Hello and welcome to the You Know How To Live show my name is Kate Hammer and in just a moment we will have Eve Rodsky with us Eve Rodsky is the author of New York Times Best Seller and Reese's Book Club pick Fair Play as well as a new book dropping on December 28th Find Your Unicorn Space and a documentary based on Fair Play set to release in 2022 Eve is working to change society one partnership at a time by coming up with a new 21st century solution to an age-old problem women shouldering two-thirds or more of the unpaid domestic work and child care for their homes and families now wherever you are watching from I'm so glad that you tuned in and are hanging out I hope you're ready for my favorite combination of things hopefully a bit of entertainment and of course some takeaways to improve how you work and play and do all the things you do in between please take a moment right now to subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review so that we can stay connected and with that let's bring in Eve Rodsky hi Eve thank you so much for being here today hi Kate thanks for having me yes absolutely you have a lot going on right now your first book Fair Play was a huge hit really likes to hang out on the New York Times Best Seller for long stretches of time um and you have a new book coming out on December 28th and you have a film coming out as well just saw an announcement the other day how are you feeling that's such a nice question um I love that question how am I feeling I would say um I'm feeling really uh reflective which I think is something that I'm trying to do more of um this new book Find Your Unicorn Space is a really interesting journey and we'll talk more about it through uh curiosity connection and completion and I think I've been really focused on that last c the idea that a completion is something important it's something to be celebrated to look back at your goals from the year before I do everything in moleskins or journals so I went back here okay you can let's even see it this was my neon one my neon neon green from 2021 but I went back and my major goals were on this page and so it was really fun to go back and realize that I had met all the goals I really wanted to achieve in 2021 I don't think women we give ourselves enough time to celebrate our completions oh we I mean we may not even know how like what does it even mean to celebrate when we hit those goals do we just like you know put on a song and dance around the room do we tell people do we even I mean do we even tell people um what we've accomplished so yeah I love that I love that you're taking that time and that you're reminding all of us to do the same and congratulations thank you thank you my friend Natalie Nixon she's a creativity strategist she literally buys many cupcakes for herself and she lights a candle um on any mini completion so I thought that's a really beautiful the idea of a ritual around completion is something I think we can all think about at the end this year and start into the new year yeah ah that's so adorable yes I love tying either like a specific event that will create a memory um or even buying something in connection with completing a goal so that it can like um every time you use it or see it or see photos of being at that place it brings back those feelings and reminds you that hey you can do big things and kind of just like revives that confidence whenever you're not feeling that way yeah yeah we all have those days yeah absolutely okay so yes we are definitely going to talk all about Find Your Unicorn Space um which was the concept of unicorn space was mentioned in your first book Fair Play but before we do that could you tell us a little bit about what Fair Play was about and who it was written for that's such a great question because you know it was written for me originally I think they call research research and as you know Kate it was a real reckoning you know and I think I'm coming up on my blueberries breakdown anniversary but since since um I write about right this seminal moment in my life when Seth sends me a text I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries and it sort of culminates in this side of the road texting and driving having to pull over break down sobbing breast pump and diaper bag in the passenger seat of my car and newborn baby gifts to return in the backseat of my car and a client contract in my lap because I had been forced out of the traditional workforce I never say opted out anymore I always say forced out because I've actually never met a woman who's not in the traditional workforce and had been who hasn't been forced out in some way and we call these things choices and they're not so I think that's important but I remember that day of really the metaphor for me was and I still think about you know you say you have things in your life that bring back good times well for me the idea of this pen sometimes holding a pen between my legs because I remember when I got the I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries text I was also racing to get Zach my older son who was three at the time from his toddler transition program that was seven minutes and costed art costs our entire salaries the recognition that the pen that was between my legs that I would and the stop signs as I was racing to get Zach kept sort of circling back and stabbing me in the vagina that's perfect that's what I remember about that day and I think this idea of being stabbed in the vagina by a pen is sort of the metaphor for how women have been treated in our society this idea that somehow we're super women and we can do it all and how great for you but oh because you can do it all and you're so great you know you don't need any help you don't need any safety nets you don't need men to step up and do child care and housework and I think that false narrative um