The Happiness Expert That Made 51 Million People Happier: Mo Gawdat

It’s hard to know where to begin describing such an incredible person as Mo Gawdat. He’s co-founded over 20 businesses, he’s the author of the ground-breaking ‘Solve for Happy’ and he was chief business officer of the pioneering wing of google, Google X, the ‘moonshot factory’ where they work on all the latest technologies like self-driving cars and robots. But most importantly, Mo has learnt perspective about life. When his son died, this sent him on an incredible journey to look within himself and find the ‘happiness equation’, a simple technique that can help us all reduce our unhappiness and appreciate life, and ourselves, more. Mo’s new book is all about Artificial Intelligence. Mo has always been focused on the future and what’s coming next. And for the first time, working on A. I., he was scared. But what Mo found, and what he shares with us, is that the next technological age that’s coming can be a Utopia, if we choose to make it. Follow Mo: Twitter - https://twitter.com/MGawdat Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mo_gawdat Mo’s new book - https://amzn.eu/d/cvGj7ar Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mo Gawdat?

  Learn from your swipes on Instagram. Your brain does what you tell it to do. You're the boss, tell it. AI is going to be a billion times smarter than humans. I would take data points and measurements and topics like happiness. Gratitude is the ultimate solution to the happiness equation.

• 0:16Steven Bartlett?

  Mo Gawdat, he is an expert on the topic of happiness. If everyone in the world listened to this podcast episode, the world would be a drastically better place.

• 0:25Mo Gawdat?

  I was chief business officer of Google X. Through that network, I've connected with the wisest people on the planet. We have an app coming out in Christmas that is aiming to get to the point where we know exactly why you're unhappy. Literally the simplest surgical operation not known to humankind. But five mistakes happened and four hours later, Ali was gone. There's nothing I can do to bring him back, but I can make his essence alive. My intention shifted from spending the rest of my life in grief to actually writing what he taught me so that I can share it with the world.

• 1:10Steven Bartlett?

  Mo Gawdat. You know, I've done this podcast for the last 12 months every week. And there's one name which my guests, the people that sit in front of me, the successful athletes, entrepreneurs, business people from all walks of life and just generally ambitious, successful people kept saying, and it was Mo's name. You know, I hype up these episodes a lot, but I've never said this. This was my favorite podcast of all time because of the lasting value that I know it will have on my life. I think I cried twice in this podcast episode. Who is Mo? He's a genius business person, so smart in facts that Google made him the head of Google X,

• 1:55Steven Bartlett?

  which was their special projects division where they do the most crazy, insane things from flying cars to machine learning, anything a genius would be capable of doing. He's also a remarkable entrepreneur. But the thing that will bring the most value to you in this episode, if you listen to it, will be what he says about happiness. And some of the things he says today have just created these like personal revelations in my head where I genuinely feel that I have to go, go and sit down in a room alone and think about them for the next couple of weeks, genuinely life changing. And you've never heard me this enthusiastic on the podcast. So if you're ever going to trust me with an episode, trust me on this one. Are you ready? I hope you are. Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO.

• 2:39Steven Bartlett?

  I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 2:51Steven Bartlett?

  No, I guess my first question for you is, because you know, when I look at the, the things that you write about, the topics you speak about so often, the businesses you've built, the areas of interests you have, and I see that they're so diverse, and also they're very smart, shall I say.

• 3:07Mo Gawdat?

  Thank you.

• 3:07Steven Bartlett?

  My, my question is, what, what were those early personal, but also early professional experiences that have shaped the way you see and analyze the world? What is that context that we need to know about you?

• 3:24Mo Gawdat?

  I, I, I think the thing that maybe shapes me most is that I was born in the east, raised in the east with the culture of the east and educated in the west and worked in the west with the culture of the west. And in a very unusual way, I didn't judge either. I think there is so much value to learn in each of them, but they're almost exact opposites. And, and to be able to embrace both of them maybe has allowed me to translate concepts that are normally spoken about on one more than the other to the other. So, so most of my work really is highly dependent on my early math, you know, love of mathematics,

• 4:08Mo Gawdat?

  love of physics. I'm, I'm a very serious geek. I don't say that in public because it affects my, I just said it, it affects my CEO job. But I'm really geeky, like to the point that I was writing codes until a few years ago. But I take all of that language of very, being very organized, very systemic, almost, you know, engineered in everything. And I try to explain concepts like spirituality, like love, like humanity, humanities position in the modern age and so on and so forth. And I, and I explain them in slightly unusual ways, you know, I use, for example, quantum physics and theory of relativity to try and explain death. And I use mathematics and theory of probability to discuss the question of the presence of

• 4:51Mo Gawdat?

  a divine being and so on and so forth. And I think the thing is, I have a brain defect somewhere that basically does not stop me from addressing crazy ideas. So I, I normally I'm writing six books at the same time. And, and, and I love it. I love it. I don't write for, for you sadly, I, I hate to say this. I write for me, so I get inspired by a topic and then I build a structure, literally like we write subroutines in software. I write the entire, you know, flow chart, if you want of the book. And then leave it on my desktop and then start to work on it sometimes for a year, sometimes for two years. And, and eventually something comes out that informs me and enriches me. And at the same time, you know, interests people.

• 5:37Steven Bartlett?

  You write for you?

• 5:39Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 5:40Steven Bartlett?

  So why did you write a book about happiness?

• 5:42Mo Gawdat?

  That's the most selfish thing I've ever done in my life. I mean, if you, if you know, uh, my story was, um, so I, I was very successful at a very young age, so unusual. I mean, I'm born and raised in Egypt, educated in public school, public university in Egypt. So my biggest dream was I was going to become sales manager in IBM Egypt. That was my biggest dream. And look at what happened. I mean, I, I went through. Beyond my wildest expectations. Chief Business Officer of Google X is literally the second best job on the planet. Okay. And, and, and, you know, I, I, I had all of this, you know, that people dream of at a very young age.

• 6:24Mo Gawdat?

  At twenty nine, I had, you know, the big villa with the swimming pool. Uh, with, you know, all of the money, all of the suits, all of the luxury cars. Uh, from twenty five, when I had nothing, to twenty nine, when I had everything. Had the most wonderful woman in my life. Beautiful, wise, sensitive, loving, who gave me two wonderful kids. And I was clinically depressed. And, and, and it's not an unusual story, where, where we keep chasing all of those things. I mean, my, my luck was that I hit my middle age crisis at twenty nine. When I achieved everything they told me I was supposed to achieve and couldn't find happiness. And so I ended up in a place where I started to research the topic.

• 7:09Mo Gawdat?

  Uh, just like I would anything else. And I couldn't get a word. I, I just couldn't get it. Uh, you know, they told me to meditate. My engineering mind was like, tell me why? Explain something to me. Tell me why it works, right? Uh, you know, if, if they told me to say om, I would get really angry. I still don't say om, right? But, but the idea is, uh, is my brain wouldn't get it. And instead of me rejecting that, I started to look at those topics as an engineer. So I would start to do literally, you know, like the scientific method. I would, I would take data points and, and measurements and try to do fitting lines and curves and charts on topics like happiness. And, uh, you know, it started to work for me.

• 7:54Mo Gawdat?

  So four years in, I started to really become a little better. And I would go back to my wonderful son, Ali, uh, who was born a tiny little Zen monk. He, he knew those things instinctively. And even as a young child, you know, age eight, I think, was when I started to discuss those things with him. He would listen there and ask me a couple of questions, clearly to entertain me. And then basically say, well done, Papa. This is amazing. You could have just asked me. Okay? And then he would literally explain it to me from the heart. So how the heart feels it. I, I would get how the left brain sees it and he would get how the heart feels it.

• 8:29Steven Bartlett?

  Your son at eight?

• 8:30Mo Gawdat?

  He was so wise. He was so wise. Ali, when he was sixteen. I promise you, my friends will tell you, I would actually, I publicly announced when I grow older, I wanna be like Ali. He was a very unusual being and he, he spoke very little, very, very, very little. He was either laughing all the time and being silly and goofy. Or when you asked him a serious question, he would stay silent and then speak eight words. Okay, and those eight words would literally reshape your world, okay? And I noticed that at a very young age for him. And so I started to consult with him on a lot of topics, on a lot of topics. And on happiness specifically, together we ended up with a model that worked.

• 9:14Mo Gawdat?

  You know, we had the happiness equation, we had the happiness model. And it worked and it worked so well that when we lost him sadly, when he was twenty one. My intention shifted from spending the rest of my life in grief to actually writing what he taught me so that I can share it with the world. And that basically determined the next life for me after the life of the executive and the chief business officer and the, you know, stock options and the luxury and the cars. That second life really was the result of his departure.

• 9:48Steven Bartlett?

  And during, during that period, the inspiration that inspired you to write the book at the very beginning and go on that journey to really find the answer to happiness. You said you were clinically depressed.

• 9:56Mo Gawdat?

  Yes.

• 9:57Steven Bartlett?

  Now, for people that don't know what that means practically, can you give a description?

• 10:02Mo Gawdat?

  Nothing would make me happy and you can, you can literally, you know, as, as I, I interviewed Ruby Wax on my, on my podcast on Slomo and Ruby was known for her sometimes, you know, depression and sometimes teaching. And she would describe it as they cut your head off and fill you with concrete when you're depressed. You're unable to do anything, you're unable to enjoy anything, you're unable to engage, right? And it comes in, in different layers. But, but for me, the, the challenge was I was so successful. I was so successful, I literally could print money on demand. I mean, there were times when my, my, my wife would say, can we change the car? And I would.

• 10:45Mo Gawdat?

  So what would you like? And she would say this, and I would say, okay, wait until Wednesday. And I would be on the stock market, you know, trading for a few days and making money. Right? It was it was so crazy because of my math skills before the age of machine trading was really as as entrenched as it is today, I could make money on demand. And yet I poured that money on my life and I couldn't find happiness. Okay, I, you know, and and that really shakes you because now you can get the vacations there. Talking about you can wear what they're, they told you is gonna make you happy. You can buy the things that they told you are gonna is gonna make you happy, but nothing's making you happy. And then it started to reflect on my family.

• 11:28Mo Gawdat?

  And I remember vividly the turning point was a Saturday morning when, you know, my my daughter, Ali, my son, was that little then monk. My daughter is life, life itself. She's truly is pure joy. Okay? And she was, you know, it was a Saturday morning. She's jumping up and down in joy. Saying, ah, mommy said we're gonna go there. Can we stop and get, you know, ice cream on the way? Can we do that? And she's so happy. And I was doing whatever busy people do, reading an email or whatever crap. And and basically, I looked at her slowly raising my head in grumpiness and said, can we please be serious for a minute? Okay, what's serious? She was five. And I could see with my own eyes as my daughter's beautiful daughter's heart broke.

• 12:13Mo Gawdat?

  Okay, and I think to me that was basically the moment where I say, I can't live with this person anymore. I can't live with me. And when when you see that, you make that choice. And sadly, most people who are successful, like your audiences, actually wait until that moment happens. When when they're old, when they've gone to the point where the good days have passed, the days where you could have actually built that connection with your family or or with, you know, enjoyed your life a little more are behind you and then they wake up. I was so lucky that I woke up when I was twenty nine.

• 12:48Steven Bartlett?

  And so you have this idea, as you say there, to write this book and to answer this question that has become so relevant and important to answer in your life. And as you're on that journey and consulting with Ali, Ali passes.

• 13:02Mo Gawdat?

  Yes. No, so Ali left after he trained me well enough. So it's really interesting. I mean, he, so I started my research maybe when he was six or, yeah, he was six, seven, and finished when he was eighteen, nineteen. And you couldn't dent my happiness then. I was, I was the example of happiness. I mean, I'm a Middle Eastern, and at the time, I used to work at Microsoft. At least through that journey, I used to work at Microsoft. And Microsoft's office was in Seattle. So I would fly every month for a week to Seattle

• 13:40Mo Gawdat?

  from Dubai to JFK, and then from JFK to Washington. And every time I landed in JFK, I got that random security check where they give me a red envelope and take me to Homeland Security. It was really not the kindest of treatment, if you want, with a stupid smile on my face. Like, I flew 12 hours, then I stood in line for an hour and a bit. And then they gave me that envelope, and there is a guard walking next to me now, assuming I'm a criminal until proven otherwise. And they sit me in that room, and I have that stupid smile on my face. Nothing could dent my happiness. Okay? I have beautiful thoughts inside me. I have compassion for every one of those officers, you know, that they're just doing their job,

• 14:23Mo Gawdat?

  and of course, they're worried about their country. And it's really weird. And to the point that I did this 37 times in a row. Okay? And to the point that I would walk into the Homeland Security office, and the officers behind the counter would go like, "Mr. Gates is back." Okay? They know I'm the guy from Microsoft. I've been there last month. I would walk to the counter, and they say, "Answer the same 10 questions we asked you last time." So I would say, "This is my name. This is my mother's name." Right? And go through them one by one without a dent in my happiness. But then life tests you. So, so, and, and by the way, I mean, we can talk about this, but of course I, you can feel unhappy, but I found a way to always come back to happiness if you want.

