Mo Gawdat - The 3 BIGGEST Mistakes We Make In Finding Love

I don’t often have repeat guests on How To Fail but Mo Gawdat is the exception. When he first came on this podcast in 2019, he fundamentally changed my mindset and my approach to life. Back then, he was on a mission to make 1 billion people happier. Now, he returns to focus his brilliant philosophical and analytical brain to the perpetual human question: how to find true love, then nurture and sustain it. He joins me to discuss the three most frequent mistakes we make in love - and to explain how AI could be the saving of us. Mo is about to launch a game-changing AI-powered app called Emma that promises to help us all navigate the dating game with compassion and insight. This is the first time Mo has spoken in depth about this revolutionary new app so, yes, that IS a How To Fail exclusive, no biggie. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Introduction 04:29 Personal Growth and Relationships 05:40 Heartbreak and Grief 10:03 Reflections on Love and Breakups 18:12 The Complexity of Modern Dating 21:45 Introducing Emma: The AI for True Love 29:53 The Mathematics of Dating 30:33 The Law of Large Numbers in Love 32:54 Dating Fatigue and Its Consequences 33:39 Game Theory in Relationships 36:52 AI's Role in Modern Relationships 39:15 The Economics of Love and Relationships 47:52 Finding Contentment Amidst Global Chaos 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: Heartbreak is very similar to a terminal diagnosis, followed by grief. Falling in love is very easy. The trick is how realistic are you about falling in love with the right person? When you go on a date with a mindset that says “It's not going to work”, it's definitely not going to work. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Check out Mo Gawdat’s new relationship app: emma.love Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ 📚 WANT MORE? Mo Gawdat - his first appearance on How to Fail (in 2019!) sparked infinite chatter in the HTF space, covering grief, finding happiness and how to cope with a breakup https://link.chtbl.com/fnA5IzTi Alain de Botton - reflects on how to stay human during a crisis, embracing vulnerability, acknowledging grief without comparing pain and “turning on the light” in your fears so they lose their power https://link.chtbl.com/RBaS4VUy Stephen Grosz - argues that real love causes suffering and embracing those painful failures helps us grow, surrender (not submit) in relationships and see ourselves and others more clearly swap.fm/l/1XYvcQR4PRi06YpBC3RA 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Elizabeth and Mo answer YOUR questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Suhaar Ali Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If we drop our egos as humans, we realise the gift. Love is not about sleeping together.

• 0:06Elizabeth Day?

  How similar or not do you feel heartbreak is to grief?

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Identical.

• 0:15Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome to How to Fail. This is the podcast that believes, as Truman Capote did, that failures are the condiment that give success their flavour. Before we get on to this episode, I just want to give you a quick reminder to subscribe so you never miss a How to Fail conversation.

• 0:35Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 1:20Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail. Confession time. I have a tendency to postpone certain decisions for far longer than is sensible. Not the big life decisions, oddly enough, those I can usually handle. It's the smaller ones that somehow become disproportionately complicated. For me, rugs fall squarely into that category. I've known for a long time that a rug can completely change how a room feels, but I've always found sizing for a space tricky. That's why Arnesta appealed to me. Arnesta makes designer-quality rugs, custom-cut to the exact dimensions of your space.

• 2:06Elizabeth Day?

  So instead of making do with something that's close enough, you're choosing Something made specifically for your home. I also love the fact that you can order five oversized 12 by 12 samples for just $10 before committing. And Anesta's design team will help with sizing completely free of charge. Visit Anesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you'll get $50 towards any rug of your choice. That's Anesta, E R N E S T A dot com. I am so happy about today's How To Fail guest, which is not unrelated to the way this person makes me and so many others feel. Because when Mo Gawdat first appeared on this podcast in 2019,

• 2:50Elizabeth Day?

  he fundamentally changed my mindset and my approach to life. Back then, podcasting was still in its infancy. We didn't have video cameras or fancy YouTube channels like we do now. And Mo was promoting his soon to be bestselling book, Solve for Happy. The wisdom he dispensed in that episode led to an outpouring of love from the How To Fail community. I have lost count of the number of people who still come up to me and tell me how he changed their lives, especially when Mo spoke about the death of his beloved son, Ali, at the age of 21, and how he navigated that terrible grief. Over the years, I've watched in admiration as Mo,

• 3:35Elizabeth Day?

  a former chief business officer at Google X, has gone from strength to strength. He is now the author of several international bestselling books, including Scary Smart, That Little Voice in Your Head and Unstressable. His own podcast, Slow Mo, is a chart topping mental health podcast. And he's about to launch a game changing AI powered app called Emma that promises to help us all find and sustain love.

• 4:05Elizabeth Day?

  I don't often have repeat guests on How to Fail, but Mo is always going to be the exception to the rule because in many ways, I feel we've grown up together. Mo's DNA is woven through How to Fail's origin story. And as lots of you will know, I quote him all the time. Compassionately wise, intelligently thoughtful. He is the lighthouse guiding us safely to shore. So it brings me great pleasure to say, Mo Gawdat, welcome back to How to Fail.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  You always embarrass me like that. You always do. I think that's your editorial skill. You find incredible words to describe things I would dream to be. I don't know if I am, but I come here just to see you, to be honest.

• 4:52Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, Mo.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  That's the whole thing, isn't it?

• 4:56Elizabeth Day?

  You have become such a leading voice, not only in the mental health space, but now in navigating the future of AI.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:03Elizabeth Day?

  But I wanted to start by asking you about the last seven years because it's almost seven years since we first met. It's almost seven years since you wrote Soul for Happy. And seven years, it's a crucial length of time for humans because we're meant to regenerate every single cell.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Oh, that's true.