is what leads us into leaves us in a really really burnt out state and also leads us to many choices and decisions that we wouldn't typically make if our you know we were able to have that space to think um long term about our lives so that's the answer uh the long answer to the question that Fair Play 10 years ago started as a an awakening um going from pre-consciousness to consciousness that something was wrong in my life that I did not have the career marriage combo I thought I was going to have even with the privilege of being a parent a single you know the daughter of a single mother and knowing I wanted an equal partner Kate and designing my life for that and also being a Harvard trained mediator and trained in difficult conversations um still still still this was happening to me and so you know I honor that completion uh the 10-year mark of living in an awakening of sorts that I've been able to share with the world um one person at a time and it's been very very powerful to me to hear other people's stories along my journey including yours we are spiritual friends in the Fair Play journey and that is that is how and why I've been able to sustain myself through 10 years of awakening is the women men non-binary individuals the people who have joined me on this cultural and political movement that is Fair Play yeah oh yeah I mean I've heard a fair short share of stories just from friends um I feel like every what it does when you read this book Fair Play it really brings out a story for you because you connect with it in a very specific way Eve has her story that she shares in the book about um the blueberries not showing up at home from the grocery store but um we all kind of have our own little moments you know as parents where we realize like wait this isn't quite what I intended and what I one thing that I really love that you do in both books is you really attack language like hey either this needs this word needs to get redefined or we just need to use different words altogether like um not that women need more help at home right right yeah just different words just do the things I always say that's why you know I thought it was funny that this new book Find Your Unicorn Space is coming out as a New Year new you month in publishing because you know what it's like New Year same you we just need different language different language to bring you out um as I was talking to a friend this morning Reena Gupta we're talking about her book called Career Interrupted and we both have this very similar lens that we're not here for reinvention we're here for reinvestment in your life and that's a very different concept um and that's that's just given me a feeling it's I don't need you to fix yourself or to shape yourself and I do want to make that point and Claudia Goldin does this so beautifully in her book um it's called Career And Family um and what she she does so beautifully is talk about the fact that yes women have gotten we've advanced of course you know in the past 100 years um or as I say -- different decades so not really that much but the advancements we've made the advancements we've made have only been at our own expense meaning meaning that we found um and discovered birth control right and then we had to fight for it because when it was discovered we weren't given access to it and so that was a tool and then we found and discovered ways to have children through scientific means to delay fertility um how many tools do we need to continue to fit into the boxes that this white male sort of Christian society patriarchal society has has made for us we have um to forge new paths we have to bring new lived experiences in and again I think that is the power of Fair Play everybody everybody feels triggered by it um regardless of your family structure there is a story that people tell me that resonates with them and so that is a new language because it's not about me saying this is what you have to do to fit into a -- up society it is um let's reinvent the language so that we can celebrate new and different types of lived experiences yes I love that and I love the language that you choose and one of those phrases is of course Unicorn Space um so I mentioned this to you before but that was my favorite concept from Fair Play I went nuts over it I feel like um you know after those first few years of my kids being really little and needing a lot uh I finally got into this space of you know exploring old hobbies and interests and um just trying to figure out what it meant for me to be creative and putting things out into the world and you know for you know remembering who I am like you said not changing who I am but kind of remembering and finding a way to explore that uh intentionally and I would use the word hobbies or whatever and you just like take an axe to all that you're like never say that I remember telling you that I was like I love that you are embracing your Unicorn Space and you stopped calling it a hobby I thought that was so great yeah so for anyone who's unfamiliar could you define for us what is Unicorn Space what makes it different from a hobby how does someone know that they are creating their Unicorn Space and living into that give us like the once around yeah I think it's really important I think first I'll tell you why I called it Unicorn Space because there was no word for what I was talking about um there were actions like you would hear the feeling of a flow state you would hear people say they wanted to be happy um and then there were these like terrible words like hobby or vanity project or passion project things that society literally would throw in a toilet bowl right I mean it's they are words that we associate with the last thing to do um at the end of our very busy to-do list and so many people would say to me well what are you asking me to add to the end of my um