Mstdfr | مستدفر

Nour Fetyani, Jeddah’s pre-eminent tree hugger, joins us on MSTDFR to talk to us about Mother Earth. We talk about the journey toward, and the struggle for, environmentalism in Saudi Arabia. We appreciate the balance of nature and talk about the need to protect that balance. And we discuss the the quality of our food and where it comes from. Nour showed up with an upcycled braclet made out of crus...

In this episode we explore the interesting success story of Lomar thobes with it’s founder Loai Nasseem. No success story is complete without failures. Loai tells us his failures that led to the success of Lomar. PS: From a fashion design point of view, the Saudi thobe stayed unchanged for decades. At the turn of the century Lomar spearheaded a cultural shift in thobe designs by making them more f...

In this episode we host Abdullah Sabban. Listen to this episode to find out how Abdullah was involved in a major international political incident. We then talk about corporate life, self-help books & self-improvement, discipline in the Saudi workforce, and realizing dreams. Show Links  Saudi Plane Bound for London Hijacked Imperative 40% Arabic – 60% English

For the month of Movember, we decided to shed light on prostate cancer. We host Dr. Abdulhakeem Jomah and start talking about working out, supplements, and nutrition. We also talk about the medical industry in Saudi Arabia from Hakeem’s experience in Ibn Sina National College for Medical Studies to his adventures in practicing medicine in the ‘Karantena’ district in Jeddah. We then comprehensively...

We start talking about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is a test designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. We then geek out on our very own show; MSTDFR! We talk about how the show came to be, our listeners, our stats so far, and our plans. The gang then takes a trip down media & technology memory lane: Walkman, CD’s VHS, Terrestrial...

This week we host Dr. Sari Sabban (No relation to Ammar) a molecular biologist and biotechnologist. Sari tells us how he got into science and the interesting journey on how he ended up as a molecular biology. We discuss DNA, the human genome project, and protein folding. Then Sari proceeds to blow our minds with amazing biological facts: Gros Michel bananas, fecal transplantation, crowdsourcing te...

Today we start with reminiscing about our online personas 15 years ago. We then talk about privacy or the lack thereof in today’s world. We also discuss ridiculous resumes we encountered. Unprofessional resumes for some reason grind Ammar’s gears. Oh well. Khayra then tells us about her struggle with learning the Arabic language. Fun times!   30% Arabic – 70% English

In this episode we talk to WSJ journalist Ahmed Al-Omran and uber new media geek Lou Kay. We talk about journalism in the Middle East and Saudi, the future of newspapers in Saudi, news consumption, the ‘filter bubble,’ WhatsApp journalism, and many other new media topics. Oh and we geek out fonts. 20% Arabic – 80% English

We couldn’t just let Reem go after one hour, so Ammar & Rami held her hostage for two more hours! We delve deeper into particle physics for almost two hours. Then Reem tells us more about her fascination with kung fu.

In this episode we kick off trying to answer the question ‘what is an Arab’ and Arab identity. The discussion automagically veers to the “genie” on Twitter. Ammar then quizzes our local theoretical physicist Reem on the science behind the flux capacitor from Back To The Future. Reem then tells us about her work at CERN and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC.) Which leads to particle physics, positrons...

Today’s topic generally is not viewed as a geeky topic, our challenge was to geek out on it. We talk sports. We get into a heated debate on the ‘national choice’ issue that many North African soccer players face during their careers. What makes Zidane, Benzema, Nasri et al choose France over Algeria or vice versa to represent on the international football stage? We then discuss the Arab/Saudi spor...

The guys start off the day by discussing dumb questions that don’t deserve answers. However, seeing dumb questions in retrospect makes Omair and Faisal think differently. Science gets explained in lay men’s terms. Even better, super hero science, human tetrachromats (see show notes), outer space, and existentialism has its 15 minutes of fame. We shed light on different techniques to watch all 6 (o...

Today’s conversation brings us to a few pet peeves in Saudi etiquette – serving things with your left hand and taking things personally. We then find out the MSTDFR origin story after realizing there aren’t a lot of podcasts like us. “IT guy” Ali turns out to be a prankster, and shares an adventure with us and highlighting the phenomenon of people teaming up with him. He gives good tips on how to...

Today we talk about art and personal passions. Fayiz Melibary starts by telling us the story of Elon Musk. Then we talk about Huda Baydoon and her artistic contribution to Banksy’s Dismaland. Then we ask the question whether photography an art or not, which gets us into war photography and Kevin Carter’s 1993 notorious photo. The gang then talk about their own individual passions including photogr...

Today we host Abdulhameed Sabban (aka Tudi) a comic book aficionado and expert. We start discussing the DC superhero universe and explore the parallels between Superman and the story of the prophet Moses. We then analyze the Fox vs. Marvel war and the reasons behind the bad blood between the two companies. We then reminisce about the comics we grew up on in Saudi Arabia, Tintin, Mickey Magazine, B...

Ammar and Rami go at it debating whether management as a profession in itself as important as it is made out to be or craftsmen can/should be able to learn managing their enterprises. Then they delve deeper into the Saudi job market as an institution and analyze it and discuss what is holding it back. Omair explains to us thermal radiation and why darker colors absorb more heat than lighter colors...

Rami shares with us his geeky yet mischievous wifi tethering hotspot name. The MSDTFR gang discusses being multicultural, conformity in Saudi Arabia vs. USA. Ammar then segues us into TV and media consumption with children. We discussed Naqatube, the video website preferred by Muslim conservatives. Rami rants about Internet censorship in Saudi Arabia and it’s adverse effect on making parents passi...

Omair tells us of the story of how Hashim grilled him in an engineering job interview. Rami asks what would be the most watched video if Youtube existed in 1900. We discuss the misuse of the word ‘literally’ and how the word has been redefined in the English language. We then move on to discussing what to name the podcast and come up with the MSTDFR podcast. We have the Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edi...

Our first ever episode, where we really did not know what we were doing. All this equipment that we barely know how to use, and just Rami, Ammar, Faisal, and Omair blabbering on mics.   In this episode we talked about: Movie Rating System Wifi Security Lord of the Rings Batman The Dark Knight Saw Ghostbusters Transformers 12 Angry Men 20% Arabic – 80% English