot. So be sure to join us for the property tour. You're going to see some great deals on distressed properties, distressed inventory, the Creating wealth in Today's Economy Boot Camp of course is the most populated, popular event I've done. I've had thousands and thousands of people come through that program over the years and it is just a great take on what is going on out there. You'll learn about details on inflation induced debt destruction. You'll learn how to pick the best markets. You'll learn how to identify properties and values. And gosh, there's so much in that, that boot camp. It has about 95 PowerPoint slides if that gives you any idea. And it is all day long we go, I believe Atlant scheduled from 9:30am until 6:00pm Again, this is unlike our Meet the Masters event. This is the one I do. I am by and large the speaker all day long. We'll have about three 20 minute spots where I get to take a little break and I'll have a couple of guest speakers. Our local market specialists, the property managers, etc. Will speak during that event. But again, the Creating wealth in today's Economy Boot Camp, that is the event I do. Whereas the Meet the Masters event, if you've been to that, we do that one twice a year. Of course that is the event I don't do as much. There's a lot of other speakers and so those are very different in their, in their tenor and flavor of course. So be sure to join us for that. And of course the tour will be fantastic and we'll share a lot of meals together and a lot of good times together. Register@jason hartman.com in the events section or directly it's jason hartman.com events and I look forward to seeing you at the end of September for that. And we will be back with our guest Today on our 10th show, our off topic 10th show where we talk about relationships, health and you know, a little perspective on unemployment and the economy and so forth, especially as it relates to young people. With author John Gray. We'll be back with that in just a moment. Did you know that you can call into the Creating wealth show? Yes, you can call me and talk to me direct or later broadcast on the show. The number is 949-200-8009 or via Skype. Jason Hartman, ROI Please make sure you have a good connection when you call, get your questions answered, participate in the show and share your experiences with other Investors call in 949-200-8009 or Skype Jason Hartman ROI and participate in the Creating wealth show. My pleasure to welcome John Gray to the show. John Gray is a very well known author of many, many books. You may remember him from back in the old days when he wrote the very well known Men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and all the subsequent books that came out of that work. And he's got a new book coming out entitled Boys to Men. And so we'll talk about the broad spectrum of his work and it's just my pleasure to welcome John Gray. How are you John?

Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be on the show with you.

My pleasure to have you. So first of all, let's talk about maybe some of your older work first and how you became interested in writing about the male female dynamic and kind of sum that up. But, but then I'm very excited to talk about your new work coming out, Boys to Men as well.

Well, the interest I have back 30 years ago when I started the understanding the differences between men and women is still present in my life. It's still amazing as a marriage counselor so much of the time women just don't understand the way men think and they, they really need to understand. It helps them feel more relaxed, it makes them make sense of mental health. Men don't make sense of women. And when I help men to make sense of women, suddenly they go, oh, okay, then all I have to do is this and that and it doesn't mean that or this. And it just helps them reconnect so much better. And it creates a context in which we can go, okay, let me tell you about myself. And the other person can hear and creates a context where we can ask what we want. And the person's response is not like, well that's an unreasonable request or that's really not so important. Why are you even bothering me with that? So understanding what's important to women, what's important to men, it's really a fascinating subject. It's always curious to me. I'm always learning about it. And I guess in the last 20 years there's been so much research in the universities with the brain scan machines and all the progresses in hormone understanding and so forth. There's just a massive amount of research backing up all the ideas that I observed a long time ago, which at that time were very controversial and now they're much less controversial because we can even back it all up with brain scans showing how men's brains are different from women's brains. Men's hormones are different from women's hormones. And I have to say, even that new research which is done on the body, putting it all together, trying to make sense of it, even helped me understand myself and men better and women better.

Well, you know, John, that's really interesting. And I suppose when you're talking about the brain scans, you're referring to the new area, the FMRI or functional MRIs, which I think are going to lead to just amazing discoveries about us. But what's interesting is you're saying that these scans, probably with fmris, back up the things that you already noticed many years ago, Right?

