Learn Persian With Chai And Conversation

"Finding Joonam: A Dialogue with Filmmaker Sierra Urrich" - Immerse yourself in a candid and emotive conversation with Sierra Urrich, the talented director behind the striking documentary, 'Joonam'. In this episode, Sierra shares her heartfelt experiences of creating the film and navigating her Iranian identity through the process. She provides us with an intimate glimpse into her journey, spanning from her childhood in Vermont to her connections with Iran, sparked by the stories, culture, and heritage shared by her mother and grandmother. We discuss the complexities of learning Persian, the multifaceted portrait of three generations of women against Iran's cultural backdrop, and the powerful reactions to the brave protests happening in Iran. This dialogue will undoubtedly resonate with anyone who has ever sought to understand their roots, grappled with their identity, or felt the echoes of a diasporic existence. Tune in for an enriching exploration of heritage, identity, and the extraordinary potency of stor

Continuation of our discussion of Rumi's deevāné shō

In this second part of the discussion for Rumi's deevāné shō, we go over the first two lines of the poem in detail.

Host: Leyla ShamsGuest: Marjan KamaliIntroduction:Leyla Shams, host of Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation, introduces her guest Marjan Kamali, the award-winning author of the Stationary Shop.Topics Discussed: Marjan Kamali's The Stationary Shop Recommended by the founder of Ketab Club, Kimia, as the number one book by a middle eastern author. Leyla shares her experience reading the book with a dozen other women and the emotions it evoked. Setting and Historical Context Unlike the common discourse about the 1979 revolution, this novel is set during the 1953 coup in Iran. Discussion on how the 1953 coup altered the course of Iranian history. Insight into how the novel shows that the coup was a significant event leading to a loss of hope and irreversible change for Iran. Discussion with Marjan Kamali The inspiration behind the novel. Kamali's thoughts on current events in Iran and her predictions for the future. Recommendations: Leyla highly recommends her listeners to read The Stationary Shop. En

In this intro lesson for Rumi's deevāné shō, we go over the full poem with musician Fared Shafinury.In addition, we learn about Fared and his project "Radif Retreat". In this particular lesson, we also dive into the musicality of the poem and how to interact with it rhythmically. Watch Fared's performance of Rumi's beautiful poetry on his Persian After Hours performance, live at the Guggenheim.

Kayvon Zand is a nightlife personality and musician living in New York City, and goes by the pronouns he or they. I’ve been a fan for years, and love their extravagant and very extra style. In the past year, Kayvon has been turning their attention to Iranians in Iran, and holding live discussions with them about a variety of topics, most notably how life is like for members of the LGBTQ+ community in Iran. I sit in on them every once in a while, and the discussions are often quite fascinating. Since the beginning of the zan zendegee azadi movement also, Kayvon has been really vocal in connecting this movement with the cause of queer rights in Iran, and showing how they are inextricably linked. We talked about his relationship to Iranian culture, the language, but also about the history of the LGBTQ+ community in Iran and how things have changed and how they haven’t.Related Links: Kavyon Zand on instagram Kavvon's new Koloocheh video

In this episode, we talk to Ari Rastegar, a commercial real estate developer in Austin, Texas. Ari talks about his half Iranian background, how his father instilled the Iranian culture in him, and how it's helped him develop his empire in Austin. 

Nixta Taqueria is an award winning taqueria in Austin coowned by today's Growing Up Irooni guest Sara Mardanbigi. She owns it together with her husband Edgar Rico, who she recently took on a month long trip to Iran. We talked about her upbringing in Arkansas, what led her to create such a unique business, and about her recent trip to Iran, amidst the women, life, freedom movement.  Related Links: Priya Krishna's NYT article about Sara and Nixta Follow Nixta on Instagram

I’m so excited to share with you today my interview with Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi. Funny in Farsi came out when I was in college, and it’s almost hard to remember what a huge huge deal it was at the time. Really, before that, we had zero mainstream representation of Iranians. The one thing we had that we could all point to was not without my daughter, and that was a horrifying depiction of what Iran and Iranians were. But then Firoozeh came out with her book, which is a delightful, funny, heartwarming memoir of what it’s like to grow up with an Iranian background in the USA. She touches on what it was like during the hostage crisis, and when Iranians were constantly negatively stereotyped in the media. But she also looked at the really lovely positive things that came from being an immigrant in this country. Iranians are often not allowed the levity of talking about their experiences in a way that say Greek people are in a movie like my big fat greek wedding. That movie was allowed to be funny

In this first lesson on Monir Taha's poem ‘meegan ké jangé jangé, میگن که جنگه جنگه’, we talk to Naz Deravian, Monir's daughter and author of the cookbook Bottom of the Pot, about the poem in general, the context in which it was written, and about the poet herself. 

