Culture, Sport & Creators

Mar 31, 2026

Culture eats AI for breakfast: Pakistan's real education fix

with Kamil Majeed

Kamil Majeed, principal of Nordic International School in Lahore, on why curiosity is the prerequisite for using AI well, why Pakistan's schools reward reproduction over creation, and why values — not technology — are the scarce resource in a post-AI world.

Dec 12, 2025

The 21-year-old chef breaking Instagram's boy-girl ceiling

with Muhammad Danial

Muhammad Danial — a 21-year-old chef with 1.2 million Instagram followers and videos that average two to two-and-a-half million views — talks to Muzamil about OCD, an army-family childhood, the moment he stopped posting poetry and started filming food, the cafe he is preparing to open, and why his content quietly refuses to perform activism.

Oct 13, 2025

Dayyan Atif lost 10,000 Indian followers in one day

with Dayyan Atif

At sixteen, Dayyan Atif has done what Pakistani comedy has struggled to do for a decade: sell out a cinema, mainstream a stand-up brand, and survive a one-post loss of 10,000 Indian followers without softening his voice.

Oct 8, 2025

Why Sannan Saleh left Paramount to make reels in Lahore

with Sannan Saleh

Filmmaker and creator Sannan Saleh on why he walked away from a Paramount job in LA, why Pakistan's drama industry is solving the wrong bottleneck, and why a phone in a small room can now do what a Mercedes-only production house cannot.

Oct 6, 2025

Why Pakistani actors can't pay rent on a drama paycheck

with Sikandar and Moiz Nawaz

Sikandar and Moiz Nawaz walk Muzamil through a path from Androon Lahore to NCA, the madrassa years, the actual economics of Pakistani drama, the Instagram playbook that built their following, and why the brothers refuse to treat reels as an end state.

Oct 1, 2025

Abbas Bukhari: comedy can't be learned, you're born with it

with Abbas Bukhari

Comedian and content creator Abbas Bukhari on growing up in Jhang as the only son among three sisters, unlearning entitlement through parliamentary debate, building a 718,000-strong reels audience by accident, and why he is now willing to take a revenue hit to put his real bet on stand-up.

Jul 28, 2025

Why Pakistan needs an inclusive university, not another elite one

with Jahanzeb Burana

Jahanzeb Burana, co-founder of the National Institute of Technology — Pakistan's first university powered by Arizona State University — on why higher education here has been chasing the wrong model, what it actually takes to bring an American university to Pakistan, and why mindset will matter more than content in an AI-shaped job market.

Jul 23, 2025

Pakistan's two real university problems are governance and quality

with Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed

HEC Chairman Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed walks Muzamil through the real numbers behind Pakistan's higher education system — where access stands, how gender parity flipped, why he refuses to blame money, and what the shift from impact factor to impact looks like inside the universities.

Jul 2, 2025

Why Netflix isn't really competing for Pakistan

with Jonathan Mark

Jonathan Mark, co-founder of begin.watch, explains why the big global streamers have left Pakistan as a dark market, how he locked premium Hollywood deals at a tenth of the price, and why sports — not dramas — is the wedge to build a streaming business in a piracy-heavy economy.

Jun 25, 2025

What a Croatian chief people officer learned about Pakistani talent

with Ivana Bajamic

Ivana Bajamic, chief people officer at National Foods, on running HR for a fifty-five-year-old Pakistani exporter from Dubai — what the local talent actually has, what it is missing, and why the future is decided one talent-review conversation at a time.

Feb 28, 2025

Pakistani students can read English. They cannot speak it.

with Dr. Sonia Irum

Dr. Sonia Irum, who teaches English literature at the International Islamic University and heads its alumni department, on why Pakistani graduates can read and write English but freeze when asked to speak it, what five years in the UK actually changes, and why a real book-reading culture in Pakistan will need to be packaged through influencers before it lands with the masses.

Oct 9, 2024

Pakistan's identity is not a product of our organic history

with Shershah Khan

Shershah Khan returns to Thought Behind Things to argue that the modern Pakistani identity was imposed on us, that the 1950s constitutional debate was the country's most productive intellectual moment, and that the country's real problem is the organising power of the modern state itself.

Jan 30, 2024

What 400 episodes taught me about Pakistan's podcast peak

A solo 400th episode where Muzamil closes out season four — the numbers behind the show, the McDonaldisation of podcast production, why the Imran Khan episode was both a blessing and a curse, and why he thinks Pakistani podcasting already hit its peak in December 2023.

