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The Love of the Microphone
PodcastOn Masih Alinejad’s theatre of grief, the platforms that reward it, and the war she now says she never wanted. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the Partido Popular, greets Masih Alinejad before the ‘Mujeres libres’ session at the Congreso de los Diputados, Madrid, 5 March 2026. Credit: EFE / Borja Sánchez-Trillo, via Infobae. On 21… — read more
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Somebody Else’s 1945
PodcastOn the Nazi analogy, the Iranians who reach for it from abroad, and the state that made it plausible Aftermath of overnight US strikes on a bridge in Bandar Khamir county, near the Strait of Hormuz, 17 July 2026. Screengrab from footage broadcast by Iran’s IRINN state television, made available via AFPTV. Credit: AFP /… — read more
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The Grief You Can Afford
PodcastOn Reza Pahlavi’s sudden mourning for the conscripts of Bampour, and the children of Minab he was willing to call a price This week you asked Iran’s soldiers not to die for the Islamic Republic. You mourned the conscripts killed at the Bampour garrison. You told their parents to keep their sons at home. You… — read more
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Built from Scratch
Podcast On the Equation That Turns a Nation Into Acceptable Rubble Do we distinguish between Iran and the Islamic Republic? Are they one and the same? It sounds like a pedant’s quarrel, a hotspot for social media. It is not. And you may be surprised which side of it you find yourself on. Begin… — read more
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Wounded, Not Defeated: On the Endurance of a People and the Failure of Shortcuts
Podcast 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 the point. Precisely for that reason, his recent formulation merits serious engagement. In this… — read more
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Je Me Souviens: After Mahshahr
Podcast 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: Je me souviens—I remember. Not celebration, but defiance against erasure. Quebec remembers conquest, linguistic… — read more
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Speculators in Suffering: The Moral Bankruptcy of Diaspora War Advocacy
PodcastThere is a peculiar species of political actor that emerges from every fractured nation—those who, having escaped the inferno, appoint themselves firefighters from across the ocean and prescribe gasoline as the cure. They populate the comment sections, the conference panels, the corridors of foreign capitals, advocating with remarkable enthusiasm for missiles to rain down on… — read more