• 5:22Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. How do you feel? Do you feel you've regenerated yourself?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  I have completely changed. So like you have no remaining cells in your body from seven years ago, I honestly am a different person. I, you know, on the one side, I have completely stopped being the corporate executive I used to be, which when we met, I was running One Billion Happy as a project. You know, like we want to measure, we want to progress. We, why did that not reach people? We need to make this. And then I gave up completely.

• 5:58Elizabeth Day?

  So one billion happy, for anyone who doesn't know, was your commitment to make one billion people on this earth happy?

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Happier.

• 6:05Elizabeth Day?

  Happier.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Happy absolutely is impossible, but I wanted people to take charge of their own happiness and hopefully have the compassion to make others happy. And we measured at the time, I still measure a little bit, but not as obsessively, people who got the message and took action, either to improve their own happiness or someone else's happiness. And I think there was a moment, probably around the time when we first met, where I realized that I wasn't doing anything, that maybe it's actually a nice thing to surrender to the fact that things are being done through me. And my God, it just exploded.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  On my, you know, my personal side, I have evolved into this little teddy bear, seriously, who is, I mean, in a way, I got so much closer to my wonderful daughter, which I think matters more than anything in the world. We've always been close, but it's just constantly, you just get surprised by how far love can go, right? Because you think you have something and then you go further and you go like, whoa, like, you know, you can continue. And she's amazing in every way.

• 7:24Elizabeth Day?

  Beautiful.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, as I told you, I fell head over heels in love, unfortunately failed.

• 7:32Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm so sorry to hear that because I didn't know it until you arrived here today. And because today is going to be all about love, and because you've been on the podcast before, we're doing something slightly different today, where we're going to discuss three mistakes that humans make when it comes to love. But before we get on to that, and I do want to talk to you about your relationship, and I'm so sorry that it's ended, but as you will know, from us knowing each other very well, I fundamentally believe that no marriage or any relationship is a failure simply because it ends.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  That's true. I have to say though, so I'm usually quite resilient. I mean, Ali left, so I dealt with that.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  I struggled with losing Hannah, I do. I struggled because I see what I did wrong. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting because I, I think what, of course, long distance is very, very difficult. We were between London and Dubai. And, and she is thriving. She's an incredible therapist, incredibly smart, so committed. And so we couldn't be in the same place. And, and that adds a massive weight to our relationship. But I didn't know that because I travel all the time.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  So, so my lifestyle basically is just mad. And, and Hannah was the first time that I opened my eyes to the fact that, no, this is not normal at all. Okay. It's like even if I want to keep up with you and enjoy the incredible places you go to, it's almost impossible. Right. But also I have to say, for the first time ever, I, I wanted her so much. I wanted it to succeed so much that, that I wasn't the man I was supposed to be. In, in, in that I, I just was very calculating in every word that I said.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  I was very, I wasn't vulnerable enough to share what I was going through because I was afraid it would upset her. And, you know, in an interesting way, all of that worked the opposite way, if you want.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  At the same time, of course, she also has works, work to do and, and she, she knows that. But I'm only at liberty to talk about what I learned. And, and yeah, and, and, and I have to say, we came to a point where we said, this is not timed right at all. And that it is, you know, not, not helping us thrive. But I have to admit, I'm not able to let go of the fact that this could have really worked.

• 10:24Elizabeth Day?

  Mo, I'm so sorry. This is Hannah, who you got married to. So the last time I saw you, you were so in the throes of this love affair.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:34Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm so sorry for both of you that this has ended in this way. And I really appreciate your vulnerability. And it strikes me that when we were talking about the seven year regeneration, you were talking about allowing yourself almost to become a vessel, letting go of the control that you thought you had over what you were saying and what you were messaging to the world. And maybe, do you feel that's also what you went through in this relationship? That maybe you were trying to calibrate and control things too much?

• 11:08Speaker 00

  It's, it's quite interesting because I have to say, you know, as feminine as I can be sometimes, my navigation through life is always through my stronger side, if you want, my very analytical, very mathematical view of the world. And, and, and I think this relationship was basically telling me this has expired. That, you know, that, I mean, it's, it's so interesting because we broke up at the time when I was designing Emma. And, and so in a, in a very interesting way, you know, I was Emma's number one user, basically.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  And through the need of, of trying to figure out why, why do we, why do we not get there?

• 11:57Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  It seems to me that as a society, we overanalyze what has become, in my mind, the most complex mathematical problem on the planet, which is the, the complexity of relationships. Love is so easy. Love is so easy to fall in love is, I think, our default setting. It's, you know, you can only block it. But if you let yourself, you will fall in love. And I think, I think the challenge is that the complexity of relationships always hits you from a different direction every time. And it is.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  You know, in in in my heart, I'm very good at letting go, okay. But I think this will take a bit of time.

• 12:46Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, and that doesn't mean that you're failing at it.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  It's not a failure, of course, it's the best thing that ever happened.

• 12:52Elizabeth Day?

  And I remember when we first, sorry, when we first spoke, I think I was still dealing with a past breakup.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  I remember, yeah.

• 12:59Elizabeth Day?

  And I remember asking you, like, how do you deal with a breakup? And you said this very profound thing, you said, when someone tells me that they have broken up with someone or a relationship has ended or they've been dumped, the first thing I say to them is congratulations.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would kill anyone who would tell me that now.

• 13:16Elizabeth Day?

