Factually! with Adam Conover - What’s Happening in Iran and Why? with Reza Aslan

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Iran is currently being rocked by protests against the oppressive theocratic regime that rules the country. What is happening there, and what brought us to this point? Writer and scholar Reza Aslan joins Adam to explain how decades of bad American foreign policy created the Iran we know today, dispel media myths about the country and its people, and tell us the amazing story of martyr Howard Baskerville, an American missionary who joined the fight for freedom in Iran.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing shit that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together. We're going to have a fantastic time.

Now, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll already know that this is a very special episode because this is our first ever video episode of Factually. That's right. If you're listening to the podcast, you can head to my YouTube channel right now to watch the words I'm saying right now and the entire interview itself in beautiful, stunning HD. If you enjoy that, leave a comment, let us know below, or send an email to factually at adinconver.net. Let me know what you think of the format.

The reason we're taking this step today, though, is because we have a very special episode for you. We're taking a short break from our Fuck Hopelessness series. That's the series where I tell you about how you can make a difference on the biggest problems facing America, from housing to climate change to the anti-civil rights movement. We're going to have more episodes of that coming for you soon, but we're taking a short break to talk about an issue that is extremely timely and topical, and that is the protests that are happening right now in Iran. If you've been following the news, you'll have noticed that things are, you know, popping

off in Iran right now. There have been 10 days of massive protests spreading to dozens of cities. These are protests against the oppressive theocracy that rule that country, and they kicked off after Masa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, was arrested by the morality police. That's a real fucking thing that they have over there for not wearing her hijab correctly. Three days in custody later, she was dead. And the government says she died of a heart attack. But that seems pretty unlikely for a healthy 22-year-old woman. And you know, her family says otherwise.

And so do thousands upon thousands of protesters. Women in Iran have been burning their headscarves in protest. Others have publicly cut their hair. The demonstrations have spread across the country, and there are calls to overthrow the theocracy. Shit is getting real. Now, the situation is also getting pretty dangerous. Over 40 police and protesters are dead.

But these protests show that the people of Iran are much more than the scary, theocratic boogeymen that are so often showed to us in American media. intertwined with shitty American foreign policy, but also inspired by democratic ideals and by at least one historically significant but little known idealistic American activist. So what the hell is going on in Iran? What is the American media leaving out? And how did we get to this point? Well, to help us answer these questions, we have an absolutely incredible guest. His name is Reza Aslan. He's a scholar and a writer, and his most recent book is An American Martyr in Persia, The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville. I cannot think of anyone better to help us understand what is happening in this often

misunderstood and critically important part of the world. So please enjoy my interview with Reza Aslan. Reza, thank you so much for being here. This is really exciting, man. Thank you so much for having me. This is our first in-studio interview in our new studio here at Starburns Audio at Post Pandemic. We're here in person. Right, right. So this is probably the wrong time for me to say I have COVID then. I should have said that earlier, man. I'm sorry. Thank you for being our first in-person guest. My pleasure. Recording some video here too. So you have a new book coming out about Iran, about one of the earlier Iranian revolutions. I want to start before we get into the fascinating story in that book.

Let's just talk about Iranian political history a little bit in relation to the United States, because we hear little bits and snippets about it. We have what we see on the American news. But whenever I sort of dip into Iranian history myself, which I only do every so often, it's a fascinating history, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, look, Iran, like if you talk about Iranian history, you're talking about 2,500 years of history here. I mean, this goes back, you know, thousands of years to, you know, one of the earliest and most successful empires in the world and an empire that was responsible for some of the greatest innovations and human rights and

religious freedoms that we all sort of take for granted nowadays. And so this is an ancient, ancient civilization. But in some ways, that's kind of the problem with Iran right now is that, you know, when you have this incredible legacy, this history, like we used to own the fucking world. And now we're not allowed to have nuclear weapons. But North Korea has nuclear weapons and they're shit. You know, there's this incredible sense of frustrated pride that navigates so much of what Iran does on the international stage, right? Iranians think of themselves as, you know, these like this mighty civilization that just doesn't get any respect. And it's, it's, it sounds weird to say, because like, it's not usually how we think about foreign

policy and the way that governments make decisions. But lot of what iran does on the national stage is uh promulgated by this notion that we should be taken more seriously than we actually are you know and i get it i get it i have that same chip on my shoulder you Take me seriously. Yeah. And a lot of nations do. I mean, I feel like, you know, when you when you think about like North Korea also wants to be taken seriously very deeply. That seems to be a common complex for a lot of nations. But but Iran specifically, like in the United States, we see it as the exemplar of like theocratic autocracy. Right. Where it's run by religious leaders who are very controlling of the population. But there's a strange dichotomy there because also I know that the population is like very highly educated, right? Very cosmopolitan in a lot of ways.

And that the country itself has been through, what, three or four different systems of government over the last hundred years? And a number of those were quite liberal, right? the last hundred years. And a number of those were quite liberal, right? Yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, you know, this is a country that over the last 20, you know, over the 20th century, at least has had three massive democratic revolutions. The first democratic revolution in the entire Middle East in 1906 was in Iran. This is actually the background for the book you were talking about. They had another revolution, a democratic revolution in 1953. And even in 1979, it's funny because like we talk about the 79 revolution as the quote unquote Islamic revolution, but that's just post-revolutionary propaganda. This was the largest anti-imperialist revolution

of the 20th century. It brought together religious groups, but intellectuals and progressives, men, women, Jews, Christians. I mean it was – by some estimates, I've seen sociologists talk about this. It was the largest popular movement in terms of percentage of population in the entire 20th century. In the entire 20th century. It's just that, as some people may be aware of, revolutions don't always turn out the way they're supposed to. It's very easy to get everyone to agree that this guy's got to go. But then when he goes...

Then who should be in charge? Everyone raises their hand. Everyone's like, us, us, us. And it just so happens that in all three of these revolutions, the revolution of 1906, the revolution in 1953, and the revolution of 1979, it was outsiders, Russian, British, and Americans, who essentially interfered in the post-revolution in order to kind of get theirs and ended up fucking things up. I mean I don't know how else to put it. As the US that fucked things up in the 1979 revolution. Is that right? Yeah. So in 1979 – Set the stage a little bit for us.

