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 such a big part of the Iranian culture, and that’s why we have a whole program devoted to it- our Poetry course is for complete beginners to the Persian language and for advanced speakers alike - we cover some of the greatest Persian poetry and through it learn how to use the words and phrases in the poems in conversation. You can check out the program and even sign up for a 30 day free trial to check out all the lessons on our website at www.chaiandconversation.com- enjoy!

Links:

• Back Home Beer Instagram
• Back Home Beer Twitter
• Back Home Beer Homepage

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