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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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Signal Through the Blackout
Podcast In a recent ninety-minute conversation with Sobhan Yahyaei for the Farsi Panorama podcast — the inaugural episode of a season titled Life in a Time of War — I tried to think aloud about the trilateral confrontation involving Iran, the United States and Israel, the predicament of the Iranian diaspora, and the cultural sediment… — read more
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The Iranian Abroad: A Shift the Diaspora Has Not Registered
Podcast A pro-monarchy demonstrator in Glasgow holds a placard that includes a reference to SAVAK. The event, on February 28, 2026, was a rally celebrating US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Over the past year, the global perception of Iranians has shifted in a direction that neither passport indices nor the slogan-politics of a loud exilic faction… — read more
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The Ordinary Apocalypse
Podcast 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 in the behaviour of its people when the monuments are burning.” The Decision to… — 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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Observations from Inside the War
Podcast 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 outside us, but within us.” — Ali Abdi ◆ ◆ ◆ I. The Landscape… — read more
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At the Threshold of Surrender
Podcast 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 are all going through—a particular species of exhaustion that transcends any single struggle, any… — read more