This interview with Moj is the first I've done for the Growing Up Irooni series since the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16th. So much has changed since then for Iran and especially for the Iranian Diaspora. As one of the cofounders of Iranian Diaspora Collective, I couldn't think of a better person to talk through these changes than Moj Mahdara. They are a venture capitalist and very well known in that world, but before the events that took place in September, they admittedly weren't too involved in or interested in the Iranian diaspora community. But the events stirred a worldwide movement and feeling of connection within the diaspora community, and we talked through that together! Related Links: Moj's Instagram Iranian Diaspora Collective 

The Real Tara joon is a social media content creator, which is not our general interviewee target. But, she has amassed a massive following on Tiktok, with almost 1 million followers, and even though she just started on Instagram, she has over 200 thousand followers there as well. Her videos really resonate with people from all over the world, but here’s the interesting thing- she’s Iranian, with an accent, and is a proud Muslim that wears hijab. The thing that stood out to me is that most of her followers are not Iranian or Muslim, and most of her fans don’t even comment on the fact that she’s an Iranian muslim scarved woman- they just focus on her comedy, and relatable stories about her husband and things like eating snacks. If you scroll through her comments enough though, you’ll see some really hateful ones- and most of them are from… Iranians (and more specifically Iranian women). So I really wanted to talk to her and see what her take was on this- where she came from, how she started, and her relationsh

Bahador Alast is a mohandes, or engineer, by day, but he has over 278 thousand subscribers on Youtube following a niche that he’s been able to fulfill and thrive in so well- comparing languages to one another. His videos usually consist of two people from different cultural backgrounds with different native languages comparing certain words in their language with him moderating. They end up discovering similarities between seemingly disparate cultures that they were not even aware of, and often end up really bonding and having a wonderful time. The videos are so fun to watch, and take you on a journey into what unites us all even if it’s not obvious on the surface. I did a poll asking who I should interview for this series, and Bahador was the most requested guest! I learned so much about curiosity, languages, and being open minded from this conversation. Related Links: Bahador Alast Youtube Channel Bahador Alast Instagram

I’m so excited to share with you all my conversation with Emmy award nominated actor Arian Moayed- he really needs no introduction, but you probably have seen him as Stewy on Succession, Kian on love life, lawyer Todd on Inventing Anna, or in the new Ms. Marvel series- really, he’s been everywhere it seems the past couple of years. But, as you’ll hear in the interview, his current success is the result of a couple decades of passionate work- I came away from this conversation with an incredible amount of inspiration and excitement for the future- both for the future of theater as a force of positive change, and for the future of the Iranian diaspora in general. Also, I learned that Arian and I share the same mantra as the basis for our work- he for his project Waterwell theater, and me for Chai and Conversation- we get into that in detail in the conversation. Super excited for you all to hear this episode, enjoy! Related Links: Waterwell theater webpage Waterwell theater instagram Arian Moayed instagram

I’m so excited about sharing today’s interview with Zahra Tabatabai, the woman behind the Persian inspired beer brand Back Home Beer. You might have seen her instagram or Twitter profile by now- she boasts three different flavors of beer, named Sumac Gose, Persian Blue Lager, and New Day IPA. Although it was released less than a year ago in October 2021, her beers have had quite an impact and presence in the Iranian community- but despite the success of the social media platforms of Back Home Beer, Zahra is pretty private, so she doesn’t show up herself very often on her feeds. I was so curious to get to know more about her, and was so delighted by her charming personality. I’m sure you’ll enjoy getting to know her as much as I did- let’s listen to the interviewA quick note from Leyla here- we talk a lot in this episode about the poetry that Zahra has chosen for the Back Home Beer beer cans- that’s a big part of the design of the cans and the overall message she’s trying to convey with the beers. Poetry is su

Dr. Shieva Ghofrany is an OBGYN better known as Big Love Fierce Juju on instagram, where she posts daily videos about topics like pregnancy, female hormones, stds, really all that good stuff that doesn’t often gets talked about openly. She’s recently the co creator of Tribe Called V, an online program made to ‘increase our knowledge to decrease our anxiety’ about pregnancy and childbirth. Shieva’s parents moved to the United States before the revolution and both worked as doctors in Massachusetts. Despite this, her path to becoming a doctor wasn’t necessarily a straightforward one- compared to her sister, she describes herself as the ‘wayward daughter’ who took a while to figure out her path, and her work now really marries her interests in engagement, community, creativity AND the practice of medicine. It’s a fascinating path- listen to her describe her journey in her own words. Related Links: Big Love Fierce Juju Instagram Tribe Called V online pregnancy program

If you've been anywhere near Instagram in the last couple years, you will have come across Payam (also known as Peter) Banifaz's amazing videos depicting growing up in an Iranian American household with a very Iranian father. The father familiar is extremely relatable to a lot of us who grew up in immigrant households- he talks about where the idea came from and how it's developed over the pandemic period. Also, he talks about his journey from studying to potentially become a lawyer, to breaking it to his family that he was going into acting instead- spoiler alert: the conversation was not easy. Related Links:Payam Banifaz on instagram 

Melody Moezzi is most recently author of the book The Rumi Prescription, in which she talks about how the poetry of Rumi became a lifeline for her, helping her to gain wisdom and insight in the face of a creative and spiritual roadblock with the help of her father, a lifelong fan of Rumi’s poetry. We covered so much in our Growing Up Irooni interview, from the controversy of Coleman Barks and why Melody is actually a big fan of his work, to learning Persian poetry in its original language, to becoming an artist in a culture that isn’t always the most hospitable to being an artist as a profession, to discussing mental health in a culture that isn’t always the most hospital to talking about mental health, and so much more.  Links: The Rumi Prescription book at Book Shop Melody Moezzi Instagram Melody Moezzi Twitter

(Originally published May 12th 2020) In this Raising Neem-Roonis edition of Chai and Conversation, we talk to author, commentator, producer, professor, and many other hat-wearer Iranian-American Reza Aslan about passing on the Persian culture and language to the next generation. Reza has four neem-Roonis of his own, and talks about the challenges of teaching them the Persian language, but also why it is absolutely imperative to do so.