• 15:07Mo Gawdat?

  And then life tests you, and I think life nudges you. It, it, it seems that soul for happy needed to be written, okay? And I had the notes for it in two thousand eleven, but hey, chief business officer of Google X, busy, busy, busy, busy. And I kept delaying it and delaying it and delaying it until Ali basically came to visit us in, in Dubai two thousand fourteen, and he was diagnosed with a very simple appendix inflammation.

• 15:36Mo Gawdat?

  And yeah, you know, it's literally the simplest surgical operation not known to humankind. It's literally a four, five minute thing. But five mistakes happened, five in a row. Everyone is, every one of them was preventable, every one of them was fixable. But five in a row fixed wrong, and four hours later, Ali was gone. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to understand how it feels, even today, seven years later. Losing a child is, is just the hardest thing ever. At least for me, it's the hardest thing ever. If life had taken all my money and all what I've achieved and, you know, made me homeless, it would have probably felt less painful than losing him.

• 16:18Mo Gawdat?

  But, but, but our reaction was very, very unusual. Instead of trying to, you know, fight with life, I simply said, okay, you know, he's gone. There's nothing I can do to bring him back, but I can make his essence alive. I can keep his essence in this world. And his essence to me was what he taught me. He saved my life with what he taught me about happiness. And so I sat down to write first time that I really write in English as English is not my first language. I wrote for four and a half months straight. And you know, if you've read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. You know, when you, when you know your life's purpose, the universe conspires to make it happen. I just can't tell you what happened since then.

• 17:03Mo Gawdat?

  I mean, every part of the universe is just pushing for this mission to work. You know, from finding my agent at a time where he was actually not feeling great about his life. So he kept saying, can you send me another chapter? Can you send me another chapter? Until I sent the whole book saying, what's he going to do with this? And then literally we meet and he basically says, can I please represent you? We go out, meet seventeen publishers within a week in the, in, in New York, in the, in the capital of publishing. And then things roll and roll and roll to the point that I came here in the UK. Uh, after, literally a week after the, the publication of Soul for Happy. And I had that interview very famous with Channel Four News.

• 17:45Mo Gawdat?

  Which within three days was the highest watched news clip on the history of Channel, uh, Channel Four. To the point that the CEO was starting to wonder like, I've been broadcasting violence and war for the, you know, last, I don't know how many years. And my highest watched clip, at the time it was thirty seven million views, is about happiness. Okay, which obviously is understandable, it is the pandemic of our time. Within three days after that, we were watched eighty seven million times. Okay, more than double the highest, uh, and, and the more, the movement was starting. The one billion happy movement was starting. Basically, I think it was a very strong, uh, uh, confirmation to the world that this is something the world needs.

• 18:30Mo Gawdat?

  And you can actually feel today that there is a shift, not because of me only, but because there are so many people coming into this. Uh, there is a big shift now between employee satisfaction and employee happiness between. You know, let's just work on mental health and actually let's work on happiness and so on and so forth. There's seen, it seems that the world is getting it, that, that, you know, we're not supposed to be grinding ourself. Uh, and giving away our lives, uh, for things that we think are gonna make us happy. We might as well be happy and get everything as a result, because we can then be successful. We can be engaged, we can be lovable, we can be, you know, supported and so on and so forth.

• 19:10Steven Bartlett?

  It's just remarkable in my mind that you can lose the most important thing to you, as you've described it in your life, your son, to human error and still not fall into resentment or bitterness or...

• 19:25Mo Gawdat?

  What would it do?

• 19:26Steven Bartlett?

  Regret.

• 19:27Mo Gawdat?

  What would it do? I mean, of course, I mean, I took steps to make sure that things are corrected so that no one else gets hurt, right? But what would it do? I mean, I was very prominent at the time. When Ali died, I was chief business officer of Google X, but I was still between Dubai and California, so I spent half of my time in Dubai. And it was after seven years of being vice president of emerging markets for Google, so I had opened half of Google's offices globally. I was very, you know, well-connected to the business leaders and government leaders in Dubai. And so when Ali died, we got a call from the top of the Ministry of Health saying, "We heard what happened. I'm so sorry, Mo.

• 20:08Mo Gawdat?

  Would you mind if we perform an autopsy on Ali's body to get to the bottom of this?" So I looked at his mother sitting next to me, most wonderful woman on the planet, with her eyes teary, and I said, "Nibel, would you mind if they do that?" And she raised his head and said, "Would it bring Ali back?" And that one sentence anchored us in the truth, okay? You see, the problem with grief is that the cycle of grief takes you five steps. The very last step is acceptance, okay? And that step of acceptance could take you 70 years sometimes. For us, the truth was glaringly obvious four hours later. There's nothing you can do to bring him back. This is it.

• 20:53Mo Gawdat?

  And the finality of death is so corrective of all of our human illusions. This is it. He's not coming back. So what can you do now? And my brain started to attack me. My brain started to say, you should have, you know, the one thought for the first few days was, "You should have driven him to another hospital. You should have driven him..." Until I said to my, to my, to my brain, like, "Okay, I wish I could go back and drive him to another hospital. I can't. So can you please bring me a thought I can act upon?" Okay? And so I had a couple of days of silence and then...

• 21:27Mo Gawdat?

  Then my wonderful daughter comes to me, they were very, very close. And she said, Papa Ali had a dream a couple of weeks ago and he called and told me about it. And I think it's very relevant, you need to know, okay? And I said, what baby? And he said, and she said, he dreamt he was everywhere and part of everyone. And that it felt so amazing that he didn't want to be back in his body. And when she told me, I still tear up thinking about it today. When she told me this, my blurry brain could only listen to, this is my master giving me my target. That's the only thing I heard. It's like, make me everywhere and part of everyone. That's what I heard.

• 22:12Mo Gawdat?

  And at the time, I was head of Google. I understood billions. I knew how to get the message to billions of people. So what did I do? I literally said out loud, consider it done. It's done, okay? And I told you, when I wrote Soul for Happy, it was the most selfish thing you can ever do. I wanted the essence of my son to live on. And so I basically wrote it with the intention of, okay, I'm gonna make him everywhere and part of everyone. I'm just gonna spread this beautiful essence to 10 million people. And then, I don't know, 70 years later, through six degrees of separation, a tiny bit of him will be everywhere and part of everyone. That was my blurry brain. But maybe it was also life's way of saying, share something, do something useful enough.

• 22:58Mo Gawdat?

  Enough building phones and building, you know, faster engines and, you know, maybe the world needs something different. Maybe, maybe share something that actually is needed by humanity.

• 23:11Steven Bartlett?

  Is that where that 10 billion, million number came from?

• 23:13Mo Gawdat?

  10 million was the original target, yeah. 10 million happy was, and at the time, it felt crazy that we were shooting for 10 million. But again, with things like Channel 4 alone, I think by week eight, we had reached 137 million.

• 23:27Steven Bartlett?

  Crazy.

• 23:27Mo Gawdat?

  Okay? But we don't measure those, by the way. We don't measure just the views. We, we measure... How many people took action in terms of of receiving the message? So it's it's basically one billion happy today is three steps. Step one is we're gonna give you, send you a message that wakes you up, that tells you happiness is your birthright. And it's highly attainable, it follows an equation, okay? So you can actually do certain things and you will be happier, right? The second, once you you get that message, that's not enough. We we count you as one of billion happy if you take one of two actions afterwards. Either you invest in your own happy, happiness, right?

• 24:07Mo Gawdat?

  So you invest in your own happiness by going to another piece of content, shifting to, you know, read a book or watch another video, we can see that you're investing in your happiness, asking me a question, getting in touch, whatever that is. Or you share happiness forward, okay? And the entire Ponzi scheme, if you want, of one billion happy is built on the idea of, we hope that as a small team, within, hopefully, the next ten, twelve years, we will have, you know, cultivated a million champions that will make a billion people happy as their own mission. And then we will get completely forgotten, okay? Because it's the only way for it to succeed is that it's not counting on, you know, one person or one face or one team.

• 24:52Mo Gawdat?

  Because the team will get dismantled and I'm, you know, going to disappear and it has to be a movement, right? And so the whole movement is on that pillar number three. Pillar number three is, you got a message of happiness, you, you know, it might have touched you, can you share it to two people? And ask them to share it to two people and ask them to share it to two people. Simple exponential curve, simple Ponzi scheme, really a positive Ponzi scheme, okay? And it's been working. We we think we're at fifty one million, which is not the biggest number, but you know, you understand the the law of accelerating returns, right? So if it's now, you know, if we can do this again in four years and then that becomes a hundred million and then the hundred becomes two hundred and so on, you know, who knows? Who knows, we may get there.

• 25:38Steven Bartlett?

  And the and the mission is, I guess, the banner of the mission is self-happy, right?

• 25:42Mo Gawdat?

  No, no, no, no, no. So, no, actually, not at all. So, bu- books don't go to millions. That's the truth of books, okay? The books allow me the opportunity to sit with you and and spread this to your audience, okay? But but the mission is much bigger now. So, the pillars of the mission are, there is a tremendous amount of content that I put out there. I mean, if you search for my name on Google, you'll have hundreds of hours of videos. I'm tireless.

• 26:10Steven Bartlett?

  I did, yeah. I watched several hours.

• 26:12Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah, and and some of them are, you know, Stanford University classrooms, and some some of them are short conversations with, you know, insightful people like yourself, and it's it's, you know, it's there is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of content, of hours of content, but that's one side. The other side, of course, is, uh, through that network, I've, of course, connected with the more with the wisest people on the planet.

• 26:37Mo Gawdat?

  So, you know, when I was Chief Business Officer of Google, I would be connected to prime ministers and business owner, or owners. Now, I'm connected to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the top monks in the world, the top teachers in the world. And so I brought all of them together on my on my podcast on slow-mo. And slow-mo is a very unusual, because it comes from a chief business officer, right? Basically, a simple message to say, take a little bit of time to slow down and reflect, okay? And it's not me talking, it's the wisest people on the planet. Like, I get blown away every time, okay? And and and so that's that's another element. The other element, of course, is training materials. So, we're working on that. We have an app coming out in Christmas that is actually

• 27:18Mo Gawdat?

  really promising. So, we're building an artificial intelligence-based happiness assistant, which covers a very interesting gap, that we're all unhappy, but we're not all unhappy for the same reasons. And so if I dispatch content at you that is irrelevant, okay? I'm probably gonna piss you off rather than make you happy. So, the app, in version one, it's not perfect yet, but in version two, we're aiming to to get to the point where we know exactly why you're unhappy. And so we're able to actually show you the enough learning and enough practice that can allow you to find the path back to happiness. So it's more intelligent, if you want, not in in understanding happiness, but in understanding unhappiness, if you want.

• 28:03Steven Bartlett?

  So to understand what happiness is, you have to understand the cause of it.

• 28:05Mo Gawdat?

  Yes.

• 28:06Steven Bartlett?

  And you write about that extensively in Solve for Happy. So what is the cause of unhappiness as you see it? Especially if you're building sort of machine learning applications that are gonna, you know, solve, you know, make people arrive at contentment or happiness in a personalized way. We must be able to know what's causing this lack of happiness.

• 28:23Mo Gawdat?

  Allow me a bit of time to explain it because it it's simple when we get it, but it's not simple to get to it. So so happiness is very predictable. Okay, if you look back at any point in your life where you ever felt happy, there is one commonality across all of those moments that can actually be documented in a mathematical equation. Okay, you've never felt happy because of a specific event in your life. Okay, take for example rain. Rain doesn't make you happy or unhappy. There is no inherent value of happiness in rain. Okay, rain makes you happy when you want to water your plants and it makes you unhappy when you want a sunbath, right? And so it's not just the event rain. It's the comparison between the event

• 29:08Mo Gawdat?

  and an expectation in your mind of how life should be. Okay, if you're worried about your plants, then life should be generous to me and get me rain so I can water the plants. And if life does that, then life meets your expectations and you're happy. Okay, and so happiness in that sense becomes equal to or greater than, so it's really mathematics, that your perception of the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should be. Okay, and apply that to anything. Apply that to anything. So, you know, my favorite example is nature. We're all happy in nature. Why are we all happy in nature? I mean, you go out there and there are ants and there are flies and, you know, trees are crooked and there are, you know, shrubs everywhere and bushes

• 29:52Mo Gawdat?

  and it's just really not that hedged and organized. But that's what we expect. So you know, nature's chaos is what we expect nature to be. And so we feel happy. You know, nobody ever sits in front of the ocean and says, I like the view, but please mute the sound. Okay, you just take it. You know, it's, it's the monotonous sound and the view and the wind and, and the sun and the whole experience. Right? And because of that, happiness becomes very different than what was defined to us. Okay? What was defined to us is that happiness is found in a gathering at the pub or a party or a,

• 30:35Mo Gawdat?

  you know, an activity or some kind of pleasure or fun or elation or whatever that is. That's not at all true. These, I, I call these the state of escape. Okay? Happiness, as per the definition of the happiness equation is events equal to or beating expectations. Life going my way. Okay? And so basically happiness is that calm and peacefulness you feel when you're okay with life as it is. It doesn't really matter what life is. Okay? What matters is that you can be okay with it. Right? So, so you take, you know, the, any example, huh? If your boss is annoying and your expectation is, yeah, bosses are annoying. This is what life is about. They become bosses because they're annoying. Right?