So the Shah, which is the king of Iran, and we've had Shahs, again, going back 2,500 years. The Shah of Iran, who was America's greatest ally, America's best friend in the 70s, bought all our shit, bought whatever we made. The Shah would buy billions of dollars worth of military equipment, by the way, which no Iranian knew how to even use. of military equipment, by the way, which no Iranian knew how to even use. I mean, you're talking about like advanced jets and weaponries that was just sitting on tarmacs collecting dust because the Shah thought, oh, just buy all this stuff up and never actually figured out how to use any of it. It was one of the bigger jokes of the 79 revolution is that like, you know, the revolutionaries all like had all this advanced equipment,

but no idea how to actually use it against the war with Iraq. But in the post-revolutionary turmoil, the chaos that occurred, there was a lot of wrangling going on about who's going to run Iran. There was a provisional government there, a democratically elected, a bunch of technocrats, you know, who had this provisional government there, a democratically elected – a bunch of technocrats who had this provisional government in place trying desperately to maintain relations with the world. And then two things basically fucked everything up. One was the hostage crisis, which is its own other crazy story that we can get into about like how that happened and all that stuff. story that we can get into about like how that happened and all that stuff. But this was,

the hostage crisis was a two-day peaceful sit-in by a bunch of engineering students that very quickly got co-opted by Khomeini and the religious groups. It was referred to as the second revolution and used to bring down the provisional government and to give Khomeini power. But that was just one part of it. The second part of it, which is something that Americans never talk about, is the fact that the United States, with American money, American weapons, and American intelligence, urged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran right after the revolution because it was the perfect plan, right? Oh, no, revolution, it may not go our way.

We have these anti-American religious radicals about to take over. Why don't we get Saddam to bomb them and see what happens? And what happened was an eight-year war that killed millions of people on both sides. Wow. With one side being almost fully funded, supported, weaponized by the United States. That's Iraq, which we later then go to war with. Yeah, of course. A decade later, a decade of change. Yeah. I mean, look, the Republican Guard in Iraq during that war were fighting Americans with weapons that we gave them to fight Iranians.

I mean that's like the quintessential American foreign policy right there, right? These stories when the United States does stuff – and this, by the way, is like – this is one nation. You look at Latin America. You look at places all across the world. You'll see the U.S. meddling in terrible ways with other toppling democratically elected governments, things like that. These stories are all part of public record. You can go look them up on Wikipedia. They're all right there. And for some reason, they never make any impact on the American psyche about our own

government. You know what I mean? There's always a couple people at the protest, like waving leaflets, like, look at what they did in Latin America, right? or in Iran. Go home, hippie. Yeah, for some reason it's never part of our national conversation about, like, yeah, we did some weird shit and things went really bad and that's why we end up in these wars over and over again after things go that pathway. I think it's funny that the

American and Iranian situation is complicated, I think, by the fact that they were such close allies for so many decades. Yeah, the Shah was our boy. This is like our friend in this strange area that we don't understand. He was our guy. Nowadays, we talk about how Israel is our closest ally in the Middle East. But I mean, Iran was the Israel of the time. And so I think in a lot of ways to think about

what has gone wrong in the Iranian-American relationship over the last 40 years, it's like you got to think about it as like a married couple that got through – that went through like a really bad divorce. You know what I'm saying? Now they just fucking hate each other. Yeah. The guy like cheated on her in front of her. Like that's how Americans think of the hostage crisis. It was so embarrassing. It was such a national disgrace

for the United States. 444 days in which these 52 Americans were being held hostage by what looked to us like a bunch of 20-year-old crazy fanatics. What are these backwards people doing? We're the greatest country

in the world. We have the most powerful military. We have the most powerful government. We're the richest country in the world. And these fanatics have basically got us over a barrel. It was incredibly embarrassing and it created this

real sense of, I think, anger and hatred in the American psyche that I know it's been 40-something years, but we still haven't gotten over. We just haven't gotten over it. And neither has Iran in many ways. Neither has Iran. Well, tell me a little bit about – so there's this revolution. And again, you say the entire society rises up to kick out the Shah because he's seen as an imperialist, as a – Well, he just sucked.

I mean, he was fattening himself and his court. The nation itself was poor, impoverished. There wasn't a very fair taxation system. He had this CIA-funded and trained secret police called the Savak who – I mean we're talking like 1984 kind of shit here. Like I mean literally like people who would go around trying to infiltrate groups and look for any kind of insubordination or anti-Shah activity. And then people would disappear and be reeducated and then show up again one day, like fully enthralled to the Shah. It was insane. It was really kind of dystopian stuff. And so there was this rising anger and animosity amongst the Iranian people, all the rich, the poor, the left, the right, the secular,

the religious. I mean, it was this massive coalition that in 1979 was saying, wait, why do we even have a monarchy? What are we doing? The rest of the world is thriving because they've got constitutional representation and a legislature that passes laws that we all have to follow instead of the whims of some asshole on a throne. And the movement – I mean I was there. I was a seven-year-old kid watching this thing happen. And even at seven years old, I understood that this was profound and special and moving. and moving. But, you know, as often happens, America was more interested in pursuing its interests than its values. And I think in this particular case, there was a large swath of the American foreign policy establishment who thought, if we stop supporting the Shah, then what about

all the other dictators that we support? Right? What about all the other autocrats that we support? Like, what are they going to do? But this is America. You would think we'd go, oh, hey, look, a revolution for democracy, if not democracy, at least a more liberal society, right? That we could maybe support. Isn't that the system of government that we think is best? And that, you know, wouldn't that be an even friendlier regime if we were able to say, oh, hey, you guys want to have a democracy? Let us help you out with the Constitution and keep things stable and stuff. That, you would think that would be the American way.

That is so sweet. That's so sweet. Call me an idealist. Call me naive. It's adorable. Yeah. It's adorable. I mean, I'm embarrassed to even propose it. You know, the entirety of American, I American, I think, history, a very short history that we've had, 250 years or so, I think is precisely this conflict between the values that we espouse and those interests align in such a way that we actually promote political participation and democratization in the rest of the world.