never-ending to-do list and I said you know what um I'm not asking you to add anything to your never-ending to-do to-do list what I'm asking you to do instead is to take things off your plate which is why Fair Play had to come first this idea that um when we invite men into their full power in the home women truly have the ability to step out into their full power in the world and this applies even if you're not married to a man this has to do with the cultural assumptions um if you are a woman um you will have you will butt up against a role at some point by being defined by your roles at some point in a way or male counterparts or not and so that's why Fair Play is an important solution for our society regardless of your individual situation but of course if you're married to if you're a heterocisgender relationship it matters even more because it affects you societally and in your home so that had to come first but then Kate the hard part was so many women said to me I have a passion gap not an ambition gap but a passion gap where it's been too long yeah it has been too long I don't even know what that return would be yeah and I didn't like that answer I found it highly triggering it made me cry it made me angry it made my heart pound yeah and over and over again you know we have the biggest longitudinal study of unpaid labor now and part of that was understanding um the profound sadness of hearing stories over and over again like the woman I talk about um in Fair Play who literally built her entire life around a skiing scholarship at the University of Vermont uh took her beloved skis with her everywhere and then at a point in her life um about 10 years into her marriage she leaves those beloved skis at an airport um because they're too heavy and they're taking too long to bring them out when she needs to get her toddler and her newborn baby fed and so she ends up in a ski lodge alone not skiing but also not even with her beloved skis and how do we get to that place where the things that literally took us took us to an ascendancy to who we are are completely disappeared whether it's skis or for me it was my name and I start to think about the power of naming as I and this is all getting to how it became Unicorn Space because the power of naming as you said became really important to me whether it was Betty Friedan in Feminine Mystique who said there are problems without names I've always felt that naming things were the key to understanding the fight for solutions that you have to come into awareness first so when I got Zach when he was handed to me uh that first time after maybe coming out of that nursery um I remember a nurse saying you know hi mom you know how did you sleep this morning how are you doing I'm to the point where then I got a necklace I remember those little charms were really in fashion 13 years ago my friend brought me went to the hospital and I proudly put it on and said mom and then I remember being at my kid's preschool for the for Zach's preschool for the first time that toddler transition program I was telling you about where we all sat in a circle and the preschool teacher said to me look around and of course it was all mothers and a couple of gay dads because of the primary parent thing which I hate that term so we're all sitting there and she said look around these will be your best friends they will know you better than anybody in the world at the end of this journey and I looked down kid at the name tag I had and the name tag said Zack's mom and I remember thinking yeah these are going to be the people that know me the best in the whole world better than anybody else they don't even know my -- name and so the power of naming as you said is a really important thing and so that got me to understand reclaiming naming is part of what I will do for the rest of my life so the idea of space became the thing that people said they had lost in their passion gap there's no space there's no space and time to focus on myself I literally can't hear myself think we're women especially in the pandemic have been interrupted every three minutes and 42 seconds and so the idea of space is a very irreverent concept but then some people were saying it as white space I need sort of this white space but I didn't like that term either because for so many women of color what they would say to me is the idea of a white space sounds like a place where I can't enter and I'm a Jew and I think well I don't want to be in a white space either because Jews are not invited into white spaces so I didn't love that term but the idea of a Unicorn Space the idea that there can be something mythical and magical that doesn't exist unless we claim it felt very special to me and that's how that term evolves it's the it's the space for for uninterrupted attention for things you love that make you uniquely you but it has to be claimed that's really what a Unicorn Space is yeah I love too how it's a word that we learn in childhood we have memories associated in childhood and it can bring us to that place in our hearts and our minds of just you know that childlike wonder of things are possible and we're not you know totally cut off by what we've learned and I don't know I just love the possibility in it well I think possibly so important that's actually one of the most important words that you um pick up on um and one of my favorite stories is a woman named Vanessa Bennett um it's called The Case Of The Toilet Revelation in Unicorn Space but it's this beautiful story of um my friend's four-year-old daughter you know waddling up to her as she's peeing on the toilet and saying what do you want to be when you grow up mommy and my friend had yeah had left her career um had been forced out as I like to say of her career she had had four kids in very rapid succession and she talks about sort of being on this toilet having