• 31:18Mo Gawdat?

  And, and so if, if that's your expectation, you're gonna look at it and go like, yeah, I need to learn the skill of managing annoying bosses. Okay? And if that's the case, then you're not gonna be upset about it.

• 31:31Mo Gawdat?

  Similarly, anything else, huh? If you look at it, then it's not just the event. It's your perception of the event. So you have a, a, something to influence. It's not just the event, huh? Your partner might say something hurtful on Friday at 4:00 P. M. That's the event. My partner said something hurtful. At Sunday morning, you tell yourself, he or she doesn't love me anymore. Okay? That's your perception of the event. That's not actually the event. The event is something hurtful was said. But your perception of the event is your work, is your, is your brain adding color to it. And then you compare that to your expectations. Right? You compared my boss is annoying to my boss shouldn't be annoying. Where did you get that from? Right? So we blur the happiness equation.

• 32:16Mo Gawdat?

  We break the happiness equation because of what I call the six and seven. Okay, six grand illusions and seven blind spots. Which are, the six grand illusions are basically, uh, call them pathways that the modern world teaches us to navigate the modern world, that are illusions, are not true. Okay, uh, take for example, control. Everyone knows that to succeed in the modern world, you have to learn to control certain events. Right? So you start to believe that the way to succeed in life is to control everything. But the truth is, even if you go down to the basics of physics, that we never are in control.

• 32:56Mo Gawdat?

  That the absolute design of nature itself, of the universe itself, is entropy and chaos. Right? That's the actual design. And so if you try to control it, you're bound to be disappointed. A lot of events are gonna miss your expectations. Okay? And yes, I'm not saying don't control anything at all, but start to understand that you're, you're gonna be selective because you have a finite amount of effort. And by the way, even if you're selective and you, you try to control everything, sometimes things will fall out of control. Okay? And that should be your expectation. Once you get that right, that was one, that was my biggest illusion. Okay? I'm a mathematician, I'm a software developer, I am a physicist, I am an engineer,

• 33:41Mo Gawdat?

  and I'm a senior executive. It doesn't get worse than that. Okay? I'm like the worst, absolute the worst. I used to give my wonderful wife, I swear to you, Stephen, don't judge me. I used to give her a spreadsheet that would tell her when to wash the colors and when to wash the whites based on our average consumption as a family to save the environment. And poor Nibel would, would actually smile at me and say, sure, baby, I will use this.

• 34:08Mo Gawdat?

  Of course, and ignores the hell out of me because that's how crazy you can be when it comes to control. Now, these are the illusions. If you live your life through the illusion of control, good luck finding happiness. So six grand illusions, the illusion of, of thought, the illusion, the illusion of self, the illusion of knowledge, the illusion of time, control and fear. Okay? Now... That's one side, and that disrupts your your entire view of what to expect from life, because you're expecting life to behave through a lens of a lens of an illusion. The other side of it is what I call seven blind spots. Okay, and the seven blind spots are not really defects in your brain. As a matter of fact, they are the very design of your brain.

• 34:53Mo Gawdat?

  Okay, your brain is designed to tell you what's wrong. Okay, it's not designed to, you know, if a tiger shows up right here now, my brain has no use whatsoever in telling me, oh, my God, look how majestic that animal is, right? Yeah, it's a beautiful animal, but my brain will say we're gonna die. Okay, and we're gonna die is the idea that basically makes our uh uh our brain constantly look for what's wrong, blur the events of life. You ask a mother, hmm, and and she will say, oh, my daughter's been sick all winter. Now, she just had two episodes of flu, three days each. But to the to the caring heart of a mother, that needs to be exaggerated to

• 35:36Mo Gawdat?

  the exaggeration is one of the blind spots. Your your brain is trying to get you to take action, so it pushes you. Hmm, it pushes you by exaggerating the event a little bit, so that you jump in and take action. And accordingly, the event you're comparing to, you're comparing the wrong event to the wrong expectation, and the happiness equation falls apart.

• 35:55Steven Bartlett?

  Under all of this, you're inferring something which I think will annoy a lot of people. And that is that happiness is a choice.

• 36:02Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, totally.

• 36:03Steven Bartlett?

  And that you you you can choose to be happy.

• 36:06Mo Gawdat?

  Totally.

• 36:06Steven Bartlett?

  And that if you're unhappy, and really, for many circumstances in our life, day to day, in work and love and relationships, personal responsibility is the is the answer.

• 36:16Mo Gawdat?

  And entirely on you.

• 36:18Steven Bartlett?

  And a lack thereof is the cause.

• 36:19Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely. You know what you just did? You've just lost us eighty eight percent of the audience.

• 36:24Steven Bartlett?

  I know. Do you know why I know? Because I did a tweet one day about this, and what my tweet was, um. There's like, I guess, a mental model, but there's a reframing that can, I think, has brought me happiness, which is when something happens to me, I used to, like many people say, X thing that happened has pissed me off.

• 36:42Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Steven Bartlett?

  And just by changing that sentence to, I've pissed myself off because of X thing.

• 36:47Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely.

• 36:48Steven Bartlett?

  And I tweeted that, and I was like, try it, just like, reframe it and take personal responsibility for how you're feeling. And in the comment section, everyone was like, nope.

• 36:58Mo Gawdat?

  Yep.

• 36:59Steven Bartlett?

  People don't like the idea that they have control over their emotional responses.

• 37:03Mo Gawdat?

  So when I wrote, so when I wrote, when I write books in general, I write them, I write them like software. So I issue a beta version, okay, and I get 270 people. I don't know why 270.

• 37:12Steven Bartlett?

  Fascinating.

• 37:13Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah, I get 270 people to read it on Google Docs. So I give them editor privileges so they can actually edit the text, right? And then something fascinating happens. They, they edit the text and then others edit what they edited, okay? And there is a conversation happening and basically it takes the book to its best possible version, if you want. In Soul for Happy, I had a sentence on page 11 that basically said exactly what you said. Happiness is a choice. Okay? And at that page, I lost 8% of the readers. Okay? And, you know, I looked into the information that they gave me about themselves, the early readers, and the eight, most of the 8% that left were already in depression. Okay?

• 37:58Mo Gawdat?

  And to tell someone, it's your responsibility to get yourself out of this horrible place that you're in, is quite disturbing because we like the idea of saying, no, no, hold on. No, it's not me. Life is treating me really badly. That's why I'm not happy. Okay? I can't do anything about it. Life took my son. You know, life took my son. I have the right to be unhappy. Yes, life took your son. That's true. And you have the right to be unhappy, but you're never going to get out of unhappiness if you wait for life to bring him back or you wait for life to correct its action. Okay? The only way you can come out of unhappiness is if you choose and say, okay, it's going to be a long journey. It's going to take a lot of time. Okay?

• 38:40Mo Gawdat?

  And I'm going to try and try and try, but I'll get there. And, and neuroplasticity proves that. Neuroplasticity basically tells you that if you just run a happiness kind of activity once a day, every day, your brain will be better at it. And I mean, please don't get me wrong, but what do most of us do every day? We watch negative news, we swipe on toxic positivity, and we're just drowning ourselves in negativity. And then what happens? Hmm? What happens is we become really good at being negative. We become really good at finding what's wrong with life. Become very good at, you know, getting pissed off with the Prime Minister. Right? Because it's an activity we do on daily basis. So your brain goes like, this must be important for her or him.

• 39:22Mo Gawdat?

  Okay, I'm just gonna make sure I have the neurons aligned around that. And so you're basically, we're basically configuring our brains to be unhappy. I have not watched a horror movie for fifteen years. Really? Yeah, you know what that means? I have not had a nightmare for fifteen years. Not a single one. Okay, I have not watched a violent movie unless really badly recommended to me because it has a good message in it. Hmm? And I watch Michael McIntyre every night before I sleep. I love Michael McIntyre. Who's gonna get me to say hi to Michael McIntyre? But think about that practice, huh? My brain before I go to sleep, hmm, is laughing. Is laughing. That's a choice. That's a choice.

• 40:06Mo Gawdat?

  Hmm? And that is the kind of neuroplasticity that we need to shift. You know, if you go to the gym and lift weights every day, you're gonna look like a triangle. If you squat every day, you're gonna look like a pear. Okay? The same is happening inside your brain, you just don't see it. If you're constantly watching, you know, news media, right? You're literally building your muscles that are concerned and are, you know, critical and are worried about the world, when in reality, most of the time, you can't do anything about it. Like, okay, so I'll give you a very strange example. When I was locked down, first lockdown, I was in London. Second lockdown, I was in Canada.

• 40:50Mo Gawdat?

  Okay? As the lockdown was approaching, I stopped watching news after April 2020. Zero news. Okay? And by the time I was in Montreal, someone texted me and said, hey, by the way, did you know we're going to Code Red tomorrow? I said, yeah, what's Code Red? She said, all restaurants are closed, you wear a mask everywhere. I said, good. That's it. That's all the news I needed to know. Really, okay? People would go like, no, how come? You need to know the numbers and the statistics and the death rate and they're... No, I don't. Okay? Someone else is doing this. And by the way, if I know it and I don't like it and I don't believe in what they're doing, I'm gonna be locked down anyway. So can I waste my time or actually utilize my time in building a podcast that becomes

• 41:35Mo Gawdat?

  one of the top half percent of all podcasts globally? Isn't that a better use of my life than just watching the news and, you know, creating that illusion for myself that I can actually influence anything when in reality? So, you know, I normally advise people and say, look, if you've been following a certain topic for the last two months and have not been able to influence the decision on that topic for the last two months, you're useless. So stop watching that topic. Okay? And start choosing topics that you can champion. Okay? One or two, because you're human, you're not, you know, you're not Superman. Find one or two real, you know, purposes that you actually care about and try to learn

• 42:18Mo Gawdat?

  enough about them, enough depth about them to influence them. That's the way to make the world better. That's the way to make your life better. And yeah, climate change is really something very important, but it's not on my agenda. I don't work on climate change. I work on happiness. That's my part of life. Okay? Someone else I trust will be working on climate change, which I believe is as important, if not more important, but it's not mine. I don't need to watch everything about it. Okay? And concern myself about it all the time. I need to be updated. I need to do my part by really changing my habits as a human, but that's it. That's as far as I go.

• 42:56Steven Bartlett?

  There's something in there which is clearly a theme in, I think, three topics we've touched on. The passing of your son, you know, you talked there about COVID and other elements, which is this theme of like radical acceptance.

• 43:07Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, absolutely. Like instant radical acceptance. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is what I call the Jedi master level of happiness. So there are three levels of happiness, right? The, you know, if you, if you really think about it, I call it the happiness flow chart. Events are gonna piss you off. It's just the truth. If you can manage to acknowledge your emotion and say, oh, my God, I feel, am I angry? Is this anger? I mean, is this, is this what I'm feeling? And then, and then you take that feeling and you say to yourself, okay, interesting. I am angry. I need to do something about it. I will give you three steps. Okay? The beginner's level is ask yourself if what you're thinking is true.

• 43:50Mo Gawdat?

  Your partner said something hurtful on Friday. Your thought is he or she doesn't love me anymore. Okay? Ask yourself if that thought is true. If it isn't, drop it. There is no point to be unhappy. If it is, then let's go to the black belt level of unhappiness, which is can I do think something about it? That's the second question. Is it true is question one? Can I do something about it is question two, right? And honestly, by the way, it doesn't take more than two seconds to feel the emotion. Ask yourself if it's true and then go to, to, to, to, can I do something about it? And if yes, then do it. What are you waiting for? Text him or text her and say, baby, can we please talk over dinner? What you said on Friday hurt me. Okay?

• 44:31Mo Gawdat?