Jan 12, 2024

Why Pakistani creators can't afford to take a risk

with Ghazanfer Jaffery

Bekaar Films co-founder Ghazanfer Jaffery on growing up in North Carolina, coming back to Karachi, the move to Dubai, raising a son in public, and the real reason Pakistan has no web-series industry.

Jan 10, 2024

Why Pakistan's web series can't get past the campaign cycle

with Sami Rehman

Bekaar Films co-founder Sami Rehman on the medical-to-film detour, why a Ferrell Williams cover got them their first viral hit before the wines did, what brands keep getting wrong about long-form content, and why 2022–2023 was a free fall for the Pakistani creator economy.

Jan 3, 2024

Pakistani creators are competing with each other, not the world

with Ali Sufian Wasif

Ali Sufian Wasif — one of Pakistan's oldest internet creators, now based in Dubai — on the army-public-school childhood across four countries, what it took to move countries alone at twenty, why he killed his sketch-comedy persona for a deadpan podcast format, and the long arc of Pakistani content that competes only with itself.

Dec 20, 2023

Pakistan's youth is in a stubborn rage — and that's dangerous

with Nabeel Qadeer

Nabeel Qadeer returns to TBT after a year on the road — eighty-plus universities, skill centres across Pakistan, and an unvarnished read on what the country's twenty-two-year-olds are actually feeling. The conversation is honest about hopelessness, sharp on why the startup-and-VC story is the wrong story for Pakistan, and ends with a case for going out, learning, and coming back.

Oct 18, 2023

How the West actually rose, and why the Muslim decline is a myth

with Shershah Khan

Shershah Khan, a 20-year-old from North Waziristan who reads three to four hours a day, walks Muzamil through the books that dismantle two of Pakistan's favourite stories — that the Muslim intellectual tradition died with Al-Ghazali, and that the West rose because it was simply smarter.

Sep 27, 2023

The engineer who became one of Pakistan's biggest singers

with Abdul Hannan

Abdul Hannan released his first song with zero followers, expecting two hundred listens. It went to two million monthly listeners and a Spotify number one — and he still codes full-time for an Amsterdam company. He talks Muzamil through the dual life, why Pakistan's live-music industry is broken at the fundamentals, and why he's scared for the country.

Sep 22, 2023

Why a brand is a story you agree to believe

with Atiya Zaidi

Atiya Zaidi runs BBDO Pakistan — Pepsi, Shan, MG Motors — and a Cannes Lion to show for it. She walks Muzamil through what advertising actually does, a father who survived 80% burns, a path into the industry she only ever stumbled into, and why Pakistani brands keep mistaking risk-aversion for strategy.

Sep 20, 2023

What a live energy reading found inside Muzamil

with Muhammad Ammad

Muzamil hands the microphone to an energy reader and asks to be read on camera. Muhammad Ammad walks his unconscious for ninety minutes — surfacing a fear of failing as a provider, a wound around being misunderstood, and a shift toward submission that Muzamil says nobody outside his marriage knew about.

Dec 9, 2022

Syed Muzammil Shah: I Came to Media for Power, Not Truth

with Syed Muzammil Shah

Political commentator Syed Muzammil Shah explains why he entered Pakistani television to acquire power rather than tell the truth, why the ratings model guarantees shallow news, and why he believes real change in Pakistan can only come from outside parliament.

Jun 22, 2022

How FAST-NUCES built a university on 10 crore rupees

with Dr. Aftab Maroof

Dr. Aftab Maroof, Rector of FAST-NUCES, traces the university's unlikely origin — a single donation from Aga Khan in 1986 — and explains how dedication, zero politics, and one rupee at a time built five campuses, 14,000 students, and a research culture from scratch.

Jun 13, 2022

How Pakistan's socio-economic classes are actually measured

with Kashif Hafeez Siddiqui

Kashif Hafeez Siddiqui, CEO of Pulse Consultant, breaks down how Pakistan is divided into 16 cultural belts, why only 2.5% of the country is truly upper class, and what media and marketing get wrong about the society they claim to understand.

Jun 6, 2022

The 19-year-old who self-funded a Spider-Man film in Pakistan

with Saboor Akram

Saboor Akram made a thirteen-minute Spider-Man fan film on a shoestring budget, got it past the censor board, and screened it in a cinema — all before finishing his A levels. He talks about how it happened, where Pakistan's film industry actually fails, and why he chose Turkey over New York as his next step.