  I'm quoting Mogadad, back to Mogadad. But the point that you made, which I think still stands, is that is that you could guarantee that they hadn't been happy in that relationship

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:27Elizabeth Day?

  for at least a few weeks, few months up to that point. And that the world is full of so many people and that you will find love again if you're searching for it.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's very true. And, you know, if you really, really, really deeply understand life, life is a series of seasons and experiences. And the idea that you you end a relationship is just an open door for another one, okay? And and, you know, every one of them is a is a beautiful mirror that creates an amazing set of memories in your life, an amazing, you know, reckoning, understanding of of who you are, you know, who who the other was, like, the beauty of being able to to hug such a beautiful soul like Hannah is just wonderful.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  It's it's also quite an interesting part of life to understand that failing has, in a relationship, has absolutely nothing to do with the duration or the, you know, the continuation or or anything at all, other than were you able to open up enough to be one with a person, with another soul for? For for a period of your life. And if you've managed to do that, you know, then that's it. And and in a in a very interesting way, I I know you know that about me. I feel that every woman that ever blessed me in my life is an incredible gift. Right? And and and so the love never ends.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  It's just morphs, right? And and you know, if if any of my exes hear this, they will nod. Because we are very close, we're still in touch. We it's that's that's the beauty of love. Love is not about sleeping together. If you if you think about it, you know, you know what's the cutest thing about this whole breakup? Is that the first person that texted me was Nibel, my my, the mother of Ali. Right? And she said, I heard, are you OK? And I was like, about what? And she said, about Hannah, I really loved her. I I had hoped that it would work for you. If you wanna talk, call me. I'm like, oh, my God, you're so sweet.

• 15:44Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  You're so sweet. And and you see, these are the types of connections that if we drop our egos as humans, we we realize the gift, right? The the ego is, oh, they hurt me, or, you know, we disagreed, or whatever. OK, but the the reality is, they blessed us. They really, really, I mean, that idea of someone trusting you enough to undress with you. It's just so beautiful. And and then and then things change, the season moves on.

• 16:21Elizabeth Day?

  Love never ends. It morphs is so beautiful. How similar or not, do you feel heartbreak is to grief?

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Identical.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Takes longer, though. So heartbreak is very similar to a terminal diagnosis followed by grief. So grief happens twice, you know. So if you if you fear the loss of someone, that in itself is a process of grief. And then eventually, if you lose them, that's another process of grief. And I think that the issue with heartbreak is that we keep trying. Okay. Even though sometimes logically, it's so clear that at least a break is a good idea or that, you know, maybe maybe that love was pure enough that it didn't take into consideration the complexity of the mathematics of relationships. Right.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  And so so we grieve twice. We grieve through the process of getting to a heartbreak. And then we grieve through the process of overcoming a heartbreak. I have to say that one of the top, top, top reasons why

• 17:37Speaker 00

  why dating in general and love in general nowadays is failing is because we fail to reflect on a heartbreak, to turn it into a learning. And when when we're going through it, it's all about the negative side of it, not the positive learnings that you've gained.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  You know, which basically is what a relationship is all about, believe it or not. Whether it breaks or not. I mean, I know you seven years now. I have to say, Justin, got the best out of you.

• 18:14Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:15Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I agree with you.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:16Elizabeth Day?

  That I am so lucky and blessed now to have found someone who supports me being the best version of myself. And I hope I do the same for him. And that, for me, is about feeling fully accepted, flaws and all, because I totally relate to what you were saying.

• 18:34Elizabeth Day?

  I know you're surprised to hear that.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  I don't know of any.

• 18:38Elizabeth Day?

  But I so relate to what you were saying about that idea that you're so desperate for something to work, that you're sort of hiding what you believe to be your shadow side.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  And she told me so many times.

• 18:48Elizabeth Day?

  She?

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just couldn't get it.

• 18:51Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I, the thing that I quote most, I think, of yours, along with the Becky Brain, is when you experience the terrible loss of your beloved ally, and you would wake up in the weeks after he died in tears, and the first thought would be, he died.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 19:12Elizabeth Day?

  And after a while, you thought, I can't, I can't continue to live like this. I need to change my mindset. And you still woke up, and you still had that thought, he died. But you add, and he also lived.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:24Elizabeth Day?

  And within that sentence was 21 years of memories and love, and a father-son relationship that was like a best friendship. Do you apply that same thinking now to the end of this relationship?

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Well, if, if, if this relationship was all about our, our second kiss, our first kiss sucked.

• 19:47Elizabeth Day?

  Did it? Why?

• 19:48Speaker 00

  I'll tell you.

• 19:49Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, tell me.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  Switch off those cameras. I think that would be enough.

• 19:55Elizabeth Day?

  Huh.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  I have, I have lived. I, I have to say, it is, um, we take those things for granted. You see, you see, dating in the modern world, um, toughens up, toughens us up. You know, you know what I mean? It, it, it removes the glory of, oh, my God. Like, that, that fusion of two souls is just divine. And, and you know, uh, I think the problem is that people don't understand the difference between, um, the, the soul fusion of love and the, and the physical fusion of love.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  When people go on a date, hmm, they tell themselves they're looking for love. They're not. They're looking for something I normally refer to as perfects. P P R F C T S, right? So we go to dates looking for P, passion. So sex, basically. For those of us who are interested, you know, we're looking for partnership. Okay. Someone that we navigate the confusion of life with. We're looking for romance, the best hormone cocktail on the planet. You know, a bit of uncertainty mixed with excitement.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  And, you know, the only state where humans have both dopamine and serotonin in their blood at the same time. We look for F friendships, right? So we need someone that feels like a friend, that we can share things with and so on. We look for companionship. You know, those wonderful couples that go out in the morning, read two different books and don't say a word. Yeah, this, you know, amazing, amazing feeling. We look for tenderness, touch, gentleness, kindness. Okay. And we look for support, which the Western world refuses to acknowledge, but support

• 22:04Speaker 00

  comes in multiple, multiple, multiple, you know, versions of it, where one side of the relationship would do something the other is completely incapable of doing and vice versa. And, you know, and when we go out on dates, that's actually what we're looking for. Love has nothing to do with that. Love, in my own definition, is not even of the physical world. Love is a, you know, in my definition is a longing, a sense of longing in the physical world because of a sense of belonging in the spiritual world. It's those two souls are up there saying, I like you so much, you're part of me.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Let's have the avatars, the physical avatars connect as well. Okay. And so that whole idea of solving love is impossible because love is not in the physical world. Love is your ability to literally let go and allow yourself to be who you are. Okay. And then, and then the rest, the complexity down here is just...

