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

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Sony Music

Society & Culture

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	if we drop our egos as humans, we realize the gift. Love is not about sleeping together.
0:06.0	How similar or not do you feel heartbreakers to grief?
0:14.0	Identical.
0:15.0	Welcome to How to Fail. This is the podcast that believes, as Truman Capote did, that failures are the condiment that
0:22.2	gives success their flavour. Before we get onto this episode, I just want to give you a quick
0:27.2	reminder to subscribe so you never miss a How to Fail conversation. Life's been full on lately,
0:36.3	in the best possible way. I've just wrapped up a world win national tour for my latest book. And while it's been an incredible experience, it's also been kind of exhausting. And honestly, I know I'm not alone and feeling like there just aren't enough hours in the day. Between work, family, friends and the general chaos of being an adult, even finding
0:55.8	time to eat properly can feel like a luxury. That's where Uber Eats steps in, because let's be
1:02.7	real, adulting is a lot. Uber Eats gives me one fewer thing to worry about. It's fast, easy and means
1:10.3	you can actually enjoy a moment of calm,
1:12.8	even if it's just flopping on the sofa in peace. So next time you're feeling like you've done
1:17.5	just enough, let Uber Eats take care of the rest. When you've done enough, order some food on Uber
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	...

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