Jun 3, 2022

The EdTech founder who left Nestle for a scholarship

with Muhammad Fahad Tanveer

Muhammad Fahad Tanveer walked away from a brand manager role at Nestle, followed his wife to the US on a Fulbright, and came back to build Edkasa — a high school edtech platform trying to reach the one crore Pakistani students sitting board exams every year.

May 30, 2022

The designer who deleted Pinterest to find originality

with Areeb Tariq

Areeb Tariq grew up in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, studied design in North Cyprus, and came back to Pakistan with no blueprint and no job plan. Now he runs a brand studio, a fashion collective, and an e-learning platform — and he has a clear theory about why most Pakistani designers stay stuck at five-dollar logos.

May 20, 2022

How to save money when the economy is dying

with Syed Muhammad Faraz

Syed Muhammad Faraz went from losing millions in leveraged stock trades to winning a $20,000 forex contest — and then building Pakistan's most rigorous retail trading training. He sits down with Muzamil to talk about what most Pakistanis get wrong about money, why the stock market is still bearish, and why youth is Pakistan's most wasted asset.

May 16, 2022

The FAST grad who nearly died and found the spirit world

with Syed Muneeb Hasan Zaidi

Syed Muneeb Hasan Zaidi grew up in Saudi Arabia, scraped through FAST with a 2.74 GPA, and built a career spanning Belgium, Dubai, Qatar, South Africa, and Switzerland before settling in Atlanta. Then, alone in a Los Angeles hotel room, his heart nearly stopped — and what he saw changed everything.

May 9, 2022

The man who invented Pashto rap

with Mustafa Kamal Khan

Mustafa Kamal Khan of Fortitude traces how he and two schoolmates created Pashto rap from scratch — no reference, no template — and why KP's resistance to change is the very reason the genre should have exploded there first.

Apr 27, 2022

The Pakistani gamer who turned down scholarships for PUBG

with Khan PUBG (Temour Ali Khan)

Khan PUBG walked away from first-class honours, scholarship offers from Germany and Norway, and a clear path into the foreign service — to become a professional PUBG Mobile athlete. This is the story of how he got there, and what the esports industry in Pakistan actually looks like from the inside.

Apr 22, 2022

The ed-tech founder who started in a LUMS dorm room

with Ammar Ali Ayub

Ammar Ali Ayub, co-founder of Nearpeer, traces a winding path from failing class three at Beaconhouse to building Pakistan's largest online CSS and CA prep platform — and explains why the country's youth bulge is either its greatest asset or its greatest liability.

Apr 20, 2022

The oncologist trying to prevent cancer, not just treat it

with Dr. Mohammad Muneeb Khan

Dr. Mohammad Muneeb Khan left Pakistan with a British passport, worked warehouse shifts in London, and spent two decades becoming a clinical oncologist in the NHS. Now he wants to use everything he learned to stop cancer before it starts — and he thinks Pakistanis are uniquely positioned to lead that fight.

Apr 18, 2022

Why Tabish Hashmi quit TBH to go to Geo News

with Tabish Hashmi

Tabish Hashmi traces the full arc — from a family that migrated from India in 1984, to engineering, to supply chain at Maersk and 3M, to stand-up comedy, to TBH, to quitting TBH for prime-time television on Geo. A rare, unguarded account of how someone builds a career by waiting for the right moment.

Apr 13, 2022

The coworking space that started with a sublet

with Saad Riaz

Saad Riaz didn't set out to build Pakistan's first flexible coworking network. He just needed somewhere to put five people. Eight years and ten locations later, the accident has a name: Kickstart.

Apr 11, 2022

The startup trying to plan your wedding in three minutes

with Izzah Zaman and Neelam Shreyas

Izzah Zaman and Neelam Shreyas, co-founders of Shadiyana, walk through how two software engineers turned 300 brainstormed ideas into a wedding vendor marketplace — and why they chose subscriptions over commissions.

Apr 6, 2022

The food YouTuber who started with a phone and no camera

with Rana Hamza Saif

Rana Hamza Saif grew up in Bahawal Nagar, weighed 140 kg in school, and built Pakistan's most recognisable food YouTube channel with nothing but an iPhone and a drone. He talks about the slow grind from 8,000 subscribers to viral millions, why he refuses to let YouTube be his only business, and what he saw in Pakistan's north that worried him.