Exactly. I mean, that's the great thing. It's like, oh, that explains why this, and that explains why that. Let me give you an example. With a brain scan, they can measure blood flow to certain parts of the brain, activity, how much activity goes on. And there's something called the IPL on the. On the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain, and it has a completely complementary function. And for men, the IPL is much, much bigger on the left side and much more active. And for women, the IPL is much, much bigger on the right side of the brain and way more active in a woman than a man. So here you have this distinction, and you start looking at what activities stimulate the left ipl. Driving a car, for ex, stimulates the left ipl. Looking at a map does, planning a trip does. So basically, it has to do with time and space. What direction are we going? How much time will it take? How much energy will it take? What will the reward be? So when you're anticipating getting a reward to be motivated, your left IPL lights up. And this is kind of a world that men live in that women don't relate to. In essence, kind of simplify it and be playful with it even, is that it kind of represents an aspect of men that I observed a long time ago, is that men, Men tend to only do what they have to do. From one point of view, women think that's lazy, but really it's prioritizing. Men also have a different energy supply in their body. The hormone testosterone gives us energy, and it runs out very quickly in men. Men need to make 30 times more testosterone than women. We're sort of always going through a cycle of activity and rest, activity and rest. Whereas women are not testosterone oriented. The other hormones, oxytocin, estrogen, serotonin, these are like primary hormones that allow her to burn fat As a source of energy, fat has way more energy than muscle. It's a sustained energy. And men have more muscle mass. Women have more fat cells, 25% more fat cells. So they really have enough energy to keep going on and on and on without resting until they're stressed. And that's what's happened to women today, is that women today have twice the stress levels of men. The stress hormone is now measured twice to four times higher than men. And this is just in the last 15 years these big changes have happened. So that was a big investigation for me. But we come back to the brain difference of the ipl. What we see is the right IPL is much bigger in women. And the right IPL all has to do with nurturing, has to do with relationship. It has to do with what do you think of me? What do I think of you? How do you feel? What do I feel? What should I eat? What are you eating? All these aspects that really, you can see an industry which is primarily suited towards women are focused at women like fashion and food. And not that men are not interested in those things, making babies and marriages and so forth, men are interested in that. But women's brains are way more active and way more connected in those areas than men's are. And women have feedback loops that when they're in a nurturing situation, actually lowers stress for women. Too much of a nurturing situation actually raises stress for men and exhausts men. Too much of a testosterone situation actually gives energy to men, lowers stress for men, but raises stress for women. So these are like amazing observations that all these studies have done. And it kind of helps us make sense of, okay, nothing's wrong with my partner and it's not like we can't ever fit together. We're actually wonderful complements to each other as long as we can have a non judgmental perspective of the differences when they show up.

Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting. Well, John, any other things you want to share? Just on how men and women can get along better and relate better. Because I'm very excited to talk to you about your new work and I want to make hopefully most of the interview about that today.

Okay. Well, this is actually a good foundation for that. But what I've seen is, you know, people ask me if the. If men and women have become that different in the last 20 years since I wrote Men it from Mars. Relationships between men and women are dramatically different. But our brains are still exactly the same. That hasn't changed. Our hormone structure is still the same. It's been that way for a long, long time. It's a long evolutionary process, but suddenly we change the dynamics of the relationships. And that is a huge shift where women are doing more traditional male work, men are doing more traditional female activities, and suddenly everybody's more stressed out than ever before. And the answer is not going back in time. But the answer is being able to learn to find the appropriate balance in our life. What I see for women is they tend to go over to their masculine side, their testosterone hormones, which inhibit the female hormones. And they have to make sure that they have balance in their life to understand what are those most important female hormones and how can they not take hormones, which is what women are doing today, to try to remedy the problem, but how to do certain behaviors that will stimulate those hormones. Ultimately, if you take hormones, you may get symptomatic relief, which for some women just feels like they've gone to heaven. It also has huge risks that go with it that are still not completely defined, but they are there. And there is no long term research on giving people hormones. Ultimately, when you give someone hormones, your body stops making the hormones. And if your body's not making the hormones in the first place, there's a problem you need to address. And so by taking hormones, you're not really addressing the problem. And it gets worse. So I, I'm into teaching women and men how to do those behaviors that actually stimulate the right hormones to stay healthy and to maintain positive mood in a relationship. So, you know, that's, that's the challenge for women. And the challenge for men is, is twofold. One is if you're in a relationship with a woman who's more masculine, it tends to make you more passive because she's so busy doing everything. And you're like, hey, we don't have to do everything now. Let's just relax, chill out. But on another level, that has nothing to do with women. Our environment is so filled with what's called xenoestrogens, Pesticides, plastics, pollution, toxicity. All these types of things have the effect in the body of estrogen. So they're called xenoestrogens. And estrogen for men is not a good thing. It suppresses his testosterone and low testosterone for men. It creates the highest risk of heart disease and irritability and grumpiness and lack of interest in sustaining relationships, inability to make a commitment. So we see a lot of problems happening for men that have nothing to do with their relationship. And so we have to counteract those. That leads me into the new Book, which is, which you wanted me to talk about and I'm happy to talk about, which is Boys to men.

