If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community,

discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter,

sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com.

All eyes are on Iran, a country in turmoil, a country that seems to be on the cusp of an enormous transformative change.

And yet it feels like we have been here before. So what lessons of 1979 in particular, what can they tell us about the future? Hello and welcome to Empire Pod. I'm William Derimple.

And I'm Anita Arnan. There is, at the moment, in Iran,

something of a geopolitical earthquake going on. We're getting reports of thousands of dead on

the streets shot dead by the state. Now, we're recording possibly a week before you're hearing

this, and we're at the Jaipur Literary Festival. And the kind of magical thing that happens at a literary festival of this size and one that is this international

is that you can pull together people with relevant experience.

So we have for you today a real treat.

We have one person who has forensically looked into the revolution of 1979 that

feels so familiar to what's going on today. And another who has been born in Iran, has contacts

with Iran, and can perhaps give us an idea of just how much we should draw from that 1979

experience to predict what is going to happen

in the next few months. So our two amazing guests on this pod, and this is the first time

in Empire, I think that we've done two guests, and it's a measure of their extraordinary

abilities that we're having them today. The first is Scott Anderson. Scott, I've rave reviewed your book on

Lawrence in Arabia 10 years ago when it came out and were very, very thrilled finally to get you here

both the Joy Pornitch Festival and to this podcast. Scott spent time in Iran traveling through

and has been working the last few years on this highly

acclaimed book that anyone that read the roundups of the books of the year this year will

...