How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Emma Dabiri - ‘We are still so obsessed with how we look’

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

This episode of How To Fail was recorded in front of a live audience at Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy theatre. Emma Dabiri is a broadcaster, historian, and bestselling author whose work delves into the complexities of identity, culture, and race through art history and current affairs. She's now written a number of books - culture shifting works which are a radical re-imagining of what we consider to be beauty. Her first book was an Irish Times bestseller and inspired a conversation around race that led to change regulations in schools and in the British Army. It was later adapted into an award-winning documentary. She's a fellow in African studies at London, SOAS and is the mother of two boys. Over on Failing with Friends, Emma talks about advice for someone in the audience who feels their singleness is a failure; what success looks like; when to know when to stop fertility treatment, and Elizabeth and Emma’s thoughts on Botox among other things! To hear Emma tackling your failures join our community of subscribers here: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com 🌎 Get an exclusive 15% discount on your first Saily data plans! Use code [howtofail] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to to https://saily.com/howtofail ⛵ Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Mix Engineer: Richie Lee Live Engineer: Will Kontargyris Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini 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 [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know that you can hear all of the things that my guests might have failed to divulge in the main episode by joining us in our subscriber community, Failing With Friends? It's where you will hear really riveting pieces of information like Olivia Atwood's dream date location or Miranda Hart's advice on performing bodily functions in front of your partner. Just follow the link in the podcast notes and we will see you there. Welcome to How To Fail. This week it's with the brilliant Emma Dabury, live from the Baudgosh Energy Theatre Dublin. I hope you love it as much as we did. This emphasis on our appearance is just, you know, so, so, so dominant.

And I bought like whatever the, however much booze you could buy, I bought, I bought like all the bottles of vodka. My life just felt like I was like in a hip hop like music video, like it was so different to like Dublin in the 90s. As someone who loves a trip away, being connected to home and the rest of the world when I'm overseas is an absolute must. I mean, I need to have my daily FaceTime check-ins with my cat Huxley and, yeah, I guess catch up on work emails and stuff. Now, something that can make this all possible is Salie, a new eSIM service app that allows you to choose from several affordable eSIM plans in over 190 countries so that with Salie eSIM,

you'll always have a connection when needed. I hate the idea of getting lost abroad and not having access to maps on my phone when there's no Wi-Fi spot in sight. It's so stressful. So why not remove that stress completely with a local SIM card that saves you money on roaming fees? It's super simple to use, you only have to install it once, and it's much more affordable than roaming. You can also activate Salie's security features and browse more confidently. Download the Salie app in your app store. Use code HOWtofail at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. Emma Dabury is a broadcaster, historian and bestselling author whose work delves into the complexities of identity, culture and race through art history and current affairs.

She was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Nigerian father, after spending her early years in Atlanta in the US, the family returned to Dublin when Dabiri was five, an experience which saw her become the target of racism and informed much of her later work. Books in many ways were her refuge. So it's a heartening twist of fate that she's now written three culture-shifting works, Don't Touch My Hair, What White People Can Do Next, and Disobedient Bodies, which was a radical reimagining of what we consider to be beauty. Her first book was an Irish Times bestseller and inspired a conversation around race that

led to change regulations in schools and in the British Army. It was later adapted into an award-winning documentary. She is a regular on TV presenting several series for the BBC as well as taking part in debates on Question Time and Have I Got News for You. Alongside this she's a fellow in African studies at London's SOAS and is the mother of two boys. All I ever really dreamed of when I was younger was having two children and writing a book, Dabiri recently wrote. Well, I've got two beautiful babes and I've written three books with more on the way.

Anything additional now is just blessings on blessings. Dublin, please welcome to the stage the one and only Emma Dabbery. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Blessings upon blessings. I'm so blessed to have you here with me, because you almost didn't get here, Emma. Yeah, there was circumstances were conspiring against me, but yeah. Tell me what the driver said when you were stuck in traffic on the way to the airport. How important is it that you get to Dublin today? I was just like, that's like the worst question.

