This is the Lion and the sun. A podcast about the modern history of Iran and its ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. In this series, we go back 200 years and through three different political systems to explore how religion, monarchy, democracy, and nationalism have all played important roles in getting Iran to where it stands now.

In this introductory episode, we go through the structure of the podcast, how it’s made, and how you can listen to and support it. You can subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts from.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Pepe and you’re listening to The Lion and the Sun.

About the Podcast

I’m sure in the past few months, you’ve heard something about what is going on in Iran. 

Now in the time that we’re actually recording this, there are massive protests happening across Iran. But the fascinating thing about the previous sentence is that it doesn’t matter when you’re listening to this podcast. It could be a week from now, a month, or even years. I am sure that the sentence will hold as much truth then as it has now.

Recently Iranians have taken to the street to protest the brutal treatment of their citizens. They are demanding change, freedom, and equality and they’re being met with brutal violence from their government.

But this struggle for freedom isn’t a newfound purpose for the Iranians.

Iran is a truly captivating place. A country with over 2000 years of history that has always been at the center of world events. From the days of the Achaemenid empire and the Persian wars with the greeks to their Islamic revolution of 1979 and the constant conflict with the west. Iran history has been a never-ending struggle for liberty and independence. a fight with many casualties, numerous dead ends, and lots and lots of false hopes.

In this podcast, we want to give some context to this fight. To embark on a journey that expands 200 years and reaches through three different political systems. We want to tell you the story of how Iran ended up where it is now and how religion, monarchy, democracy, and nationalism all played important roles in defining the lives of its people through different centuries. 

Things to Remember

But before starting our story, we need to mention a few things.

• Iran’s history is full of detail, any occurrence in it involves many players, big and small, and stems from multiple other preceding events. In this series, for the sake of convenience and easy understanding, we will do our best to stick to the main events and key players and stay away from minor details. While doing our very best not to compromise rigor and the essence of the story. Therefore we’ll try to keep the story limited to key and critical matters in history of Iran and stick to the big events that defined each era. So while definitely rigorous and precise, this will not be a historical account of scientific granularity. If that’s what you’re looking for, maybe check out the list of resources we’ve provided on our website. They might be more helpful.

• The other thing is, we’re not historians. We’re just two people who are interested in history. We’ll do our best to make sure everything you hear on this podcast is fact-checked, neutral, and historically accurate. But at the end of the day, this will be history told through our eyes and therefore might be prone to some mistakes, mispronunciations and personal takes that some may disagree with. We are more than open to hearing your own take on our account. The only rule is to do it on the base of respect.





• And finally, the structure of this podcast is everchanging. We’ll probably spend the first few episodes trying to fine-tune how we tell the history, calibrate our technical skills and find the perfect voice for this story. So be patient with us and let us know how we can improve and make things better. 

Final Note

Oh and just a friendly reminder that We’re completely independent of any groups related to the politics of Iran. We have no skin in the game and we’re not trying to vouch for any specific idealogy, or political party or give approval or disapproval for any event or action taken by noted individuals throughout Iran’s history.  

This project is free. It will always stay free. We’ll publish new episodes once every two weeks and we’ll do our best to stick to this schedule, but since this is just our side project, we apologize for any potential delays in the future. 

If you enjoyed our episodes and wanted to help us keep this thing going you can do so by telling your friends about us and introducing this podcast to the other podcast listeners you know. You can also visit our website for the transcript of the episodes or follow us on social media for supporting content related to our story. 

On that note, we invite you to join us on this journey and to travel back to 1890, where the first chapter of our story begins …

Sources:

Iran: A Modern History by Abbas Amanat

Iran Between Two Revolutions by Ervand Abrahamian

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