Freshly Grounded

One late Maghrib, a trivia question in the car park, and a story Faisal has been saving for a year. Then a Recon Padel update that includes the sentence "I've been in meetings about towels", the fiqh of pre-orders and selling what you don't own, and two murder trials that got way too interesting, including a doctor who fired his lawyers and defended himself. We end on cutthroat razors, the bin men, and whether recycling is real.

This one starts as a casual watch party for the Apple 2026 event, with Hanan, a five-time number-one Apple store queuer, giving live commentary on the iPhone Duo fold reveal, variable aperture cameras, the Gemini-powered Siri, iPhone Handoff, and whether Apple copied Samsung or the other way around. Then the food arrives, the event wraps, and the conversation goes somewhere much more interesting: what follows is a real, unscripted conversation about logic and faith, the verification chain of the Quran, why Islam requires no intermediary between you and God, and the question of whether divine rules and a personal relationship with God can coexist. If you want honest conversations about faith, tech, life, and everything in between, subscribe to Freshly Grounded.

Kaya and Faisal get into a new business Faisal has quietly launched, a second business idea Kaya is sitting on, and the usual relaxed chatter that started FG in the first place. Key topics covered: - Whether ten years is a natural finishing point for a podcast and why the mission has shifted - The pressure of competing in the Muslim content space and why FG was never meant to play that game - Why low views might actually be fine and what Joe Rogan's early episodes have to do with it - Faisal's new product launch, Recon Padel, a magnetic towel built for padel - A squishy toy business idea, localising global trends for regional markets - Kaya's app update, Apple developer approval delays, and repositioning a Shopify AI tool for enterprise customers If this is the kind of content you have been coming back to FG for, subscribe and we will keep showing up.

He launched an Islamic AI tool and within hours his email provider suspended him, trolls were faking screenshots, and his bill hit $1,200 an hour. Then a stranger offered to pay it. Abdellatif is an ex-Twitter engineer and co-founder of Tarteel. Two weeks ago he launched Qaf, an AI that answers Islamic questions by searching over 8,000 books from the Shamila library and shows you exactly which scholar, which book, and which page every answer came from. The launch video hit 4.5 million views almost immediately. In this episode he breaks down how Qaf works, why ChatGPT falls short for Islamic research, and what it actually looks and feels like when the entire internet lands on your product at once. Key topics covered: - Why ChatGPT is unreliable for Islamic questions and what Qaf does differently - The moment the $26,000 Microsoft bill arrived and how a stranger stepped in with funding - How Islamophobes raided the launch thread with fake screenshots and how the team responded - The use cases Abdul Latif did not expect, including converts, blind users, and under-resourced language communities - Why Qaf will not give fatwas and what it does instead when you ask one - The mission to make Islamic knowledge accessible to every Muslim regardless of language or background If this kind of honest conversation about faith, tech, and building something that matters is your thing, subscribe and join the Freshly Grounded community.

He went from boiling plain pasta for dinner to quitting his teaching job and becoming one of Dubai's most recognised food bloggers. This conversation will make you hungry. Faisal joins the pod to talk about how he built his food page from scratch in Abu Dhabi, what it actually took to go full-time as a content creator with a young family, and why he believes Dubai has the best food scene in the world. Along the way we get into the hidden restaurants he genuinely rates, the moment he made dua at the Kaaba and went viral shortly after, and what raising your palate really means when you are eating professionally. Key topics: - Starting a food diary page with 200 followers and scaling it to a full-time income in under two years - Teaching in the UK versus the Gulf, the salary differences and why he could not go back - His top three restaurants right now and what makes each one special - How fasting most weekdays by accident turned into a deliberate routine - Cultural differences in healthcare, raising kids abroad, and building a life without family nearby - The dua he made at the Kaaba and the viral moment that followed