Mar 28, 2022

Pakistan's rap scene has peaked commercially, not creatively

with Umair Tahir

At 18, Umair Tahir is already one of Pakistan's most in-demand music producers. In this conversation, he traces how he taught himself production through YouTube tutorials, why hip hop emerged from Karachi's streets, and what's still missing from Pakistan's music industry.

Mar 16, 2022

The doctor who built Pakistan's largest free hospital

with Dr. Abdul Bari Khan

Dr. Abdul Bari Khan built Pakistan's first large-scale, free-of-cost tertiary care hospital from scratch — starting with a student-run blood bank in 1980 and a dream sketched outside a bomb-blast casualty ward in 1987. Today, Indus Hospital and Health Network runs 14 hospitals, serves 4.5 to 5 lakh patients a month, and operates on a 34-billion-rupee annual budget — all without a single cash counter.

Mar 7, 2022

The photographer who moved to Hunza to actually live

with Feroza Gulzar

Feroza Gulzar grew up in Quetta, studied fine arts in Karachi, did an art residency in Nepal, and eventually moved to Hunza with her husband. This is the story of how each small step made the next one possible.

Mar 4, 2022

The corporate burnout that led Zarina Tariq to coaching

with Zarina Tariq

Zarina Tariq left a brand manager role covering all of Middle East at Reckitt to become an empowerment coach. She talks about the childhood wound that drove her overachievement, why a partner can't fix you, and what NLP actually means.

Feb 23, 2022

How Coke Studio happened for Seemab Saqib Khan

with Seemab Saqib Khan

Seemab Saqib Khan traces a path from a difficult childhood in Lahore to working as a creative associate on Coke Studio — through a film nobody expected would be the connection.

Feb 2, 2022

Why a psychologist refuses to look at one problem through one lens

with Ali

For the 200th episode and Season 2 finale, clinical psychologist Ali returns to the show to talk about building a practice in a field Pakistan barely recognises, the neuromarketing work he is doing inside Icon Seven, why forensic psychology has no home here yet, and the case against black-and-white thinking.

Jan 31, 2022

Why Pakistani designers chase technique and skip the idea

with Sarmad Ahsan

Motion designer Sarmad Ahsan on the long detour from accountancy to CSS to motion graphics, why Pakistani creative work over-indexes on execution at the cost of the idea, and what freelancers should actually be learning if they want to survive the next wave of automation.

Jan 28, 2022

The state is not a political party, and its digital media shouldn't be either

with Shahbaz Khan

Shahbaz Khan walks through the path from FAST CS to Lall Studios to Ericsson to Teradata to running the government's digital media wing — and why the conflation of state communication with party politics is the most stubborn misunderstanding in Pakistani public life.

Jan 26, 2022

The financial burden on Pakistani men nobody wants to discuss

with Saad Khalid

Data engineer Saad Khalid joins Muzamil for a long conversation about why marriage in Pakistan has been made so structurally hard, the silent financial pressure that builds on men long before the wedding, and what an honest reading of revolutions, fascism, and the Pakistani state actually looks like.

Jan 14, 2022

Reporting from inside the warzone with Sumaira Khan

with Sumaira Khan

Sumaira Khan — embedded journalist in North Waziristan at 18, first reporter on site at the Marriott blast, only Pakistani journalist inside Kabul on August 15 — walks through eighteen years of covering Pakistan and Afghanistan from the ground.

Jan 7, 2022

Pakistan has 1,200 publishers for 200 million people

with Syed Umar Ameer

Syed Umar Ameer, founder of Dastaan, walks Muzamil through a decade of trying to revive Pakistan's publishing industry: from a banned magazine chapter and a rejected meeting with literary heads, to a self-publishing platform, a content business, and a print operation built because no one else would do the quality control.

Dec 8, 2021

The LUMS bubble: empathy, burgers, and life after the gate

with Muhammad Saim Rehman

Storyteller Muhammad Saim Rehman talks about the academic pressure of his third year at LUMS, the burger-versus-Karachi-DHA fault lines, the empathy the university quietly teaches, and the moment his Instagram series Milwaate Hain Aapko stopped being a hobby.

Dec 3, 2021

Hip hop is a culture you have to live, not a sound you can copy

with Xpolymer Dar

Xpolymer Dar — one of the oldest rappers in Pakistan and a founding member of Rap Engineers — sits down with Muzamil to talk about why most local rap is still phase one of hip hop, what an MC actually is, why he keeps disappearing from the spotlight, and what an artist owes to the local flavour.