this four-year-old who wouldn't let it go uh Vanessa said you know she asked her and she said you know I don't know what I want to be when I grow up um but I will let you know and Zion her daughter's saying okay well I'm going to come back and ask you again and then she kept asking her did you decide what you want to be when you grow up and Vanessa talks about the reinvention of her career at that point based on the generosity of Zion's question that there was as much possibility that word you just used for her after four kids and being defined by her roles for a period of time as there was for Zion and I think that's really the crux of you find your Unicorn Space is that there is as much possibility for us now even if we've been designed even if we've been defined by our roles even if we've had a passion gap there's as much possibility for us now as there was um as there is for Zion and there's a lot of stories in the book that show you that that is true and that's the most inspirational piece for me living in the possibility yes I love that okay so let's imagine someone's reading this and they're like all right I'm with you Eve I do need this I want to pursue it but I don't have time right now you have an answer to that question can you share with us what it is yeah well I think it's actually really I there's a lot of resistance to that I don't but I don't have time um I wish I could just get into the program Kate of curiosity connection and completion it's a beautiful second half of the book but like Fair Play I could not jump into a system for domestic rebalance without having 150 pages to unpack why we don't have time and unfortunately there are three reasons that three hurdles that really come up that we have to unpack one when you tell me you don't have time I ask people as I often do my research to go deeper it became one of three things it was either one I don't have a permission to be unavailable for my roles that's what you meant by saying I don't have time there's too much guilt and shame there's too much overwhelm in my roles as a parent partner and or a professional and by professional I mean anybody who works for pay who doesn't work for pay your work is still professional even if it's work in the home uh we've been taught too long that child care and housework is not professional work it is very important work so I loved that I loved how you redefined that in the book too yes so it's easy it is it is so it is if you're saying you don't have time it's either because you believe you don't have a permission to be unavailable from your roles and we unpack that in the book about how to burn guilt and shame and work through that um but the second one is um I
don't have the permission to ask for what I need um those are the two that usually you're saying um unavailability has a lot to do with how we look at ourselves our roles the guilt and shame people put on us and we want to spend uninterrupted attention on ourselves um or you're telling me that you really don't have the permission to ask for what you need and what I mean by that is not just ask for what you need to others but the self-talk to understand the clarity to understand what you need for yourself and so those those two are unpacked because um time you do have time and it's actually not not um it's not it's not just optional this is essential to your mental and physical health so unless you want to die you do have time for your Unicorn Space it is literally linked it's the opposite of a failure to thrive which actually is a big diagnosis people are having in the pandemic which is horrific that people are literally losing you hear that with infants but we're seeing it with people who lose their their their thriving their failure to thrive their their will to live um so what I'm not saying here is that life is is 72 and sunny Kate right as you know me um
you know a lot of the metaphors on Vivian Green's I'm not a big inspirational quote person but my cousin whose husband had a catastrophic stroke at 37 really came to to use you know the quote life is not waiting for the storm to pass it's learning to dance in the rain that became so important to her and that metaphor of you know we can drown in the rain or we can have an umbrella doesn't mean it's not raining but the umbrella are those things as we talked about in the beginning of this podcast which is are the things that can't be taken away from us those completions uh those Unicorn Space completions those are those are that's the umbrella yeah I love how visual you make it too makes it so much easier to remember and call back on gotta go get some umbrellas with me into the next season I have a unicorn umbrella someone actually bought me a unicorn umbrella which I thought was the cutest thing ever um and I think it's a kid's size so I would just probably keep my my hair dry not my shoulders but the cutest um cutest prop I have love okay eve a few minutes ago you mentioned that um there are some things later on in the book that you wanted to touch on do you want to say more about that yeah I would love to I think let's get into the fun part you know I just went pretty dark oh my god as one man said to me you're really good at going you're great at going dark to going light so I was like awesome I'm glad that you see that there's a rainbow arc um so the beauty of of this book what I loved writing about it especially during a pandemic was there were people thriving Kate there are people who are dancing in the rain and it is correlated to three c's and I want to explore those a little bit with your listeners the three c's that kept coming up and now you know we are um there are 750 people in my CRM that were asked exactly the same questions there are thousands more who've answered the Unicorn Space call to what is theirs so I really have some really beautiful there's 20 23 uh stories