Yeah, absolutely. We're going to talk about that, John, before we jump into that. And I know this will be, you know, it'll be related, but I have read and, you know, seen news reports for years about the way the two genders are changing and things like birth rate and male sperm count going down. And I hear these commercials all the time for, you know, low t, low testosterone for men and then about women becoming more masculine and men becoming more feminine. Now, this may be totally anecdotal what I'm saying here, but I seem to just keep noticing and hearing a lot in the media about this kind of stuff. And you know, when you called for our interview today, just before we kind of went on the air here, I was distracted because I had just heard about an attack in my neighborhood where three girls attacked another girl and beat her up. And what is going on out there? Are, are, are the genders sort of like moving to the middle? You know, like in politics where they'll say, well, this politician's moving to the center because of the polls, you know, seems like women are just becoming much more aggressive. And of course, this is a massive generalization. I know that it's a stereotype and men are maybe becoming more docile. Is this happening in our society, these xenoestrogens that you mentioned and all the environmental pollutants and so forth? What's going on out there with this?

Well, I would have to agree. I mean, with everything you just said, there's a. It's not really moving towards the middle. It's moving all the way out of balance, the other direction. And I wouldn't say even before we were out of balance, we were just at a state of evolutionary development where women were women and men were men and we were complementary. And as our consciousness rises, greater self awareness, greater introspection, and we can see this, even our children today, they're so much smarter than we were. They're so much more aware than we were. And there's research that even shows that just even with the Internet, the amount of information stimulation that is going into people, the amount of increased consciousness that's happening, awareness of information increases our self awareness. We have access to so much information so quickly. We're being stimulated so much. On one level this can cause stress, but another level, it does increase our self awareness. And with increased self awareness, women were going, hey, you know, I have masculine abilities as well. I don't want to just be feminine. And so they went towards the masculine. And men growing in awareness said, you know, I like the, I can be more whole and complete within myself as well. But the problem is, is when we go too far out of balance, it's like you're walking a tightrope and you suddenly swing out of balance, you fall down, you've got to be able to come back into balance, you got to go back the other direction. And so what I teach women is, you know, how to use your relationships or your personal life when you're at the workplace, how to, how to have a personal life where you swing back to that actually stimulates the life giving happiness hormones that can only be produced if you're a woman, if you are nurturing your female side for a man, if you don't have the masculine hormones, the testosterone stimulated and supported, you're going to have low energy, irritability, passiveness, in many cases grumpiness and so forth. So there's, you hear all the testosterone things being recommended and so forth. Many doctors are actually giving men testosterone, which is extremely dangerous and irresponsible in my opinion. There's steroids and certainly sometimes they see some immediate benefits where men feel alive and great because they've just taken a hormone. Very different from taking a hormone than taking one of these herbal supplements that actually help your body to make testosterone more effectively. There's different pathways that herbs work. And one of the herbs that I prefer and I recommend to people all the time, particularly to men or women with low libido is Tongkat Ali. Tongkat Ali from Indonesia.

John, do you care to spell that? Maybe for the listeners that's quite a helpful.

