Podbit · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Riz Ahmed believes his inner critic was so relentless it caused an autoimmune condition — his body literally turned on itself. Two years after winning an Emmy for The Night Of, he was still waking at night to run scenes. He calls shame the thing that can actually kill you.
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At 42:30 · chapter starts 39:15
Emerging from his hospitalisation, Riz Ahmed began making the connection between his psychological state and his physical collapse. [1] — Riz Ahmed "Riz Ahmed believes his inner critic was so relentless it caused an autoimmune condition — his body literally turned on itself. Two years af…" 42:30 Citing The Body Keeps the Score, he argues that he was at war with himself: his inner critic so ferocious, his shame so deep, that his body had literally turned on itself in an autoimmune response. He gives a telling example: two years after winning an Emmy for The Night Of — after the show had aired and his career was at a peak — he was still waking in the middle of the night to rehearse scenes, his critical voice insisting he wasn't good enough. The shame he felt around his illness — not wanting anyone to see him weak, nearly dying — kept it private for years. But he frames the creation of Mogul Mowgli, Sound of Metal, and Bait as his act of defiance against that shame: owning the experience, losing the shame, making work from the most personal place as an act of healing.
Lying in an NHS hospital ward, unable to walk or lift his arms, Riz Ahmed was moved to tears by a pigeon on his windowsill. He hadn't earned that moment of beauty. That realisation — that everything he had was a gift — became the spiritual foundation he carried back into the world.
Riz Ahmed believes his autoimmune illness was caused by his inner critical voice being so relentless that his body literally turned on itself — a thesis also explored in The Body Keeps the Score.
Two years after winning an Emmy for The Night Of, Riz Ahmed still woke in the middle of the night to rehearse scenes — his inner critic saying he wasn't good enough despite the award.
Anxiety is not fear. Fear has an object — a wolf, a threat. Anxiety is the vertigo of standing at the edge of infinite possibility and knowing that choosing any one thing closes off all the others. Kierkegaard argued that the depth of your anxiety is proportional to the depth of your potential.
AI nailed Andrew Huberman's vertigo-vs-low-blood-pressure diagnosis because that pattern has been reported millions of times. But every patient's liver is different and data on liver surgeries is scarce worldwide — making solo robot surgery dangerous. The rule is simple: data abundance means AI can help; data scarcity means keep the human in the loop.
Fei-Fei Li's father had liver surgery performed by a da Vinci robot guided by a surgeon. The result: 10 times less blood loss than a typical procedure. This isn't replacement — it's the gold standard of human-machine collaboration, where the human's judgment and the robot's precision combine.
US drug overdose deaths fell from 110,000 to roughly 70,000 — the biggest CDC-recorded single-year drop ever. Men's rates fell 27% in one year, and the steepest decline of all was among 15–24-year-olds, down 37%. The crisis narrative around young men needs to make room for signs of genuine progress.
Kessler thought his grief expertise would protect him. It didn't. When his son David died unexpectedly, he found himself on the floor — and eventually realized that acceptance alone wasn't enough. That unmet need became the sixth stage: finding meaning.
Grief isn't just death — it's any unwanted change. Kessler lectured at Coca-Cola and General Mills not because they had lots of funerals, but because change management is grief management. People who grieve well live well.
Witnessing someone's grief isn't just emotional support — it's an essential act of healing. Kessler argues grief is a severance and connection heals it. But real witnessing has two steps: seeing the pain AND affirming the person's capacity to recover.
Avoiding grief isn't free — it's exhausting. Kessler's beach ball metaphor nails it: pushing a small balloon down is easy, but holding a massive beach ball underwater takes constant, draining energy. Unattended feelings don't disappear; they just consume you.
Most people try to control their environment to avoid triggers. Kessler flips this entirely: triggers aren't problems to manage around — they're a detailed map to your pain and your healing. Every trigger points directly to what needs attention.
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