Mo Amer on Grief and Growth

Why we need a new story big enough for all of us.

A warm greeting to all you lovers of humanity!

If you haven’t already checked out this week’s episode of the Soul Boom podcast featuring Mo Amer, we hope you do. It’s a special one.

Some conversations don’t move in straight lines. They wander. They circle. They pause. They let a little silence in. That’s what this one with Mo Amer felt like. Less like an interview, more like sitting with someone who’s lived long enough—and paid close enough attention—to stop pretending the world is simple. The conversation with Rainn and Mo is powerful not because it offers all the answers, but because it refuses the easy ones.

Mo is, of course, hilarious—but not in just one way, or in just one lane. Many of us first encountered him through his stand-up, where he’s long walked the tightrope between sharp social observation and deeply personal storytelling. Then came the talk show appearances, where he brought that same grounded wit into rooms that don’t always know what to do with it. For many, his breakout moment was his unforgettable role on Ramy, where his humor carried both swagger and sorrow at once. His comedy specials only deepened that reputation—fearless, funny, and quietly philosophical. And then there’s Mo: a masterful, poignant, deeply funny Netflix series whose eponymous main character—like the real Mo—knows the long, grinding experience of statelessness. Taken together, his work forms something rare: comedy that never flattens lived experience, and storytelling that insists on dignity even while making us laugh.

One of our favorite parts of Mo’s conversation with Rainn was when the two talked about Mo’s experience growing up stateless—what it means to move through the world without the basic assurance of belonging that so many of us barely notice. He spoke about the way humor becomes both a survival mechanism and a bridge. Not a way out of pain, but a way through it. A way to stay human when systems insist on making you invisible.

And again and again, he returned to something that felt almost stubborn in its simplicity:

“Whenever somebody feels superior to the other, that’s what the problem is.”

He didn’t say it as a slogan. He said it like someone pointing to the crack in the foundation. As if so much of what we’re watching unravel right now—politically, socially, spiritually—can be traced back to that single impulse: the decision, conscious or not, that some lives count more than others.

Mo didn’t pretend that naming this fixes anything. He’s not naïve about the scale of harm in the world. But he was adamant about one thing: disengagement is not the answer.

“You’ve got to be able to have a conversation and to get somewhere,” he told Rainn. “Or else we’re screwed. We’re totally screwed.”

What he meant by conversation wasn’t politeness or false equivalence. He meant the radical act of staying in relationship even when it’s uncomfortable—especially when it’s uncomfortable. Of refusing the emotional shortcut of dehumanization. That refusal felt especially urgent as our conversation inevitably turned toward the ongoing devastation in the Holy Land. The grief. The horror. The scale of loss that has numbed so many of us into abstraction.

The facts themselves are heavy. On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out attacks in southern Israel that included the mass killing of civilians in homes and at a music festival, as well as widespread hostage-taking. Roughly 1,200 people were killed that day, the majority of them civilians, and hundreds were abducted and taken into Gaza. Survivors, first responders, and investigators have documented acts of extreme brutality. In Israel, the trauma and loss of that day—and of the war that followed—remain raw and unresolved.

And since those attacks on October 7, 2023, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, with many more missing. As of early 2026, the Israeli military retaliation in response to the October 7, 2023, attack has resulted in over 71,000 recorded direct Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip. Additionally, over 171,000 injuries have been reported, with thousands more Palestinians presumed buried under rubble, and significant numbers of indirect deaths due to famine caused by the military assault. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in connection with the Gaza conflict, alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity. The accusations include the use of starvation as a method of warfare and other actions that deliberately deprived civilians of essential supplies and protections.

The warrants—naming Israeli leaders as well as a Hamas commander—remain unenforced, politically contested, and legally unresolved. None of that brings anyone back. None of it, on its own, tells us how to live with one another.

What Mo kept steering us toward was what gets lost when people become statistics or symbols instead of human beings.

“What takes away from the biggest issue of all is that Palestinians have not been able to live normally as civilized human beings,” he said.

And then, almost instinctively, he pushed back against that erasure by naming who people actually are.

“You have philosophers, professors, artists, musicians… so many incredible human beings that live there.”

It wasn’t a defense. It wasn’t a justification of violence—on any side. It was something quieter and harder: a demand that we not lose our capacity to see.

“That doesn’t justify completely erasing an entire people either,” he said.

We sat with that for a while.

Soul Boom has never been about offering definitive takes on contested histories or pretending we can adjudicate suffering from a distance. What we are interested in—what we keep coming back to—is the deeper current beneath the headlines. The stories we tell about who belongs. About who is worthy of safety, dignity, and grief.

As the historian Yuval Noah Harari tells it, people think they’re fighting over land, but really they’re fighting over a story.

The basic position of Soul Boom is that we need a new story. All of us. Not just Israelis and Palestinians, but every human on this planet. We need a story big enough to fit all of us—not just some of us. And we need a story that centers the oneness and diversity of the human race—not smaller stories that center our lesser identities.

After all, stories shape us. They tell us who counts. They tell us who doesn’t. They tell us whether the future is something we share—or something we fight over until there’s nothing left.

Listening to Mo, we were reminded that the spiritual work of our time may be less about choosing the right side and more about refusing supremacy altogether. Refusing the idea that our humanity depends on someone else’s erasure.

Not because it’s easy. But because the alternative—silence, withdrawal, hatred—leads somewhere we already know too well.

So we’re grateful for this conversation. For the laughter, yes. But also for the insistence on staying human in a moment that keeps daring us not to.

We hope you’ll listen.

At the end of the day, it’s simple, isn’t it?

We need more peace, more love, more justice, more unity.

And definitely, Mo Amer.

Best wishes to you and yours,
Soul Boom

So we’re curious, Soul Boombinos—what does a story big enough to fit all of humanity look like to you?