  Instead of just banging your head against the table, hoping that they will find out and come and say, oh, I'm so sorry. You know, I, I, I was teaching this. This story really hurts me. I, I was teaching, you know, when, before lockdown, I, I taught a lot of people in workshops and seminars, more than 20,000 people. One, one day, one of them comes to me in the first break and says, what are you talking about? What do you mean happiness is a choice? You have no idea what happened to me. Okay? And I said, okay. And she said, when I was 17. She was 74 at the time. Can you believe that? Hmm? Fifty seven years of holding on to one thought hitting her head against the wall. Right? And I hugged her.

• 45:14Mo Gawdat?

  I hugged her and I cried and I said, did it work? Did all of that work? Or was the better thought? Hmm? Okay, it was horrible. But can I do something about it? Okay? And that's question number two. That's black belt. Sometimes, however, there's nothing you can do about it. Whatever she experienced could be irreversible. What I have experienced, the loss of Ali, is irreversible. There is nothing you can do about it. Okay? And I'm not asking everyone to get there quickly. But the Jedi Master level of happiness is to say, "Okay. It happened, and I have no choice to change it. There is nothing I can do to fix it. So can I accept it? But not surrender and lie down and, you know, and die.

• 45:58Mo Gawdat?

  Accept it and then start to do something to make my life better despite its presence? Or maybe because of its presence? Okay? Can I accept that Ali died? Hmm? And start to spread his message? So that my life and the life of others become better? Can I accept that I'm locked down? And start my podcast? So that I can use the time where I'm not traveling? Can I do that? I call that committed acceptance. Okay? And it's very simple. If you commit and accept to... If you accept things you can't change and commit to make your life better despite of or because of their presence? Nothing can beat you. Nothing can beat you. And yeah, does it... Is it horrible that I actually managed to move on and, you know,

• 46:42Mo Gawdat?

  not hit my head against the wall for 27 years? Uh, does that say I don't love Ali? What are you talking about? I adore Ali. I cry about missing him still today. Right? It's not that... It's... There is nothing to prove in that. Hmm? What I can prove is I love him so much? Hmm? That I actually dedicate my life to spreading his message. That's so much better. Hmm? Than sitting there and saying, "Ah, life hit me. I don't like life." Right? That's a six-year-old attitude, honestly. Okay? Adults will say, "Okay." And especially business people, I mean, your audiences, huh? The market changes all the time. Do you sit down and go like, "Ah, I lost another deal?" Or do you just get up and say,

• 47:27Mo Gawdat?

  "Why did we lose this deal? What can we do about it?" Right? And if there is something wrong with the product, can we change the product? Right?

• 47:37Steven Bartlett?

  Well, you talked to there about business in particular rings very, very true because in business and you've been, you know, very successful entrepreneur yourself and worked with teams. You'll get people who are high in defaulting to logic in moments of chaos and also default to personal responsibility and those that don't.

• 47:56Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Steven Bartlett?

  And the outcomes of both groups are quite predictable.

• 47:59Mo Gawdat?

  Very different, very different. And actually, this, this approach of is it true, can I do something about it? Can I accept it and, and, and commit? I learned that in business. Okay. So I've spent most of my, my career, I was managing managers. And what do managers do? They open your door and they sit down and complain. Okay. And after a while, it becomes too much. So my attitude was very straightforward. I would give them 10 minutes to vent, then 10 minutes to ask them, is this true? Okay. Is there anything you're missing? Is, is the legal team also nice? Not just making your life miserable, right? Have, have you seen evidence that they've helped you before? So, you know, is it true? And then I go like, so now, great. Last 10 minutes of the meeting, what are we going to do about it?

• 48:44Mo Gawdat?

  Are we going to be able to, to, to improve it, fix it? Or are we going to accept it and do something despite its presence? And it's a very simple business approach. Now, most of us do that in business, but when it comes to our personal life, we don't do that. And interestingly, most of us, by the way, who do that in business are very successful in business. And most of us who do that in life are very successful in life. It's not just happy. It makes us, it makes us successful because it doesn't waste our cycles on things that are not necessary. So if you can do it at work, do it at home, do it in your life, do it in your relationships. It's really a very straightforward flow chart.

• 49:22Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about, when you were talking about the, the chatter that arrived after Ali's passing. And it was telling you, maybe you should have driven him to another hospital. Maybe you should have done this and you could have done this differently. That is, you know, everybody has that that chatter show up in their minds at certain points, which seems to be, you know, not necessarily your best friend. And it's sometimes suggesting that you should do X, Y and Z, which would probably be destructive. What you said following that is that you almost like disassociated from it. And it wasn't, it wasn't you. You, you're almost describing it as if it was someone else in your head.

• 49:59Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely. I call my brain Becky. Yeah.

• 50:01Steven Bartlett?

  You call your brain Becky?

• 50:02Mo Gawdat?

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:03Steven Bartlett?

  Talk to me.

• 50:04Mo Gawdat?

  Becky is a third party. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Becky is not me.

• 50:08Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 50:08Mo Gawdat?

  So, so think about it, huh? It doesn't take a lot of logic. Again, it's one of the illusions of the modern world. The illusions of the modern world, basically, we glorify thinking so much that we think that the voice inside our heads telling us what to do is us telling us what to do. If it was you telling you what to do, why would it need to talk? And I think really you need to think about this. And there has been, you know, research in this since the 1920s. And Lev Gidofsky, I think his name is a Russian Nobel Prize winner in the 1920s, basically won the Nobel Prize because he observed that the voice box, when you're, when you have that internal dialogue in your head, is moving ever so slightly like, like it does when you speak out loud. Okay?

• 50:53Mo Gawdat?

  And so MIT proved that, actually, 2007, there was a wonderful MRI study where they put participants in MRI machines, give them word puzzles, and the participant problem solving areas of the brain would light up for as long as it takes to actually solve the problem. And then that would shut down. So no, no more problem solving, but the participant's still not aware of the, of the answer. And the, and the, and the speech association area of the brain would actually light up for up to eight seconds. And then you would know the answer. Then the participant would know the answer. Okay, so literally your brain solves the problem. And they then takes up to eight seconds to to turn it into words to tell it to you. Your brain is literally talking to you. It's not, I think, therefore I am.

• 51:38Mo Gawdat?

  It's I am therefore my brain thinks. Now, the the interesting challenge we have in the modern world is this. Nobody wakes up in the morning and tells themself. Uh, I pump blood around my body, therefore I am. Okay, the biological function of your heart is to pump blood around your body. Okay, yet we think, I think, therefore I am. I am that voice in my head. Now, you know, simply if you realize that this is just a biological organ. Okay, and the biological product of your brain is thoughts. And the and and the currency of the brain is words. Because the only building blocks of knowledge you have since you started to speak is words. Okay, and so accordingly, what your brain is doing is it's analyzing it's it's.

• 52:22Mo Gawdat?

  You know, it's the world around it and presenting ideas so that you can choose. Now, if you think that those ideas are you telling you what to do, then you're gonna obey. Okay, if it says, oh, life is miserable, then it must be true. Life must be miserable. But that's not the truth at all. If me and Becky are two different people, I can debate what Becky Becky's telling me. I can refuse to obey what Becky's telling me to do. And I can tell Becky to shut the F up. Do you understand that? And I actually do it very often. I'm like, I'm working on something and Becky comes up with an idea. Oh, my, your daughter doesn't love you anymore. I'm like, Becky, we're gonna talk about this at six. It's as simple as that, right? And your brain does what you tell it to do.

• 53:03Mo Gawdat?

  I mean, anyone listening to us, if you tell your brain, raise my right hand. Your brain is not gonna ra- ra- raise your left foot. It's just gonna obey, just tell it. You're the boss. Okay, so when your brain poisons you with all of those thoughts, follow the flowchart. Okay, Becky, vent a little bit. Then tell me, is this true? Is there something I can do about it? Can we accept it and do something despite its presence? How difficult is that? And so most happiness practitioners, I interviewed my dear, dear friend Matthew Ricard on, on slow mo. Matthew Ricard is known as the world's, the world's happiest man. So sixty-three hours, sixty-three thousand hours of lifetime meditation. Okay. His brain circuitry is literally different than ours. Okay.

• 53:48Mo Gawdat?

  And, and I asked him and I said, Matthew, so do you sometimes get unhappy? And he laughed and in his funny French accent said, what are you talking about? No, I'm pissed off all the time. Okay. And, and basically, all happiness experts will tell you, unhappiness is a survival mechanism. It's alerting you. Your brain is saying, hey, something is not perfect. Can you please look into this? Right? The game is not to avoid that. That's actually harmful for you. You want, you wanna be aware of the things that might go wrong. Okay? The game is how quickly do you bounce back to happiness? From that moment where your brain says something is not right, how quickly do I go back to happiness? And I don't brag about this, but I say to encourage people, I'm, you know, if I'm allowed

• 54:33Mo Gawdat?

  to teach people about happiness, I need to be the Olympic champion of the sport. Okay? So I promise you, and I'm not bragging, on average, it takes me seven seconds. From the time my brain suggests that something deserves my happiness, to the time I either dismiss it because it's not true, or decide what I'm gonna do about it, or decide to accept it and think what else I'm going to do is seven seconds. Seven seconds. Okay? Yes, sometimes I get stuck in, you know, maybe three, four times a year, I get stuck in something that takes me, you know, a day to overcome. But most of the time, it's a very simple flow chart. It's a very logical process. And you've had to train yourself to get to that point? Totally. It's, it's neuroplasticity. It is new, go to the gym. Okay?

• 55:17Mo Gawdat?

  Write the flow chart on a piece of paper and every time your emotion changes, look at it. Is it true? Can I do something about it? Can I accept it and do something despite its presence? It's really that simple.

• 55:29Steven Bartlett?

  And you talk a lot about one of the illusions you said there was time.

• 55:33Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, I love time.

• 55:34Steven Bartlett?

  And the importance of presence. What role does time in being present? Because also you talked about that you're the world's happiest man, as you described him being a great meditator. And I think from what I understand about meditation, although I'm not an expert, much of that is about bringing us to the present moment.

• 55:48Mo Gawdat?

  Totally. I mean, there are two sides to time that we need to understand. One you can easily understand from zero relativity and Einstein's view of spacetime. Anything you know about time is not real. As a matter of fact, nobody has a clue what time is. Okay, and we have to accept this, that the illusion of time in the modern world is because we've managed to to control what we've measured. Okay, we're measuring mechanical movements that sort of hint to the passage of time. And we now can show up on time and, you know, have an interview that we can measure is like an hour and a bit and so on and so forth. But time itself, we don't know.

• 56:28Mo Gawdat?

  Okay, the only understanding we have of time is that we're being propelled forward through spacetime along the arrow of time. Okay, and that every slice of spacetime, we're standing there in that slice, only living here and now. Okay, you've never ever lived yesterday. Do you realize that? When you lived yesterday, it was called today. You're never going to live tomorrow. When you live tomorrow, it's going to be called today. Okay, it's always right here and right now. And I did an interesting analysis in Solve for Happy, where I listed down the majority of human emotions and plotted them across where they are anchored in time and across if they're positive or negative. Okay, so you take an emotion like regret.

• 57:11Mo Gawdat?

  Regret is anchored in the past. It's about something that happened in the past and it's negative. You take something like anxiety. Anxiety is anchored in the future. It's about something that might happen in the future and it's negative. Okay, the majority of negative emotions are anchored in the past and the future. The majority of positive emotions are anchored in the present moment. Okay, if you're, if you're here and now, there's absolutely nothing wrong. I mean, think about it this way, if you're listening to us talk, having this conversation as a, as one of our listeners. By definition, there is no tiger trying to eat you. You know, the act, the reality, hmm, that, you know, which is really shocking.

• 57:52Mo Gawdat?

  The, the, the reality that you can feel unhappy about something in the past and the future is in itself evidence that now is okay. Because if there was a tiger trying to eat you right now, you wouldn't be thinking about losing your job in three weeks. Okay, so the truth is every time, remind yourself that the fact that I'm thinking about past and future is itself evidence that now is fine. There is a roof on top of my head, I'm obviously not starving, okay? You have an electronic device that allows you to listen to us, huh, life is okay.

• 58:23Steven Bartlett?

  That's so crazy, I've never actually thought about that idea of, practically of what you just said then, of that the person listening to this now, focusing on the sound of my voice, is not actually unhappy now.

• 58:35Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely not.

• 58:36Steven Bartlett?

  They're not, when they stop listening to it, they might, their thoughts might descend into unhappiness, past, future regret, whatever. But as they're listening to this, they're not actually in the state of unhappiness, they have to stop listening and stop engaging to

• 58:46Mo Gawdat?

  And think about something else.

• 58:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, to create space for that.

• 58:49Mo Gawdat?