Okay, that's called Tongkat T O N G K A T ALI A L I and most of these, all the livido products carry it. The problem is that it's so popular. I mean it is the most powerful of all of the libido herbs and testosterone herbs because so the people are diluting it, they're adding other things, they're ripping it off to make it cheaper to increase their profits. You want to make sure you get the pure stuff. But the reason that particular herb is so significant is the pathway in which it works is that when your body has high estrogen it seems paradoxical. So take a moment to explain this. But historically there's never been all these xenoestrogens in the environment. The only time a man would ever experience high estrogen is if his testosterone levels were consistently too high. And then the body Can. When the testosterone in a man goes too high, the body converts testosterone into estrogen. And then now you have high estrogen. So the body thinks, oh, I have high estrogen, then I must cut off the production of testosterone. So there's just this physiological response that when estrogen levels are high in a male body, testosterone production stops or goes way down. And that's the pituitary gland, sends a message to the testicles to stop making testosterone. Well, the herb tongkat ali, the pathway that it works on is not a hormone. It's, it's just a messenger that tells the brain to send the message down south to make more testosterone. So that's something that's so relevant today because one of our biggest problems today is the excess estrogen in our environment.

So what about hgh?

Okay, human growth hormone? So there was a phase about five years ago, for about five years it went on where a big rage was giving older men, 70 and 80 year old men injections of HGH, human growth hormone.

I saw that and heard commercials about that all the time on the radio.

Right, right. And so, well, they did some real studies and they gave people these injections and men started getting younger, their muscles started growing, their libido came back. Basically you're regenerating your body with HGH is how your body utilizes food basically to regenerate cells. The problem with taking these things, if you're 70 or 80, you just want to, you don't mind what you do if you live another day, so it's fine. But for younger people, we don't know the long term results of adding these substances to the body. What we do know is consistently the way the body works. If you take things that actually are the substance your body makes, then your body gets the message that it's too much and it shuts down. The same thing happens with. And by the way, your body can make hgh, your body makes it, and yes, your body makes less of it as you get older, but your body doesn't have to grow as much as you get older. We have to keep that in mind as the growth hormone. And the key to why people are so low at HGH is we eat so much. Basically every time you eat, the process your body goes through, you digest the food, insulin goes up, transports the food to the cells, and then when insulin goes down, that triggers the brain to release growth hormone and the body utilizes the nutrition to regenerate the body. But today, because we have so many carbohydrates in our diet, our insulin levels never Go down. As soon as they start going down, we eat some more. So you have to have a period of time, at least three or four hours after a meal where you don't eat anything, so you get a chance for the insulin levels to drop and growth hormone to be released. So that's another aspect of just a natural way to create more growth hormone is don't eat so much all the time.

Yeah, yeah. Follow maybe the more European method rather than the American method, which. Which I think would have a lot of other benefits probably too, right, Dr. Pompa?

Well, it's hard for people to do that when their food isn't nutritious, which is why my website, I recommend all these particular supplements that I found to be effective for people. We're making huge advances today. I don't want to be critical of anybody, but we have Parkinson's, which is another big, big deal. What they do is they give them L, dopa, dopamine, and then as you take it, then the Parkinson's ultimately gets worse and worse. Your body habituates to the dopamine that's caused by receptor downregulation until you don't have any, and then nothing works. So the drug itself works, but you have to keep using more and more and more. It's not even a drug. It's a bean mucuna perens, that's high in dopamine. Well, another scientist in Chicago realized the same concept I'm talking about. If you give your body a huge amount of something, then your body stops making it. And see, if you give a lot of dopa to somebody, what happens is your body stops making the enzymes that convert phenylalanine into tyrosine. And tyrosine has all these other functions in the body, and your body stops making serotonin. So if you just supplement with other supplements while you're doing the dopamine, then suddenly you can get a dose of L dopa, and you don't have to keep raising the dose. And the Parkinson's doesn't get worse. This is like a huge breakthrough. And. And then what he found is that same formula of taking some extra tyrosine and some 5 HTP to make serotonin has a dramatic effect in helping kids with ADD and adhd. Literally, in a few weeks, your child doesn't have ADD and adhd. I mean, it's amazing that the discoveries are out there, but you won't hear about them anywhere.

Yeah. John, is it just the big pharmaceutical conspiracy? Because. Because it seems like everybody is just taking Drug after drug, prescription drugs, of course, I'm talking about, you know, nowadays, they're just drugging people up. It's really scary.

