Iran International:

Kambiz Hosseini

It’s eleven o’clock at night in Tehran when I open the phone lines for my live call-in show, The Program. Friday night is when I ask Iranians to do something that has become almost subversive: not just to talk, but to listen.

For more than forty some years, the Islamic Republic has tried not only to control power but to monopolize conversation itself, deciding who speaks, what is heard, and which "alternative truths" are permitted to exist.

Dialogue frightens it. So does ordinary patriotism, the kind that arises when people speak in their own words about their country.

On the line, a teacher from Kermanshah tells me that students are never taught the courage to ask critical questions. A Toronto caller describes a generation that has learned to survive by lying. A woman in Tehran confesses that she’s waiting for a miracle because she can no longer imagine change.

These voices are not fragments; they are coordinates on the map of a national psyche. Talking in Iran can be dangerous. Silence, in another way, is deadly too. When a society stops speaking to itself, it begins to turn against itself. Authoritarians thrive on that silence.

The live show I host is an attempt—improvised, fragile, sometimes chaotic, to reverse that damage. We bring Iranians together in real time, from Tehran to Los Angeles. We follow three simple rules: everyone gets heard, no judgment, and keep it suitable for all ages.

Our callers often contradict themselves. That’s what makes it real. Dialogue isn’t the theater of agreement; it’s the discipline of listening.

Across the static and emotion, three truths keep repeating.

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