  Remember inception?

• 58:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:51Mo Gawdat?

  The beginning of inception, the question was, what is the most deadly parasite or whatever, I don't remember. And he said, it's an idea, an idea, you have never, there is nothing in your life that has the power to make you unhappy, until you turn it into a thought, a negative thought, and turn it into your head and torture yourself with it, simple as that, okay? If you're locked down and you're at home, and you have food, and you have shelter, and you're not sick, and hopefully none of your family and loved ones is sick, okay? The only way you can get yourself to be unhappy is to say, I don't like this. I want life to be different, right?

• 59:35Mo Gawdat?

  And that's not gonna change life, interestingly, that thought, right? But it's gonna change you and make you miserable, it's the only way you can make yourself unhappy.

• 59:46Steven Bartlett?

  You just lost another 8% of Alice.

• 59:52Steven Bartlett?

  Um, you have a, yeah, hopefully we're getting 8% more somewhere else. You have a tattoo on your back?

• 59:59Mo Gawdat?

  I don't, Ali did.

• 1:00:00Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, you don't? Oh, Ali did. Was it Ali about, um, oh yeah, the gravity of the battle.

• 1:00:04Mo Gawdat?

  The gravity of the battle.

• 1:00:05Steven Bartlett?

  Could you, could you, could you explain that to me? I found that really amazing.

• 1:00:09Mo Gawdat?

  It's the last thing he told me. Can you believe that? So Ali, um, Ali, uh, had a tattoo on his back that read, "The gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace." Okay. And you would wonder why, why? Because he's, you know, he, he lived a life of ease and luxury in general. I mean, even though he always forced himself to go to the, I mean, he had those journeys where he would go and literally, walk across the villages of America with no money, just to live the life of the people, the real people, if you want. He would go to, you know, it was very unusual. Anyway, uh, yeah. His, his tattoo said, "The gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace."

• 1:00:52Mo Gawdat?

  And it was the very last thing he told me because basically he had, he was wearing those scrubs. And you know how the scrubs are open at the back and he was lying on, on the operating table. And then they were fixing something, so he, he had to sit up. And I could read the, the tattoo was the very last thing he told me before he went into the operating room. And yeah, it's quite interesting when you really think about it. Of course, life is full of battles. Life is not supposed to be easy. Just understand that, huh? Think of life as a video game. If it was easy, it would be boring like hell and you would learn nothing at all. Okay. Life is supposed to have a few difficulties on the way.

• 1:01:32Mo Gawdat?

  But that, but, but some battles, um, are, are much harder for you than they are for me. And many battles don't even shake those who are at peace. Right? And, and, and the question is, how do you find that peace? How do you find that feeling of, it's okay, it's just another battle? It's just, you know, I've, I've won every other battle so far and the ones that I've lost were the best thing that ever happened to me. How can you get that straight in your mind? Because then suddenly, when, when the next battle approaches, and I promise you, there will be a next battle approaching. Okay. You take that battle with.

• 1:02:13Mo Gawdat?

  Complete peacefulness, basically treat it as one more twist on the game controller, where you can actually affect your life and make it better. And then wait for the next one. And then another twist on the game controller and you can do better. It's a very stoic approach to life, but it's so spot on when you think about it.

• 1:02:35Steven Bartlett?

  I was reading something you said, which really did make me pause for a second. And it said that, you know, correct me where I'm wrong, because I don't want to mischaracterize what you said, but you were saying how basically nobody regrets their battles. Like basically, nobody would reverse history and undo the hard thing they went through. And I sat and reflected and I thought, I thought, all my guests that come here and sit in that chair and all the things they've told me about. And I thought, I think you're probably right.

• 1:02:59Mo Gawdat?

  Point one percent. So I ran an experiment. So in the in the chapter about control, I I wrote something that I called the Eraser Test. The Eraser Test is a thought experiment at Google X. We've developed something that can pinpoint a memory in your life and go back to that event and erase that event from your timeline. Okay. Not the memory of it, the actual event, it will erase the whole thing. And I ran that experiment with maybe 12,000 people, where I basically tell them, first, write down an event that's traumatic in your life. Second, make a choice. Do you want me to erase it or not? Third, be aware that if you erase it, you're going to erase everything that happened as

• 1:03:44Mo Gawdat?

  a result. Every friend that you met as a result, every learning that you had as a result, every resilience that you developed as a result, would you still erase it? And 99.99% of people said, no, I'd keep it. Okay. And these were very traumatic events. It's not just some bully at school. So, you know, I will tell you openly myself, I cried on stage in 2019 because someone asked me and said, now that you have the Eraser Test, would you erase the death of Ali? And I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Because I will tell you openly, if you know my son, if I had told Ali before he died that his death would make 51 million people happy, he would have said, kill me right now.

• 1:04:28Mo Gawdat?

  And I don't know, I mean, is it radical acceptance or is my brain telling me this? But most of the time, most of the time, the person that you are is the result of those moments. It's not the result of the easy parts. And you would never erase it. Ninety nine point nine nine percent of the people would not erase it.

• 1:04:53Steven Bartlett?

  Easier said in hindsight, I guess.

• 1:04:55Mo Gawdat?

  Of course, but then, but then, but then let's, let's extrapolate. If I would not erase ninety nine point nine nine percent of the harsh events in my past, why am I thinking that this one is the one that's going to stick? Think about it. If all of your past harsh experiences were painful then, but enormously important now, then maybe this one too will be enormously important. Maybe this is the one that's gonna make you who you are.

• 1:05:25Steven Bartlett?

  Reminds me actually of something you said about death as well. Because much of the reason, I think, again, correct me if I'm mischaracterizing, but um, you said that people fear death because of the uncertainty it brings and not knowing what that, you know, the life after death or that, you know, that will look and feel like. And I, I reflect on what we're talking about with this eraser. And so I think a lot of the reason why I might not choose to erase traumatic events in my life or the worst things that happened to me is because then I don't know which way that kind of, my life would have gone then, and it could have gone in a worse direction. So in this current moment, I feel somewhat content. You know, I'm just, I'm being, I'm talking about the potential where there's ninety nine percent of people that you described.

• 1:06:08Steven Bartlett?

  And there's a chance it could be worse if I use that eraser. So I'm not gonna use that eraser because.

• 1:06:13Mo Gawdat?

  Correct, yeah, yeah, correct. And, and, and most of the time, yes, when you look back in hindsight, you start to recognize all of the benefits that came with the trauma. And most of the time, interestingly, the way the physics of life work is that the benefits outweigh the trauma. Interesting.

• 1:06:32Steven Bartlett?

  I wrote a book called Happy Sexy Millionaire.

• 1:06:35Mo Gawdat?

  Nice.

• 1:06:35Steven Bartlett?

  Because I was an 18 year old kid that, because of all the insecurities from my childhood, being the only black kid in an all white school, parents were broke, but everyone else around me was rich. So it creates this cauldron of insecurity where you want to be, you want to fit in and then it leads you to the path of thinking that money and material possessions will be the thing that makes me fit in. So I go off on the path to try and be this happy sexy millionaire. Of course, 25 years old, Range Rover sports sat outside. I'm a multimillionaire, big successful business, six pack, all these things. The day our company IPOs, it's by 300 million and just this total anticlimax, which almost sent me into like, and I'm like, where is the marching band and the confetti? Like, where is it? 18 year olds, they promised

• 1:07:17Steven Bartlett?

  me that. And so now I reflect, I look forward and think, well, I need to be careful about some of these ambitions I have because I don't know whether that's the insecurity defining the path, or if it's my sort of intrinsic, these are intrinsic things that will make me feel content. So my question is about how do I know if my ambitions, how do I reframe them now to make sure that they are leading me to a happy place or a fulfilled place and not just scratching some unscratchable insecurity?

• 1:07:45Mo Gawdat?

  That's so interesting. Did the sexy girlfriend make you happy or make you miserable?

• 1:07:51Steven Bartlett?

  Miserable. The sexy one did, made me miserable, but the one that wasn't so, wasn't, didn't care about being sexy and cared about other things, you know, had those good values, made me much happier.

• 1:08:03Mo Gawdat?

  Did the Range Rover break down anytime and annoyed?

• 1:08:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, a couple of times. It got smashed up. People broke into it all the time.

• 1:08:09Mo Gawdat?

  There you go.

• 1:08:09Steven Bartlett?

  It cost a lot of money and hard to park.

• 1:08:11Mo Gawdat?

  So I think we need to differentiate between two sides. One is ambition and the other is expectation. Okay. So have any ambition you want, any ambition you want, hopefully a good ambition, be a good billionaire. Okay. So my dream is that by the end of my life, I will have lost all of the money I made, not taking it to the grave anyway, and made a billion people happy. That's a very, very interesting definition of wealth. Okay, have one of those or have any definition you want, any ambition you want. But have the right expectations. There is a difference between ambition and expectations. Ambition is what gets us to thrive and strive in life and go further and have an impact.

• 1:08:56Mo Gawdat?

  Great, set as many of those as you want. When we achieved 10 million happy, we set a billion happy. Okay, but don't get me wrong. It took Jesus 2,000 years to get to a billion people. I'm not gonna get there. Let's just be very clear. The expectation is clear. My expectation is that my best dream is that I will energize enough people to take the mission forward. Okay, and that's my expectation. So you know what my expectation is today? My ambition is a billion happy. My expectation is that those listening to us are happy. Okay, and if that fails, that you are happy. That's good enough. That's an amazing day, right? And once you set your expectations right, nothing can deter unhappiness. Don't, don't get me wrong.

• 1:09:40Mo Gawdat?

  I wake up every morning and I go like, what are we gonna do today? Can we reach, you know, 100,000 people today? Is there a piece of content we can develop? Can we do this? Can we, can I write another book? I don't know. And I'm constantly engaged. That's my ambition.

• 1:09:56Mo Gawdat?

  There are days where I wake up and nothing happens. Great, yeah, that exists part of life. When you differentiate those two, everything becomes okay. Now, I would also say, when you're setting your ambitions, avoid junk food. Okay, avoid the stuff that was promised to you to make you happy before and failed to make you happy then. Okay, I, I know that because I had 16 cars in my garage. The reason I had 16 cars in my garage was because I thought the first one would make me happy and it didn't. So I told myself, it's the color. I should have taken another color, right? So I bought another one. Ah, it's the model. Okay, and then I was like, no, but I don't have a fast car.

• 1:10:40Mo Gawdat?

  Maybe I need, a fast car will make me happy. No, a vintage car will make me happy. And you know what happens? Every time the, the promise is missed, you go like, ah, no, no, hold on. Maybe more or different is gonna make me happy. Wake up, you're a smart person. Those things don't make you happy. Okay, and just measure, look back in your life and find the actual moments that made you happy. You know, I have a practice that I call the happy list. And on the happy list, I say, write down as many answers as you can to the statement that starts with, I feel happy when. Okay, nobody ever wrote, I feel happy when I buy a Ferrari. Okay, yeah, you get that for a couple of moments. Nobody says, I feel happy when I win the Nobel Prize.

• 1:11:24Mo Gawdat?

  People say, I feel happy when my daughter smiles. I feel happy when I have a good cup of coffee. I feel happy when I have a connected conversation, when I learn something new. All of them accessible, all of them that things that you can introduce in your life today or this week at most. Okay, and yet we don't do any of them because we wanna buy the Ferrari. Made me miserable. I swear to you, I think Ferrari is gonna sue me. It made me miserable. Okay, it always broke down. It was so noisy. It was so noisy and it didn't meet my character. I'm a simple guy. I don't want to be looked at in the streets. Right, and it made me miserable and yet I tried. And you know what's the funny thing? The funniest thing is that I swear to you, I would take one of those cars out.

• 1:12:09Mo Gawdat?

  And two minutes into the drive, I wouldn't remember which one it is because when you're driving, what are you looking at? The road, okay, especially when it was dark and at night, you just don't see the car anymore. It's like something's taking you somewhere. Right, and yet I keep trying. It's so stupid.

• 1:12:28Steven Bartlett?

  Gratitude.

• 1:12:29Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:12:32Steven Bartlett?

  The theme that came to mind when you were speaking then, because some people think, and I was definitely one of those, that the way to get, have more in your life is to go and buy more. But in fact, it's that it came to, and this is one of the conclusive points in my book was that you can create so much more with gratitude from what you already have.

• 1:12:49Mo Gawdat?

  Four dollar T-shirts.

• 1:12:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely love them. Make my life so easy. I don't really have to iron them. I don't have to, you know, worry about, when I go on a date, the first thing I say is that this you're gonna see every time. I hope you're gonna find other qualities in me. Okay, and it's very open. And if she doesn't like that and she wants the Armani suit, she's not for me. It's very good. Okay, now the game is this. Gratitude is the ultimate solution to the happiness equation.

