Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation

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 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:...

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 depi...

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 know...

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, wit...

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 discov...

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 r...

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 pres...

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’...

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 pandemi...

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...

(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...

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 p...

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

In this lesson, we go over one of Rumi's most famous poems, beshnō een nay, which means ‘listen to the reed flute,' with our friend Muhammad Ali of Persian Poetics . We go over the essence and meaning behind the poem, and analyze it line by line using Muhammad Ali's English translation. Beshnō een nay is the first poem in Rumi's Masnavi, and is a common poem for Iranians to have memorized. The maj...

Kaveh Hoda is a physician, musician and host of the medical podcast House of Pod in San Francisco. His expertise is in gastroenterology, hepatology and, according to him, making fun of medical grifters. He cohosts the humor adjacent medical podcast, the House of Pod, which is how I first learned of him. Along with his cohost Lizzie, he explores topics related to the medicine, which, as we touch on...

My name is Leyla Shams, host of the Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation podcast. Today’s interview is with Mohammad Ali, better known as Persian poetics on both Instagram and twitter. He went viral just a few months ago on a twitter thread where he talked about the bestselling poetry book in the English language, a translation of Rumi’s poems by Coleman Barks. In the thread, he went through a...