Welcome to the Twin Wisdoms podcasts. Listen to audio companions to our essays — thoughtful commentary and readings on diaspora, politics, and civilisation.
Podcast
The Ordinary Apocalypse
On Crossing Borders, Hearing Bombs, and the Stubborn Normality of a Nation at War Based on a first-hand wartime account from Iran by Kazeroun (@mkazeroun) on X “The evidence for a nation’s endurance is not found in its monuments but…
Podcast
Without the Adjectives: What the Evidence Reveals About Pahlavi’s Political Project
Introduction In my previous assessments of Reza Pahlavi’s political project, published on this blog during the 2026 US–Iran conflict, I employed polemical and emotionally charged language—characterizing Pahlavi as driven by a personal “vendetta with a flag” and deploying the postcolonial…
Podcast
The Zwartboek Mirror
On Dutch Collaboration, Iranian Compradors, and the Price of Borrowed Salvation Still from Black Book (Zwartboek, 2006), dir. Paul Verhoeven. Rachel Stein, a Jewish resistance operative, navigates a world where collaborators and liberators wear indistinguishable faces. Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book…
Podcast
War Unseen, War Unleashed
Photographer/Creator: Levi Meir Clancy / Source: Unsplash The loudest war drums in the diaspora are often beaten by people with no skin in the game at all. No mother in Tehran waiting through blackouts. No brother in Isfahan tracking sirens.…
Podcast
The House Slave at the Microphone
Credit: © ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Live News On the Comprador Character in the Iranian Diaspora and the Collapse of Borrowed Salvation A Character Type, Not a Person Every imperial project produces its own native chorus—voices from the colonised…
Podcast
A Vendetta with a Flag
Alain ROLLAND © European Union 2023, Licensed under CC BY 4.0 Reza Pahlavi wants his throne back, and he is willing to see Iran broken to get it. For more than four decades, from the safety of American exile, the…
Podcast
The Copernican Revolution of the Iranian Mind
Hamid Dabashi on Sovereignty, Selfhood, and the End of Western Validation Based on a conversation between Hossein Hamdieh and Hamid Dabashi The Day After the Ceasefire On the Wednesday after the ceasefire was announced, Hossein Hamdieh sat in a repurposed…
Podcast
Wounded, Not Defeated: On the Endurance of a People and the Failure of Shortcuts
Chah Kouran Caravanserai, a Qajar era brick building visible from the road while driving. This is a response to a comment by Kayvan Hosseini, a brilliant and intelligent journalist at BBC Persian, whose interventions are generally sharp, disciplined, and to…
Podcast
The Man With No Alternative
AP Photo / via The Intercept On Reza Pahlavi, the Monarchist Fallacy, and the Corruption of Logic A ceasefire has come into effect between the United States, Israel, and Iran. For most rational observers, this is a moment of cautious…
Podcast
Je Me Souviens: After Mahshahr
Photo by Jerry “Woody” / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 The Iranian diaspora keeps sending its people to the barricades. The people at the barricades keep dying. The diaspora keeps forgetting. In Quebec, every licence plate bears three words:…
Podcast
Iran’s Digital Dead End: Why Internet Shutdowns Guarantee Strategic Obsolescence
Credit: Georgia Tech Internet Intelligence Lab – IODA (Internet Outage Detection and Analysis), Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis Iran’s internet shutdowns during the 2025-2026 conflict have been the longest on record—38 consecutive days of near-total digital darkness. The opposition…
Podcast
Stone Age-ism
The severed B1 Bridge — the tallest in the Middle East — after US-Israeli airstrikes, April 2, 2026. (Photo: NBC News) Lapis Aetatem Complicitatis — The Complicity of Wishing a Nation into Rubble One of the enduring arguments of a…
Podcast
Why Reza Pahlavi Still Matters
Supporters of Iran’s last crown prince, now key opposition figure, Reza Pahlavi hold a banner reading “He is coming – Make Iran Great Again” and depicting a portrait of Reza Pahlavi during a march for Iran in Paris on March…
Podcast
Observations from Inside the War
Image credit: Photo by Iranian Red Crescent / UPI A Witness Account from the Interior of a Nation at War By Ali Abdi, revised narrative by Daryoush Mohammad Poor “The truth is that the beginning of this path lies not…
Podcast
At the Threshold of Surrender
Image credit: Source: Unsplash On Disillusionment and the Refusal to Close the Door This piece is the product of my reflections on a voice message from a friend, a friend undergoing cancer treatment. But it captures something of what we…
Podcast
Every Additional Week of Conflict Benefits Iran Strategically
Image credit: Majid Asgaripour / WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS Why an Immediate Ceasefire Is the Only Viable Option The most plausible trajectory of the US-Israel war with Iran is not rapid victory but a grinding stalemate with…
Podcast
Why the Case for Ceasefire Stands
UN Secretary-General António Guterres receives the Ataturk International Peace Prize from President Erdogan of Türkiye in Ankara. Responding to Critics with Analysis, Not Ideology The critics demand evidence, baselines, cost accounting, enforcement mechanisms. Fair enough. Here are the direct answers…
Podcast
The Depth Illusion: How Philosophical Scaffolding Disguises the Banality of War Apologism
Image credit: Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash A Diagnostic Framework for Identifying Logical Fallacies in the Rhetoric of Humanitarian Intervention For S. S. and M. M. who steered the direction of this essay into a more constructive…
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The Elegy They Earned
On the Destruction of Humanities in Iran — First by the Republic, Now by Those Who Claim to Oppose It One of the defining legacies of Ali Khamenei — the second supreme leader of the Islamic Republic — was his…
Podcast
The Pen Against the Bomb
Hacking War with the Only Weapon We Have Left For S. S. who planted the seed of this essay in my mind. The Ominous Timing of War It is ominous—and it should unsettle every thinking person—that both times Iran came…