Dec 2, 2021

My father on Lahore in the sixties, raising six kids, and Pakistan's drift

with Syed Hasan Sajjad

Muzamil's father, Syed Hasan Sajjad, sits down for a conversation that runs from a 1947 birth in Lahore through a career in banking across Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the financial arithmetic of raising six children, and what he thinks went wrong with the country he was born into.

Nov 26, 2021

Talha Ahad on building Asia's first video-only newsroom

with Talha Ahad

Talha Ahad, founder and CEO of The Centrum Media, talks to Muzamil about building a video-first newsroom in Pakistan with no funding, the line between journalism and activism, and why he refuses to take political money to push a narrative.

Nov 25, 2021

Boys can be men. Men are respectful. Boys at times are not.

with Ayla Adnan

Content creator Ayla Adnan on accidental TikTok virality, growing up in a non-typical family, menstrual hygiene awareness in Pakistan, toxic local debate culture, and why the conversation on respect has to start in the room with the boys.

Nov 17, 2021

Twelve years of grace: how The Idiots stayed grounded

with Muhammad Kashan

Muhammad Kashan of The Idiots on twelve years of skits, the day Pakistan's YouTube ban lifted, why he finally quit his job, and what content creation in Pakistan still has to grow into.

Nov 15, 2021

Why Pakistan's influencer industry is stuck on the frame

with Hemayal Attique

Hemayal Attique on starting on Instagram before influencers had a name for it, why brands here still demand A-to-Z control of the post, what the LSA hate cycle actually felt like, and why a TikTok-trained generation will move past the frame whether the industry is ready or not.

Nov 12, 2021

Uzair Jaswal: "If I'm not on stage, where do I belong?"

with Uzair Jaswal

Uzair Jaswal on the year live music disappeared, how Tere Bin got a second and third life, why the Islamabad underground was special, and what a Pakistani musician actually needs from a label.

Nov 8, 2021

Why an artist with a national audience has no right to emotion

with Abdal Mufti

Storyteller, painter and education-policy consultant Abdal Mufti joins Muzamil for a long conversation about how art came to him through depression, why a murdered student changed what he paints, and what happened when one of his pieces became the centrepiece of a national pile-on.

Oct 29, 2021

Why Syed Owais Ali moved back to Pakistan at 28

with Syed Owais Ali

Filmmaker and YouTuber Syed Owais Ali on growing up in the Gulf, an Al Jazeera documentary at 23, walking away from a dream job in Qatar, and why Pakistan's digital media space is nowhere near saturated.

Oct 25, 2021

Pakistan's biggest meme page is run by a district medical officer

with Dr Naseer Ahsan

Dr Naseer Ahsan, the doctor behind Pendu Productions, talks about running one of Pakistan's largest meme pages on the side while serving as a district medical officer — and what the meme industry has quietly become.

Oct 18, 2021

Why Hashim Nawaz tells aspiring rappers not to obsess over rap

with Hashim Nawaz

Pindi rapper Hashim Nawaz walks Muzamil through the desi route into rap — copying Eminem instrumentals as a kid, a piano-playing father who passed too soon, three years writing in silence before his first cipher, the Goky Records crew, and why he keeps telling younger rappers to enjoy the process and not make rap their whole identity.

Oct 15, 2021

Usman Mukhtar: the actor who still wants to be a filmmaker

with Usman Mukhtar

Usman Mukhtar on growing up in the Kuch Khaas era, why Pakistani dramas still rotate the same four plots, what shooting a song for thirty-six hours straight does to you, and why he turned down scripts when he had no money in the bank.

Oct 8, 2021

Why Zara Dar topped ACCA and still wants her own firm

with Zara Dar

ACCA global prize winner Zara Dar talks about a military childhood across Pakistan, why she chose ACCA over CA, what it felt like to go viral on an academic achievement, and why she wants to build a female-led accounting firm of her own.

Oct 6, 2021

Why Danish Hasan dropped out in his final semester

with Danish Hasan

Filmmaker and content creator Danish Hasan on walking away from his engineering degree in the eighth semester, why he treats Pakistani universities as a broken system, how Bros Meets the World ran its course, and what a bike accident in Karachi taught him about who he actually wants to talk to.

