The social, political and economic forces behind Iran’s protests

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is the third week of protests in Iran. Dozens have died and hundreds have been arrested in the demonstrations following the death of a young Iranian woman in police custody. And now the outrage seems to be spreading and tapping into a deep well of grievances.

“This is really anger at the entire system for its 43 years of corruption and abuse of power,” said Jason Rezaian, opinion columnist for the Washington Post and author of “Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison.”

On the show today, Rezaian explains what’s driving the latest protest movement in Iran, the role of the United States and what may come next.

In the News Fix, the Supreme Court started a new term this week and it’s expected to be a doozy. We’ll explain. Plus, get ready for the return of Donald Trump on Twitter.

Then, the gif vs. jif debate continues. And, in case you didn’t know, the climate crisis is so bad that the city of Los Angeles hired a chief heat officer. Hear her answer to the Make Me Smart question.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“Opinion | To help the next Iran protests, the U.S. should change these policies” from The Washington Post
“Iran Protests Underline Economic, Social Pain” from Bloomberg
“Musk Proposes to Buy Twitter for Original Price of $54.20 a Share” from Bloomberg
“Three Huge Supreme Court Cases That Could Change America” from The New York Times
“Watch world’s first all-electric plane soar through test flight” from CNN
“Los Angeles Becomes Latest City to Hire ‘Chief Heat Officer’” from Smithsonian Magazine

Join us tomorrow for Whaddya Wanna Know Wednesday. If you’ve got a question you’d like us to answer, leave us a message at 508-U-B-SMART or [email protected].

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello everyone, I am Kimberly Adams and welcome to make me smart where none of us is as smart
0:12.0	as all of us.
0:13.0	I'm Kai Rizzo, it's Tuesday, one topic is what that means.
0:15.8	We're talking about Iran today, some of the biggest protests in years and years in
0:21.0	that country.
0:22.0	It started a couple of weeks ago after the death of a young Iranian woman in police custody.
0:26.0	Since then dozens have been killed, hundreds have been arrested in protests that are even
0:30.9	as we speak, even as we speak, still spreading.
0:34.0	Right, and those protests have tapped into this well of deep grievances in Iran over social,
0:41.0	political, and of course, economic issues that have been just simmering for the longest.
0:45.7	Here to explain what's behind this latest protest movement in Iran is Jason Rezayan, former
0:51.3	Tehran Bureu Chief for the Washington Post, now an opinion columnist and author of Prisoner,
0:57.3	my 544 days in an Iranian prison.
1:01.3	Welcome Jason.
1:03.3	Thank you so much for having me, Kimberly and Kai.
1:06.9	So can you talk first about the event that was the catalyst for these mass demonstrations
1:12.6	that are happening all across Iran right now and what these protests are really about?
1:18.6	Well, the real jumping off point for these protests happened a few weeks ago when a young
1:25.0	22-year-old woman named Masa Amini from a town in the Kurdistan province was arrested
1:32.1	in the capital Tehran by the so-called Morality Police for allegedly not covering her hair
1:38.4	properly.
1:40.2	These police have existed in some fashion or other for the entire 43-year history of the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.