I wanted to start really with the importance of books for you. So I mentioned in the introduction that books were your refuge. What were some of the books that you remember as a child reaching for? I read like really, really widely. I read like whatever I could get my hands on. And I think like the first book I read on my own was like a Victorian children's book called Five Children and It. Yeah, I think I read that one as about six.

And I think that's that's what got me like obsessed with books. I also read like a lot of stuff by like black authors or books with black characters. And it was actually remarkable how many of them I was able to find in the 1980s in Ireland. And a lot of that I always shout out out this bookshop and my friend who's in the audience, her mom actually worked there at the time, but it's called Books Upstairs. And that had a lot of books, that had a lot of books by like black authors. When I got older, I realized it was actually quite like a radical bookshop and it had a lot of black authors, Marxist authors. So I think I was like exposed to a lot of the ideas that really

went on to like inform my work and the direction that my life took in terms of what I studied, but from some of those books. But that's the kind of stuff I was reading from a young age and was really fascinated by. And I think that just brings it home to us the power of a great bookshop and people who really care about books running those bookshops. So shout out to all of them. Yeah, big time. So much of your work deals with what we think of as beauty and unpacking that and unpacking it in various ways, including the ways in which it oppresses us. And we're going to talk a bit more about that, but I just wonder if I could start by asking

you now, what beauty means to you, Emma? Oh, wow. When I was writing Disobedient Bodies, I really wanted to think about beauty just beyond something that was physical and... physical visual, and maybe quite superficial in ways. And not to disregard the visual as immaterial,

but to think about how beauty could be understood as a verb. Beauty could be something that one does, or how one behaves, like beauty as an action. So maybe thinking about beauty in terms of our behavior, how we are and the things that we do. And I drew on like a concept for, so my paternal, my dad is Nigerian, he's Yoruba,

and I studied and taught Yoruba philosophy at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies. So I feel like I draw on ideas from that kind of tradition quite a lot. But they had this, in the kind of pre-colonial context, they had this idea of outer beauty. But also very important was this concept of of inner beauty, which was actually somebody's like character and their integrity.

And actually, without having inner beauty, which was what animated the outer beauty, outer beauty wasn't really something that was held in particularly high esteem. So it was far more about kind of like, yeah, character and integrity. There's this idea of connectedness and integrity, which I really admire and appreciate. And you introduced me to a new word through reading your work. Ocular centrism. Yes. Which makes me sound very clever.

But explain to us what that means, particularly in this time of social media and the sort of visual importance we place on those little grids on Instagram. Yeah, when I discovered the concept of Okulocentrism as well, I was just like, wow, this is like, I felt kind of like mind blown. So obviously we have like lots of different senses, but in Western kind of philosophical traditions, sight became privileged as the noblest of the senses. So sight was prioritized as the kind of,

as the preeminent or the most important sense. And we're kind of told that this idea that you can't judge a book by its cover, but we are going to be really sweat. We believe that we can see something. We look at something and we believe like we can make a value judgment. We make a value judgment based on the appearance of the thing or the person or the object, on how the thing looks

on its appearance or the person's appearance. And I think I believed that that was something that was universal and that was just like, it's just human nature. And when I discovered that it's actually not human nature, it's a particular way of approaching the world called ocular centricism and discovered that there have been many, many other cultures and many in different places and times throughout history that actually didn't see sight as the preeminent sense. So there wasn't really a belief that you would

look at something and be able to kind of make a judgment or infer the value of the thing or the person from its appearance. That would be measured in other ways that are not visible. So fascinating, because you also make this excellent point that representation can only go so far. So purely because we might see ourselves represented now. I think your phrase was we're not feeling any better about ourselves just through seeing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's been such an expansion on the types of the features and the types of people who can be perceived as beautiful. You know, the boundaries of that have expanded