Oct 4, 2021

The man who made podcasting mainstream in Pakistan

with Junaid Akram

Junaid Akram traces his path from flipping burgers in Karachi to pioneering long-form podcasting in Pakistan — and explains why the country's biggest export is human capital it keeps driving away.

Oct 1, 2021

Why Umama Ismail refuses to pick just one thing

with Umama Ismail

Umama Ismail — trainee clinical psychologist, singer, painter, makeup studio owner — on a small-town school that taught itself co-curriculars, losing her grandmother while she was alone in Turkey, and why she tells everyone, especially the boys, to cry.

Sep 29, 2021

The internet is an ocean. Most Pakistanis are still wading in.

with Zaki Khalid

OSINT consultant Zaki Khalid on what open-source intelligence actually is, how to take your information off Google, why dark web myths are mostly noise, and how Pakistan's online discourse will need another decade to grow up.

Sep 27, 2021

Why Shehzeen Siddique started freelancing at 15 in secret

with Shehzeen Siddique

Shehzeen Siddique started freelancing at 15, got scammed seven times learning the trade, lost her first social media manager job, and built Learn to Earn into a course for Pakistani students. She talks about average grades, online hate, and why she now teaches mostly girls.

Sep 25, 2021

Pakistan football's problem is the management, not the players

with Faizan Sameer

Faizan Sameer on running 18's football initiative, why FIFA suspended Pakistan, why the auto-sponsored Premier League era is dying, how Global Soccer Ventures could change everything, and what it's like to build a public life alongside Aaliyah.

Sep 22, 2021

One year of TBT: Muzamil on hope, slow growth, and the fear of going bitter

with Humna Raza

On the one-year mark of Thought Behind Things, Humna Raza turns the mic on Muzamil. They cover why he turned down every sponsor, why his favourite conversation broke his stereotypes, and the single fear that sits underneath everything he does.

Sep 15, 2021

The mobile phone that ended a PMA career and started Bedaar

with Ijlal Khattak

Ijlal Khattak walks through the disciplinary lapse that cost him an army commission, the call-centre and football years that followed, the King Edwards trip that lost three and a half lakh rupees, and the contrarian quality bet that built Bedaar Travels into one of Pakistan's better-known tour operators.

Sep 6, 2021

How two sisters in Thatta built a global audience on a one-hour dial-up

with Noor Unnahar and Areeba Siddiqui

Noor Unnahar and Areeba Siddiqui talk about starting blogs as schoolgirls in Thatta, selling $5 banners through an uncle's PayPal in Saudi, getting published by Penguin Random House, and refusing to drop their Pakistani identity to grow a Western audience.

Sep 1, 2021

The bluff that turned DJ Toshi into a producer

with DJ Toshi

DJ Toshi on bluffing his way into a friend's house party with a YouTube tutorial, why localising EDM with sitar and tabla matters, the making of BIBA with Farasat and Umair, and why producers in Pakistan still get buried in the credits.

Aug 30, 2021

Daktar Saab on why a doctor's absence in Pakistan matters

with Dr. Asad Khan

Dr. Asad Khan — Daktar Saab — on impostor syndrome after medical school, why USMLEs are an escape route, the standardisation fight inside Pakistani medicine, the kink of staying fixated on a problem, and why the opposite of conservative is progressive, not liberal.

Aug 25, 2021

Why raising a son well is the harder job

with Zenab Rauf & Hassaan Tayab

Zenab Rauf and Hassaan Tayab — a Faisalabad couple navigating YouTube, a restaurant, and first-time parenting through a COVID lockdown — talk to Muzamil about gender-sensitive parenting, the cultural script that lets boys off the hook, and why the first five years are where the work actually happens.

Aug 20, 2021

Why flight training in Pakistan is a waste of money

with Wasif and Salman Tareen

Drone photographer Wasif and eighteen-year-old aviation photographer Salman Tareen walk Muzamil through plane spotting in Pakistan, the economics of becoming a pilot, runway categories, the politics of who gets hired by Gulf carriers, and why a niche hobby keeps running into a national security wall.

Aug 11, 2021

Why Mustafa Babar wants to be an actor, not an influencer

with Mustafa Babar

Mustafa Babar talks about leaving a 30,000-subscriber YouTube channel from scratch, why he wants out of the influencer bracket, the Midsummer Chaos backlash, and why call-out culture rarely leaves room for anyone to actually improve.