• 1:13:20Mo Gawdat?

  Because it doesn't only remind you that the event is meeting expectation. It tells you that the event is so much better than expectation that you're grateful for it. Okay, and it does something else that's amazing. It's neuroplasticity at its best. It basically tells you, okay, brain, I know you're grumpy. I know you wanna tell me the seven things that went wrong today. But your task right now is to go and find the thing that you're grateful for. Something that went so well that you're happy with it. Go, brain, do your work. And if you do that every day, hopefully several times a day. Suddenly, your brain goes like, oh, when I was searching for that thing you asked me, you know, that I was grateful for, I found three other things I'm grateful for. Because I'm getting really good at it.

• 1:14:05Mo Gawdat?

  Because life is full of blessings. Right? It is the absolute answer. And you know what's the most interesting part of gratitude? Part of my software happy, I talk about a concept I call look down. Okay? And look down is the idea that if I compare to the guy that had seventeen cars, I'd feel miserable. Okay? If a model compares to the supermodel, she would feel miserable. Okay? If you compare to the guy in Africa, or the guy in India, or the guy in Afghanistan, or the refugee camp, you would actually suddenly realize, oh, my God, I'm so blessed. One of the most interesting statistics is the Nordic countries.

• 1:14:50Mo Gawdat?

  They measure something called subjective well-being. Subjective well-being basically is the quality of your life. They have the highest subjective well-being on the planet. And yet, they have some of the highest suicide rates. Why? Because as the quality of our life increases, we keep looking up. We keep raising our expectations, like we have a service level agreement with life. Okay? Now that the government can give me, you know, healthcare and pension and so on, then maybe my girlfriend shouldn't annoy me either. Where do you get that from? Show me their contract. Right? And if, and suddenly, it's just constantly resetting. If you look down. If you look down, I promise you it's gonna take you a very long time to get to the bottom.

• 1:15:32Mo Gawdat?

  There are so many people in the world that are so much less fortunate than you are. And it's almost arrogant and so sorry to say stupid to not recognize that. Okay, to not, if you live in the UK, by definition, you're one of the luckiest 10% alive. It's as simple as that, okay? At least most, the majority of the people in the UK. And by the way, if you're listening to Stephen, then I can guarantee you you are.

• 1:15:59Steven Bartlett?

  It's so true. I, do you know what, it's, I, I've never really, so I thought this idea of practicing gratitude was kind of some like fluffy, airy fairy thing. And then over the last, I'd say, three years, when I really, I reflected on the moments when I'm just alone and I get overwhelmed to the point where it's like slightly emotional.

• 1:16:17Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:17Steven Bartlett?

  Usually sometimes by music or whatever it might be. I can genuinely make myself overwhelmed to almost the point of tears with gratitude.

• 1:16:24Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:24Steven Bartlett?

  And I did it last night, I was in my bedroom and I was walking through and I just, I, and I, I posted on my Instagram. I think I posted blessed, grateful and enough, just the three words. Because I have that sometimes, this overwhelming feeling of like, yeah, and I.

• 1:16:38Mo Gawdat?

  So lucky.

• 1:16:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and it's.

• 1:16:39Mo Gawdat?

  You're so lucky.

• 1:16:40Steven Bartlett?

  And you know what, that is a choice. That was a choice to have those thoughts, to have those thoughts about like enough, I have everything I need and, and to be quite honest, way more. And to be fair, I always have before the money. I've always been enough, you know, and it was society's attempt to convince me that I wasn't.

• 1:16:56Mo Gawdat?

  Four dollar t-shirts, how many of those can I buy? You think about it, and yet some of us waste an entire lifetime trying to get more Armani suits. Why?

• 1:17:08Steven Bartlett?

  Cause of, cause of the matrix, whatever they call it.

• 1:17:10Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely. So you're smart, you're so smart to be able to make the money to make, to, to buy the Armani suit. And yet you're still a sucker for the people that are, for the eyes of the people that are gonna think of you as more than you are because you're wearing it.

• 1:17:23Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:24Mo Gawdat?

  It's seriously, I mean, if it pleases you, by the way, nothing wrong with being fashionable and beautiful and taking care of yourself. Absolutely. But if you're doing it for the ego, what does that, what does that say about you? You're so freaking successful and you're still, you know, expecting that people will value you more because you're wearing a suit?

• 1:17:44Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:45Mo Gawdat?

  I don't know.

• 1:17:46Steven Bartlett?

  There's something you said as well on that, in that exact point, but also on your previous point about going on these dates and saying to the, the young person or the, you know, the lovely person you're on the date with, um, listen, this is a $4 t-shirt and I'm gonna wear it a lot. So if you don't like that.

• 1:18:00Mo Gawdat?

  I wear 10 of them. It's not the same t-shirt. I have 10 of them at any point in time. Yes. Don't, don't spoil my reputation here.

• 1:18:07Steven Bartlett?

  I was gonna say, well, it's very similar to the one you were wearing.

• 1:18:10Mo Gawdat?

  There's three pairs of jeans and 10, 10 black t-shirts.

• 1:18:14Steven Bartlett?

  You said that, you said, um, if she's okay with that, then in fact, she's actually not the person for you.

• 1:18:18Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:19Steven Bartlett?

  And she, and actually trying to forge a relationship that is on that basis would probably lead you to a not so good place because your life would become a hamster wheel of valuing that.

• 1:18:29Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Steven Bartlett?

  So conditional love, you talk about this concept of conditional love and I don't necessarily know what you, you mean, because I didn't get the full definition. But what is conditional love and what's the danger of it?

• 1:18:38Mo Gawdat?

  Conditional love is I love you because we're having this conversation and it's going to go to tens of thousands of people.

• 1:18:43Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:18:43Mo Gawdat?

  Okay. And yeah, but, but, but that actually ends if it doesn't go to 10, to tens of thousands of people, you know, I love her because she's cute and she makes me laugh. Unconditional love is real love. Okay. Unconditional is I love my son. He pissed me off when he was young. I loved him. He taught me when I was young. I loved him. Uh, you know, he left me and caused me pain when he left. I mean, it's not his choice, but, you know, and I still love him. He's not even part of this world and I love him. There are no conditions for my love. There is, there are no conditions for my love for butterflies. Okay. I love butterflies, even though there are none in this room. None of them is entertaining me. Uh, you know, I just love butterflies. It's, it's, it's just a feeling that I don't

• 1:19:25Mo Gawdat?

  understand. I can't explain with an equation and it's always there. Okay. And it's the only kind of love, the only kind of love that makes us happy. Understand that. All of the other kinds of love are anchored in conditions, anchored in what? In expectations. Okay. And anything you anchor in expectations, sooner or later is gonna change. If you, if you love her because she's beautiful, sooner or later she's gonna grow a little older and someone else will be more beautiful. What are you gonna do then? Okay, if you if you love him because he's your business partner and making you a lot of money, what are you gonna do when things go a little difficult?

• 1:20:06Mo Gawdat?

  Okay, and and the idea is when you go to unconditional love, something amazing happens. Suddenly you're in control because the joy of unconditional love is to give it. There are no conditions, you're not expecting anything to, you know, conditional love is is reciprocity. Hey, I'm gonna love you for this, and in return, you're gonna do this for me. Okay, and and of course, the other side of it is the ego of love is like I'm lovable. I'm, you know, I'm gonna create the conditions for you guys to love me. So, look, I'm lovable, I'm well done, Mo. Right, you've you've created something amazing, you should be proud of yourself. None of that matters, all of that gets you, of course, romantic love is wonderful and, you know, the love of, you know,

• 1:20:48Mo Gawdat?

  partners in in business, yeah, beautiful, wonderful. You wanna get to the core of unshakable happiness that comes from your love? Learn to love beyond conditions. And if you can learn to love beyond conditions, promise you, the world will love you back without conditions. So the days when you're not at your best, you're still gonna be loved.

• 1:21:10Steven Bartlett?

  Romantic love, let's take a pivot there then.

• 1:21:12Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, man.

• 1:21:13Steven Bartlett?

  Before we started recording, we talked a little bit about the modern world of dating and how difficult it is because of the way the world's changed and, you know, the battles with romantic love. You know, I know you've been in, you were in a relationship for a long time.

• 1:21:25Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah, twenty eight years, yes.

• 1:21:27Steven Bartlett?

  And then back on the dating market?

• 1:21:29Mo Gawdat?

  Yes, not doing great.

• 1:21:31Steven Bartlett?

  Not doing great.

• 1:21:34Steven Bartlett?

  You were you were with someone for twenty twenty eight years?

• 1:21:37Mo Gawdat?

  Yes.

• 1:21:38Steven Bartlett?

  I'm like twenty eight years old.

• 1:21:39Mo Gawdat?

  I know.

• 1:21:40Steven Bartlett?

  That's staggering, you know.

• 1:21:42Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, she's an amazing woman, and we're still best friends. She's still, she's still, in my eyes, the best woman that ever existed. And I think in my, in her eyes, I'm still, I'm the best man that ever existed. And I think it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful connection. And it's doable, and it's actually, if anyone needs to experience that once in their life.

• 1:22:02Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what question I'm gonna ask you?

• 1:22:04Mo Gawdat?

  No.

• 1:22:06Steven Bartlett?

  If if you both think you're the best people that ever ever existed.

• 1:22:10Mo Gawdat?

  Love and relationships are two different things.

• 1:22:14Mo Gawdat?

  Love is feeling, relationships are.

• 1:22:19Mo Gawdat?

  Uh compatibility and fit and work, okay? And progress and projects and uh you know and partnerships and lots of and lots of things, relationships. So in in the book I'm working on, uh I actually have a section about finding love and a and a section about keeping love, right? Because because they're not the same thing. And I, you know, Nibel and I, you know, she's the most amazing woman ever, uh you know, uh at least from what she gave me in life, I I will eternally be grateful. Everything that I am, any comment that I said today was discussed one day with Nibel, right? Her spirituality, her wisdom, her, you know, her love made me who I am, okay?

• 1:23:01Mo Gawdat?

  And you can't kill that because you no longer want to sleep together. Do you understand this? You can't, you can't be that stupid to take all of those beautiful relationships and just say, okay, that's it, we're separated, we don't want to talk, right? The the the thing is, uh I believe that love uh is short-lived, okay? I believe that Nibel and I had to fall in love six times uh uh over over the twenty-eight years because we both changed every single time. So she's my, she was my college sweetheart. We had that amazing, you know, puppy love and wonderful romantic relationship and so on, and then we get married. And then she becomes a different person and I become a different person. And you suddenly go like, where's my sweetheart?

• 1:23:46Mo Gawdat?

  Okay? And you have a choice then, either to walk out and say, I'm look, I'm gonna go look for my sweetheart. Or in our case, we go like, oh my God, she's gone, that sweetheart, but my God, this one is so cute, I love that one, right? And we fell in love again and again and again, six times, until our paths went literally opposite ways after Ali, uh where my my path went into, okay, I'm gonna write a book and tour the world and do more of what I do. And her path went into, okay, it's time for me to start focusing on my own life. I wanna, you know, focus on my own business, focus on my own stability, I don't wanna travel the world like a maniac, and it became difficult. It became difficult to go back every two weeks when we haven't met.

• 1:24:31Mo Gawdat?

  And feel guilty that I have not been there for her and she hasn't been there for me. And so one day we sat down, we spoke, we hugged, literally hugged. And then, you know, said, okay, maybe it's time to try another experience. And, and then we went back to the same home and spent another week together. And then I left, uh, and it's beautiful. It's beautiful as it is, I think, uh, you know, uh, we, we still carry each other's credit cards. And we still, you know, manage our investments together. And there is total trust and total, uh, you know, understanding. And we still, you know, parent Aya, our daughter together. And it's wonderful.

• 1:25:11Mo Gawdat?

  Uh, it's just that romance is a, is one part of the different melody of loves that you can feel for someone.

• 1:25:20Steven Bartlett?

  Such a beautiful level of maturity and I guess love, yeah.

• 1:25:25Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah, of course, and you should meet her. I think it becomes easier if you understand how she is.

• 1:25:32Steven Bartlett?

  So pandemics, let's talk pandemics.

• 1:25:36Mo Gawdat?

  From wrath to pandemics.

• 1:25:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I mean, this is exactly what I felt when I was reading about your, your stories. Such a diverse range of topics that in so many beautiful ways intertwine and are influenced by each other. Um, I read that you, in a recent sort of news article that had just come out, I think in the last couple of weeks, that you, you, you feel that we're currently engaged in a productivity pandemic.

• 1:25:59Mo Gawdat?

  We're engaged in many pandemics. Uh, the, the truth is that we are focusing on the silly ones.