hugely from our childhoods, even in the past 10 years. But I still feel that there's like a limitation because we are still so preoccupied and obsessed with how people look and how we look. And I think the visual landscape that we inhabit, the way so much of our lives and interactions are mediated through social media, this emphasis on our appearance is just so, so, so dominant. So while the beauty standard has been expanded or diversified, the way we look is still given like far too much emphasis. And I think it can be very, can just be very destructive and very oppressive in many ways. Final question before we get on to your failures. So how do you personally cope with that? Because you do have a sort of Instagram presence,

although I know that you're careful about it. How do you cope? You know, I'm pretty active on there. In terms of like protecting myself or presenting myself. I guess they're both intertwined, but primarily protecting yourself. Yeah, I actually, I don't really scroll like that much. So I feel like I'm not, I try not to be bombarded with too many images of other women. Like I don't want to be caught up in

a cycle of constant, constant comparison. We're just bombarded with so many images. I feel like we just need to protect ourselves. I read a great deal. I read a lot of books and they don't have pictures. Yes. You post, you bounce, you eat a spice bag. Yeah, exactly. That's your mantra for life. I interviewed Yuval Noah Harari for this podcast and he talks about going on an information diet in the same way that people are careful about what they eat or want to work out the gym. He actually does that for his mind. He just gives himself space from information. Yeah.

I mean, he takes it to an extreme. He meditates for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. Wow. But that's why he's a giant brain. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Now, if you're an entrepreneur like me, or living the creative freelance life, then Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or nurturing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a stunning website and engage with your audience. My website was designed on Squarespace and I found it so user-friendly and easy.

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use offer code fail 10 to save 10% off your first purchase of a website and domain. My schedule has been so hectic recently, running around trying to keep on top of my writing days, my podcast recordings, there are live shows coming up. It's super exciting, but that's just work. Amongst all of this, I'm conscious of making time for my husband, my wider family, and my friends. And I need all the help I can get coordinating everyone's schedules to make sure we all have time to meet up. That's where the Life360 app comes in. It's a location sharing app that makes coordinating your family's daily routines and activities so much smoother. You can just open up the app to see real-time locations for everyone in your family, eliminating

the stress of wondering where everyone is, and saving you from constantly asking where they are. It means I'm not messaging my husband all the time asking where he is or how long it is until he gets home. I don't have to bother him with the extra admin. Get peace of mind knowing where everyone in your family is at any given time. Life360 keeps you connected and works whether you're on iPhone or Android. Download the app today and family-proof your family with Life360. So your first failure, Emma, is that you failed Irish in your junior leaving cert. And you put in brackets, big deal in Ireland.

Okay. Yeah. Tell us the story. That was for drama. So I didn't actually fail. Okay. But I did do foundation Irish, which in and of itself is a failure. I think I got a B though, to be fair.

There's like honours and pass. Honours Irish, pass Irish. And then for a special small selection of us, there's Foundation. I think probably three people in my year did Foundation. I just really, really struggled in school. I got diagnosed as being hyperactive when I was about nine. I think I was eight actually. Nothing was done about it.

I just kind of continued. I just had, I found it very, very difficult to concentrate in school. I just can't really learn in that kind of environment. And I particularly struggled with Irish. And I think what was going on there was that, first of all, the way it was taught to us, it was very punitive.

Like it just, it felt like you were being punished the way it was taught to us. And I also associated with punishment because, like, you could only go to the toilet, like, if you could ask in Irish. Oh my God. Yeah. Or if you got in trouble, which for me was quite frequently, you'd have to write lines and I'd have to write the lines in Irish.

