The Weekly Show This Week
On this “The Weekly Show” podcast with Jon Stewart, his guest is Maziar Bahari, publisher of iranwire.com. As the show writes, “With the US now directly engaged in the Israel-Iran conflict, Jon is joined by Maziar Bahari, author of Then They Came for Me, a memoir that served as the basis for Jon’s 2014 film Rosewater. Together, they explore the reality of life under Iran's current government, discuss the complex challenges of regime change both in Iran and elsewhere, and consider what ordinary Iranians actually want: peace and the freedom to live their lives.
Side Note: If you haven’t seen Jon Stewart’s aforementioned film, Rosewater, try to track it down somewhere. It’s very hard to find – not just now, but also the film was inexplicably dumped when it was released – and it’s excellent. It’s not just a good movie by Jon Stewart, but it’s an excellent movie, period. And for someone’s first movie, it’s seriously impressively done. A terrific script (that Stewart wrote), but also maturely and richly directed, by him with several innovative tweaks. Why it got thrown away has always been beyond me – in fact, during “awards season,” they didn’t even have screenings for it, or send out DVD to guild members. The movie isn’t remotely a comedy, it’s the gripping true story of what happened to Mr. Bahari after he’d been interviewed for a segment on The Daily Show, back when Jon Stewart was hosting, and Iranian secret police thought that this had made him a spy. (In a small role, his character’s wife is played by Claire Foy, who later came to fame as the young Queen Elizabeth in the first seasons of The Crown.) As a bonus, I've posted the trailer below.
Back to “The Weekly Show”, here is the show’s "breakdown" of when specific topics are covered during the conversation, so you can jump to the sections that most interest you. Those time codes are hyperlinked to the video on YouTube and will jump you automatically to the right spot. But for those who watch it here, this is the schedule.
0:00 - Introduction
5:41 - Maziar Bahari
9:51 - Difficulties of maintaining contact with sources in Iran
14:45 - Ad break MINT MOBILE
16:25 - Story about 2012 Ehud Barak assassination attempt
18:02 - The difficulty of getting information into Iran
25:02 - What kinds of leaders are Iranian people supporting?
32:51 - Mistake of Mosaddegh & former Iranian politicians
41:08 - Ad break INDEED
42:56 - Talk of nuclear programs, what is defining foundation holding a nation together?
53:27 - What do other countries think about conflict?
59:16 - What is the regime’s support level?
1:03:25 - Ignorance, incompetence, and evil
1:08:02 - Nature of the people versus nature of the leadership
1:19:59 - Breaking Down the Discussion
BONUS:
Here is the trailer for Rosewater. It's done well -- but the movie is even significantly better.
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