Podbit · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Riz Ahmed told people from marginalised backgrounds that the very thing creating resistance in their lives is also the key that unlocks something no one else can offer. He felt like an alien at Oxford. He's grateful now he stuck it out. The obstacle is the way.
Where this was said
At 1:18:40 · chapter starts 1:12:32
The episode closes with Jay's signature Final Five questions, brought to you by State Farm. Best advice ever received: Idris Elba's 'categorize yourself not' — stop internalising the limitations others place on you or you're doing their limiting work for them. [1] — Riz Ahmed "When Riz Ahmed hit a glass ceiling in the UK, Idris Elba told him simply: 'Categorize yourself not.' The point was devastating in its clari…" 1:16:15 Worst advice: a casting director who told the young Riz his wide, animated eyes made him look like a psychopath, leaving him stiff and self-conscious for years. Biggest lesson from his wife: devotion — to a path, a purpose, a creativity — as a form of prayer. Their love story began when she needed to borrow his laptop charger in a New York café; six years on, she still borrows it. What he prays for: health, the ability to provide with dignity (rozi roti), and for everyone he loves to be brought closer to their purpose. He also describes his first adult pilgrimage to Mecca as extraordinary — 50,000 people from every country on earth, masks stripped, walking in a circle together, a sense of oneness unlike anything he has experienced. [2] — Riz Ahmed "Riz Ahmed went to Mecca as a spiritually sceptical Muslim. What he found was something beyond religion: tens of thousands of people from ev…" 1:24:15 His one law for the world: everyone goes back to dumb phones, or at minimum, everyone agrees to put them away for stretches of the day. [3] — Riz Ahmed "Met his wife because she lost her laptop charger: Riz Ahmed met his wife (novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza) in a New York café when she needed…" 1:23:10 Time feels different without the phone. Ideas bubble up. He is a little bit closer to being obsessed with the Velcro on the shoe.
When Riz Ahmed hit a glass ceiling in the UK, Idris Elba told him simply: 'Categorize yourself not.' The point was devastating in its clarity — by pigeonholing yourself, you're doing other people's limiting work for them. Riz took the advice. He went to America.
Idris Elba told Riz Ahmed 'categorize yourself not' when Riz felt stuck in the UK — advice that unlocked his path to Hollywood.
We tell ourselves: when I'm successful, I'll finally be myself. Riz Ahmed flips it. The people who become most successful are the ones who were most unapologetically themselves first. Specificity and authenticity are what people are actually attracted to — not the polished, diluted version.
Riz Ahmed met his wife (novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza) in a New York café when she needed to borrow his laptop charger — and she still borrows it 6 years into their marriage.
Riz Ahmed went to Mecca as a spiritually sceptical Muslim. What he found was something beyond religion: tens of thousands of people from every country on earth, dressed identically, walking in a circle together — every mask stripped, a profound sense of oneness. He promised himself he'd bottle the feeling. He got back on his phone on the plane home.
Social media feeds men and women the absolute worst caricatures of each other while stripping away the everyday, imperfect relationships that would calibrate their expectations. Combine that with smaller families and fewer cross-sex friendships, and you get a generation that talks about the opposite sex constantly but almost never to them.
The 'would you rather be alone with a man or a bear' debate went viral not because men are objectively more dangerous than ever, but because an entire fear industrial complex of influencers and safety products had already primed women to feel that way. Once the algorithm identifies you as worried about personal safety, the content and the scrunchie drink-covers never stop.
Women feel less safe not because danger has increased, but because trust in institutions — police, churches, schools — that used to enforce safety norms has collapsed. Young women are far less likely than older women to believe those institutions will handle sexual assault responsibly, leaving them with only individual self-protection as a fallback.
Even self-identified feminist women consistently told Daniel Cox in interviews and surveys that they want men to open doors, pay for dates, and show demonstrable care. The internet noise around 'benevolent sexism' drowns out this widespread, quietly held preference.
In focus groups in Philadelphia and Raleigh, every single hand went up when participants were asked if parents discussed financial stability and education. Zero hands went up for marriage or parenthood. Parents are shaping their children's ambitions with total silence on the experiences that matter most.
American families are smaller than ever, with roughly 1 in 5 children now growing up as only children. Without the daily friction of siblings — shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, resolving disagreements — young people enter adult relationships without the negotiation muscles relationships require.
Online dating optimises for your existing preferences rather than expanding your horizons. People who meet online give bad first dates almost no second chances; people who meet through mutual friends are far more forgiving. The disembodied, checklist-driven nature of apps removes all the social cues that actually reveal character.
A split-sample survey found that men judge male and female cheating identically harshly, and women judge male cheating the same way men do. The outlier: young women are dramatically less likely to call female infidelity morally wrong, suggesting shared-fate thinking and personal experience of being cheated on are reshaping the moral calculus.
The monk mode trend encourages men to withdraw from social life to work on themselves — but this is precisely backwards. The research is clear: close friendships are the single most powerful predictor of whether a man dates, commits, and becomes his best self. Self-improvement without social reintegration is just sophisticated avoidance.
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