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The Good Fight

An Iranian in America

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7963 Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Roya Hakakian is an Iranian dissident, poet, and writer. She has long been a fierce critic of the regime. But in her latest book, A Beginner's Guide to America, she sets her sights on the United States, setting out to explain why the citizens of liberal democracies should value their political systems despite their flaws. In this week’s conversation, Roya Hakakian and Yascha Mounk discuss Iran’s democratic prospects, the state of democracy around the world, and why the benefits of freedom are often lost on those who have always enjoyed them. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John T. Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

What should we have for dinner Trevor? We've got a few bits in the fridge.

0:03.0

Beets me, Connie.

0:04.1

Hang on, I'll use my phone.

0:08.4

How about a nice prawn curry?

0:10.4

Whoa, that's amazing, Connie. You got a chef living inside your phone

0:14.8

Not quite Trev at Argos.

0:17.8

Co. UK we have all the latest must-habs including the new Google Pixel with

0:22.2

Gemini AI.

0:23.3

There's more yum to Argos.

0:25.9

Subject to availability delivery fee may apply.

0:28.1

Can the phone what the dishes do, Connie?

0:30.6

What I tried to do in the book was to make Native-born Americans aware of all the gifts that American democracy has bestowed on them, not in the form of every four year an election, but in the form of the beauties of daily living in a country where there is no dictatorship and censorship.

0:52.0

And I think those are the things that if you have always had

0:56.9

this or known this as the only way that your nation has been governed, then you are likely to be blind to the other darker possibilities.

1:08.0

And now the good fight with Yasha Monck.

1:20.0

When I was promoting my last book, The People versus Democracy, I gave an interview to Targestim,

1:22.0

one of the biggest German news shows.

1:24.7

And when I was asked about the causes for the rise of populism, I said that there was the rise

1:29.9

of the internet and of social media, there was the stagnation of living standards for ordinary citizens,

1:35.0

and there was also what I called in that interview

1:38.0

the great experiment we're living through

1:40.0

of turning monoethnic, monocultural nations into multi-ethnic ones.

...

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