The problem with democracy is that everyone gets a voice. And if you need country X to do something, you don't want them to all vote on it. Like I think back to the early days of the second Iraq war, you know, and I remember, you know, how quickly countries like Saudi Arabia and the rest of the UAE, despite the fact that, you know, they set themselves up as like the defenders of Islam and Muslims against Western, you know, infidels. Very quickly, we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Bomb the shit out of Iraq. Defenders of Islam and Muslims against Western infidels. Very quickly, we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Bomb the shit out of Iraq.

We're all on board. And whatever you need. You need airspace? You got it. You need ports? Here you go. The one country that didn't help was Turkey because they voted and they voted no. And see, that's the problem with democracy is that, yeah, in a vacuum, it sounds great.

Like, oh, look at Turkey. That's so fantastic. You know, they've got a legislature and elections and, you know, they get to vote on things until the thing that they vote for matters to you. Yeah. And then you're like, what if we mess around with that democracy a little bit? What if we send some CIA agents in there to like hand out some pamphlets or whatever? And this has been the history of American relations in Iran. I mean, look, the 79 revolution, that's a pretty obvious one. And because it sort of ended in the hostage crisis, all of America's actions, including its role in the war between Iraq and Iran, has been buried, as you say.

But the most obvious one is the previous revolution in 1953. Iranians, again, poor, rich, left, right, Christian, Jew, Muslim, everyone came together and kicked the Shah out. The same Shah, by the way. The same Shah that kicked him out 25 years earlier. Yeah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, yeah. We kicked him out in 79 and we kicked him out in 53. But in 53, we kicked him out. And then he comes out, hey, I'm back again. You're going to have to kick me out. And we replaced him with a democratically elected prime minister named Mohammad Mossadegh.

And for a few glorious months, Iran was a functional democracy. The Shah was in exile. An elected prime minister was running things. And one of the first things that that elected prime minister did was nationalize the oil. So now you got to understand the oil in Iran until at that time basically belonged to the British. I mean, it was their oil.

They paid us, they paid Iranians rent. Like we will take all your shit and then we'll pay you like a monthly rent for it. And by the way, that rent went to the Shah. It's not like it went to the country.

And the first thing that this prime minister did was nationalize the oil. Now, this was 53. So the UK was nothing anymore. They weren't the empire that they were anymore. They were like just basically this island kingdom now. So they couldn't do anything about it. And so they asked America. They said, hey.

The British asked America. The British asked America. The British said, we don't have the capabilities anymore of actually doing anything about, you know, these countries that don't do what we want them to do. We used to. But now, you know, we can barely afford to keep the lights on post-World War II. And so, can you do something about it? And the United States said, yeah, sure. And we sent a CIA agent by the name of Kermit Roosevelt. That's right. Kermit, wait, I'm sorry. His name was Kermit Roosevelt. Yeah, it was Teddy Roosevelt's... Muppet brother.

Nephew. It was Teddy Roosevelt's nephew. Someone on this show is going to fact check me. I think it's either nephew or maybe great nephew. That sounds more likely based on the years to me, but that's wild. Kermit, guys, if you're listening to me, Google Kermit Roosevelt. Guys, if you're listening to me, Google Kermit Roosevelt. This guy was like this 97-year-old nasally nerd with Coke bottle glasses who was the most fucking insane CIA operative. Like the kind of guy who would just like point at a map and say, kill those people.

Do this, do that. I mean this guy was such a badass. I don't understand why there isn't a movie made about Kermit Roosevelt yet. But he's also, he sounds like a criminal the way you're describing him. He sounds like a horrible guy. Kermit Roosevelt. It's called Operation Ajax.

Check it out. Kermit Roosevelt and like a professional boxer and a couple a there's like professional boxer and a couple of other guys basically and a suitcase with a hundred thousand dollars went to iran and this is in the very very early days of the cia too by the way uh so post-world war ii the cia was trying to figure out like well what are we like we? Like, what do we do? Like, I guess we're going to fight global communism. And so this was the first attempt by the CIA to actually change an election outcome or, you know, government.

And it was Kermit Roosevelt's idea. He pitched it to Dulles, to Alan Dulles, you know, and was like, just give me a suitcase with $100,000. Give me a couple of weeks and let me see what I can do. And sure enough, this guy showed up in Iran with that suitcase and like four or five, you know, agents and within a few weeks had manufactured a fake protest against Mossadegh and the government, managed to bring down the democratically elected government, bring the Shah back to Iran, place him back on the throne.

And this did two things. Number one, now suddenly the CIA had an objective. Oh, wait a minute. Now we know what we're for. We can overthrow government. This is great. That only cost $100,000. Nobody died.

They have a protest and then the democratic regime was so fragile. It's very fragile. He literally handed out money and did this sort of fake protest. And there were enough Iranians with vested interests in the Shah to help

out. You find the right leverage points, you give a little push, and then you are able to bring it down. You beat up enough people, you kill the right people, you stage the protests in the right way. They literally attacked Mossadegh's house and he ran off and they arrested him and they

put the Shah back on the throne. This would make a great TV show. This is like the dark mirror of Homeland. Rather than trying to protect the United States, it's just trying to topple other regimes. They put the Shah back on the throne. This would make a great TV show. This is like the dark mirror of Homeland. Yeah, exactly. Rather than trying to protect the United States, it's just trying to topple other regimes. It's an insane story about how shit used to be done in the 50s in the CIA. And let's be honest, probably still is, Don. Come on.

I think probably more than $100,000 nowadays, but yes. The second thing that it did is that once America put the Shah back on the throne, the British were like, hey, thank you so much. That was great. So we'll just take the oil back now. And America was like, yeah, no, it's ours now. And that's what happened. Fifty three is when America married itself to Iran and kicked the British out. Got it.

And so that's why it's so important that the Shah is our boy because we have the access to the oil. We have access to the oil. He buys all of our military equipment. He does whatever we tell him to do. We have all of our troops stationed there in case anybody else gets out of hand or anybody else causes any trouble. And he's utterly dependent on us.

He is on his throne because we said he can be. And those are the kinds of allies that you keep forever. You know what I'm saying? You do not lose an ally like that. But then again, there's a – Because it makes the country a client state.

