Students spill the tea on Iranian culture

The Chai Guys, a student-run podcast, have been producing the newest season of their show against the backdrop of an Iran currently enveloped by exploding civil protest and increasing unease over its fundamentalist regime. Amid this unrest, word of what is going on at home is creating far-reaching implications for the 700,000 Iranians living in Southern California.

“Tehrangeles”, a neighborhood in Westwood, houses much of Los Angeles’ Iranian American community and the biggest community of Iranians outside of the homeland. Among them, a young demographic of Persians is only just growing up to the realities of the ongoings in the Middle East, but is seemingly no less vocal about it compared to their elders. Late last month, over 5,000 protesters filled the area near L.A. City Hall in protest of the deaths of Mahsa Amini and approximately 250 others in subsequent demonstrations in Iran. Many of those protesters were university students.

Darian Ahmadizadeh, a sophomore majoring in data science, recognized this population of Gen-Z Iranian Americans as an engaged one, willing to hear more about the topics that drove discourse in the community, as well as others that their parents or grandparents might consider too risqué for conversation. It’s for this reason, but also for fun, that Ahmadizadeh said he approached fellow USC student and longtime friend Jackson van Horn, a sophomore majoring in film production, to produce a podcast with him. Thus, “Chai Guys” was born. 

The Chai Guys’ first season was released last June, with Ahmadizadeh as co-host and van Horn taking up the role of executive producer. From the first episode, the Chai Guys brands itself as a discussion of “taboo subjects that you’re not necessarily comfortable speaking to your parents about.”

The scope of the Chai Guys was not meant to be particularly expansive at first, Ahmadizadeh and van Horn said. In trying to convince van Horn to join the project, Ahmadizadeh told him to just do it for their friends -— that it would be “funny.”

“We didn’t think anything too serious of it. We reached out to a host, and then I have a couple of connections in the Iranian community so we reached out to a couple of future guests that we had for season one,” Ahmadizadeh said. “We kind of just did it. I think the hardest part was just starting.”

van Horn said he initially had “no idea” how to run a podcast. He found adapting from filmmaking to podcast production through audio mixing and other production techniques was his “biggest challenge” at the time.

“The easiest solution we found was obviously going to a studio where there’s a mixer there… and they mix it as we go so we don’t have to worry about it as much. After that point, everything is just like filmmaking,” van Horn said.

Nonetheless, the response to season one “exceeded expectations,” according to Ahmadizadeh. The Chai Guys introduced a plethora of guest speakers, from comedians to TikTok influencers, across seven episodes. The trailer, Ahmadizadeh said, resulted in “press reach[ing] out to us from all over the country, even back home in Iran.” They aim to build on this interest.

The Chai Guys hope that their guest list, new studio and revamped hosting team will earn the second season more success when it is released in December across platforms such as YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, with clips also to be uploaded to TikTok to generate further interest. They host a variety of guests, such as Nina and Nicolette Gray — a mother and daughter duo featured on “Dr. Phil” in August 2018 that garnered mainstream media attention — as well as Pej Vahdat, an actor who starred in the TV series “Dynasty,” and Ashley Zarah, an up-and-coming musician.

“I was really happy and really proud to see the younger generation kind of taking the reins of what our culture is going to look like in the future,” said Zarah on being a guest on the show. 

“I think what they’re doing is reminding people of the value of that inherent culture … something you can’t get rid of, but it’s something that controls your day to day,” Zarah said.  “So they’re really connecting everybody in a comedic way, in an artistic way. I saw a lot of the guests that they had there. They’re coming from all sorts of different backgrounds and really challenging the meaning of what it means to be an Iranian in America.”

In addition to these changes, the Chai Guys have altered the tone of some of their conversations in response to the recent events in Iran. It created a conundrum for the creators of the podcast of whether or not to continue. 

“We eventually decided to do it, and I’m really grateful for having a platform and having the freedom of speech to do it in L.A., because we couldn’t have done this in Iran, talking freely about these heavy subtopics,” Ahmadizadeh said.

Van Horn said that there is a focus on the current Iranian protests in all their conversations with guests.

“[The recent events in Iran are] the center focus of this second season, every single episode. Every single guest touched on it, how it’s impacted them and how within their own industry,” van Horn said. “They believe people can help.”