Aug 9, 2021

What 127 episodes of TBT did to Muzamil Hasan

with Yusra

Yusra takes the host seat and turns the microphone around. Muzamil Hasan talks about how Thought Behind Things rebuilt his confidence, why he predicted the podcast boom, how becoming a father reorganised his priorities, and what he wants Pakistan Now to do that Bollywood did for India.

Aug 2, 2021

Why Umara and Kashaf refused to chase TikTok

with Umara and Kashaf

Fashion bloggers Umara and Kashaf on starting a blog at sixteen, why they walked away from TikTok-style transition videos, the gap between Pakistani fashion's roots and its current output, and what changes when an entire generation refuses to inherit the silences of the last one.

Jul 28, 2021

The YouTuber who got into 12 universities and said yes to all

with Zainab Fatima

Zainab Fatima built a 200,000-subscriber YouTube channel while navigating a school that told her she couldn't join the sports team because of her hijab, a counselor who said the US was out of reach, and a family that needed convincing. Then she got into twelve universities. All twelve gave her scholarships.

Jul 23, 2021

The man who built Pakistan's insect community from scratch

with Azaz Ahmad

Azaz Ahmad founded Keero Ki Dunya with 200 members and grew it to 87,000 — not through marketing, but through the stubborn belief that Pakistanis could identify, document, and care about their own insects.

Jul 19, 2021

Pakistan doesn't have career counsellors. So she built an AI one.

with Dr. Zunaira Saqib

Dr. Zunaira Saqib, founder of Merafuture.pk, explains why aptitude testing in Pakistan is broken, how she trained an AI model on successful cases to fix it, and what parents keep getting wrong about scope.

Jul 12, 2021

Does being real online actually get you hate?

with By Rooj

By Rooj on growing up in a small town, building an audience through honesty, and what happens when the internet pushes back.

Jul 9, 2021

Momina Munir on losing 22 kgs and finding herself again

with Momina Munir

Momina Munir opens up about the gap year that wasn't really a gap — the weight loss, the grief, the kickboxing, and the slow return to content creation.

Jul 7, 2021

The ASP who built Pakistan's first gender protection unit

with Amna Baig

ASP Amna Baig on joining the police force as a woman, founding Islamabad's Gender Protection Unit, and why financial independence is the only real answer to gender-based violence in Pakistan.

Jul 5, 2021

The missing character in Midsummer Chaos

with Bisma Khan

Bisma Khan built a hair-care brand from Rs 5,000, recorded her first rap on a mattress propped against a wall, and is now appearing in Pakistan's most controversial web series. She talks to Muzamil about failure, social media personas, and what Pakistani art gets wrong.

Jun 30, 2021

How Shehnoor Films built a wedding photography empire

with Shehnoor Films

From a film camera sent from Germany to running a multi-team wedding photography studio in Islamabad — Shehnoor Films breaks down how the business actually works, what gear to buy, how to handle difficult clients, and why Pakistan's wedding market is unlike anywhere else.

Jun 21, 2021

Pakistan's squash heroes are playing on their own money

with Farhan Mehboob

Farhan Mehboob is a national squash champion who has won South Asian Games gold, reached a world ranking, and beaten players who went on to become world champions. He pays for his own tournaments. Pakistan has never given him a sponsorship.

Jun 18, 2021

Does school fuel insecurities?

with Sheena Sohail

Sheena Sohail, Principal of HITEC School and College for Girls in Taxila, sits down with Muzamil to talk about what schools are actually doing to children — and what they're failing to do.

Jun 16, 2021

How Bilal Munir built VideoWaliSarkar from scratch

with Bilal Munir

Bilal Munir, founder of VideoWaliSarkar, traces the full arc: dropping out of university, starting an Urdu-language tech channel nobody believed in, and building toward a vertically integrated media and product business in Pakistan.

Jun 14, 2021

Why Qutaiba Mehmood came back to Pakistan from Australia

with Qutaiba Mehmood

Qutaiba Mehmood traces the arc from electrical engineering dropout to documentary filmmaker to study-abroad consultant — and explains why he eventually chose to return home despite building a life in Sydney.

Jun 11, 2021

Osmann Mumtaz on finding filmmaking before anyone told him to

with Osmann Mumtaz

Filmmaker and editor Osmann Mumtaz traces how he discovered filmmaking through a borrowed camera, survived disinterested years in ICS and college, and now thinks about where Pakistan's content industry is actually headed.