You can do whatever you want with the country. You can do whatever you want. But as you can imagine, for the normal Iranian who is pissed off at the Shah because like your dad got disappeared or because you can't – you don't have heat for your house or whatever. Or you just remember the month when you had a democracy. And you're like that was nice. That was really nice that month. That was a really great month. But what you do then is that,

what are you going to do to the Shah? You can't do anything to the, you can't get mad at the Shah. So who do you get mad at? The guy who is putting the Shah in his place and that's the United States. And so from the early 50s, there was this real sense of animosity

and anger in the Iranian populace, which was towards its own government. But of course it was really about like the power behind the government. And in 79, that boiled over into a revolution that again gave us about a couple of months of, wow, this is what freedom feels like, until the post-revolutionary chaos brought Khomeini to power, and the rest is history. This is what's so bizarre when you hear Americans go, like, why do they hate us?

Why are they stomping on American flags in the street? Why does that happen? Oh, could it have been a hundred years of interfering in another country? Putting a puppet government in place and all that? Like, you know, putting a puppet government in place and all that? Oh, that's kind of a funny question.

Look, this is so enlightening. We've got to take a really quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about the even earlier revolution. This is in our capsule history of Iran.

We'll be right back with more Reza Aslan. Okay, Reza, let's talk about the revolution that you cover in your book, which is the even earlier revolution. Do I have that right? Yeah, yeah. It's the first of the three major democratic revolutions that Iran had in the 20th century. But it was also the first democratic revolution in the Middle East. It happened in 1906 when it's that coalition again, right? The sort of religious groups, the conservatives, the sort of pious masses, they've got the streets. And then the business interests, you know, they've got, you know, access to the economy. They can shut

everything down with like strikes and protests. And then the young, in many cases, Western-educated intellectuals who provide the ideas. This coalition, which brought down the Shah in 79, brought down the Shah in 53, brought down the Shah again in 1906. They came together for the very first time. This is a different Shah this time. This is a different Shah, yeah. Different Shah, yeah.

Different dynasty, in fact. This is known as the Khadjar dynasty as opposed to the Pahlavi dynasty. And how long had this dynasty been in power? This dynasty had at that point been in power for maybe 150 years. Okay. Yeah, so a while. Okay. Yeah, for quite some time.

And what they wanted was actually pretty basic. What they wanted was a constitution. And that's why it's called the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906. And the idea of the constitution was so sort of basic and yet profound at the time. Why don't we actually put the law down on paper? Right. So that, you know, we can point to it yeah when something happens instead of just the law is whatever the guy sitting on the throne says the law is or you know whatever the guy with power

says the law is this is a very basic step in like political development if you look at like the history of england you've got like uh you know an autocratic monarch and then eventually people no we need a constitution we got to write stuff down, other forces in society get power, they can write that constitution, and eventually you end up with a queen who just waves at people from a very expensive car, and they give her a big funeral, and you know, et cetera. We've just got some rich people

who don't have much political power, right? So this is like a very... And were people in Iran looking at those other countries that had constitutional monarchies and saying, hey, this would be a civilized way to be – this is what we should do next. Well, as a matter of fact – so at this point in Iranian history, the north of the country was more or less administered by the Russians and the south of the country was more or less administered by the British. It was called the Anglo-Russian Accords and it, you know, a lot of your listeners may be familiar with this term, the great game, which was sort of the game played by the Russian and British

empires in the Middle East and South Asia, where they were just like divvying up pieces of land over who's going to run it. And, you know, they were fighting against this stuff. And there was this sort of conflict between Russia and the UK for decades and decades and decades. And then in the run up to the First World War, when they start seeing, you know, the Ottomans and the Germans start to like come together and suddenly, you know, the Sultan and the Kaiser are BFFs. Then suddenly the British and the Russians realize, you know what, maybe we should stop fighting. We should start like – we should form an alliance here. And places like Iran or Persia as it was called back then, let's stop fighting for it. Let's just divvy it up.

You can have the north. We'll have the south and we'll just be friends and we'll focus on this emerging threat that's coming from Turkey and Germany. And so that's the world that Iran was living in when this constitutional revolution happened. And it took many years of protests and strikes and bloodshed. But finally, in December of 1906, the sort of ailing Shah at the time, this man by the name of Muzaffar al-Din, signed a constitution and allowed for the creation of a parliament, free and fair elections. And suddenly Iran was a constitutional monarchy, very much modeled on the British form of it. So Muzaffar signs the constitution in December of 1906 and then dies three days later. Which is exactly how history always works.

You know what I'm saying? Thank God we got him decided in time. Yeah, we got to sign him. And the guy who comes to power is his 35-year-old piece-of-shit son by the name of Muhammad Ali. Not that Muhammad Ali.

A different Muhammad Ali. Yeah. Muhammad Ali Shah. And this is a kid, you know, raised in the palace. He's been told since he was, you know, born that God has made him the prince and God is going to put him on the throne and that, you know, he is himself divine and divinely ordained to rule over Persia like kings before him have for 2,500 years, etc., etc. And he becomes Shah and immediately realizes, wait a minute, like there's a constitution now that checks my power.

There's a parliament that decides my budget like that. This does not sit well with him at all. And so he puts together this plan along with the help of his Russian benefactors. Rush is the real sort of villain in this story. I'm sorry. This sounds like the last season of Succession to me. It's like Succession meets Game of Thrones but no dragons. This sounds like Kendall going like, what did dad do?

No, he didn't do it. He didn't do it. He was dying. His mind was going, we can't let him do this. He gave everything away. So this is what Muhammad Ali does. He tears up the constitution that his father signed, and he rolls cannons to the parliament building while parliament is in session and destroys the building with the parliamentarians inside. Jesus Christ.

I don't know if Kendall would ever – I mean that's pretty bold. He might. He might. He's a piece of shit. It's season five. We'll see. But – and he declares war on the revolution. Wow.

And he essentially manages to take over, take back control over every city, every town, every province in the country except one, the province of Tabriz. And Tabriz becomes sort of the last bastion of this constitutional democratic revolution. There's one city against the entire nation. And Tabriz happens to be the city in which at that moment in time, this 22-year-old evangelical Christian missionary from Nebraska suddenly shows up to preach the gospel and teach English and finds himself in a city in the midst of a revolution fighting against this tyrannical, villainous Shah for the same democratic rights and freedoms that he enjoys in America. This is the world that he suddenly steps into.

