April 30, 2025
In this episode, Leyla talks with Gissou Nia, a leading international human rights lawyer and Director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council. Gissou shares her journey from growing up Iranian-American in New Jersey to taking on some of the world’s most urgent human rights cases. They discuss the tension between diaspora and homeland, how her name connects her to Persian poetry and protest, and why it’s more important than ever for those in the diaspora to speak up.
March 19, 2025
Babak Tafreshi is an incredibly inspiring Iranian photographer, science journalist and amateur astronomer. He got his start photographing in Iran, but has since moved to the United States. He is the creator and director of The World At Night, an international program in which photographers from around the world capture images of night skies as seen above notable landmarks of the planet.
March 05, 2025
In this interview with the wonderful author of the cookbook Bottom of the Pot, we learn how she started the tradition of growing sabzé for Nowruz (the Persian new year) along with her international group of followers. Growing sabzé is an integral part of the Nowruz tradition. It acts as the centerpiece for the table we need to set up for Nowruz. She'll be starting on March 7th, so listen to hear how you can join, and why it's important that you do so, no matter where in the world you are.
February 19, 2025
In 2018, Anna Eskamani became the first Iranian-American to serve in the Florida Legislature. She's a liberal politician in a sea of hostile Republican colleagues and now faces even more challenges at the federal level. Despite all this, she continues to fight for her values and is currently running for mayor of the city of Orlando. We talked about her immigrant Iranian parents and how her mother's values continue to lead her as she's making big waves in Florida politics.
December 31, 2024
Filmmaker Jasmin Mozaffari’s Motherland is a stirring reflection of identity, love, and resilience set against the backdrop of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. In our recent podcast, Jasmin shared how her father’s immigrant journey inspired this powerful short film, exploring the challenges of assimilation, intergenerational trauma, and cultural pride. Born to an Iranian father and a Canadian mother, Jasmin navigated a complex cultural identity, especially during post-9/11 tensions in North America. In our conversation, she opens up about reclaiming her heritage, connecting with the Iranian diaspora, and how movements like Woman, Life, Freedom have inspired her art. Dive into this episode to hear Jasmin’s moving story and her plans for future projects, including a new horror feature centered on Iranian-American experiences.
October 09, 2024
Kaveh Akbar is the Iranian-American author of the critically acclaimed and heavily lauded novel Martyr! In our long-awaited conversation we dive deep into the themes of his powerful book, Martyr, which explores the human cost of so-called “collateral damage” and the real-world trauma often reduced to mere statistics in Western media. I had so much I wanted to ask Kaveh about the deeply personal and timely relevance of his work, especially in light of ongoing global events.
February 21, 2024
Shally Zomorodi is one of the more well-known and incredibly prolific members of the Iranian diaspora. Her day job is as a news anchor of Fox 5 San Diego Morning News where she’s been waking up San Diego for more than a decade now. However, her journalism career spans over two decades at this point, including a two-year stint in Texas where I live. But over the years, she’s also been heavily involved in the greater Iranian community, through her show Bereez o bepaz, through the many lives she does on her Instagram page interviewing other Iranians, or giving glimpses into her embrace of Iranian traditions in her home, through her Iranian gher breaks on her morning news show, and so much more. I had a lot of questions to ask Shally after having watched her develop into such a force in the past few years, and especially over the last year.
February 07, 2024
Hollay Ghadery is is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions (2021) and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, came out Radiant Press in 2023 and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is also a book publicist and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township.
January 25, 2024
From the very beginning of this current stage of the conflict, after the horrific events of October 7th, the first person I turned to for an understanding of what was happening was Noam Shuster-Eliassi. I’d been following her for a long time because of her comedy about Israel and Palestine.
