Welcome to the Twin Wisdoms podcasts. Listen to audio companions to our essays — thoughtful commentary and readings on diaspora, politics, and civilisation.
Authority Without Territory
Source: Originally published in The Ismaili UK, July 2015. | View at The Institute of Ismaili Studies Author: Dr Daryoush Mohammad Poor, Interim Head of the Constituency Studies Unit and Associate Professor at The Institute of Ismaili Studies. Abstract: This…
Nizārī Ismailis: History, Geography, and Beliefs
Source: Illinois Geographer, Vol. 65 (Fall/Spring 2023, No. 1-2) Abstract: This article examines the history, geographical distribution, and doctrinal evolution of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī community, tracing their succession through Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate.…
Podcast
The Occupation Myth
Credit: Haidar Mohammed Ali / Anadolu via Reuters Connect [Note: The Reuters Connect page itself says the asset is provided by Anadolu Agency and that Reuters Connect “has not verified or endorsed the material.”] One of the lazier slogans in…
Podcast
Pakistan Between Riyadh and Tehran: Military Ally, Peacemaker
Source: PBS NewsHour / Reuters An Assessment of Strategic Contradictions and Diplomatic Opportunities The Dual-Role Paradox Pakistan’s deployment of 13,000 troops and fighter jets to Saudi Arabia on April 11, 2026—executed under the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) signed in…
Podcast
The Manufactured Mirror and the Curated Outrage
Members of the Iranian diaspora in Perth, Australia, holding a solidarity rally on 10 January 2026 against the Islamic Republic | Source: Wikimedia Commons | Credit: Gnangarra Listen to this essay: I have watched the Iranian diaspora move deeper into…
Podcast
Iran’s Unfinished Reckoning
Photographer: Parastoo Maleki – Unsplash A narrative essay drawn from a dialogue between Hossein Hamdieh and Daryoush Mohammad Poor The Polarised Mirror In the spring of 2026, Iran and the United States were engaged in careful, tentative diplomatic contacts—first talks…
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…