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And now from Luminary Media and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Axfiles,

with your host, David Axelrod.

I consider Jason Resiner the Washington Post, a hero as I do all journalists who put themselves at risk to cover stories around the world.

In 2014, as the Post's Tehran Bureuchy, he was seized by Iranian authorities and jailed for 544 harrowing days on Trumped Up espionage charges before being freed in a prisoner swap with the US.

Now Jason has written a compelling book called Prisoner about that experience.

I sat down with him last week at the Institute of Politics at a live podcast to talk about his experience in prison, US, Iranian relations, and the plight of journalists who are trying to do difficult jobs around the world in a time of decaying security for freedom of the press.

Here's that conversation.

Jason Resiner, it's so good to see you here at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago here on the Axfiles.

Your story is so interesting to me.

We should point out that your mom is here who is a native of the Chicago area raised here.

And a whole bunch of relatives also here tonight.

We don't have a filler room.

It's a deceptive.

This is a hometown crowd here.

But you weren't brought up here. You were brought up in Northern California.

I did have two years of high school in Wheaton, actually.

Oh, I'm familiar with you.

But tell me about your upbringing because it sounded like a bucolic sort of...

It was pretty great.

I grew up about 15 miles north of San Francisco in Marin County on a big piece of land with trees and a stream running through it and a couple of horses and some chickens.

You know, my dad was from Iran and my mom was obviously from the suburbs here.

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