So, like, I associated, I associated Irish language with punishment. And then it was just like it's such an extraordinarily fascinating and beautiful language that as an adult, I have tried to go back and learn. So my relationship with the Irish language is like unrecognizable to what it was when I was a child. And I think that just goes to show there was such a real failure, actually, in the way in the way it was in the way it was presented to us. I think none of the magic that exists within it was apparent to me,

was made apparent to us. It also just felt like a dead and useless thing that was a waste of time. That's the way it was presented. When I'm back in Dublin now or in Ireland, like more generally, and there are just so many people who are Irish and who aren't white, I almost feel what my childhood was like didn't happen, because it's so dramatically different to how it is today. And the fact that such change has occurred over such a short period of time

is like kind of mind blowing. But when I was growing up, I was like very much, very, very much an anomaly. And so there was quite like a constant like refrain that I wasn't really Irish. So I was being told this all the time, having to learn this language that I didn't enjoy learning, that I associated with being punished, that didn't feel relevant to my life. When I was told that I wasn't even this thing,

I just felt very disconnected from it and kind of like just very resentful towards it. So you had to do it in school, like it wasn't an option. Yeah, I was just like scraping through, I just hadn't learned anything, so I ended up in this kind of remedial place. Yeah. One of the things that I feel first bonded us was the similarity, although by no means the equivalence of our childhood experience,

in that you moved to Dublin when you were five and I moved to Derry when I was four. And obviously, as you can hear, I did not pick up the accent. And if you've seen Derry Girls, which I sincerely hope you have, I'm like the weird English cousin, James. Yeah. And I constantly felt like that I was making excuses for living there, even though it was my home, And I still consider it my home.

And it was really amazing to speak to you about that feeling of outsidership, even though it is your home. And I wonder if I could ask you a bit more about it from your specific perspective, which is one of race, because you do, you wrote in Don't Touch My Hair about some of the exchanges that you had with friends and nuns. There was a nun who wanted to look at your teeth. She didn't want to look at my teeth. She actually pulled my lips back and exposed my teeth. Do you mind talking to us a bit about... God, I wrote that ages ago, but yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. God. Also, when I moved here as

well, I had an American accent as well. So it wasn't just, it wasn't just race. It was also like my accent, but I got a Dublin accent like pretty, pretty quick. Yeah. So a school friend of mine, her great aunt had been like a nun in Nigeria. She was very elderly and we went to visit her in, I think, a home for her elderly nuns. I don't know why she brought me with her. I actually don't even know why I went. But we ended up there. We went in and I think, like she, I think the aunt was like quite senile by this stage.

She was very elderly. She saw me and her eyes just like lit off. I don't know that she knew I was Nigerian, but she obviously knew I was black and of African descent. She just kind of like came over and she was just like, I can't even remember exactly what she said, but she was saying something about you people always have beautiful teeth. And she kind of pulled my lip off. I was just like, what? I was about 12. So yeah, I had just weird, I had so many weird situations like that happen to me. But the, the sleepover, yeah. So one of my friends, well, my former friends, we're no longer friends. But this was, this was a very long time ago when we were teenagers. We had like a slumber party at her house and I remember

like the next morning she started screaming and like squealing and everyone was just like oh my god like what's happening what's happening and she was just like there's pubes in my bed there's pubes in my bed and then she like picked one up and then she was just like oh no it's just Emma's hair and everybody was laughing. Yeah I was like 14 and I was already like really insecure about my hair and just felt aware of my otherness. So that was just felt really like degrading and I don't know, exposing. And I feel like because I was really isolated, it wasn't like I had other friends that were going through anything similar. I just felt like very, very alienated and like very alone in those kind of things.

And they're just like two examples. This stuff was like pretty like constant, things like that. I know that you don't like to talk about age necessarily because you make- I'm not averse to it either. But I think with a similar age. With the same age. Okay. So we grew up at a similar time.

And the culture... The exact same time. The exact same time. Yes. Again, that's why I sheathed the brain. No, no, no. I appreciate your... Yes.

Like trying not to like put me on blast, but my age is out there. It's all good. And there was also this cultural fetishisation of thinness. Oh, yeah. How did you experience that? So I think much like all my friends, I just wanted to be as skinny as possible. That was very much the beauty standard, to just be very, very thin.

