Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation

Interview | Growing Up Irooni: Samira Mohyeddin on Navigating Culture, Identity, and the Reverberations of Politics

In this episode, we dive into an enriching conversation with Samira Mohieddin, discussing her experiences growing up in a Persian family that migrated to Canada. We unpack the challenges and dynamics of navigating multiple cultures, languages, and political climates. Highlights : Samira reflects on her sudden rise in Instagram followers and the oddity of newfound attention. A mention of Ari's project, Water Well, and its resonance post-George Floyd protests. Samira shares her early life in Tehra...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni: Gisue Hariri on Nurtured Imaginations and Building Bridges in a Male-Dominated World

In the latest episode of the "Growing Up Irooni" podcast series, I had the unique privilege of sitting down with the iconic Gisue Hariri, one half of the brilliant duo behind Hariri & Hariri Architecture. In this intimate conversation, Gisue delves into the intricacies of growing up in the southern part of Iran, where the environment fostered imagination, resilience, and a profound connection to nature. She candidly shares the challenges and triumphs she faced as a female architect, breaking...

Poetry | Rumi's deevané shō Part 5

Poetry | Rumi's deevané shō Part 4

Interview | Growing Up Irooni: Sierra Urich

"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 h...

Poetry | Rumi's deevané shō Part 3

Continuation of our discussion of Rumi's deevāné shō

Poetry | Rumi's deevané shō Part 2

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

Interview | Growing Up Irooni: Marjan Kamali

Host: Leyla Shams Guest: Marjan Kamali Introduction: 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 commo...

Poetry | Rumi's deevané shō Intro

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.

Interview | Growing Up Irooni: Kayvon Zand on inclusivity in the zan zendegee azadee era

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. S...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Ari Rastegar and the business of being Iranian

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.

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Nixta Taqueria's Sara Mardanbigi Makes Contact with the Motherland

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...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Funny in Farsi 20 years later, with Firoozeh Dumas

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 delightfu...

Poetry | Monir Taha's meegan ké jangé jangé Intro

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.

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Moj Mahdara on the Iranian Diaspora Collective

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 inv...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- the Real Tara Joon

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 ...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Bahador Alast on Viral YouTube Success and Interconnectedness of Languages

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 ...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Arian Moayed on the true purpose of art, and Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds

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 ...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni - Back Home Beer on rediscovering the tradition of Iranian beer

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 Be...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Big Love Fierce Juju on openly discussing uncomfortable topics as an OBGYN

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 Massachuset...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Payam Banifaz and his journey to not becoming a lawyer

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...

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Melody Moezzi on The Rumi Prescription

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 be...

Interview | Raising Neem-Roonis- An Interview with Reza Aslan

(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.

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Caspian Chef discusses returning to his Iranian roots after decades of assimilation

In this Growing Up Irooni we talk to Omid Roustaei, better known as the Caspian Chef. In this conversation, we discuss the process of coming to the United States on his own and figuring out his own path for assimilating into American culture as a means of survival. Omid has has a very rich and varied path, first studying biotech engineering, and then becoming a personal chef and yoga teacher, to pursuing a career in psychotherapy, to returning to cooking and his Iranian roots only in the past fe...

Poetry | Saadi's bani ādam Part 3

In this final part of the discussion of Bani Adam by Saadi, we go over the last two lines of the poem, and review the entire poem in its entirety as well.

Poetry | Saadi's bani ādam Part 2

In this lesson, we'll go over the first part of the poem bani ādam and learn the individual words and phrases of this section of the poem.

Poetry | Saadi's bani ādam Intro

In this poetry episode, we go over one of the most famous poems of the Persian language, bani ādam , by the poet Saadi. We will learn about Saadi and what made him such a unique voice, and then we'll go over this poem specifically. We're joined in this episode by musician Fared Shafinury.

Poetry | Rumi's beshnō een nay Part 4

In this lesson, we're going to go over the final part of the poem beshnō een nay by Rumi. We will go over the Persian words and phrases learned in this part of the poem.

Poetry | Rumi's beshnō een nay Part 3

In this third part of our discussion of Rumi's beshnō een nay, we go over the middle part of the poem, and learn the words and phrases associated with this part of the poem.

Poetry | Rumi's beshnō een nay Part 2

In this lesson, we're going to go over the first four lines of the poem beshnō een nay, (also known as beshnō az nay- we explain this in the lesson) and learn the vocabulary and phrases associated with the poem. We also learn other vocabulary words related to the ones learned in this part of the poem. Translation by Persian Poetics .