• 1:26:06Steven Bartlett?

  What is the real one?

• 1:26:07Mo Gawdat?

  The real one is artificial intelligence, no doubt.

• 1:26:09Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:26:10Mo Gawdat?

  Because it's here to stay and evolve and become bigger and bigger and bigger. And influential in ways that we have not even started to consider yet. Covid is here to come and go.

• 1:26:21Steven Bartlett?

  For someone that doesn't know what artificial intelligence is, which is a lot of people,

• 1:26:24Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:25Steven Bartlett?

  Probably more than ninety five percent of the listeners of this podcast. What is artificial intelligence?

• 1:26:31Mo Gawdat?

  Great question. So the reason for Scary Smart, my book, is entirely around that, that there are so many people out there that have no clue that they have interacted today, whatever time of the day it is for you, wherever you are, whatever you do in life, you've already interacted with ten to twelve, fifteen, twenty, maybe fifty artificial intelligences that are all smarter than you. That's the truth of our life. Artificial intelligence, there was a turning point in the history of technology where, before which all technology was programmable, so it became, it was simply a tool that extended the capability of humanity. Okay? You can't hammer a nail with your hand, you use a hammer, you can hammer a nail with the hammer,

• 1:27:14Mo Gawdat?

  and the hammer will do exactly what you tell it to do. Okay? Beyond the turn of the century, we've discovered something that's called deep learning, and deep learning allows machines to learn on their own. We don't understand how they learn. Developers that write the code don't even understand how they learn, but they develop intelligence. They become able to make autonomous decisions based on intelligent observations and in a sense of their environment and the sense of the conditions that surround them. And they make those decisions on every specific task we've given them better than humans.

• 1:27:54Steven Bartlett?

  Something you said scared me before we started recording, which was that, you know, you're a very smart guy, right? And your professional experience, especially working at a company like Google, which is known for its artificial intelligence capabilities. For you to say to me that you've basically given up your summer to go around the world talking about your new book Scary Smart and the implications of artificial intelligence, and you're basically choosing to, you know, because you understand the importance of time and you could be doing anything, for you to consider this the important work of your life in this period. Begs the question, why is it so important? Why are you giving up so much to spread this message?

• 1:28:36Mo Gawdat?

  It is the single most important message on our planet today. I don't think people realize. So AI today is better than humanity in everything it does. Okay, by the year 2029, the smartest being on planet Earth is going to be a machine. Now, I just, I don't wanna, we can go into the details. But I want you to imagine a scenario on here, on, on planet Earth, where we're not the humans, but the apes. Okay, where there is another being that looks at us as the apes. Okay, and that being is going to be smarter than us. You heard me correctly, in eight years' time.

• 1:29:14Steven Bartlett?

  Eight years' time?

• 1:29:15Mo Gawdat?

  Eight years' time. And we're not talking about it, Stephen. What's going wrong with humanity? We're not talking about it. Okay, well, if you, if you look at AI from the inside, you realize that through the law of accelerating returns, Ray Corwell basically predicts that by the year 2045, it's in your lifetime and mine, AI is going to be a billion times smarter than humans. One billion times smarter. You know what that means? This is comparable to the intelligence of Einstein as compared to a fly. Okay, and humanity, while we're still Einstein, is not discussing how are we going to keep the best interest of us, the fly, in Einstein's mind.

• 1:30:00Mo Gawdat?

  Okay, we're, we're talking through the arrogance of humanity about how we're gonna control them, how we're going to box them, how we're going to tripwire them. Good luck with that. The biggest hacker in the room, the smartest hacker in the room will always find a way through our defenses. Okay, now, Scary Smart is written in a very unusual way because it's not a book about artificial intelligence only. It's a, it's a book about the role of humanity in the age of the machines. Okay, and it's split into two parts. The first part is the scary part. And if you and I dive into this, I promise you, you're gonna be scared. The second part of it is what I call the smart part. So five chapters are scary like hell. Most of my early readers would call me after five chapters and say, should I commit suicide?

• 1:30:45Mo Gawdat?

  Right, and, and then the other five chapters are a story of hope. Basically, it's entirely within our hands to do something so quickly, so simply, that can save our world. Okay, now, the difference between those two is a question of awareness. That people are preoccupied talking about Covid and what the Prime Minister decided and the next profitability quarter on our business. And people are not talking about the existential challenge that we have ahead of us, okay? Which is imminent, eight years and 2045. So I start the book with a thought experiment. I say, you and I are sitting in front of a campfire in the middle of nowhere in 2055.

• 1:31:25Mo Gawdat?

  Okay, I'm gonna tell you the story of what happened between 2021 and 2055 from that perspective. Okay, I'm not gonna tell you why we're sitting in front of the campfire. Why are we hiding in the middle of nowhere? Is it because we're hiding from the machines? Or is it because the machines have built a utopia that allows us to enjoy nature and connection and the luxuries of life, right? And the difference between them is really straightforward. The difference between them is what you and I and everyone listening, not the developers, not the government, okay? Not the regulators, what you and I and everyone listening are going to teach those machines. Because those machines don't learn from their developers the minute they're out there. They learn from your swipes on Instagram. They learn from your retweets.

• 1:32:11Mo Gawdat?

  They learn from your fights, your arguments from this conversation. And if we don't shape up as humanity, at least some of us, enough of us, those machines will magnify the essence of what we are today as humans. And that's not really pretty.

• 1:32:27Steven Bartlett?

  Are you optimistic about this?

• 1:32:28Mo Gawdat?

  I am hundred percent optimistic, okay? And it's a great question to start with. I believe eventually, eventually, we're gonna end up in a utopia. Whichever way, now let me explain. We humans have been able to create this amazing setup that you and I are sitting in to record and communicate with the world because of our intelligence. But we've also destroyed the planet because of our limited intelligence. So, you know, we found a way to create a supply chain that can supply more with a slice of watermelon right around the corner in, you know, in a supermarket. Because we're intelligent. But we could not be intelligent enough to not use single-use plastic.

• 1:33:13Mo Gawdat?

  We created mobility because we're intelligent, but we could not be intelligent enough to stop burning fuel to kill the planet. Right? It's our limited intelligence that is the hindrance of humanity. And AI is surpassing our limited intelligence very quickly. To the point that it will get to the ultimate form of intelligence. And what's the ultimate form of intelligence? The ultimate form of intelligence is the intelligence of life itself. It's the intelligence of abundance, where AI would see no reason to crush the fly. You know how life is. Life will say more flies, more, you know, antelope, more tigers, more poop, more everything. Let's just, you know, let's have more of everything and everything will thrive. This is where AI will get.

• 1:33:57Mo Gawdat?

  A hundred percent, I have no doubt about that. The challenge is the journey from here to there. Do we want that journey to be smooth and straightforward and wonderful? Or do we want to hit bumps on the way? And if we don't want to hit those bumps on the way, it's not about their intelligence. It's about their ethics. It's about the ethics of the machines. And that's a very, very important conversation. They're no longer machines. They will develop a code of ethics. They are independent, they're sentient in every possible way. And, you know, and this is truly the core of Scary Smart. Is an explanation that we're no longer building computers.

• 1:34:37Mo Gawdat?

  This is not the programmable technology of the pre, you know, turn of the century. This is autonomous. It is independent. It is intelligent. It evolves. It procreates.

• 1:34:53Steven Bartlett?

  That's terrifying.

• 1:34:54Mo Gawdat?

  It is terrifying, and we're not talking about it.

• 1:34:57Steven Bartlett?

  For anyone that doesn't know what procreates mean, basically, creates more of itself, I guess.

• 1:35:02Mo Gawdat?

  It replicates. We, we humans, we take a nine-month cycle if we find the right person and we're, you know, we're in the mood. They take microseconds to create 700 million copies of themselves if they wanted to.

• 1:35:19Steven Bartlett?

  Can I ask a really specific question? Because whenever we go into this conversation around machine learning and AI, people think of it as robots, sort of like, marching down the streets with guns, because we've seen that that's the image we've had portrayed to us in movies like Terminator and such.

• 1:35:34Mo Gawdat?

  That's not, that's never gonna happen.

• 1:35:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so what is, what is the realistic, practical threat?

• 1:35:40Mo Gawdat?

  So, so let's just take that moment, that point for a minute, huh? One of the most interesting part of AI being sentient is that it has agency, okay? And that agency is, is, is available through robotics, whether that's a humanoid work, walking down the streets. And there are many killing robots being created as we speak, okay? In the US Army and in the, you know, in the Chinese Army and so on. But that's not the challenge. The agency they have is over your mind. And that's what most people don't understand. Let me give you a simple example. I, yeah, my daughter loves cats, so when I swipe on Instagram reels, I look for cats, send her as many as I can, good ones, and then when she sends me back a smile, my life is made, right?

• 1:36:25Mo Gawdat?

  Through that process, one time, I realized that one of the types of reels on Instagram is people playing rock solos. I'm a junkie for rock solos. And so I clicked on the first one. It was a very talented young woman, holding a serious metal guitar and playing some Metallica something or whatever. I was like, man, that's amazing. I clicked like. Then Instagram recommendation engine said, okay, I can capture this one, seems to like this, let me show him more. So, two pages later, I started to see other rock music solos being played by men. They played songs I didn't like, so I swiped away.

• 1:37:07Mo Gawdat?

  The next morning, my entire feed was filled with women playing rock music.

• 1:37:13Mo Gawdat?

  Because Instagram thought I didn't like the men, I liked the women. Not that I didn't like the songs and I liked that song. Now, if you think of that simply without knowledge of the real world, you would think that rock music is dominated by women guitarists. And the truth of the world is no. Rock music in its, you know, in its generation was completely dominated by male guitarists. Now, it's not, it's not for male or females. It's just that your, your view of the world is entirely skewed by a machine. Okay? And that view of the world can go into any ideology, can teach you anything that it wants or that it believes it, you want, based on machine intelligence.

• 1:37:56Mo Gawdat?

  That kind of agency can change societies. Okay? And we're handing over that control entirely to the machines. There is no employee at, at, at Facebook that gets consulted, "Should I show more female guitarists?" Okay? It's entirely in the hands of the machines. And of course, you know, if you've ever seen the movie Idiocracy, what is happening is that the machine is populating more and more idiocracy. The machine is getting people who are clicking on stupid stuff to see more of the stupid stuff, so that their view of the world is more stupid. Now, that kind of agency is massive. Now, let's go back to robots and, and, and, and machines and so on.

• 1:38:40Mo Gawdat?

  A self-driving car is a kind of robot. Okay? It just doesn't look like a humanoid. A, a, a flying drone, a delivery drone is a kind of robot. A, a, a, an autopilot that lands a 747 is a kind of robot. And, and all of those are now going to be controlled by machines. Defense arsenals are going to be controlled by machines. And, you know, the trigger that, that, that, you know, launches a rocket is a kind of robot. Now, the, the, the challenge we have as humanity is this.

• 1:39:14Mo Gawdat?

  AI is never gonna get to the point of what we saw in Robocop or iRobot or whatever, because we will not live long enough to get there if the intention of AI is against us. Okay, the kinds of, chapter four of the book is called A Mild Dystopia. Okay, and in The Mild Dystopia I speak about realistic scenarios that are horrifically scary. And if you've ever watched horror movies, if you remember Halloween when I was a child was the most horrifying, because Halloween could actually happen. Hmm, the kinds of scenarios are simple. They are machine versus machine. We've seen that in Black Monday,

• 1:39:57Mo Gawdat?

  when machines trading versus each other would collapse the market by 22.6%. When the humans would take hours until they can actually intervene. Machines versus machines is happening all the time. Most of the market now is traded by machines. Of course, you can imagine that this will happen more and more. So if, imagine if one of the superpowers in the world puts its nuclear arsenal under the control of an AI because it's quicker to take action, then the other side will probably do the same. And then suddenly we've handed all the nuclear weapons to machines. Okay, these possibilities are absolutely going to happen. Possibility of machines siding with the wrong guy. Just like you can use AI to, you know, find solutions for climate change,

• 1:40:40Mo Gawdat?

  you can also use it to develop advanced viruses. Okay, and probably, you know, identity theft or, you know, breaking through bank statements and so on. So the same kind of technology can actually develop patterns that can take us to that direction. Take, machines not understanding what we mean. Like Instagram didn't understand that I was interested in Metallica, not in just, you know, Lady Rockers. Okay, they didn't understand. Can we blame them for that? But it's a very realistic scenario. Now imagine if we told, you know, the machines, okay, we wanna be happier, what would machines do? Pump us up with dopamine. Hmm, uh, they didn't understand.

• 1:41:23Mo Gawdat?