But again, like in that context, my body shape was quite different. And again, it's weird because like now when there is so much more diversity in the world, there's nothing I think that would particularly stand out about my body in that way. But at that time, like I didn't even really know that sometimes black women have like, you know, maybe like a more rounded posterior. So I was just, why is my arse so fat? Why did, and all my friends, oh my God, that thigh gap had us like in a chokehold,

but most of my friends like had a thigh gap, but I could be like six stone. I've never been six stone, but I could be six stone. I still wouldn't have a thigh gap because I have like a bigger bum. I also have like bigger thighs, like there's no gap, but I just thought that was fat, like I just thought that was me being like obese. But it was literally, you know, just, I guess like, you know, like a racialized feature, like I had a different body shape to my friends. And this was also before having a bigger bum had been like popularized, you know, like this is pre-Cardassians, etc cetera. So I just felt like very self-conscious and also like weirdly sexualized.

Like I remember we'd all kind of wear the same clothes but I remember like we'd all have these little bodycon like dresses and my friend just being like, oh no, you can't wear them because you look like a prostitute. Oh my God, these friends. Right? Yeah. Did you feel Irish then and Did you feel Irish then? And do you feel Irish now?

Yeah, it's so interesting. I not just feel I'm so Irish, especially not living in Ireland. I feel like very rooted in and kind of like grounded by being Irish actually. But when I was growing up here, no, I didn't. Primarily just because I was always told that I wasn't, that I wasn't really. I was just like, you know, as soon as I can leave, yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to university. Like, I really wanted to go to America,

but I never, we're gonna come to that. I went to the UK. And it was moving to London that made me have to really like confront my Irishness, or just made me initially like aware of how Irish I was. Like I got a really, really big culture shock when I moved to London. There were so many things about me that I just thought were my personality or just me. And I realized in the UK that these were actually things that were very Irish, like that my perspective, my worldview, my sense of humor, so many things about me were Irish.

And then I was just like, how do I reconcile that with feeling like I can't, like I've had to leave and always being like, okay, well, I'm not, I don't feel accepted there. So I'm not going to like beg going to beg to be considered Irish. So I had also kind of rejected Irishness. And then leaving and discovering how Irish I was was a bit of an identity crisis. So that really took me quite a few years to reconcile. You said earlier that you felt alienated and there wasn't someone that you could talk to

and I just wonder whether one of the guiding motivations for doing the work that you do, for having written the books that you've written, is to be that person for your younger self or for someone else who's going through it now. Yeah, like you know what, I don't think I've really like conceived of it as me as a younger person, but I do think for other people, I don't think I realized how many people across the world had very similar experiences.

And not even always about race, but just like some level of outsidersness, you know? It's actually pretty common. So I feel like writing out of outsider-ness, you know, it's actually pretty common. So I feel like riding out of a place of maybe like loneliness or like outsider-ness and then that giving you community or like that being the vehicle that then creates community is like something that just I'm kind of overawed by. So beautifully put. just I'm kind of overawed by. So beautifully put.

And that's exactly my experience of this podcast, really. That ability to show up as my flawed self and be accepted by this community, who also have their flaws and the strength to explore that vulnerability, that is an agent for such powerful change. Yeah, absolutely. Let's get onto your second failure because you mentioned it briefly there.

So it's a failure, interestingly, all of your failures are academic. I know. Which you only realized today. Yeah, when we were running through it, yeah. So your second failure is failing to get a scholarship to study in America, which had been your dream, hadn't it? And so instead you went to the UK as a plan B. Yeah. So as someone who

I imagine, because of this sense of outsidership, your intelligence, did it become a really important factor to you for your identity and your self worth? Not in terms of being like a high achiever in school. Like I said, I really, really struggled in school. Like I did well in like English and history because they were the only two things that I could like concentrate on

and just had a kind of natural, it's like if I had a natural attitude for something, I could do it, but like anything else just felt like virtually impossible in that context. But I had always been an avid reader. So I was quite like scholarly, like kind of in an independent way, but not in terms of like academic success.