plus uh 12 expert disciplines in the book um so I really do feel like I know what I'm talking about here and I want to explain why curiosity plus connection plus completion is so important because if you look at your Unicorn Space journey your journey to happiness that way it's much easier than if you look at your journey to happiness as a pursuit of happiness because what I learned sitting in happiness labs and even the happiness professors will tell you this the more you focus on how to be happy the sadder you are um I don't even know if sadder is a word but I will coin it a word um and so I think we've had this misnomer that somehow we can gratitude journal ourselves to death and that is not yes of course gratitude is important of course um I'm a Jew our entire religion is about um saying to thank you to God and to other you know to really have gratitude for everything from drinking water to waking up in the morning to um being able to go to bed for having food so I believe in gratitude um but but I think really understanding that we can put happiness where it's in its place where happiness needs to sit is like behind you as like that bowl it needs to be one of of your clues and so what the beauty of that is is that if happiness becomes a clue then curiosity becomes a really interesting way to look at the pursuit of something if you start getting curious about something that makes you happy you are on the right track however some people have said to me well Eve you mean like I'm curious about my kids why my kids poop is yellow and I was like no not that type of curiosity curiosity about something that is grounded in your values and so I'll argue for you Kate you know this platform for you I really see you in your Unicorn Space and I'll tell you yes why I mean you can tell us but I'll see how I see you from an outside perspective which is that you have curiosity about making things better for others um you then reach out to guests or to experts or to people that have piqued your curiosity which takes courage it's how we became friends and then you are willing to share yourself with the world by completion by uploading this episode um even if it doesn't go the way you wanted it to it's not it may not be perfect I may go off on 100 tangents like I've done and you still upload it you still edit you still complete and that is a cycle of Unicorn Space it is something that no one can take away from you and that is how we get those umbrellas and these in this in this life that is storms and I'm going to presume that when you do this you do this because as a clue these are things that make you feel happy um not stressed not overwhelmed and those are the clues I want more people to follow so my point is keep doing what you're doing because it's it's how we met it's really you're you are really beautiful in how you share yourself with the world thank you Eve that was very kind I really appreciate that and you're right on I mean yeah this is I'm pursuing something and it's not about a particular end in mind um I'm doing it for the sake of the thing and that's fine I think sometimes we worry a little too much about excellence about how something will be perceived and that's not it it's doing something and putting out there in the world what that thing is like you said the completion aspect like share it because there's opportunity for impact and we all I feel like very deeply want to be known um and the only way to experience that as humans is to share ourselves sincerely so it's not always going to be as pretty and buttoned up as we'd like but always worth the risk I just also think what you just said it's so beautiful right the desire to be known um because it's that's exactly the opposite of what happened to me when I was handed a baby and I was called mom right um how can I be known how can I be known if people don't even know my name and so I think that you know we're talking about the same thing here that the desire to be known is the metaphorical and the and the literal reclaiming of your initial um as you see I put an E back on my neck um you can see it Kate and I did that very intentionally to my kids I had a ritual with them where I took off their initials and I put mine back on alone and I said you know this is really important that I wear my own initial that you know my name I already made the mistake of changing my last name without thinking about it without having any intention or clarity around why I did it I did that because that's what everybody else did um but I'm not going to lose my first name too my name is Eve it's um it's a palindrome and I love that about my name it's why I named my daughter Anna too I love palindromes I like the symmetry of it you know talking about yourself talking about your name uh it's it can be a really good return um that reinvestment just a little bit of a ritual to hold on to especially if you're feeling you know that these concepts are are new to you or um you haven't lived in them as long as Kate and I have yeah so while you're waiting for December 28th to get your copy of this new book um Find Your Unicorn Space you should just contemplate your name start there Eve that's great exercise I love that um and a great place to start for folks so let's talk a little bit about the film based on Fair Play when is this happening what is happening tell us a little bit about it oh thank you for asking I haven't actually gotten a chance to talk about it publicly yet so this will be my first time we have a Fair Play film we took advantage of the pandemic to follow 75 couples not everybody obviously made it into the film but we will be using a lot of that footage for other type of storytelling and we thought it would be really really interesting to watch how couples navigated Fair Play um we can say it I hear it people reach out to me but sharing these stories with the