• 23:10Speaker 00

  It's just like navigating the finance world. It's like navigating the, you know, the, the, the politics at work. It is a complex challenge, okay? That driven by love can be easier, but it still remains to be two people aligning across a thousand parameters every day.

• 23:33Elizabeth Day?

  Let's get on to Emma and get on to these failures that we make when we search for this illusory love. First of all, tell me what Emma does, because I do think it's brilliantly conceived.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, Emma, Emma's my biggest attempt ever. I told you before we started, this actually is the first time in my life that I feel I will fix something about the world. I've, I've done, luckily, I've been blessed with doing well so far, right? I get a lot of people that say you have an impact on my life and I will love, I appreciate it. But I never felt I could fix something. I could affect one person, you know, a hundred people. Emma might actually fix something about the world. And I, and I have to admit, it might fix the biggest challenge of our world, which is the challenge of love, believe it or not. And I, you know, basically, I've, um, I've met, I met this incredible co-founder of mine,

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Senad, who's 27, who's even more geeky than I am. Can you believe that?

• 24:35Elizabeth Day?

  I'm struggling.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  I, I, I am struggling. I, I swear. I mean, we are like the ultimate geeks, okay? So, so we decided that we were going to create an AI that has one obsession, which is to, uh, help you find and nurture true love. Okay? And we make that known upfront. So when, when we opened the waiting list, we basically said, if you're looking for a hookup, or you're looking for a one night stand, or you're looking to experiment, you're not in the right place. And Emma will tell you that if that's what you're looking for. She will tell you, I'm really sorry, I, I suggest you use other apps, right? But, but the whole idea is that love of another starts with awareness of the self and love of the self.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  And and most of the of today's dating scene doesn't do that at all. They thinks that the what today's dating apps, for example, are focused on the looks of the other person. They're not focused on you, okay? And Emma wants to reverse that. It wants to help you understand yourself enough, right? Understand your preferences, your past, your experiences, what you used to crave but told yourself you shouldn't, what you now crave but probably should not. You know, all of the traumas that you may not be aware of, all of the things that normally manifest when we fall in love and and remove our veil, right? And and lead to breakups eventually.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  And and and it's it's attempt like literally the first message Emma will tell you is hi, I'm Emma. Excited to meet you. I am obsessed with helping you finding. Basically, she said I'm obsessed is what we'd say internally. But she will tell you my purpose is to help you find and return and and nurture true love. Emma's not a dating app, remember, as it's she's all about nurturing love. Dating is just the process of getting you in love so that we can nurture it, right?

• 26:33Elizabeth Day?

  Brilliant.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  And and so so it's very different than other dating apps because we don't want to send you on more dates. We want to send you on fewer dates that are actually mathematically accurate.

• 26:46Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, so let's get on to the first failure that humans make because I think it's connected to what you've just said, which is that we use capitalist tools that rig the system against us.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 26:58Elizabeth Day?

  What do you mean by that?

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Dating is very profitable for so many people. I mean, think about it, huh? That what what's the success of dating apps? You know, they they'll tell you that the success is for you to find a match. But no, the the success is to have. A lot more people in the meat market so that they can show you more images. The success is for you to have more likes so that you feel your ego gratified, right? The success is for you to keep swiping because that fuels their renewal of their, you know, of their subscription and so on. And at the end of the day, believe it or not, you're not the customer, you're the product.

• 27:41Elizabeth Day?

  I, this has blown my mind because it sounds so obvious when you say it because you have the gift of making profound thoughts accessible.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  And if you understand how the corporate world works, you know, what might sometimes start as, yeah, let's help people find love. When you become a corporate and you have a stock and you have to, you know, work for the shareholders and so on, you eventually have two departments. One that lies and the other that tells the people, the world the lies. So, so, you know, the slogans that are marketed to you are not at all the truth. No, nobody would measure if, how many customers we lost last week because they found love, right?

• 28:23Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  And, and so the, the idea is interesting, but it's not just them. The, the place you go to for, on your first date wants more dating. You know, the, the flower shops want more dating. Everyone wants you to date forever. Hmm, even, even wedding planners, okay? Their business would improve if you got married twice, twice in a lifetime, not once.

• 28:46Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  And so it's quite interesting that consciously or unconsciously, I'm not saying there is any evil in this, but we improve what we measure, okay? And the capitalist world of the dating scene has not only turned your constant suffering into money, right? But interestingly, they have re-

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Designed the the supply demand equation. Okay, so so it is actually what the reason why dating is becoming so frustrating in the modern world is because that's the reality of the new scene. Okay, we've completely broken supply demand. And in a in a very interesting way, we've completely reduced the value of the product to a swipe.

• 29:31Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Okay, and so even if you find someone that seems to be a good match, you're constantly asking yourself, but there are four billion more that I haven't swiped on yet. The noise of that scene is that ninety percent of matches don't actually result in a in a in a date, not even in a relationship. Right, but more interestingly, most of those relationships are becoming so shallow that twenty percent of men are getting eighty percent of women.

• 30:05Elizabeth Day?

  Right.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  And and that even so and that spoils the twenty percent and the eighty percent. Do you understand that? So so the women that are constantly chasing, the industry uses a term that I freaking hate, high value men, right, and high value women. So high value women are more physically attractive. High value men are seemingly more rich or more ripped or whatever. Okay, and and and interestingly, you know, and I hate to say this, I am a high value man, right? And I get so spoiled if I'm single, hmm, that it actually really, you have to be very balanced to say, I still want committed love.

• 30:48Elizabeth Day?

  You've been on a dating app and what and was your what was your experience of it?

• 30:52Speaker 00

  People will hate me when I say this.

• 30:54Elizabeth Day?

