Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation, Raising Nimrunnis, a conversation with Razazlan.

Hello and welcome to this raising Nimb-Rune's edition of Learn Persian with Chaiin Conversation.

I'm your host, Leila Shams, and today's interview is Reza Aslan, who in recent years has become one of the most respected and recognizable Iranian Americans out there. He wears many hats and his resume is too long to go through, but among other things,

he's the author of several books, including his number one New York Times bestseller,

Zealit, The Life in Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

He's a commentator, a professor, a producer, a scholar of religions.

I actually met Reza at a podcasting conference last August. Remember those things?

Conferences shortly after coming up with the idea for this podcast series. He was there as a

keynote speaker promoting his then new podcast with Rayne Wilson called Metaphysical

Milkshake. After his presentation, we had coffee and he told me his experiences of raising

three, which has since become four, half-heronian children. He enthusiastically agreed to

be interviewed for the podcast and connected me with several other people I ended up interviewing

for this series. So I really thank him for his enthusiasm and connected me with several other people I ended up interviewing for this series.

So I really thank him for his enthusiasm and for his help along the way with this project.

So for some context, we finally recorded this interview the first week after the lockdown was

announced from COVID-19. So I was a little shell-shocked, but Reza was certainly in good spirits. Let's

listen to the interview. Reza, so welcome. Thank you for talking to me. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm very excited to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. And I have a whole series

of questions. So we're recording this on March 20th and the world has changed a lot in the last week. So first of all, if you can tell me about your background where you were born, what your relationship has been with Iran, learning the language.

I was born in Tehran. My father's family is mostly from the south of Iran.

There are, you know, a few Balukis in there somewhere.

And then my mother's family is mostly from Isfahan.

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