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If you’re not fully caught up on recent events: Recently, Jimmy Kimmel staged a faux White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast on his show. He made a joke about the First Lady, Melania Trump having “a glow like an expectant widow.” For context: This happened several days before a shooting attempt at the real dinner.

The First Lady, outraged, called for his firing. Then Trump echoed her sentiments, telling ABC to get rid of him.

Then the FCC ordered an early license renewal for ABC stations.

As they say, in comedy, it’s all about the timing. But also in real life.

This is not the first time that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has stepped in.

What surprised me wasn’t the administration’s response so much as the reaction from so many others. Trump and the First Lady are entitled to free speech, the crowd chanted. And it’s true. They are. But this had gone far beyond merely criticizing Kimmel for a joke they didn’t like. They called for his firing. And who speaks for the government if not the president?

This isn’t on par with the criticism of the average person. When Trump tells a media organization to fire someone, it carries the weight of an entire administration.

And yet many of the same people who were up in arms over the Twitter Files—where government “suggested” certain content deemed harmful is removed—and cancel culture, were now fierce defenders the President openly demanding a television host be fired.

You might think the joke was in poor taste, mean-spirited, or cruel. Worse, you might think it wasn’t funny. But as is often echoed, free speech protections aren’t just for the speech you like.

Kimmel explained the joke on his show:

“It was a pretend roast. I said, ‘Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at her. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.’ Which obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular.

“But I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it... because, by the way, I also should point out: Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you, and as am I, as are all of us. Because under the First Amendment, we have as Americans a right to free speech.”

Legally, Trump calling for Kimmel’s firing probably doesn’t constitute a First Amendment violation on its own. Presidents can speak. They can criticize. They can even be petty about it. That said, one could argue that calls for someone’s firing coming from the highest office in the country may undermine the spirit of free speech, even if they do not violate its letter.

But the law gets more complicated when government pressure is used to coerce or punish private parties for speech. Courts have found such pressure unconstitutional before. The FCC’s immediate move to order an early license renewal for ABC stations may be an indication of exactly that.

The FCC cited other regulatory reasons—connected to DEI practices (which brings up its own set of legal issues)—but the timing of it seems more than coincidental, especially given that the licenses weren’t due for renewals until 2028 at the earliest, with some not due until 2031. The move has been widely called unprecedented. The FCC controls broadcast licenses, which are essential for networks like ABC, so it has real leverage.

It comes across like a warning to other networks: behave — or else.

In a statement, Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, stated:

“The FCC has no authority to cancel broadcasters’ licenses because of their perceived political views…But this isn’t just about the rights of Disney and ABC. President Trump is trying to consolidate control over what Americans see and hear on the radio, television and social media. If he gets his way, we’ll have only government-aligned media organizations that broadcast only government-approved news and commentary. It would be difficult to imagine an outcome more corrosive to democracy or more offensive to the First Amendment.”

It’s also worth noting that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr contributed to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy blueprint on communications, which calls for stronger presidential control over independent agencies like the FCC and recommends more aggressive use of regulatory authority over communications and tech sectors.

When it comes down to it, those who didn’t share my concerns are right on one key point: criticizing Kimmel is indeed within Trump’s rights, and even calling for his firing likely falls within the bounds of protected political speech—even if not the spirit of it.

But the FCC putting ABC's licenses under early renewal the day after Trump called for Kimmel to be fired? That's where this veers into potentially unconstitutional territory—retaliatory, coercive, and a threat to First Amendment values.

Even the perception of such conduct alone can have a chilling effect on speech, underscoring the fragile boundary between political rhetoric from public officials and how it can cross over into political pressure.

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By now you've probably seen the clip circulating around. The New York Times had New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino and rich socialist Hasan Piker join the paper’s Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman on “The Opinions” do discuss the morality of microlooting and petty theft.

The guests drew a clear line at dine and dash, but stealing from Whole Foods? Well, that was quite alright.

The video of the conversation was titled: “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?”

Tolentino, far from a starving artist, had confessed that she had stolen lemons from Whole Foods. “I think that stealing from a big box store,” she admitted, stating her platform, “it’s neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest or direct action.”

When questioned by Spiegelman whether widespread theft would might eventually cause price increases, Piker chimed in: "Yeah, chaos…Full chaos. Let's go."

Tolentino welcomed it. “I kind of am inclined toward this,” she said, adding, “Everyone, try it. See what happens.”

Maybe they were partially joking. But fundamentally they were stating something a meaningful portion of the population believes: that stealing from big corporations, morally speaking, is not a big deal. But is it?

The Case for Stealing

The pro-stealing-from-corporations argument isn’t new and it isn’t as fringe as some people may like to believe. Proponents argue that Walmart has made $29.3 billion in operating income last year while paying workers wages that frequently require them to rely on food stamps. Amazon admitted that its drivers were sometimes forced to pee in water bottles. When the gap between what a company extracts and what it gives back is that obscene, the argument goes, the moral weight of shoplifting a $12 item approaches zero.