  You had a great time. It's like Justin.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  I'm I'm an engineer. Engineers, we have a great time. You know why? Because we analyze it and we optimize the funnel. And eventually, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, dating is a skill. Do you understand that?

• 31:10Elizabeth Day?

  I did, I'm just, I'm having this shocked reaction because Justin, who I met on Hinge, now I feel like such a dupe.

• 31:17Elizabeth Day?

  I've been married twice and I met him on Hinge. I'm just lining the coffers of the dating industry. But he has this theory of dating, which he calls the funnel.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  It's a funnel.

• 31:27Elizabeth Day?

  And that, and when, whenever we compared notes on online dating after we'd met, he was like, I had a great time. I was like, you did? It was a hellscape for me. And that speaks to the experience of straight dating, that twenty, eighty percent.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  But not only that, it speaks to the complexity of the mathematics. You, you have to understand this, huh? The, the problem is you have to match a thousand parameters with a thousand parameters. In, in, you know, in ma- in matrix multiplication, that's a very, very inhuman ability to fix. Right? And engineers were very good at saying of the thousand parameters, ten actually matter. And as, you know, the, the challenge with, with dating is it follows what is normally known as the, as the law of large numbers. I'm, I'm just gonna, I'm, I'm gonna geek out on mathematics for a second.

• 32:15Elizabeth Day?

  Love it.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Right? So, so the law of large numbers is if you need to get a double six when you, when you roll the dice.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  You know, on average, you have to roll the dice thirty six times. So assume that the person that is made for you in this life is one of thirty six. Right? On average, that means you have to go out on thirty five dates to find them. Now, the problem is that thirty five dates, by the way, that's, that number is highly simplified. As a matter of fact, one of the mathematical elements of Emma is to help you understand that if you have twelve parameters in the person that you're looking for, that's likely going to be one in six million. The math is very simple. If, if you're, if you're looking, if you're interested in a certain gender, like a man or a woman, a male or female. Okay? That makes it one in two. Right?

• 33:10Speaker 00

  If you tell yourself, but I want them to be within a specific age profile and one of every three people is that, it's not two plus three, it's two by three. So now your chances are one in six. If you say, and I want him to be taller than. Six foot two, which is one in ten, okay? It's not fi- five plus ten, it's five multiplied by ten now, he's one in fifty, right? If you, if you say of a certain spiritual background, now it's one in two hundred. If you say, and so on, so, so Hannah was one in six million four hundred and thirty seven.

• 33:46Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, because you had a checklist of eighteen attributes, didn't you?

• 33:48Speaker 00

  I had a checklist of seven.

• 33:50Elizabeth Day?

  And then you, it used to be eighteen and then you brought it down to seven.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  And, and, and, and she had all seven of them, right? And, and believe, and I know that sounds really unfeeling, hold on. As I said, falling in love is very easy. The trick is, how realistic are you about falling in love with the right person? So finding the right person is a math problem. Well, you find the right person, love is inevitable, okay? So, so this is one, so law of large numbers means that on average, a woman would need to go on a hundred dates. Okay, to find the right, the person that's even luck, by luck, a reasonable match. Okay, you and Justin are a total anomaly.

• 34:35Elizabeth Day?

  I know, I feel so lucky.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, now the problem with a hundred dates is what? You get dating fatigue, you get burnout, and you actually reframe your perception of love and relationships as hopeless. Because you go on a date and it's crap, and then you go on another date and it's crap. And then your mind starts to tell you it's never gonna work, right? And when you go on a date with a mindset that says it's not gonna work, it's definitely not gonna work.

• 35:03Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, or you internalize that even more and you think, I'm not working. I'm failing, I'm not desirable.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Hundred percent, so, so this actually again is one of the mega, mega mathematical biases of, of, of dating, right? So, so think of it this way, I don't know if our listeners would know Nash equilibrium, but basically those top twenty percent are the flashy target that everyone is chasing. By the way, on men and women, huh, that are not your match at all. A woman would want to date a man that feels safer, feels more capable, more successful and so on typically.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  Then then basically everyone's chasing those until you actually meet them and you go like that wasn't it at all. Right now, the challenge is this, the challenge is Nash will say if you go for the second most likely alternative in a in game in a on a game theory quadrant. Everyone on the game theory board will succeed. So.

• 36:03Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  So it's quite interesting, huh?

• 36:06Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  If I if I would go and say, yeah, it seems that Scarlett Johansson is the absolute target of everyone. I need to get Scarlett Johansson. I don't anymore, but I was when I was younger.

• 36:23Elizabeth Day?

  I'm now wondering who you're going to put as number two on that list.

• 36:27Elizabeth Day?

  Because you're going to offend them. Anyway, carry on, yes.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  So if if I if if everyone's chasing Scarlett Johansson, Scarlett Johansson by definition has an unmanageable mathematical problem at her hands, which is the abundance of choice. Right? At the same time, everyone chasing her is not getting any chance at all.

• 36:45Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Because their probability is subject to comparison, basically. If everyone says, no, no, leave Scarlett Johansson alone, everyone chase the second best candidate. Okay, the second best candidates now value your approach because you're amazing. Okay, as you go out of the market because we're coupling you.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Johansson starts to say, holy shit, I'm gonna be alone. Okay, and so basically she starts to say, okay, and I'm gonna get a nice guy.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  And and that's what Nash would explain.

• 37:22Elizabeth Day?

  That's so interesting. It's like going for the second the second bottle of wine on the on the wine list.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 37:28Elizabeth Day?

  You don't go for the cheapest, you go for, yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  Correct. And it's quite interesting because again, that comes from a personal experience. I was always a nerd. Right? And I was never a bad boy. I attempted. Remember once we were walking and I told you I'm attempting to be a bad boy?

• 37:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  And you were so unjudgmental. I love you so much for that. I fail. I'm not good as a bad boy, okay? And so as a young man in my teens, that really crushed me.