And this is the main character of your book. His name is Howard Baskerville, correct? And you describe him as the Lafayette of Iran. Did I get that right? Iranians call him the Lafayette of Iran. Do they really? Yeah. Yeah. The sort of foreigner who fought in another country's revolution. That's kind of how he has always been talked about. This is a kid, I mean Howard Baskerville is a fascinating kid. He's sort of the product of the Second Great Awakening in the United States. This was a kind of great religious movement that happened in America that gave birth to what we now call evangelical Christianity.

It was like a movement of movements. Like doesn't Mormonism come out of the Second Great Awakening or is it the first? I'm not sure. Yeah, it was all these... What happens is it's like a moment of revivalism in which Christians sort of break free from the bounds of church and doctrine,

and they start going out... And it's mostly young people. This is the amazing thing. It's mostly young people, it's mostly white people, and it's mostly women. That's the most fascinating thing about the Second. It's like two-. It's mostly white people. And it's mostly women. That's the most fascinating thing about this second. It's like two-thirds women-led. And they leave the churches of their parents. They go out into the woods and thickets of New England.

And they go there in covered wagons. And they spend like three, four days crying and screaming and yelling and praying and singing. Yeah, and there are these like sweat-soaked preachers screaming at them to repent. And because travel is not easy, you know, in those—we're talking the end of the 19th century, travel is not that easy. So you usually bring a tent with you and you sleep in, and hence the term tent revival. And that's—it was that movement that gave birth to evangelical Christianity. And the sort of the primary drive of evangelical Christianity is twofold. Number one, individual salvation above all else.

It's not about what church you belong to. You're Anglican. You're Presbyterian. And you're Methodist. And who cares? It's about you and Jesus, and that's all that matters. Yeah. Who cares? You know, it's about you and Jesus and that's all that matters.

And then the second thing is you have to go and convert the rest of the planet to evangelical Christianity. It's not enough to just kind of – Because I'm saved. Now I have a duty to save you. You have to save everyone. You have to go to every dark and exotic corner of the world. You have to bring every soul to Christ. corner of the world. You have to bring every soul to Christ. So this was a time in which these evangelical missionaries were just spreading in every corner of the globe, going places that no one had ever heard of before, places that no white person had ever been to before. And

Howard Baskerville is this sort of – his dad is a country preacher. His grandfather is a country preacher. He goes to Princeton and he's there to study Christian theology. That's what he's there for. He's just going to become a country minister. That's what his job is. And Princeton has this new program that they started where you have to take electives, these things called electives that we now all take for granted. And so his junior year, he's like, fine, I'll take some electives.

And he takes two electives with the newly elected president of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson. And Wilson is a complicated dude. On the one hand, he basically birthed what we now call international relations. He helped win World War I against fascism. He created the League of Nations, which becomes the United Nations. He has this incredibly expansive idea that all peoples everywhere deserve to be free, that democracy is a gift given by God. It has nothing to do with America, that it is the sort of the will of God for all human beings to be free. And it is the responsibility of Americans to go out there and

make sure that everyone has what we have. It's almost an evangelical form of democracy. It is. It was very religious for him. Yeah. I should mention it's hard to talk about Woodrow Wilson nowadays without also mentioning the fact that he was a fucking unrepentant racist. I mean, like his family owned slaves. He supported the Confederacy like decades after the Civil War, like decades after the Civil War. This dude contains a multitude. So but nevertheless, and he lights this fire under Baskerville and Baskerville is like,

I'm not going to go back to Nebraska and be a country preacher. I'm going to go and convert the world. But I'm also going to give freedom to everyone. It's that American – it's a deeply American thing. The combination of evangelical Christianity with democracy is a real strain. I'm going to go and give it to the world. And he begs the Presbyterian Church to send him to China and Japan because he's reading all these reports about how great it is there.

Like, oh my gosh, in China, people are converting en masse and Japan is so beautiful and the weather is great. It looks like the UK. But he gets sent to Persia and it's the last place he wants to go. Like he's reading missionary report after missionary report from missionaries who spent decades in Persia saying, this is the worst place on earth. These people are awful. And Persia, this is the name for what we now call Iran. In 1935, it became known officially as Iran. And he arrives there and it's the opposite of everything he's been told. He falls in love with the culture and the people. he's teaching English and history in this sort of missionary school.

He loves his students. His students love him. He literally falls in love with the headmaster's daughter. He's having the time of his life at the same time that there is this like revolution happening in front of him, you know, like on the streets where he lives. He's literally living what he had spent a year studying, you know, with Woodrow Wilson. But he's constantly told by the Presbyterian Church, it's not your business. You're here to save souls, not lives. Mind your own damn business.

Wow. He's constantly told by the American government. The president Taft at that time issued a memo basically about the Iranian revolution saying there's no such thing as Muslim democracy. That's stupid. Wow. And so there's no supporting this revolution. Is Persia at this time majority Muslim? I assume.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there are probably some amount of Christians there, but the revolution was Muslim in character? No, the revolution was multi-religious. That's kind of the most exciting thing about it. And in fact, once Tabriz became the last bastion of the revolution, it became sort of this global cause where you had like Georgians and Russians and Armenians and Turks and Europeans and Arabs, everyone started pouring into Tabriz because it was at that time the most sort of successful anti-imperialist revolution. So it was this like multicultural, multilingual, multi-religious revolution that Howard Baskerville just got absolutely swept up in.

Wow. And it took a while. It took about a year and a half or so. But he eventually gives up his teaching position. He gives up his missionary post, eventually gives up his American citizenship because he's threatened with treason. Wow. And he's like, well, OK, well, then I guess I'm not an American citizen anymore, so then I can't be treason. Wow. And he's like, well, okay, well then I guess I'm not an American citizen anymore. So then I can't be treason. Um,

wow. And, and he, in this incredible, like made for movies moment, uh, tells his students, I can't be your teacher anymore.

I can't continue to watch the suffering that I'm watching here. I need to do something about it. I'm going to go join the revolution. And his students get up and join with him. It's like a demented dead poet society moment where they're like, all right, let's all go die. It sounds inspiring to me.

What's demented about it? It actually does sound inspiring. It's this kind of incredible moment. So he reconstitutes his classroom into a militia. Despite the fact that he himself has no military training whatsoever, he actually had access to some Encyclopedia Britannica. And he basically learns like military maneuvers. That's not a joke.