But I knew that I really wanted to like go to university and study something that I was like really, really passionate about. So what did you want to go and study? So I wanted to go to a university called Spelman, which is a HBCU, which is a historically black college. And these historically black colleges were set up in America during like segregation

when black people weren't able to go to universities that white Americans could go to. But there's a few of them like Spelman, Morehouse, Howard, that had like grown into these really like prestigious institutions. But the idea for me then of being somewhere that was a black space was really appealing after the feelings of isolation and alienation that I had experienced growing up. The reason that I had been in Atlanta when I was a kid was because my, so my Nigerian granddad came to Ireland to study

in the 1940s, he went to Trinity. And then they moved back to Nigeria, but my dad had been in Ireland for a little while as a child and had like kind of very happy memories of it actually. So when he came to go to university, when it was time for him to go to university, he also wanted to come back to Ireland. So he came here, went to UCD, met my mum, decided he didn't like UCD

and wanted to go to HBCU. So I wanted to go to Morehouse, which Morehouse and Spellman is like a man's college and it's actually gendered, like a man's college and Spellman is like the woman's one. So my dad had gone to the man's one and then I wanted to go to the woman's one, because it was kind of like in the family. So there was a lot wrapped up in this for you. Yeah. So when you failed to get the scholarship, did it really feel crushing?

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to go there so badly. I had come back to Ireland, spent my childhood here and my teens, and then my parents separated. We all came back here from America. Then my dad spent about two more years here and was just like, I'm out. He went back to Nigeria. And then we were like estranged. I didn't speak to him again until I was like maybe 16. He came back to Ireland to see us. Once I spoke, once we got

back in contact, I connected with the rest of his family, lots of whom were still in Atlanta. So I started going back to Atlanta as a teenager. So like all of my friends would go like interrailing like around Europe or they'd go to like Berlin, they'd go to like the Berlin love parade. We were all like massive ravers, but I wouldn't go with them. I'd be like, oh, I'm going to go to Atlanta. So I was like spending my summers in Atlanta. And this was like Atlanta in the 90s. Like it was absolutely popping. My life just felt like I was like in a hip hop music video.

Like it was so different to like Dublin in the 90s. I was like literally obsessed with it. So I wanted to go to university there. Yeah. And I was like, I wanted to be like a cheerleader and like all of that like American college campus stuff. And then I didn't get in. And that sense of belonging, which must've just felt so important,

belonging in terms of being closer to your dad, but also belonging in a place that felt like your people. Yeah, it was actually a weird one because it was like I belonged... From the way I looked, I belonged. But then as soon as I, like, opened my mouth or spoke, or just even, like, culturally, I was so different. So I guess I did have, like, that kind of schism

or identity thing there as well, in that, like, culturally, I was... The South, particularly in the 90s like the black culture in Atlanta is like something very specific and I was a girl from Rialto very very different I remember like going over and this was like in the days where like Judy Free was like really exciting and I bought like whatever the however much booze you could buy I bought I bought like all the bottles of vodka this was the first time I was meeting my cousins as well. And I think I turned up with like two liters of vodka. It was like a Saturday and I was like, oh, like are we going out tonight?

And they were just like, no. I was just like, so are we going to drink these? Like, and they were really like, they were really shocked. They were really shocked. That wasn't like normal behavior there. So yeah, there was again, like this big culture shock and them just being like a bit, you know, kind of confused by me as well. And it was weird because here, I think the way I behaved, like I was just culturally like, you know, completely Irish, but then the way I looked didn't fit. And there it was like the way I looked fit,

but the way I was there didn't. So I just actually, I felt kind of like uneasy there as well. So when you went to the UK and that was your plan B, yeah, was that another level of culture shock? Yes. I hadn't really spent that much time in England before. And I didn't understand, like, how different English culture was to Irish culture until I was in it.