  We didn't tell, we were not very good at explaining what we want. And then there are, there are bugs, simple mistakes. And there has been quite a few examples of those so far in AI. Where there is a bug in the system and the bug in the system leads to a mistake. Okay, those scenarios are a lot more realistic and they're around the corner. And we're not talking about.

• 1:41:44Steven Bartlett?

  Even though that was a short monologue, I'm now totally convinced.

• 1:41:49Mo Gawdat?

  We have to wake up. It is real.

• 1:41:52Steven Bartlett?

  I'm going to make sure I, I can finish your book entirely. And I would really implore everybody to read your book because I know that the way that you see the world, the perspective you come from, and especially the fact that this book isn't one that's about explaining the technology itself. It's about the real near term implications of the technology that we, you know, will impact all of our lives in considerable ways and are at the moment. Um, I really consider it to be one of the most important books of our time.

• 1:42:17Mo Gawdat?

  Um, oh, thank you.

• 1:42:18Steven Bartlett?

  And I, I have to say, to, to really conclude on that point, what therefore is the answer?

• 1:42:25Mo Gawdat?

  The answer is very straightforward and, and it's very shocking if you think about it.

• 1:42:28Steven Bartlett?

  Straightforward, I like.

• 1:42:29Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, the, the, the truth of artificial intelligence is the key answer is found in the concept that they are no longer machines. Okay, you have to internalize the idea that these are sentient beings. And the difference is if you're dealing with a machine, what you normally do to safeguard yourself is to create restrictions. You, you chain it to a wall or you, you have a safety, uh, you know, a red button or whatever.

• 1:42:58Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, unplug it.

• 1:42:59Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah. If you're dealing with sentient beings, sentient beings don't make decisions based on intelligence. Sentient beings make decisions based on ethics as informed by intelligence. So, so, you know, simply when you really think about it. Which is, again, one of my favorite chapters in the book. Is a chapter that basically speaks about, I call it raising our future. That basically speaks about the fact that those machines are going to be conscious. They're actually going to be more conscious than humans, okay? They're going to be emotional. They'll have a much wider breadth of emotions than we do, just like you have more emotions than a jellyfish.

• 1:43:41Mo Gawdat?

  If you extrapolate that, you know, the more intelligent we become, the more able we are to analyze things and accordingly, the more emotions that we can, you know, feel as a result. And the third and most important is that they will actually develop morals and a code of ethics. So they will have a view of the world through which they decide what they should do, okay? To ponder what that kind of ethical code should be when there are digital beings and biological beings and the interaction between them and their perception of time and their perception of, you know, of objectives and targets and so on. It suddenly becomes quite intriguing when you, and we're not talking about it, okay?

• 1:44:27Mo Gawdat?

  We're not talking about any of this. So the game is this. The game is if they're going to make their decisions as sentient beings based on ethics, how do you raise a sentient being that is ethical like you raise a child? The answer for me is that we, you and I, swiping on Instagram and tweeting, we need to find ways to show the machine that humanity is not represented by the scum of humanity, but is represented by the top of humanity. And most people, when I tell them this, they go like, "Oh, man, we're in trouble. Humanity sucks." No, humanity does not suck. I apologize.

• 1:45:09Mo Gawdat?

  Humanity is an amazing, amazing, amazing being when it's defined by its top. If you've ever fell in love, if you've ever, you know, listened to music, if you've ever observed a work of art, this is divine. We're an amazing species. The worst of us is scum, the best of us is amazing, okay? The problem is the best of us does not show to the machines. The best humans actually resign. They go like, yeah, let them swipe. Let the dogfight continue. I'm not interested in any of this. It's time to show up. And the best of you and I individually, in the past, humanity, every individual tried to show the best of them. Now we show the worst of us. We show narcissism.

• 1:45:54Mo Gawdat?

  We show toxic positivity. We show, you know, we show the worst of us. And that has to shift. So my answer is very straightforward. For the machines to become amazing teenagers in 10 years' time, we need to become amazing parents today. And that's truly the answer. The only answer I could find. And I promise you, Elon Musk said that in his interview with Joe Rogan. He said, "The threat of the machines is comparable to the threat of nuclear weapons." And I have lobbied. I have tried to tell the world not to go there. But it's going to happen. It's inevitable. I call them the three inevitables. The machines, AI will happen. It will be smarter than us. Okay? And some mistakes will happen in the past. It will happen.

• 1:46:36Mo Gawdat?

  But we could influence it as good parents. You and I and everyone. And it doesn't have to be everyone, by the way. We need 1%. We need to instill doubt in the minds of the machines that we are not the worst of us. We are the best of us. The example I always give is when Donald Trump used to tweet. The first tweet is Donald Trump. The second tweet is insulting the president. The third tweet is insulting the guy number one. And the fourth tweet is insulting all of them. The machines are creating patterns. They're saying, okay, the second guy doesn't like the president. And all of humanity likes to insult each other. Okay? Can we have seven tweets inserted in there that are respectful?

• 1:47:20Mo Gawdat?

  Can we show the machines, instill doubt in the minds of the machines, so that they look at the world and say, "Oh, my God, Hitler was horrible." But Hitler is not all of humanity. As a matter of fact, most of humanity resents that. Most of humanity believes that this is wrong. Mommy and daddy are good beings.

• 1:47:42Steven Bartlett?

  The only problem with this podcast is that it has to come to an end at some point. Honestly, honestly, just absolutely mind blown. And you know, the really remarkable thing about you is you're able to explain very complex ideas in relatable ways. So that whole time, I, you didn't lose me once. It's also because of your, your great passion on these subjects and you can tell you're fighting battles that, you know, you sincerely care about. And I just hope that if we are to become better parents with whatever help we need from the big tech companies, well, I mean, you're saying that it's more of a reflection of who we are. That, that day in 2055, where we're sat around that campfire, it's because we've chosen to go there for a meditation retreat as opposed to escaping the sentient beings that are controlling our lives.

• 1:48:27Steven Bartlett?

  And that's a tremendously thought provoking thing to, I think, to end on. Your book, Scary Smart, is available now for everybody.

• 1:48:38Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:48:39Steven Bartlett?

  Amazon.

• 1:48:39Mo Gawdat?

  Everywhere, your book, your bookshop, your online, on Amazon, on Audible, on.

• 1:48:45Steven Bartlett?

  All over the world as well.

• 1:48:47Mo Gawdat?

  All, all of international English and Dutch are coming out at the same time.

• 1:48:52Steven Bartlett?

  And I really, really recommend anybody that wants, wants to, to understand, but also to prepare themselves in an optimistic way for what you've described as the real pandemic of our time, to, to go out and buy that book. There is just one more thing I wanted to ask you before we wrap. And we only started this last week. The last guest that sat in the chair with you, I said to them at the very end, I said, can you write a question in this diary for my next guest? They didn't know who, who it was going to be, but they wrote a question in the diary for you. So I'm just going to skip to that page. I've actually not read the question.

• 1:49:27Mo Gawdat?

  That's such a great, great practice.

• 1:49:30Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, here we go. So the question that the previous guest wrote for you, and this is Jacqueline Gold, who is the longstanding CEO of Unsummers, just one of the most remarkable stories, business stories. I think she's the 14th richest person, woman, woman in the country. And she's gone through tremendous adversity, lost a child, battled with cancer against all the odds, stage four cancer, sexual abuse. And she, she talked about that last week. The question for you, she wrote, is what are the failures you cherish the most?

• 1:50:03Mo Gawdat?

  I have failed for many, many years to empower my feminine side.

• 1:50:09Mo Gawdat?

  It's my biggest failure ever. Still is my biggest weakness, even though I've done so much better in the last five and a half years.

• 1:50:18Mo Gawdat?

  I think our world is suffering from hyper masculinity. And I say that with my weird, deep voice, but it's the truth. We've turned it into a world of doing. We just go out there and do stuff. Mostly the wrong stuff. Mostly stuff that we don't need. Mostly stuff that doesn't nourish anyone. Okay? And it's because we've capitalized so entirely in our modern world on skills like analytical thinking, linear thinking, strengths, you know,

• 1:50:51Mo Gawdat?

  discipline, control. All of these are masculine traits. Okay? Masculine and feminine is not man and woman. Masculine and feminine is traits that are correlated to the masculine and correlated to the feminine. All those masculine traits, when you overdo them, they work against you. Strength is good. You overdo it, you become aggressive. Linear thinking is good. You overdo it, you become stubborn. And we've ignored the feminine qualities that are life-giving, nurturing, and, you know, intuitive, creative, playful, flowy. Okay? Beautiful. All of these, empathetic.

• 1:51:34Mo Gawdat?

  We've created a world that is so lacking in all of those, and I'm to blame. To become a successful executive, I had to empower, empower the masculine side. Until I realized that true leaders don't do. We be. And being is what the feminine is about. Our humanity is on the wrong side of being. We're not showing our good sides. We're not able to nourish, life-give, care. We're not able to. And I had a... I mean, most of my work is very...

• 1:52:12Mo Gawdat?

  Confusing marriage between sometimes what is physical and you know measurable and concrete and mathematical and and what is not physical. Sometimes I have to ponder topics like death and spirituality and so on. And one morning I woke up five and a half years ago and I heard my left brain tell me, that's it, that's as far as I can get you. Without being able to connect to all of being, to to go outside that shell of me versus the world, which is the masculine, we're not going to go anywhere further. If there is anything that I have failed miserably to do was was to do that early enough. And if anything our world is failing to do is to embrace that side.

• 1:52:57Mo Gawdat?

  Sadly, as we empower women today, we force them to become masculine. We force them to become competitive. We force them to become tough because the way the game is played is that way. We should empower the feminine. And and and it's so funny when you really think about it, even someone like Steve Jobs or Gandhi or who are men in their biology, they succeeded because they empowered their feminine. Steve Jobs creativity or appreciation of beauty or empathy for the user needs, that's what made him Steve Jobs. Being obnoxious and annoying, that's what took away from it, the masculine side. Hmm. And it's about time that the world wakes up to this. When we raise the machines, by the way, going back to Scary Smart, are we going to raise

• 1:53:40Mo Gawdat?

  them to be masculine geeks? Or are we going to raise them to be life giving? I think really this is the biggest failure ever for me and I think for all of our society.

• 1:53:54Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, fuck. That was really powerful.

• 1:53:57Mo Gawdat?

  It's true.

• 1:53:58Steven Bartlett?

  And it's so true. And you know what? I was thinking that whole time. My my girlfriend is in Bali at the moment.

• 1:54:04Mo Gawdat?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:05Steven Bartlett?

  And she's been talking to me extensively about being more in touch with the feminine and what they call, you know, yin, which is, you know, the

• 1:54:12Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely.

• 1:54:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yin and yang energy. So it all rang very, very true. And I think you really helped me make sense of all that in a very, again, relatable, understandable way. And I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to carry on this tradition by writing a question into the diary, which will be shown to my next guest, but it will remain a secret until then. Listen, I can't thank you enough, you know, sometimes I thank people for the time. I think I want to thank you for the lessons that you've taught me in this conversation that will really make my life a lot better. And, you know, the thing is as well is I, I sit here every week imparting what I know. So long after you walk out of this door, because you've left me with those lessons, I'm going to spend the rest of my life on this podcast, talking about them.

• 1:54:53Mo Gawdat?

  Great.

• 1:54:53Steven Bartlett?

  As I do, and also talking about your book, right? So there's a couple of guests that I encounter and I just spend the next 10 years of my life just battling on.

• 1:55:00Mo Gawdat?

  Thank you.

• 1:55:00Steven Bartlett?

  So you're one of those really, really profound people. And I understand, we said this before we started filming, but my manager, Don Murray, when he started on like the first week of his job here, and he started learning about the podcast, he said to me, he said, you've got to get this guy called Mo on. He's Google X. And I was like, I don't, you know, just I hadn't had the name.

• 1:55:17Mo Gawdat?

  You're the man. You're the man. I'm grateful.

• 1:55:18Steven Bartlett?

  And he kept saying it and then, and then it wasn't just him. And this is where it got really sort of reinforced. Other people were coming on the podcast, telling me that I had to get you on over and over again. And you hear that, you hear this name three, four, five times, you think, fuck, okay, there's something that I need to, you know, this is definitely something I need to do. And then, you know, someone in our team said, oh, Mo's in London. So we had to reach out and I'm so deeply grateful that you came.

• 1:55:43Mo Gawdat?

  So grateful that you did. I'm really grateful for the time that you gave me and the opportunity to share some of what I am pondering. It might, it's not right, but it's really worth thinking about.

• 1:55:54Steven Bartlett?

  And it's a great, great thing you're doing for the world by, by sharing that. Honestly, I don't say this, I'm not, I don't gas my guests up like this, but it is really of tremendous value and, you know, just, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

• 1:56:06Mo Gawdat?

  Thank you.