He literally learns military maneuvers by reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. Okay. Under G for gun. What do you do with it? Which side do you point? So he creates this militia. He and his students fight against the Shah along with the rest of Tabriz. And then the Shah changes tactics at one point and decides instead of trying to continue to defeat Tabriz because it's not working, I'm just going to besiege the city and starve you all to death.

And what follows is four or five months of just horrific, horrific starvation and suffering in the city. I'm fast-forwarding a lot through the story, obviously, but at the end, on April 20th in 1909, Howard Baskerville and his students, his militia, decide enough's enough. We're going to try to break this siege. Wow. And so on the early morning of April 20th, 1909, they – he and 11 of his students try to break through the Shah's siege. Against how many troops? Thousands. Wow.

Thousands, yeah. And he gets shot in the heart. Wow. And he dies. But that death becomes such an embarrassment to the Shah. The Russians and the British empires who had been supporting the Shah the whole time ultimately force him to call for a ceasefire to let humanitarian assistance into Tabriz. And as soon as he does that, the revolutionaries break through the siege, march on Tehran, move the Shah from power, rewrite the constitution, reelect parliament. And the first act of parliament is to declare this 22-year-old Christian missionary to be a hero and a martyr of the revolution. His tomb is still in Tabriz.

There's like a museum there with his bust in it. Like when I was a kid growing up in Iran, there were elementary schools named Howard Baskerville Elementary School. I mean, this guy was such a hero, this like American Christian missionary, you know, who died for Iran. But as you can imagine, you know, over the last 40 years, because of this animosity between America and the United States, his story has more or less been forgotten. Oh my God. What a fucking story. You have to write this screenplay. This is unbelievable.

Working on it. I'm not going to try to write it. You have to. I mean, what an incredible conclusion to the story. So he's shot in the heart and then his case is widely publicized enough that this missionary was killed trying to, what, help the starving people. That he embarrasses – it embarrasses the regime that much. Well, it's – at the moment, it was hugely embarrassing because all these reports of like the suffering that's happening in Tabriz and this attempt to break the siege and then of course the death of this American missionary, all that stuff creates so much pressure. But what's really fascinating is almost immediately afterwards, thousands of people pour into Tabriz for his funeral. It's gigantic.

Almost immediately, his story starts to be wiped. Not in Iran. In Iran, he's a hero. But in America, his story instantly... It's on the front pages of the New York Times. American dies defending Tabriz is the headline. But the problem is twofold. One, for the American government, they can't

go around publicizing the story of an American who's fighting in a foreign revolution. That's not a thing that people should know about. So the U.S. government, the State Department especially, tries very hard to sort of suppress this story and keep it quiet. But on the other side, the Presbyterian Church, they're screwed. They've got missionaries all over the world. They've got missionaries in China. They've got missionaries in Russia... They've got missionaries all over the world. They've got missionaries in China. They've got missionaries in Russia.

They've got missionaries all over Africa. They can't let it be known that, oh, by the way, one of our missionaries might try to overthrow your government. But don't worry about it. It's cool. It's cool. That's the entire stigma against missionaries. Well, there's a lot of stigmas

against missionaries, rightly so. But that would be any government's worry. And then if it happened one time, hold on a second. Yeah. Well, in fact, there's this hilarious thing that I read about in the book because of these series of memos that go back and forth between the consul general in Tabriz and the State Department and the head of the Presbyterian foreign mission. The consul general basically writes the State Department and says, I did everything I could to stop Baskerville from fighting in this thing. I told him that he's going to get arrested for treason and he gave me his passport.

What do I do? And the State Department says, well, we can't, we don't have any control over him. If he's giving up his citizenship, then he's not under American laws. We can't really do anything about it. Let's call the Presbyterian Church. So they send a memo to the Presbyterian Church saying,'s not our boy. Wow. He's not really a missionary.

He's a teacher at a mission school. And the State Department – This is just trying to disavow for political purposes. The memo for the State Department back to the consul general in Tabriz because they're like, they said he's not theirs. So basically says, we don't understand exactly the difference between somebody, a teacher at a

missionary school. Here's the problem. The Presbyterians are a wimpy denomination. Okay, the Catholics would have gotten it done. The Methodists would have gotten it done. But the Presbyterians, yeah. So this heroic kid, you know, who had a lot of flaws and a lot of ideas but like he was somebody who was living out his values and who was willing to sacrifice himself for the freedom of other people. His entire story has been completely wiped from memory. It's been wiped from memory in Iran.

It was never even in our memory in America. This is the first biography ever written about this kid. Wow. That's been wiped from memory in Iran. It was never even in our memory in America. This is the first biography ever written about this kid. Wow. That's unbelievable. But are there people keeping like the story alive in Iran? If it's clearly under the current regime, it wouldn't be a celebrated story. But is it like, I mean, you said you, you, there are elementary schools or there are people who went to those elementary schools who are like, Hey kid, it's 1am. Let me tell you about Howard Baskerville. So it's funny because I've got this Iranian production company that's doing this kind of really fun digital video for me, and they went to Tabriz to film at the gravesite and in the museum

and to talk to people. And I knew that no one under 40 would have known who this kid was, but I was like, go find some old people. Find some older people and ask knew that like no one under 40 would have known who this kid was but I was like go find some old people find some older people to and and ask them about it and it was impossible like they would find occasionally they would find some old people who knew who he was but didn't want to talk about it especially to on camera um but they went into the museum this is a museum dedicated to the to the constitutional revolution a museum that's got a giant painting and a golden bust of Howard Baskerville. And they had the docent kind of walk them around the museum.

And they asked questions of the docent about Howard Baskerville. And the docent barely knew who this guy was. The guy paid to, like to tell you about these characters. Didn't know him. Someone built this museum a while ago. I don't know why it's here. I'm just paid to walk around. No one comes in here ever.

But if you talk to older people, like my parents' generation, they still speak about Howard Baskerville with this reverence that they reserve for saints. Wow. You know, Iran – at the heart of Iranian culture is this concept of martyrdom and sacrifice, right? And it's been bastardized and people have used that idea to say a lot of shit about Iran or whatever. But fundamentally, Iranians believe that values and beliefs are shit until they are put into practice. Like if you are not willing to die for something that you believe in, then you don't believe it. And it's actually a big reason why evangelical missionary work in Iran had been so unsuccessful. Baskerville preached the gospel for a year and a half.