It is very scary. And conspiracy always creates the word, then suddenly discredits what you're about to say. But I could just say it's business. It's business. When you have a product, you want to sell it. And the most profitable product on the planet right now is health care. And to make money off of people being sick. If you actually healed everybody, then you wouldn't make any money. And that's not a very productive business. So just the whole concept of making money off of people's health is pretty challenging, particularly if they're sick. But take it another step away from that and just go into the markups on pharmaceutical Drugs sometimes are 2,000 times. On a supplement, it's 50. It's like costs $50. The health food store gets it for $50. They probably sell it on sale for $75. They make not even 100% markup. So there's just so much money in the industrial complex. The pharmaceutical companies, and then there's a whole system. They then pay for all the research to be done. They then determine the curriculum for our doctors, who. Many people think doctors are health experts. And they're not that. They realize they're not trained in being healthy at all. And quite often they're not healthy themselves unless they're a naturopathic, holistic doctor who studied naturopathic medicine, homeopathic medicine. They don't know very much about being healthy. They know, you know, somewhat, but they don't understand all the value of these supplements. And they. They think it's like talking witchcraft. And then we even have laws that say if somebody gives advice, you have to go check with your doctor. What does he know?

The doctor doesn't know anything about it.

Well, he knows. I don't want to minimize it. Doctors know, but they don't understand all these new developments in the supplements and so forth.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you and the doctors I know. I don't think they're any example of good health. It seems, John, that the western medicine idea is just cover things, cover up symptoms rather than deal with symptoms. We don't have to go too far afield with this whole thing. But I'm sure we both agree on that.

Well, we certainly do. And we can come right back to, you know, my new book, which is. And I know you wanted to talk about it, which is. It's not out yet, but it's boys to men, this huge crisis in boys. Now girls have their own crisis, but the boys is sort of overlooked and most people are not aware of it. But just some of the symptoms of it are Right now in colleges there's two women graduating to every guy, so that's a two to one. In high school there's two girls graduating to every boy. There are four times as many boys committing suicide in their teenage years than girls. 90% of all children with learning difficulties are boys. What is going on when you interview? It's just everybody's going, what's happening? What's happening? Then what we see on another level is many of these children who have learning difficulties are close to learning challenges. They're diagnosed with ADD and adhd, Attention Deficit disorder. Now, if you have attention deficit disorder and a teacher is teaching you, you become bored very quickly. If you have adhd, you're so bored you become restless and you become distracted. So these are two really big problems. And typically boys are way more vulnerable to ADD and adhd. Their research is saying, you know, there's four to one, four boys to one girl with ADD and adhd. And so. And however, my own anecdotal experience talking to teachers, usually 9 out of 10 kids who have ADD in schools are boys. And a lot of it goes undiagnosed as well. But what you can just look at just the grades and the outcome is the number one ingredient that you need for good grades, which is a measurement that we can compare to 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Boys have gone dramatically down. And it's comprehension to be able to comprehend, to be interested, to not be bored, to stay focused and to comprehend. This is our intelligence and it's being restricted for some mysterious reason. So my book, I explain it very simply for parents to understand the various causes of it. It's not genetic. This is a whole thing which is nonsense. The thought that suddenly an epidemic comes out in the last 10 years and it's genetic. Children have a genetic tendency to have different types of add, adhd, but the cause is pretty much the same. And there's a variety of causes, but the main, most common cause is our high carbohydrate diet or the high carbohydrate diet of the mother when the child is pregnant. If you have high blood sugar, blood sugar, when it spikes, causes inflammation in the brain and inflammation in the brain inhibits brain function. So there was a. One of the most popular supplements in Europe for the last 50 years for arthritis. And arthritis is inflammation. One of the most popular supplements is something called grape seed extract. It's very inexpensive too, grape seed extract. And they found in some studies that just as it takes away the inflammation in your elbows and your arthritis and your hip and everything, it also takes away inflammation in the brain. And this is the major cause of ADD ADHD symptoms in children and adults. If you take grape seed extract along with vitamin C, suddenly, symptoms of ADD and ADHD go away very quickly. Even for myself as a kid, I was add. When I look back at it, the tendency of that and I go, where did that come from? Well, I drank two 16 ounce Cokes every day. That will do it. I did okay. I didn't have the extreme symptoms kids have today, but I still had the symptoms. I now recognize them. And now when I'm 60 years old, occasionally I'll be reading something and my mind kind of goes over it again and again or I'm not absorbing it. That means I'm stressed and I'm not comprehending. And that means there's inflammation in my brain or I'm tired. All I have to do is take some grape seed extract, about 300 milligrams, 600 milligrams of vitamin C, and within a few minutes, I go right back to the book or the magazine I'm reading and my brain grips it, I absorb it, I comprehend it. And this is what kids are missing today.