world are these universal truths the power of family the power of connection watching men step into their full power in the home it is not perfect by any stretch of the means Fair Play is a practice it is a practice that butts up against a hundred years of the opposite of what Fair Play is conditioning um that doesn't allow for the um the beauty the beauty of uh viewing child care and housework as not only essential but our humanity and so that's what this movie does um there's a lot of experts because Fair Play is always in Unicorn Space it's always marriage of data and science with with storytelling and I think it's really I think it's really good I really do Jennifer Newsom is our director she was uh revolutionary in her work with a film called Misrepresentation um she has subsequently done films on toxic masculinity and this is sort of a marriage of the two of women being sort of liberated as mothers not constrained as mothers along with men being able to be in their full selves as opposed to look that look at as opposed to being just looked at as um you know a cog in a capitalist wheel so it's just a really beautiful a beautiful testament to to our humanity I can't wait to see it thank you I can't wait to we are in the midst of uh having streamers acquire it so we don't know which streamer yet will get it um so as soon as we know of course I you will be one of the first people I tell yay okay and not really sure about timeline do you think 2022 yes definitely 2022 definitely 2022 for sure awesome I mean I don't know what else would be better to be honest I think we're all needing some more Fair Play fair pay fair day um in our lives as we think about what a return to work return to hybrid work return to any sort of um you know integration of our lives will look like in all of these disruptions yeah
I'm excited to see how people choose to watch it um you know will they get together with their book clubs from reading your books will they be watching with their families like what how will that experience of consuming the film impact you know what they've learned so far with what you've shared um I can't wait to see how it all rolls out super excited about it thank you thank you it's uh it was a labor of love for sure um a year of filming it was a labor of love but we did it we did it we completed that Kate yes so again celebrating completions uh feels very important to me we did that we we made a film and again I feel um I wasn't a producer on the film which was very important to me because I really wanted uh the producers Hello Sunshine the representation project to do with the footage as they needed so I'm there as a um family I'm featured as a family so it's really it's fun to watch what they did with the um with the themes yeah totally okay so you mentioned Hello Sunshine you have been partnered up with Hello Sunshine for quite some time and Reese Witherspoon has Fair Play was part of her book club can you tell us a little bit about how that came to pass and what that experience has been like for you yes it's funny I think what's what makes me laugh the most is um you know I get a lot of people saying you know that it must be really sort of a star struck experience to know um and work with Reese but the way I've always been in the biggest um nerd fashion of in the world for me is that the star struck I get is when I talk to a professor that actually um is willing to speak to me about a study a peer-reviewed study that they have done that speaks um to Fair Play so uh this professor named Daniel Carlson out of uh Utah he had a study around communication that showed ta-da when we you know bring our communication vulnerabilities to the table uh maybe our partners do more but then it decreases long-term marital satisfaction so um speaking to him I was like oh my god I'm freaking out I'm speaking to Professor Carlson so um that's always sort of where um my awe and wonder lives I think the beauty of Reese um was her willingness to say you know I have a book club an audience that reads fiction they often look for an escape and I'm going to pick a very triggering book that doesn't look like spooky fiction it came out in October of 2019 and people were expecting spooky fiction so to take a risk on me like that um I will never forget ever ever I will never I have boundless and endless gratitude for Reese and Hello Sunshine to take a risk on me I'm so glad they did too
I mean yeah I do read a lot of the books in the club and yeah totally lots of eerie stuff lots of midnight murders and whatnot and that is so fun but um but man I'm so glad that Fair Play was on that list too and that because of that so many women got to experience the book so very cool stuff Eve I would like to ask you a couple of questions about how you go about making all this happen in the day-to-day um you know I think when we look at it we're like okay here's this person who's writing these books who's making these movies like how what does that actually look like and how do we make big things happen for ourselves um so I have uh two quick questions about that and then I'm gonna go into this or that segment and hear a little bit about your preferences