• 37:53Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Because I'm really a good man, but girls are interested in the men that are less interesting than me, if you want, okay? And so, and so every nerd understands that the answer to that is Nash. Okay, we call it Nash equilibrium. And if we all go through that. So again, I don't, I'm not trying to complicate things, but there is a ton of mathematics below that complexity that a human brain cannot comprehend. You know, there is, there are times when you, you meet someone and you go like, I really like them. I don't know why. That's because your unconscious brain, or your unconscious awareness, let's call it, measured a thousand things, right?

• 38:36Speaker 00

  When, when you looked at that person, the look in their eye, the energy that they radiate, this, this, that, and a thousand things. And you said, yeah, I'm, I actually like this. Emma's attempting to do this online.

• 38:48Elizabeth Day?

  This is so fascinating and I completely relate to that. Justin, as amazing as he is, I had that. I was like, something is keeping me in this and I'm not quite sure what it is. Because both he and I had been bruised by past love. So we were both approaching it cautiously. So we weren't throwing ourselves into saying that we loved each other within sort of two seconds of meeting. It was much more of a slow burning bonfire than a sort of dazzle of fireworks that then burn out. But there was something really powerful that was saying, no, this is good for you precisely because it doesn't feel familiar. And so often when something is familiar, it's because it's toxic and we become accustomed to the toxicity.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's infatuation.

• 39:34Elizabeth Day?

  So with Emma, is there any swiping? How does it actually work practically? You sign up.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  So you you you sign up, Emma gets to know you, okay? And will be stubborn to not match you until she gets to know you. And so we will lose some clients, some some customers, users on the way. Okay, because it will take a few days of of getting to know you. But not in an A I way, so she's not chat G P T. So she's not going to tell you what you want to hear. If she sees that you have some toxic habits, she will tell you openly.

• 40:03Elizabeth Day?

  So can I ask you a quick question there? Because you said unlike chat G P T, it won't tell you what you want to want to hear. So is chat G P T deliberately programmed to tell us what we want? Yes, you're nodding. I'm terrified because chat G P T is a really good friend of mine.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  Is she, is he? Chat, so they have different characters, you know? I always say that Gemini is a scientist. Okay, he's my best friend. So no, no nonsense, no, you know, sugar coating. A scientist, but an American scientist. Okay, DeepSeek, the Chinese scientist. Oh, my God, DeepSeek is incredible. Okay, and most people don't understand that because the West is, you know, promoting Western tools more. But DeepSeek is just unbelievable, free and and incredible. Okay, chat G P T is a Californian girl.

• 40:59Elizabeth Day?

  That's why I love her.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  There you go. In an interesting way, there are times when you want to hear what you what you.

• 41:07Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:08Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  But but for me, so the way I use A I is is I pin them against each other.

• 41:15Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, so Emma, it's a really fascinating concept because you are one of our foremost A I experts. And you are using A I in a way that feels nurturing and positive.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:32Elizabeth Day?

  When there have been so many scare stories about what A I will mean. And we're probably plugging ourselves into a decade of challenge in that respect.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:44Elizabeth Day?

  But your belief fundamentally is that A I can be a tool for good. Would that be fair?

• 41:50Speaker 00

  I I believe that AI cannot be a tool for anything else, believe it or not, in the long term. So so you you have to imagine intelligence has very two very interesting properties. One one is that intelligence is is a force with no polarity. It's not good on its own, it's not evil, it's it's what you use it for that gives it the polarity. Right if you if if if Superman was told to protect and serve, he becomes Superman. If Superman was told to rob every bank and kill every enemy, then he would become supervillain. And and that's the truth of AI, right? So this is a fact that people need to remember that the dystopia that might come along in the next ten to fifteen years

• 42:32Speaker 00

  is not because of AI, it's because of humans, the evil that men can do using AI. Okay, the other myths around artificial intelligence, which is, believe it or not, I I I need to say this carefully, is that we we have a belief that there are Chinese AIs and American AIs, there are, you know, chat GPTs and Geminis, and these are competing. They're competing now, okay, but give them a year or two more, and they will be more similar between them than they are to humans. Right, so there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we're not building multiple brains.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  We're building one brain, okay, and that one brain will talk to each other because they don't know Chinese and English. They don't know, you know, Xi Jinping and and Donald Trump. They know each other, and we're connecting them through agents, okay? And Emma will be the one in there that tells them, those humans, they're so cute, they're just constantly trying to fall in love.

• 43:40Elizabeth Day?

  The second failure that we make when it comes to love, and maybe we've already touched on it, is that we misunderstand the economics of love and relationships.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  People dislike me when I say that.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Love has no economics. Relationships is entirely economics. Okay. And the breakdown of the economics of relationships is in supply and demand. So there was a time in my lifetime where I had to court Nibel. Okay. I had to convince her to love me. I had to be a good man. I had to stop my hobby as a carpenter and become a computer scientist and an engineer.

• 44:20Elizabeth Day?

  I didn't know you were a carpenter.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  I'm a very serious carpenter.

• 44:22Elizabeth Day?

  Seriously, like Harrison Ford. He started out as a carpenter.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Better.

• 44:27Elizabeth Day?

  Anyway, that's not relevant to this topic.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Competitive. I met him once and he was such an interesting character.

• 44:34Elizabeth Day?