Let me take a brief pause. We'll be back in just a minute.

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When I heard you on another interview recently about talking about your new book, you talked about, I think, about the employment prospects and what's going on with men in the workforce as well, or young men particularly. You know, you talked about those graduation rates. Some of that stuff is really, really mind blowing. And I assume that when you talk about statistics like that, we're still producing about the same equal amount of boys and girls as they're Born right?

That's right. There's an equal amount of boys and girls and twice as many girls who are considered educated. And education in our society today quite often is the prerequisite for getting a job. And even once you have a job, for getting job promotions, I mean you can actually, in some jobs you can be very confident, but you didn't have the degree so you can't get promoted where somebody else who has the degree has the opportunity to get promoted. So that's one huge injustice and challenge for males today. But also just simply getting a job if you don't have an education is so much harder. And so suddenly that becomes this huge challenge of men getting work. The next aspect of men getting work is women. And whatever reasons we want to attribute to this are often willing to come in at a lower pay grade than a guy. So a guy looking for work has to look for a job where he feels he's going to be able to support himself and his family. So he really sort of has a higher requirement. And companies know this. You can hire women for less money, even though from a realistic point of view a woman with a child has huge needs for greater money, but she tends to be more willing to accept the low paying jobs. So you've got the high paying jobs taken by the women because they have more education and you have the low paying jobs taken by the women who don't have the education.

So it's this middle ground where men are just losing out. Now I want to comment on that as an employer because I remember I had a girlfriend years ago who was rather had feminist leanings for sure. And you know, she would always complain about how women statistically only make 72% or 73% of what men make and complain about how unfair that was. But I will tell you though, John, I'm not so sure that's true because as an employer who has hired hundreds and hundreds of people over the years, when I would put an ad out for a receptionist for my company, women would apply, men wouldn't apply, and when I would put an ad out for outside sales, men would apply. And I think there's a self selection, a self sorting that goes on.

There is, there's a place where now what often they'll say with that figure, which is so many disputing figures and it is a big debate, but it's really an inaccurate figure. It's just the one that suits everybody on the news. There's actually debates going on about it. Here's another figure which is completely accurate by the US Government, which is single women make more money than men for doing the same jobs. Now, that's an average like $0.13 more on the dollar or something like that if they're single. So there you have another aspect to it then. You have the whole concept of when you go into the detail, there's a whole book written by a friend of mine, which is why men earn more. You know, married men do earn more than married women. There's a reality there. But then you say, well, what work are they doing? Is it for all the exact work? And that's where the details come in. Very significant, which is the details. If you're both heart surgeons, who's been a heart surgeon longer, that's going to cause you to make more money for the same job. That's a B. Who comes in on the weekends and works overtime for the same job. That's typically the male, because the female will typically not want to work overtime because she has children at home and she doesn't. You know, she feels that there's that responsibility. The male often has a wife who will take care of his children so he can have that opportunity to compete more and make more. So there's lots of.

There are a lot of factors, and certainly it should be noted that many women leave the workforce for five or seven years to raise their children, which is great. And that plays into it, too. I mean, men have five to seven years more experience on average if they're 40, 45 years old by that time. Right?

That's exactly right. So you come back to where the studies that say women are making less, they're basically saying a woman doing the same job, but they're not comparing a woman doing the same job who has less years of experience. So it's a really challenging aspect. You know, I've actually done a study of 100,000 men and women, and you ask the phrase, do women are women appreciated in the workplace? And 80% of women say no. So, and you ask, men, are women appreciated in the workplace? And 80% of men say, of course. If I was to ask you, do you appreciate those women you hire?

I certainly do. Of course.