yes yes I love that so much yeah absolutely um and and then a little rapid fire so in the day-to-day how do you get your day started right what kind of habits have you put into play to make all of this work um to continue to show up and do the work and create more over this long stretch of time such a good question I think um the number one thing for me of course is none of this would have been possible if I didn't have Seth holds many many many Fair Play cards with full conception planning and execution um the fact that I never ever ever have to fill out another school form for the rest of my life is highly liberating and the fact that I don't receive any school emails anymore as highly liberating except for when i want one I'm like oh geez you know I did want to watch my kid on his sing today and I don't have any access like the live stream um yeah but I think we don't we talk too much about what women can do like getting up an hour earlier or the most problematic this idea well if you're overwhelmed just get help that's been a very white feminist message this idea that for us to rise we should do it you know on the backs of the undervalued labor of domestic workers so I think not that we don't need professional help it's about how we talk about that professional help Cecilia is part of our family she is with us um she helps raise our kids just as much as Seth and I do we pay her well we pay her more than well she has health insurance she's considered an integral employee in our lives in addition we literally moved to LA from New York where our careers were thriving over 10 years ago now for help because Seth's parents my mother is still a professor of social work and a single mother my father has never been in the picture in a meaningful way um so moving across the country for help um was very subversive to say actually 13 years ago Kate um people were like what do you mean you're moving for help I'm like we are moving to be closer to parents because we cannot raise Zach alone um that's when we just had one yeah one child um so man yeah I think recognizing that in America we have no social safety nets we are breathing polluted air but that doesn't mean we have to stop breathing um I am not saying that um that we don't need to and what I'm also fighting for this year I created a Fair Play policy institute to really continue to fight for you know paid leave universal child care my favorite um adding unpaid labor into the u.s gross domestic product but we have to also take agency in our own life so I think when when people ask you know really how do I get all this done it is first and foremost the division of labor between me and my partner and then it's the community that we have built around us and let me just make that very clear we did not have money for a Cecilia you know for an amazing third parent basically uh 10 years ago so that's why we moved to be closer to Seth's parents so we could have that child care help in addition uh the other thing I think is really important for women is to understand our circadian rhythms there's a lot there's a lot of new research coming up about our circadian rhythms I am a night person so understanding that it does not go well when I have any child care responsibilities in the morning Seth is a morning person so he transports the kids to school in the morning it takes him an hour and a half so he has to get up really early to do that uh and so and that that is what it is I can't do it I cannot wake up early um I literally walk around like a zombie I have headaches I feel sick I have dizziness um my circadian rhythms work better at night and now so I am Zach's primary parent at night he's a teenager there's a whole other world that happens after Seth goes to bed there's a whole world in the morning when I when I Seth's awake and I'm not so that's just what we we recognize the power of our circadian rhythms oh yeah
that is I think because of the pandemic more and more people have been able to even consider that um with working from home uh changes just in schedule not necessarily commuting and just getting you know having more of an opportunity to get more in touch with that possibility right and my friend Sarah she you know she talks about like she doesn't have a lot of privilege she's in Canada her husband's a commercial fisherman and still she said look I'm living with a chronic disease she and I actually have something similar I have dizziness I've been called a dizzy blonde since I was 21. She has like real bouts of vertigo and vertigo it's no joke oh my god no and for her it's also waking up early we both have that in common where not living in our circadian rhythms triggers vertigo and so her husband's a commercial fisherman he has to be out at 3am so she said well it's your card still so his his grand uncle her grand uncle um works with her husband now to get her kids to school in the morning um again the concept of Fair Play is not that we have to do it all but it's that one person in the partnership is responsible for figuring out how to get that done and so for her um her commercial fisherman husband um has his great uncle take take the kids to school yes okay village they're doing okay yeah I like it oh man I love what you just said too it's not divvying up these tasks and you do this and I do that and you do this and I do that it's either you do it or you figure it out you figure out another solution you figure out who else is gonna help or you know how you can automate it or whatever um because the figuring out can sometimes be just as much of a challenge exactly yeah oh man okay all right let's jump into the this or that segment I'm gonna suggest two different possibilities and I just want you to share with us your preference between the two all right you ready ready okay read a book or listen to a playlist read a book I am who I am or I am always evolving I'm always evolving go on an adventure or stay in and relax stay in and relax re-watch favorites or search for a new show re-watch favorites okay I'm always curious about that do you have one that comes to mind immediately yes um I When Harry Met Sally I just I watch that over and over again um every Christmas season maybe like 10 times 15 times I just the couples it's so it just I don't know there's something so important to me about seeing New York in the 80s like that and my home it's my hometown and I just I love it so much that movie yeah oh yeah it's a good one okay here for humor or please be serious here for humor the more the merrier or more fun with fewer the more