And then so I went to SOAS and Land and African Studies. And that just had, like, a very particular type of person as well that I had never, ever encountered before, like this kind of trust-a-farian class of person. So just these very, very privileged white English people. I'd never heard of a gap year before. Like, so everyone had just doing African studies or learning Chinese. Everyone was studying something to do Africa or Asia.

And most of them, it was because their parents had been like diplomats in one of those countries and they'd maybe been born there, or many of them had spent like a gap year in Kenya and were like obsessed with Africa. And I was just like, these people are mad. And again, me whipped by vodka and I was just like, and they'd all be drinking like herbal tea and doing like poi and playing like, kind of like African thumb pianos and stuff.

And I was just like not ready. I wish I'd known you then. I wish we'd known you then. I wish we'd known you to do that. So what do you think this failure ended up giving you? Apart from an annoyance with Gap Beatrice de Farias, who played African thumb pianos. You know what, I feel like if I'd gone to America, as Atlanta specifically, I would have like completely assimilated.

I wanted to be American like so badly. And I feel like I would have just completely assimilated. And now I'd be a yank. Right. And I'm glad that I'm not. I'm just joking. I love America. Great deal. I feel like I've retained my Irishness more

because I went to England than I might have if I went to America. I don't know if that makes sense. I feel like London is such a multicultural and like diverse place. And I actually think because of the relationship specifically between Ireland and the UK, me remaining very aware,

well, first of all, becoming very aware. But then after that, just remaining very aware, well, first of all, becoming very aware. But then after that, just remaining very aware of my Irishness just had a very different flavor to I think how it would have if I'd gone to Atlanta. And also, I'm just really happy with like what I studied and like the direction that my life has gone in. Like England has been good to me, like, you know, I think things worked out pretty well there. And then I also, because I'm a slightly impulsive little nutter, got engaged to this guy that I met in a mall in Atlanta.

OK. After about six weeks of knowing him. And I feel like if I'd moved there, I would have married him and that would have been a disaster. Wow. So many questions. Because initially I thought you said you'd met him in a morgue. She said a mall.

So it was like, in a morgue. Not a morgue, but I kind of wish. Have you stayed in touch? Have you stayed in touch? We reconnected about 10 years later and we actually met up a few years ago, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But not like romantically, just catching up.

Okay. Yeah. This episode of How To Fail is brought to you by BetterHelp. I know firsthand that stress and anxiety can show up in all kinds of ways and people don't always realize the physical symptoms like headaches, teeth grinding and even digestive issues. In a world that's telling you to do more, sleep less and grind all the time, here's your reminder to take care of yourself and maybe try

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Get the tools to manage your anxiety with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com forward slash how to fail. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com forward slash how to fail. If you don't know about flyer deals on Instacart, this message is for you. Flyer deals are like strolling through your favorite store looking for deals. But you're scrolling your phone, and maybe you're in bed. Because getting delivery doesn't mean you have to miss deals like you'd get at

the store, like the one creamer that doesn't make your stomach hurt. Or the pasta sauce you can't not buy when it's on sale. So download the Instacart app, shop flyers and never miss a deal on one of your favorites. Plus get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Instacart. We're here. Your final failure is that you haven't finished your PhD yet. Jesus Christ. What's your PhD in? That's a good question.

It's in sociology, it's like the discipline and then like specifically like the topic I was looking at was I was looking at like the invent like racial categories and I was looking at the category mixed race and exploring its history and its like ideological function. But I've been in the completion stage, which is the last year of the PhD. I've been in the completion stage for the last six years. Okay. I keep extending it. They keep giving me an extension. But the extension has actually run out now.

If I don't submit it by October, that's it. But I've been doing it for fucking ages. Like, most of my adult life. Like most of my adult life. Will you submit it by October, do you think? I actually think, do you know what? I think I will. Some version of it. Let's manifest it. Yeah, please. Everyone can be manifest that.