I've scoured the historical records. I don't think he converted a single person, not one person, because Iranians don't give a shit about what you have to say. Are you willing to die for it? And the fact that this kid was able to say in the name of my American identity, in the name of my Christianity, I am going to pick up a weapon and I'm going to save as many people as I can from certain death and die doing it, that's what made him a hero. That's what made him a martyr. That's what put him in until 79 into Iranian history books.

You know, there are still now, I have some friends in Iran who tell me there's still like, you know, a couple of hip coffee shops in Tehran called Baskerville. That's it. That's about it. No, no, no kidding. It's like Baskerville. That's about it. No kidding.

It's like Baskerville lattes. I'm not joking. I'm not kidding, man. Man, don't name a coffee shop fucking anything, no matter how disrespectful it is. That is such an incredible story. And I want to ask you what bearing this has on Iran today. But we have to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Reza Aslan.

Hey, folks, if you're enjoying this interview and the incredible perspectives that you get We have to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Reza Aslan. You get every episode of the podcast ad-free. You can join our community Discord. We do a live community book club over Zoom. It's super fun. It's a wonderful community of intelligent, curious people who love to learn, and you will be supporting this show directly. And once again, you get every episode ad-free once you join. Head to patreon.com slash adamconover. That's patreon.com slash Adam Conover.

I'd really appreciate it. And thank you so much for being here. Reza, this story is incredible of Howard Baskerville. Our understanding of Iran as a country in the United States is so narrow. It's based on, you know, once every, you know, three years, there'll be one scary story about Iran on CNN, right? And that's all that people get. What bearing do you think this story has on how we could understand Iran differently today? It's funny.

Despite four decades of animosity between the Iranian government and the American government, I think people would be shocked at how unbelievably pro-American the Iranian population is. We talked about this earlier. It says 75% of the population of Iran is under the age of 30. They are globally connected. They know what you know. They read what you read. They have access to what you have access to.

They know what the world is like. And they absolutely loathe their government. It's kind of like the flip side of the 60 60s and 70s where they hated their government. And so because America supported the government and their government loved America, they hated America. Now they hate their government, but the government hates America. So they love America. They love American food and American clothes and American music and American culture. American clothes and American music and American culture.

When 9-11 happened, thousands, thousands of Iranians poured out onto the streets to mourn with America. It was the only population in the entirety of the Middle East in which you saw that kind of spontaneous emotional response for the United States. And the truth of the matter is that Iranians and Americans have so much in common with each other. Even this whole thing, you know, people are like, oh, Iranians are so religious. First of all, no, they are not. They are not. Like when religion is forced upon them by the government, you know, it's very hard, honestly, to find, certainly in a young Iranian that is like overtly religious, you know, by choice. But at the same time, Iran's conception of religion is very much aligned with kind of America's conception of religion. You know, the stuff that Woodrow Wilson said about, you know, God and government. I mean, any Iranian would agree with that.

and government. I mean, any Iranian would agree with that. And so what I'm really hoping is that if I could just revive the memory of this kid, Howard Baskerville, in both countries, I am doing a free Persian version of this book that's a PDF that anyone can download in Persian in Iran. So it goes bypasses all the censors and stuff. But if I can revive the memory of this kid in both America and Iran, then maybe in a way that he could form a bridge of understanding, you know, he could remind us at the very least of everything that we have in common with each other. You know, these two countries that, that whose governments loathe each other for very reasonable reasons. I get it. We have different foreign policy perspectives and interests and all that stuff. But whose populations have so much in common.

Well, because this kid had the reaction to the revolution that I was naively suggesting the American government should have, which was, oh, I grew up learning about the American revolution, about democracy. Here it is happening in front of my eyes. I should help because that's what is – confusion in the sources about he was willing to hand his passport over. And the question is, did he hand it over or did they take it? Did he actually do it? Was he willing to do it, but he didn't? Whatever. The point is, is that he got a lot of shit for this idea that, oh, he abandoned his Americannness or that he abandoned his Christianity. But I have the letters that he wrote, the letters he wrote to his mom,

the letters that he—on the eve of his death, the letters that he wrote to the consul general saying, hey, there's a lot of confusion about why I'm doing what I'm doing, but I just want to make it as clear as possible. I'm not doing this because I've abandoned Christ. This is what Christ would do. I'm not doing this because I've abandoned America. This is what Americans should do. I'm doing this in the name of all those things that you are saying that I am abandoning.

And if anything, it's you guys who are abandoning these values. It's you guys who are abandoning these values. That's what makes it an inspiring story because he is living out the values, the positive values of his faith and of his country in a way that his – the religious institution – in a way that America itself has not. That is exactly what I was bemoaning America not doing. Why the hell aren't we supporting a legitimate democratic revolution? Why are we supporting the autocrats instead? Why do we do that around the world? But individually, those values are still real.

They're just expressed by individual Americans rather than by our government at many times. And especially nowadays where, you know, far from like supporting democracy in the rest of the world, we're not even all that fond of democracy here. We're like, you know, freedom. Well, not when it disagrees with me. You know, not that, you know, or where you have, you know, I mean, for better or worse, American Christians have now got this label, right? Where it's like, we call them Christofascists or Christian nationalism where they are trying to codify laws, you know, on the rest of Americans based on their sort of limited conception of Christian morality. And here is this kid who's like, you know, if you really want to call yourself a Christian, that means you do what Christ did. And what did Christ

do? He sacrificed himself for other people to save other people. That's what he did. He didn't, you know, work to change Roman law to outlaw abortion. He wasn't like at the legislature in Rome. Or ban Judaism or anything else. Exactly. He actually lived that out. And, you know, he didn't talk about how great democracy is and, you know, how wonderful it would be if the rest of the world was, you know, democratic. He saw people fighting for their most basic rights. The right to have a say in the decisions that rule your life. That's not that

big of a deal. That's a very small thing to ask for. And he thought he couldn't believe that America wasn't supporting this. And so he just did it himself. He was literally, I told you, there were hundreds of revolutionaries that came from all over the world to join this revolution. There was one American, one American, and he was a 20-something Christian missionary with no military training whatsoever. That's unbelievable. I have to ask, and it's maybe a big question to ask as we're getting towards the end of the podcast. But when you say that we have so much in common with Americans and Iranians and that they hate their government, then how does the regime persist, especially in a country that has a history of revolutions, of everyone in the country saying, you know what? We're fed up about this. Let's go get into the streets and tear it down.