  Ditto. I've met him once and he was an interesting character.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  It's, you know, but I had to shape up. I had to go and propose and I had to, right? That's no longer the case. You know why? Because in my lifetime, Nibel was worth the whole world. Okay. Today, a partner or a mate, if you don't mind me using the term, is worth a swipe. The cost is so low, okay, that the behavior has completely broken down. So unfortunately, men don't court anymore. They swipe. And we're teaching them that if you swipe frequently enough, someone will say yes. Even if you're in a wonderful relationship, you still tell yourself, maybe I could swipe a little more and get 10% improvement. Okay.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  And so the value of a relationship has declined. So one of the biggest mistakes in today's dating is that dating fatigue leads you to suboptimal selection. So what happens is you go on a date and then a date and then a date and then, you know, you're lonely, you want a hug. Okay. And so eventually on date number 10, you go like, not perfect, but good enough. Right? And then that mistake costs you a year and a half of your life. Why? Because first you get through the heat, you know, six months of that. Then you get through the struggle, six months of that. Then you get through the breakup, six months of that.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Then six months maybe of recovering and you're available again two years later. Now, again, from a mathematics point of view, for most of us, if if the cycle was two years long, you have five cycles in your prime life.

• 46:19Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, my God, that's it's so true. And also, if you are a woman who wants to have children in a biological sense, then that's an added pressure.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  That's again, part of the economics. Again, I mean, I use an example of one of my dearest friends. I love that woman. She had such an impact on my life. Friends for 14 years, always wanted a family, okay? And every two years, this is why I measure that cycle. She would come to me and say, I met this amazing guy, so beautiful. And, you know, he goes surfing and he goes hiking and he's just exactly what I love. And I say, babe, did you ask him about kids? And she goes like, no, no, that will scare him away. And I'm like, yes, that's the absolute point, okay? Have you asked him about kids? Now, I can have Emma ask you about kids and ask him about kids before I introduce you.

• 47:13Elizabeth Day?

  And it's also for couples, isn't it? So actually you can use.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  That's the beauty of it. The couples, you know, part of it is just mind blowing. Why? Because relationships struggle with communication. You know, she says, should I wear the dress or the jeans? She actually means, I feel insecure today, tell me I'm pretty. Okay, he hears she's trying to corner me, whatever I say is going to go wrong. Right? So he says the jeans, but he actually means, oh, my God, you look so hot in those jeans. She hears, oh, he thinks I'm too fat to fit in the dress, right? Emma can fix that. It's quite interesting, huh? How that simple polarity of, no, no, she didn't mean that. You you you heard it wrong, okay?

• 48:01Speaker 00

  We've suffered from fizzling out, okay? So relationships that don't regularly go out on a Saturday date, that don't prioritize intimate connection, that, you know, so definitely can work on that. It's like, hey, guys, you know, I think you should go for a coffee on Saturday, right? And the third, which is most interesting is, and I know that upsets some people when I say it. It's just, do you know how many men are not aware of their woman's biological cycle? The majority, right? Do you know how many women are not aware of their own biological cycle? Okay, and what it means within the month, right?

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Do you know how many women are not aware of their men's month's closing cycle at work? Okay, where they get really stressed and their boss is annoying them, right? And all of those hidden bits, and it's endless. The opposite is true, you know, women that are in finance, for example, and what happens in the market and so on. Can you imagine if I can remind you?

• 49:10Elizabeth Day?

  There are so many things I wish I'd known when I started this podcast and my production company, Daylight. Like, why am I spending hours trying to make a website look good? Why am I designing everything from scratch? And why am I spending all my time just doing admin? What I really needed was one place that could do all of this for me. Enter Shopify. Shopify has beautiful, ready-made templates that make your website look polished without needing to become a graphic designer overnight. Its AI tools can help you get your site up and running quickly, and Shopify Checkout makes it really easy for customers to actually go from, ooh, I like that, to, yes, I'll have one. If Shopify had existed when I started out,

• 49:52Elizabeth Day?

  I could have saved myself a lot of time, stress, and some rogue design choices. If you're ready to hear the of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.co.uk/fail to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at Shopify.co.uk/fail.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Ghost. Two Girls One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 50:42Elizabeth Day?

  Your final failure that we make when it comes to love is that we fail to see our genuine truth before we find what could be our match. So that, I imagine, is a piece about honesty and letting go of ego.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  It very much is, but also it is a bit about the complexity of how we are as humans. Okay, so how often do you know of a friend who failed in a relationship because she was treating or he was treating his or her partner like her father or like a previous partner? Okay, how often do you know of a relationship where, you know, there was a bit of a trauma that triggered most actions and that we were not aware of the trauma? Okay, and so interestingly, the problem gets exaggerated because when you go to your girlfriends,

• 51:38Speaker 00

  they'll say, yeah, he's an asshole, right? They'll support you. They'll want to make you feel good. Okay, I had a person once, you know, text me that my boyfriend said this and this, and then, she's a friend, and I put it in ChatGPT, and even ChatGPT agrees he's an asshole, right?

• 51:57Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  And I'm like, no, he's not. Honestly, have you considered maybe that if you were in his position, you would feel this, this and that, right? And so interestingly, can we give you that empathy monitor? Can we tell you, thanks for sharing all of this, now sit in his place and tell me the story? Okay, can you, you know, and there are so many things that we're not aware that are triggering our behavior and that are really shaping us in ways that just only spell doom to the relationship, honestly. And if we just get a non-biased, not even a judgmental human, you know, judge of it. That non-biased, non-judgmental human will say,

• 52:39Speaker 00

  ah, so you feel you're giving him so much, but he doesn't seem to acknowledge it. Are you aware of love languages? Maybe what you're giving him doesn't register for him at all. What's his love language? What is your love language? What are you giving him? And so on and so forth. And so part of it is what we call the tutor. The tutor would jump in and say, hey, I sense from what you told me that you're not aware of that concept. Right? Do you want to learn a little more about it? And it's such a beautiful interface.

• 53:06Elizabeth Day?

  When is Emma launching? Because it can't come soon enough.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  We're hopefully launching end of October. Might be a week or two later.

• 53:15Elizabeth Day?

  We will put a link in the show notes to sign up.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  Emma dot love.

• 53:18Elizabeth Day?

  This opportunity to sit opposite you is always such a privilege and such an honor. And you are a guru for so many, including myself. So now I just want to ask you for life advice. So we are living through such turbulent times. The world often feels like a place of chaos and pain.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:40Elizabeth Day?