To be fair, in that time, you have done a lot of other stuff. Yeah, that's how I justify it. Including becoming a parent for the second time. You've got two sons. And as someone whose work is so much about beauty, the ethics of how we see each other, what's it like raising two soon-to-be men? Mmm.

You know what? So I have a 12-year-old and a five-year-old, and they actually seem pretty untroubled by their appearance. They don't really seem, this is probably like, not so surprising for the five-year-old, but for my 12-year-old, he's pretty unconcerned with and disinterested in his appearance in a way that I think would probably not be the case if he was a girl. I mean, I don't have daughters, so I don't know.

He also really doesn't like people commenting on his appearance. I think beyond my own bias, he is gorgeous. But he he's very gracious when people tell him that but then he's just like, I mean it's a bit tiny violin but he's a bit like, he's a bit like, oh it makes me feel really uncomfortable when people like say that to me, when people like kind of focus on that because I don't think that's what's important. I don't think that's what's the most interesting thing about a person. And your five-year-old, is it too early to tell?

He's another kettle of fish. So I think it's too early to tell, but he's like way more like performative. And as I was saying earlier when we came out, and I was admiring these very blinging cups, I was like, he would love that, and I was admiring these very blinging cups, I was like, he would love that, because he loves anything that's like, you know, kind of like shiny and glam.

So I think maybe he'll be more into his appearance. I'm not sure yet. Talk to me a little bit. I mean, we're talking about the fact that you failed to finish your PhD, because life can be messy. And life doesn't turn out according to plan a lot of the time.

But you have introduced me to the radical nature of mess. Yes. Tell us a little bit about this because this has honestly changed the way that I've thought about failure. Tell us about the under commons is basically what I'm getting at. Yeah. Oh my God. When you messaged me the other day and you were saying that you've been introduced to the

undercommons through kind of doing the research for this and how much you loved it, I was so happy because I feel like I'm just banging on about the undercommons like all the time. But it's it can be a bit abstract and in certain ways and some of the reading material is like quite dense. But I feel like it yeah, it's it is it's radical in it's radical in its propositions. And one of the concepts I've written about a lot that I find very, I'll get to mess in a second. Before I get to mess, I'm gonna talk about inclusivity and fugitivity, and then I'll come to mess.

And will you just explain what the under commons is? Because they sound like an indie band, but they're not. So the under commons is kind of like the wild beyond. They actually liken it to the world of where the wild things are in the children's storybook. But it's kind of like the world that exists beyond properness and order. And I feel like kind of like colonial logic. And it's the place where kind of like wildness and refusal and the subversion of the colonial order are like the order of the day.

And actually I will talk about mess. So it's kind of like the embracing of chaos and mess and mess being seen not as something that is negative, but actually mess as a generative space where like beauty and resistance can emerge. Yeah. Isn't that brilliant? It's so good. Yes. Oh, thank you.

Let's applaud it. It's Fred Moten. Yes. But because I got to thinking about it as it pertains to failure and the fact that in a society that wants us to be perfect and often wants to sell us stuff under the illusion that we can become perfect, it actually is a radical act of honesty to fail. Yes. And to be messy and to own the floors.

So actually we're being revolutionary in owning our failures. So obviously life and the world is chaotic. And I sometimes think if you try and be too controlling and too kind of predeterminate in things, it can actually cut off possibility. And sometimes honestly, like just, like I mean this manifesto or like ethos is very appealing to me because I'm like a messy disorganized person.

So I'm like, yeah, let's make this, let's make this radical. But I honestly feel, I honestly feel for me that some of the best things in my life have come about because something that would have been perceived as the more successful outcome didn't happen. Yes. You know? Oh, well, what an amazing note to end the first half on. In all of your beautiful, messy, intelligent glory, thank you so much.

Please give it up for the amazing Emma Dabury! I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing With Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions and we offer advice on some of your failures too. But it's actually quite difficult like logistically in many ways to live as a single person. Yeah there's this structural underpinning. Please do follow How To Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.