the merrier and merrier and merrier all right would you consider yourself extroverted 100 I call myself an ambivert because I like I like it all but uh one million trillion percent on the ENFP tests or Myers-Briggs or any of those tests that work give you which I'm not a big fan of personality tests because it does feel like you're not ever evolving you are I am who I am and I don't always I don't believe in that again I believe in I don't believe in reinvention but I do believe being reinvestment um and that takes evolution and so um yes I am I'm always considered an extrovert on any scale gotcha so you're always growing but you also always love people exactly exactly yes okay awesome all right next is rapid fire and this is the last part of the show so could you share with us something you've read lately that you would recommend to others it's a great question yes I just finished a book that I love so much it's called Between Two Kingdoms I think every it's a great audiobook um anybody can listen it is very much Unicorn Space it is um a journey a reinvention journey of a woman who was diagnosed with uh Leukemia early in her life but it's it's not about that it's really about creativity and its full power creativity loves constraints okay this idea of creativity and privilege is an interesting conversation sometimes the less privileged the more creative because these constraints that they're a different type of capital than financial capital and um and we often need it we need it to get through as we said those storms so between two kingdoms is a must read for creativity okay it is this fiction nonfiction non-fiction a non-fiction memoir interesting Suleika Jaouad is her name and it's written in her she narrates it so I would recommend listening to it as an audiobook it's so beautiful wonderful I love I mean I love any book recommendation but I love to know that the audio book is great um because you know we all need one of those in our background all the time we do the drives and the chores or whatever it's great to have an audio book at hand so noted okay a favorite thing for you right now it could be a product an app or a tool something that has appeared in your life that you're just really enjoying oh my gosh that's a good one too I would have to say um
let me just okay let me think a good one that I read because there's so many so I want to give um I will say post-its I love them so much I've reinvested in my love of them and what I've been doing with them recently is as I'm on panels if somebody says something beautiful I write it down as a quote and then I will have a friend who's in her Unicorn Space her name is Cynthia Sulis shout out to Cynthia I will have her calligraphy uh the quote for for somebody and send it to them oh that's so lovely like it's been my favorite gift so you send it to the person who spoke the whole said it that's who spoke the word yeah but you need post-its to do that because you have to have them right on hand to write it down yeah this is the best use of post-its ever I mean that's like not your traditional use of post-it notes you need one right by by your side and then the good part is you can have a whole wall of quotes like I do of people's quotes that I love so much and they stay with you and I put yours I put one of yours down on a post as we spoke desire to be known I thought that was so beautiful when you said that I love that I added to my wall what a great tradition and gift that is too cool okay all right I love um what is something that people would be surprised to learn about you
um that maybe not surprised but maybe that I don't I don't eat any vegetables
zero zero
minimum standard of care in our house when Seth yells at me if I have any of the food cards and he's like green is not a lucky charm shamrock it is not it is a a thing that's picked out of a garden but growing up in the lower East side we didn't have much produce um it was just never something that was ever introduced to me uh so I grew up eating a lot of carbs uh something called Tigers Milk Bars the Tiger Milk Bars were were the I think that was the beginning of protein bars but anyway um so yeah I don't eat vegetables all right well I know it's not proud it's just it's just something surprising well we can't in fact do it all so right we cannot ask exactly there you go um all right and the last one finish this sentence you'll never see me
you'll never see me
putting any other woman down for her choices because I understand how constrained we are and we all can benefit from throwing off societal judgment the judgment of our friends peers colleagues and so I will not be complicit in my own oppression by doing that beautiful let's just all take that cue love that eve thank you so much for being here today I so appreciate your time I so appreciate all that you're putting out in the world and all the work that you've put into it remember her book Find Your Unicorn Space comes out December 28th gotta pick it up and if you haven't read Fair Play you gotta pick that one up too thanks you thank you Kate wow what an amazing human being I feel so inspired right now and I hope you do too you can connect with Eve on Instagram at @everodsky that's e-v-e-r-o-d-s-k-y
to be among the first to hear the exact date of her upcoming film Fair Play also be sure to pick up Eve's new book Find Your Unicorn Space out December 28th thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed your time with us today please share this episode with a friend then subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review season one of the show will include more chats with top authors experts and influential personalities we will be serving up simplified applied psychology habit theory and quality of life tips and tricks that you can put into action right away until next week I'm Kate Hammer and You Know How To Live