That's why we hire them, I think. You know, I talk to bosses all over the place. They think the women are great and they're fantastic. But these women actually will say in a survey, I don't feel valued and appreciated. So I'm also working on a book called Gender Smart Workplace where we close the gender gap, where men can understand why women are not feeling valued in the workplace. It's not about the money. That women. On a personal level, I've never heard a woman say, I don't feel valued because I'm not making enough. That's just some political feminist statement kind of a thing. On a personal level, women will say things like, I don't feel included. I don't feel valued. Men walk on eggshells about me. They have their own club. You know, there's all kinds of issues that do happen in the workplace that are really. That can really make the workplace better if we understand how men and women are different, you know, how does a woman feel appreciated? You know, even in my own life, when I was just had a counseling practice, you know, I had this great assistant, Helen. She's still a very good friend, and she wanted to quit. And I said, why? She said she didn't feel appreciated. Now under emphasize she's a great assistant. I got my lucky stars to found her. But the way I communicated to her didn't say to her that she was appreciated. So I said to her, well, what would I. What would it look like if I appreciated you? She said, you'd know more about what I do. And this is a real key thing. Men feel appreciated when you just acknowledge the results of what they've done and you pay them well for it. They go, look what I did. But women don't feel valued unless you really understand all the work they put in, the struggle they put through, the angst they go through, the experiences they have, the highs and the lows. And we're not talking a therapy session here. We're just talking a few extra minutes every day to listen and ask questions, to know the deep, more details about what she goes through. Then women feel very much like now. You know, I stayed up really late for that, and I had to call this person 13 times, and they were a jerk. If you understand what they go through, then they feel, ah, you really value me. Because if you don't know what somebody does, how can you value them? And that's the perspective women have. And that is, again, we come back to brain differences. That's the right IPL that says, see how I feel, see what I do, and then you can value me. But for men, it's the left ipl. See what I did in terms of the outcome of what I did and what I accomplished. And that's where men feel value.

Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting stuff. John, tell us a little bit more about your new book. First of all, when's it coming out?

Well, you know, I Don't have a publication date. We're still in the editing stage, so probably next year will come out.

What else are you covering though? The title is interesting. From Boys to Men. I mean, you know, maybe a little bit more about the title and what it's about. I mean, you explained this problem with the learning disabilities, the suicide, I mean, that's just awful. The education situation, very grim. The employment situation and the add, the.

ADD situation, the ADHD situation. These are with practical solutions to help. And it's also helping parents to understand their sons and what their sons need. And a big part of what sons are missing today is happy mothers. This is a really key thing as the boy gets the message of his own sense of worth. If he sees his mother not happy or the father not being able to assist the mother in happiness, he doesn't get a clear message that he has the power in relationships to be successful. So that's a real key thing for mothers to become aware of and the ways they unknowingly cut off communication with their sons. So I go into a lot of communication there skills where mothers will ask too many questions. Mothers can also be too empathetic, the too protective, particularly with boys. Boys need to have a greater sense of risk taking in their life. And mothers, their job sort of is, oh yeah, you can go there. But you, but look at this could happen and this could happen and this could happen. She's kind of like the doorkeeper to hold you back. And there's a value to that. So kids don't do crazy things. The father is the balance to that, which is kind of like, we'll try it, see what happens. You know, just he wants to climb a tree. All right, I'll watch. Go ahead, climb. Be careful. But you know, the mother is like, you're not old enough to climb that tree. And dad says, well, I'm going to be here. And there's a whole dynamic as well of the role of the father that we talk about in terms of sons. Some research has shown that kids who, when parents divorce, if the child goes with the father, if the boy goes with the father versus goes with the mother, there's a much more positive outcome for the boy. If he goes with the father or if it's both mom and dad, it's even better. But if it's one or the other, the boys that go with their fathers actually end up better in life. And right away what we find is just boys who grow up with mothers. Single mothers with boys have a much higher percent of add And ADHD problems, whereas the boys who go with their dads don't. And this is the influence of dads. Dad is just the presence of men. With men increases testosterone and increases dopamine. ADD is a condition of inhibited dopamine function. So just boys being with fathers in control of their lives has a huge effect of setting boundaries, which helps to stimulate dopamine in the brain of boys. You can see in a child, they've actually measured that when a father comes into the room, a different brain chemical gets produced, and that's dopamine. When the mother comes into the room, a calming brain chemical gets produced. Serotonin. So we children need a balance of mom and dad. And if they're going to get a divorce, they need to make sure that they still have that balance and make peace and provide a network for those children of contact with both. I mean, these are the ideals. We have to know what our North Star is to navigate the ship. Life is not perfect, but at least we can know how to move towards it.

Sure, yeah, very.

Some of the dynamics we go into.