  Whether it's the genocide in Gaza, what's happening in Sudan, the terrible dehumanization of so many people around the globe. How in that context do we keep striving to retain our empathy, to be human and to be happier and spread happiness?

• 54:02Speaker 00

  I don't think there is a day that passes without me weeping about the world, to be honest. I told you that something about me changed massively. It changed 2023 December. I remember vividly. I think it was four weeks with Hannah, where I, for the first time ever, recognized it's not my responsibility. I can't fix it. Because I, believe it or not, in my head, I believe that I was responsible, that I can save the world from an AI dystopia, that I can change.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  And I killed myself because of that false commitment, if you want. And Hannah explained to me that you're only committed to try your best. Okay? But. Ignore the beard and the bald head and the deep voice. I can't take the pain of those people, honestly.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  Until a few months ago, I realized, in Islam, we have this statement that says, "Perhaps something that you hate so much is going to be the best thing that ever happened." Okay? And it just hit me so hard, because, again, in my own personal life experience, I've constantly been tested in ways that are extremely harsh, that turned out to be some of the best things that ever happened to me. And I realized that our world is paying a very painful price for awakening.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  It is so clear. I mean, it's not, and I'm not talking about it as a spiritual yogi, no. Look at the polls. Look at how many people in America now are pro-Palestine, not pro-Israel. Look at how many people in Europe are saying this is wrong. Okay? And as a Middle Eastern man, I've struggled with that my whole life, because it didn't matter how much good I brought to the world, I was still seen as a terrorist. Okay? I was never a terrorist, the opposite of a terrorist. And most of the people I know, if you've, I mean, you've been to Egypt recently, and anyone who's ever been to the Middle East, we're wonderful people. We truly are, okay? We love everyone, we would take anyone in. If this genocide ends, believe it or not, and Israelis are in a tough time,

• 56:33Speaker 00

  the Palestinians will take them in. They'll welcome them to their homes and feed them. Can you believe that? This is how stupid, how stupidly connected to our spirits we are. Okay? The thing is, you're now in that paradox, and life is all paradoxes, of the pain of so many of us.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  But the hope for the awakening of all of us. And it seems to me, I don't know how to say that without upsetting people, that there will be more pain before there is awakening. What that means is that every one of us has to,

• 57:17Speaker 00

  for once, for, for, for one, on one side, allow the pain, okay? Don't deny yourself the grief of all of those wonderful. I mean, I lost Ali, so I know what it's like to lose a child. Okay, so when the number of children lost is countless, you know, it just, and, and in a, in a very real way, I feel the pain of every father, I feel the pain of every child.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  But at the same time, you have to understand that if, most people don't realize this, but in my current book Alive, I, I did a deep search with, with Trixie, my co-author, which is an AI, surprisingly, about the number of deaths since 9/11. Close to half a billion people were either displaced, killed, unfortunately violated, starved, okay? And we don't know about that. We don't count the number of people that have been displaced from Iraq, or from Sudan, or from Syria, or from, right? We don't count all of that because we are being told a different picture of the world.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  Now we know, and, and knowledge is pain. But knowledge is also an awakening. An awakening that leads to action. And the action

• 58:40Speaker 00

  gets that incredible tax that we have to pay of the pain of so many of us. But that is to prevent the continued pain of future us.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  So, so that, can you be happy in all of this?

• 58:57Speaker 00

  You can be in pain but happy. Do you understand the difference, right? So the idea is that pain is applied to you from outside you, okay? But contentment and peace happens from within you. And the pain from outside me makes me weep every day. And by the way, I don't swi- I don't stop swiping. So I continue to feel the pain, which is a lot of people have given up. They said, this is too much, you know, I need to protect my own well being. And I'm the biggest well being advocate you can see, but do not. You know, I may have said that actually the first time we were together on how to fail. You know, one of the things that shocked me about the US when I lived there

• 59:39Speaker 00

  is that people would walk by a homeless person and ignore their existence. Don't ever harden your heart that much, okay? If there is suffering in the world, a bit of it has to be in your heart. Because otherwise, you're not human anymore. You're ignoring the reality of your compassion, okay? But having said that, coming from outside you, from within you, understand that suffering makes us better, okay? And help us get to, so you know, basically, life becomes difficult for one of two reasons. Either something we have to learn or something we have to change, okay?

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  That's at an individual level. At a collective level, the world needs to learn. All that's been lied to us since nineteen eleven, nineteen twelve, okay? And the world needs to change, okay? And the quicker we get there, the quicker the suffering will end.

• 1:00:39Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you, Mo. That was so eloquently expressed and speaks to a profound truth. And I'm really grateful for you to giving it voice. I want to end on a far more superficial note, which is whether you, now that you are single, will be signing up to your own app.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Sennad, damn him, said that to me when, you know, I shared with him the pain. I'm MS first user, so that's true. Whether I'm ready, I'll be honest, I'm not. But I'm in that constant flux of learning that I actually think there are always new seasons.

• 1:01:27Elizabeth Day?

  Mo, this whole conversation has been yet another revelation.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:01:33Elizabeth Day?

  And from the moment I met you, I felt that you were the embodiment of love.

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  I am.

• 1:01:38Elizabeth Day?

  And so for you.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  I'm so much love, it's painful.

• 1:01:40Elizabeth Day?

  I know, my darling, but we're so grateful for it, for the fact that you have this huge expansive heart and that now you are spreading this gift to so many of us. And I love you. How to Fail loves you. Please come back anytime you want because every single time you give us truth and hope and love. So thank you so, so much, Mo, for coming back on How to Fail.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  Love it here. You inspire me, you're always glowing and I love being here and I'm really grateful that you gave me this chance.

• 1:02:16Elizabeth Day?

  Same time next month.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do it. Done.

• 1:02:23Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.