But yet this regime, which is not supported by the majority of Iranians in your account, has persisted for, what, 40 years now? This is such a great question, and it's such an important answer, and I want to answer it fully, so I'm going to speak as fast as I possibly can. Here it goes. Number one, almost on a daily basis, there are protests and uprisings and strikes and everything else that you can imagine happening in Iran all the time right now. It's happening every day. It's not getting enough attention. This government is barely, barely holding on.

But they have a huge advantage, and it's a very easy thing to understand. A tyrant stays in power by isolating his people from the rest of the world. If you have to rely on that tyrant, literally for bread, literally to keep the lights on, right, then you're far less likely to successfully be able to bring that tyrant down. For 40 years, America has had this wrongheaded, years America has had this wrongheaded, dim-witted policy that if we can just sanction, isolate, and contain Iran from the rest of the world, if we can destroy its economy, if we can isolate it from the rest of the world, if we can cut it off from the free market, if we can cut it off from the globe when it comes to medical supplies or the international banking system, then eventually the people will rise up and bring down their government.

But that doesn't work. It's the exact opposite that happens. A country that's isolated, contained, and sanctioned can barely pay for food for the day. The idea that this is a population that would go out and risk its lives bringing the government down is very hard to imagine when you can't keep the lights on in your house. And again, despite all that, we're still seeing it. We're still seeing people on the streets, thousands of people on the streets protesting this government. people on the streets, thousands of people on the streets protesting this government. But once again,

it is truly American action, American foreign policy that has kept this regime in power for four plus decades. Whereas the opposite is what you want to do. If you want a successful, If you want a successful, quote-unquote, democratic society, you need two things. You need a vibrant middle class, right? A middle class that has what we used to call the leisure class. The ability, the freedom to actually even think about, hey, we should change things. I'm going to read a newspaper. I've got a couple of free hours to vote. Let me go to the coffee shop and talk about politics. Instead of I've got three jobs just to keep the lights on.

And you need access to the free market economy. You need access to the rest of the world. We have cut off both of those things from Iran on purpose because we think that it will eventually convince the Iranian people to get rid of their government. The Iranian people hate their government. They would like nothing more than to get rid of their government. They don't have the ability to do so because of a four-decade sanctions regime. And I love this idea. There's a lot of people who would disagree with what I'm saying. That's fine. There's a lot of sort of really brilliant government minds out

there who can draw analogies around like, well, there are certain ways in which you could use a sanction regime in order to create positive change within a government. Okay, fantastic. Great. Go and do that. But here's what is undeniable. 40 fucking years of doing the exact same thing has done nothing to bring down this government if anything it is just entrenched them yeah in place so maybe just maybe we try something else yeah yeah try some blue jeans and rock and roll and bring some food in and let them connect with the rest of the world, which is something they're hungry to do. It's ridiculous. And I'm not – I know I'm being very general here because we only have a veto power, kept Iran from joining the World Trade Organization, the WTO, which it's been trying for a long time. And America's government is – it's a terrible government. They do terrible things.

They should be punished, not rewarded by joining the WTO despite the fact that Iran is desperate to join the WTO. desperate to join the WTO. Okay. When a country joins the WTO, the World Trade Organization, in order to stay in the World Trade Organization, they have to enact certain economic and political changes. It enmeshes them in the global system. It forces them to do precisely the kind of progressive and liberal actions that they need so that they could stay in the WTO. And then if they fuck up, they can be punished by being removed from the WTO. America has this idea that you can punish Iran by taking away something that they already don't have. And if we just keep doing that for maybe four more decades,

then maybe something will change. Well, and the big, I think, especially leftist critique of the WTO is that it erodes sovereignty for nations, right? It makes nations have to do what the WTO wants, which if you are not a leftist, if you're the American government and you want to topple the Iranian government,

well, then maybe membership in the WTO is what you should allow to have happen. So basic and obvious. So basic. And here we're having this conversation again with the nuclear accords and all that stuff, you know, the JCPOA, which, you know, Obama got all this shit for, for, you know, signing those accords, which again, forced Iran to join an economic partnership with all of Europe and Russia and China, which then gives them something that we could take away if we want to punish them. Right. You can't punish a country when you don't give them anything to begin with.

What are we going to sanction you more? What are we going to do? Yeah. There's nothing we can do to punish Iran. Yeah. What are we going to do? There's nothing we can do to punish Iran. Yeah.

You know, and so I think it's just this, again, it goes back to this is policy that is being dictated by emotion. I know it sounds weird because like governments aren't supposed to think this way. But this was a very, very nasty divorce. Uh-huh. And the bitterness. So maybe just having, maybe just getting to a point where you can have a phone call every once in a while and say, Hey,

tell you what we can, we can nod and shake hands when we hand over the kids on weekends or something. That would be, that would be an improvement. It's an early start. And maybe this book will be that first, you know,

phone call. I mean, it's not, it's ridiculous to say, okay, well maybe a book can change that first, you know, phone call. I mean, it's ridiculous to say, OK, well, maybe a book can change policy. But, you know, we need a different story. Yeah.

You know, stories are how we understand the world. It's how we understand ourselves. It's how we understand our role in the universe. And right now the story about Iran and the United States is stuck in this hostage crisis revolution, Iran-Contra, you know, terrorism, you know, Iran-Iraq war. Like that whole thing that we've been talking about. And what we need is a different story. Yeah. And it might sound naive and a little pie in the sky, but I think Baskerville can be that story. I hope so.

I mean, I really thank you for coming on to share the story with us today. It's an incredible story. Tell us again the full name of the book and when does it come out? An American Martyr in Persia. And then the subtitle is The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville. And the book comes out October 11th, and it's available everywhere now. And I'm really grateful for this, Adam.

Thank you so much for having me. Reza, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. It's been incredible. Thank you. Well, thank you once again to Reza Aslan for coming on the show. If you want to pick up a copy of his book, you can get it at factuallypod.com slash books.

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