favourite interviews & videos

by Haider Toha · 14 July 2025

videos i've rewatched more than once. the ones that left a mark.

the last dance - watched this during lockdown and it broke something open. jordan's obsession isn't healthy, but the way he channelled slights, pain and ego into performance changed how i think about competition. the "and i took that personally" meme undersells it.
sachin tendulkar: a billion dreams - growing up, cricket was the main sport. sachin was proof that quiet discipline could carry the weight of a billion people. i still get emotional watching his final walk at wankhede.
pep guardiola masterclasses - not the press conferences, the tactical breakdowns. how he sees space, how he thinks in systems. i coach kids football on saturdays; his philosophy of "make the pitch big" is the only thing i teach.
muhammad ali interviews - the conviction. the wit. "i'm so mean i make medicine sick." he stood for something when it cost him everything.

frank ocean - blonded radio - he rarely speaks, so when he does, i listen. the way he talks about loneliness and nostalgia shaped how i think about memory.
rick rubin: the creative act - the podcast episodes, the book. "the goal isn't to make art for the audience. it's to make art that the audience didn't know they needed." i think about this constantly.
j dilla: still shining - the sp-303, the samples, the illness. he made beats from a hospital bed. the definition of craft until the end.

christopher nolan bfi masterclass - time, structure, why he shoots on film. practical effects as philosophy. made me appreciate that constraints create art.
hayao miyazaki: 10 years with the master - watching him draw is meditation. the way he cares about wind, about movement, about things most people don't see.
denis villeneuve on dune - adapting something "unfilmable." the ambition, the patience. he waited decades for the technology to catch up to his vision.

hamza yusuf lectures - particularly "the content of character" and his lectures on the soul. islamic spirituality explained with scholarly depth and poetic clarity. these shaped my twenties.
abdal hakim murad on modernity - tradition engaging with the contemporary without losing itself. rigorous, thoughtful, necessary.

anthony bourdain: parts unknown - every episode. food as lens for understanding people. he listened more than he talked. miss him.
roger federer dartmouth speech - "effortless is a myth." from the most elegant athlete ever. losing 40% of your points still makes you a champion. reframed failure for me.
david foster wallace: this is water - "the really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness." i return to this when life feels automatic.

steve jobs lost interview (1995) - before the second act. raw, unpolished, but the clarity about taste and conviction is all there. "people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
andrej karpathy's neural net series - the only ml content i recommend. no hype, just building intuition from first principles.
bret victor: inventing on principle - what tools should feel like. "creators need an immediate connection to what they create." changed how i think about developer experience.

jiro dreams of sushi - 80 years of making the same thing, getting slightly better each day. mastery as practice, not destination.
free solo - not about climbing. about what commitment actually looks like. the preparation, the fear, the execution.
senna - rivalry, purity, tragedy. racing as something transcendent.