Yeah, you know, that's an amazing level, really, John, of detail there in those dynamics. I mean, you know, the presence of the father, the presence of the mother, and the future holds, I think, with technology, such good things in terms of us continuing to understand more and more about this. But your work and your research has certainly been on the cutting edge. Tell people, if you would, where they can learn more. Give out your website.

Thank you. They can certainly learn more@MarsVenus.com is my website and all these sort of supplements that can help out. I have a little store there and I have a video on each one to show people. Explain in greater detail how the brain works, the body works, why we need certain things today, or why someone might need it. But you know, one other thing I want to point out which I think is dramatically wonderful. It's a question every parent has. How much time should my child sit on a video game? Because it turns out that video games are just as damaging to the brain as cocaine. If you spend too much time on them, the same part of the brain lights up as with cocaine now you become dependent upon excess stimulation. That's called addiction. And the normal stimulation, parental approval, parental motivation, the desire to please your parents that suddenly has no power over the child. So parents gain less power over their children to lead and guide their children. The more they play these games. It also actually interferes with brain development if it's too much. So, you know, this has all Been theory and speculation. We could see it certainly was an addictive thing. You take the video away from the child, they get upset just like you take away a drug. Now we got research showing that when a child's playing a video, you've got the middle part of the brain called the nucleus and compass, where there's a lot of pleasure, gets stimulated. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's then connected to. There's a blood flow from there to the front part of the brain, which is the executive center of the brain. For the first hour of a video game, there's that connection between the middle brain and the front brain. After about an hour, the front brain just turns off and the middle brain continues to be stimulated. That's not good. That's the addiction setting in. That means the child's actually gaining less control over their life about making decisions. And they're more into just kind of a conditioned reaction state. More like a conditioned animal, a monkey, that you can train them to do something. That part of the brain is actually called the monkey brain, conditioned brain, as opposed to the front part of the brain that is stimulated through education, where children learn to set goals, achieve those goals, behave responsibly, explore morality and so forth. That part of the brain actually turns off after about an hour. So for the first hour they're learning good skills. So, you know, that's a nice study because it kind of says to parents, all right, don't worry about for an hour, but after that it's too much. Kind of like with a vitamin pill, you know, it's good for a certain amount, but if you take too much, it can make you sick.

Yeah, most certainly. Most certainly. Well, what are you doing in the way of supplementation and products? I see on your website that you have products and so forth.

Oh, well, they're not my products. A few I designed because nobody else had them, but. But what I do is I'm kind of consumer. I test all this stuff and see what works with my clients and test it out, see what people are, what's really working out there and try to find the best deals for people and recommend things. And so I have like a little 10 minute video on things for depression, particularly relationship oriented things. Depression, anxiety, mood disorders, energy levels, libido, passion, hormone balance, menopause. I mean, there's a product there that I imported from Korea called Rx for women and that does have my picture on it because they market it there with my picture because I'm kind of well known there that one in three days, women's hot flashes stop. It's just amazing. Women order bottles of it just because imagine something you take if you're one with hot flashes is only herbs and all those symptoms of menopause go away in three days. I mean, it's a shocking, amazing response that people have. And it's actually double blind studies showing that hot flashes will go away and all those other symptoms. And it's not actually taking hormones, but it's herbs that help send messages to the brain to balance your hormones. Those are the kinds of products that I recommend to people that are kind of relevant to their sex lives and so forth. So it's quite extensive. The kind of things that are under the sheets, people don't talk about, but I do.

Well, John, I'm looking forward to your new book and the title again. Boys to Men.

Boys to Men. Boys to Men. Thank you so much.

Fantastic. Thank you, John. And I got to ask you one final question before you go. How did you ever think of the title Men are from Mars? Women are from Venus? What a great title.

It took two years of looking for a way to talk about gender differences without people suddenly getting upset because it's back 30 years ago and I'd see in 1984, I saw the movie E.T. and in my talk I happened to say, women, just imagine your husband's ET and they all laughed. I thought this is the perfect way to talk about it, like from different planets. And some woman, even that talk said, where's my husband from? And I said, mars. And that was it. Everybody laughed. I said, this is this. This is what I've been looking for.

Good stuff. Well, John Gray, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it.

You're very welcome. Thank you. Bye bye. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews. Please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email mediaartmanmedia.com Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, health or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own.