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Compliance Is Not Innocence
Podcast On the two ways an institution abuses its own rules, and why following the process is not the same as being right. Nobody installs a handrail before somebody falls. That is the first thing to understand about an institution’s rules. Policies, procedures, declarations of interest: none of it was drafted by anyone with a… — read more
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The Chain Above the Chair
Podcast On what Imam Ali asked of a governor, the rules an institution writes and then steps around, and why a charitable intention repairs nothing. An institution that will not keep the rules it wrote for itself is not being flexible. It is taking itself apart, quietly, with its own hands, and it will not… — read more
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When Language Fails: Vulgarity, Silence and the Unfinished Conversation
Podcast I was there—present online—when Dr. Fatemeh Sadeghi and Hossein Hamdieh, speaking from London and Tehran respectively during Iran’s internet blackout, began discussing something that has haunted me for months. An interrogator assigned to question young protesters arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising had confessed his bewilderment. He could not understand what they were… — read more
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Iran’s Unfinished Reckoning
Podcast 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 in Islamabad, Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir travelling to Tehran, a fragile ceasefire still… — read more