Jun 9, 2021

How Imran Ali Dina became GFXMentor

with Imran Ali Dina

From a failed restaurant to a university lectureship he never formally applied for, Imran Ali Dina traces the winding, accidental path that turned a childhood love of colour into one of Pakistan's largest graphic design education platforms.

Jun 4, 2021

Why women work: Usra Murtaza on independence and identity

with Usra Murtaza

Usra Murtaza talks about building a career in media and digital spaces, the psychological shift of earning your first salary, workplace harassment, and why financial independence changes the power dynamics of every relationship.

Jun 2, 2021

How Pakistan's advertising industry actually works

with Babar Khan Javed

Babar Khan Javed - investigative journalist and industry analyst at Z2C Limited and Profit magazine - breaks down the structure, dysfunction, and hidden pressures inside Pakistan's advertising and media ecosystem.

May 31, 2021

How schools destroy self-esteem

with Emad Bukhari

Emad Bukhari on the psychological damage schools inflict on children, why the education system produces graduates with no practical skills, and what Pakistan's youth can do differently.

May 26, 2021

Why awareness alone will never change behavior

with Raheel Waqar

Raheel Waqar built a behavior change agency in Pakistan over 15 years - working on child stunting, clean water, and COVID messaging - and his core argument is simple: designing for the ideal environment is not the same as designing for the real one.

May 24, 2021

How women are objectified in Pakistan's media

with Fizza Jamal

Fizza Jamal traces her path from broadcast news to UX design, and along the way describes what it actually feels like to be a woman working in front of a Pakistani television camera - the unsolicited comments about lipstick colours, the selection panels that talk over you, and the moment she decided the industry was not for her.

May 21, 2021

A Media Insider on Fake News, TV's Business Model, and Pakistan's Civic Crisis

with Asadullah Khan

Asadullah Khan, a veteran of Pakistan's television industry, traces his accidental entry into media, explains why TV channels are businesses first, and argues that the country's real problem is not fake news but a population that treats television as gospel.

May 19, 2021

How Dananeer Mobeen's "Pawri Ho Rahi Hai" went viral - and what came after

with Dananeer Mobeen

Dananeer Mobeen sits down with Muzamil to trace the journey from a casual video posted on a private account to an international viral moment - and what it actually felt like to live through it.

May 17, 2021

Dr. Tariq Banuri on higher education reform in Pakistan

A conversation with Dr. Tariq Banuri, former Chairman of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, on research funding, university quality standards, and the structural challenges facing Pakistani higher education.

May 12, 2021

Pakistan's healthcare system, brain surgery, and Covid vaccines - a neurosurgeon's view

with Prof. Dr. Ahsan Aurangzeb

Prof. Dr. Ahsan Aurangzeb, neurosurgeon and Medical Director at Ayub Medical Teaching Institute, walks through the structural problems in Pakistan's health system - from how patients are financed to why doctors leave - and closes with a direct message on Covid vaccines and the third wave.

May 5, 2021

Ahmed Sarym on storytelling, journalism, and filmmaking in Pakistan

with Ahmed Sarym

Ahmed Sarym, one of Pakistan's youngest journalists, talks with Muzamil about how he found his voice as a writer, the ethics of entertainment journalism, and what drove him toward filmmaking.

May 3, 2021

Finding Opportunities in Crisis: A Conversation with Zeenat Ahmad

with Zeenat Ahmad

Zeenat Ahmad traces her path from a government school scholarship to chartered accountancy, reflecting on how clarity of thought - not convention - shaped her choices.

Apr 28, 2021

Naba Khalid on switching to architecture in week one, building a wedding-photography business by 22, and what the people about to inherit Pakistan actually think

with Naba Khalid

A NUST architecture student turned wedding photographer talks with Muzamil about the week-one pivot from engineering, the business she started in the hardest year of her degree, why Pakistani houses are built to be resold, and why she thinks young entrepreneurs are about to run the country.

Apr 26, 2021

Diet plans, fitness myths, and building a science-based approach to nutrition

with GetFitAthletic

Muzamil sits down with GetFitAthletic to unpack why generic diet plans fail most people, how to distinguish qualified nutrition professionals from online noise, and what a sustainable, evidence-based approach to fitness actually looks like.

Ep 56 · Feb 8, 2021

What actually happened in 1971

with Farhat Hussein

A senior guest who lived through 1971 as a factory man in East Pakistan recounts the war he was caught inside: the firing, the flight through the jungle, two years of captivity in India, and the long road home.