An argument Piker made, to further alleviate any feelings of guilt, is that large retailers build in what they call “shrinkage”—a more polite and official term for theft—directly into their pricing. So the loss is already priced in.

Another point, raised in response to a short video I made asking for input, was the idea of wage theft.

The data here is striking: employers stole more from workers through minimum wage violations, uncompensated overtime, and off-clock work than the total value of all burglaries, robberies, larcenies, and auto thefts combined—yet most employers face no criminal charges.

So who is really stealing from whom? Why should a person barely able to afford rent or groceries feel shame for stealing from a company making billions annually, whose CEO earns millions, while charging the consumers barely getting by as much as it can?

The case against stealing

As to be expected, there are some counterarguments. I prefer to pose them as questions.

If you haven't personally experienced wage theft by a particular company, what entitles you to steal from them because someone else has been aggrieved by them? And how does your theft help that person? Shouldn't the focus be on solving the underlying issue—strengthening penalties, improving enforcement, holding executives accountable?

Wage theft is wrong, and it's the most compelling argument in the pro-stealing case. But if stealing is wrong, isn't it inherently wrong regardless of scale? Stealing is, at its core, taking something you didn't earn, trade for, or receive freely. The corporate version may cause more aggregate harm—but aren't both acts still theft? And if one is wrong, isn't the other?

There's a strong enforcement asymmetry argument here. But justifying retail theft as a response to that asymmetry may be misplaced anger. The problem is that the law isn't being applied fairly or consistently. The fix is better accountability—not to steal downward while employers steal upward. That accounting won't balance well for anyone.

And who gets to decide which stores are most deserving of being stolen from? Is it really determined by the damage these corporations do—or by the desirability and accessibility of their goods? (eg. crimes of opportunity)

Large retailers often respond to rising theft by closing stores, and they tend to close them in the lowest-income neighborhoods first. Does widespread retail theft not ultimately hurt the very people on whose behalf the argument is being made?

Then there's the shrinkage argument turned on its head. If theft is already priced in, that cost gets passed on somewhere—to consumers. And the more theft there is, the more shrinkage gets priced in. Doesn't that mean low-income consumers end up paying more for the same goods?

But the silver lining is that property crime isn’t actually increasing—it has been falling sharply since the 1990s. Although we saw a spike during the pandemic, it has been trending downwards in recent years, despite what various pundits might suggest. Some cities, however, fare better than others.

(The last time I was in New York, I was struck by how even the most basic, inexpensive items at CVS were locked behind cases, which might partially account for the 20% drop in early 2026).

When is stealing the better moral choice?

Some people will argue that stealing is always immoral, and to some extent they are correct. But sometimes people are faced with two immoral choices, and they have to pick one.

In Les Misérables, Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephew. He does something technically immoral to save a life. For this, he receives a 19-year sentence. Hugo's point isn't subtle: the law can be perfectly applied and morally monstrous at the same time. The moral context matters—and Valjean's context is life or death.

As for the New Yorker’s Tolentino, she stole lemons—hardly a life necessity, and something she can easily afford.

I suppose that brings up the utilitarian calculus: stealing a $12 item from a billion-dollar corporation is very low, but the benefit to a hungry person is massive. The benefit to a person who wants lemons in their tea? Priceless, I guess.

The math is clear when the need is immediate and massive. Things get murkier when something becomes a want vs an immediate need, and the scale grows and it becomes a societal issue.

We already acknowledge, in our legal system, that theft exists on a moral spectrum. Sentencing guidelines account for circumstances—the amount taken, the need behind it, the harm caused. A starving person stealing bread is not tried the same way as an armed robber. The law, for all its flaws, builds in context.

Kant would say rules must hold universally or they collapse entirely. He argued that you shouldn’t lie when it’s convenient, even if a murderer were to ask where you friend was hiding—though you wouldn’t have to volunteer that information either. He has a point. But strict rule-following produces its own horrors, and most of us know it.

So I’m a little more flexible. If a starving child needed a loaf of bread and the only way to get it was to steal it—as long as I’m not depriving another starving person of it—not only do I think that would be the more moral path, I would help steal it.

Rules matter. But so does asking whether they are just.

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By now you've probably seen the clip circulating around. The New York Times had New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino and rich socialist Hasan Piker join the paper’s Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman on “The Opinions” do discuss the morality of microlooting and petty theft.

The guests drew a clear line at dine and dash, but stealing from Whole Foods? Well, that was quite alright.

The video of the conversation was titled: “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?”

Tolentino, far from a starving artist, had confessed that she had stolen lemons from Whole Foods. “I think that stealing from a big box store,” she admitted, stating her platform, “it’s neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest or direct action.”

When questioned by Spiegelman whether widespread theft would might eventually cause price increases, Piker chimed in: "Yeah, chaos…Full chaos. Let's go."

Tolentino welcomed it. “I kind of am inclined towar…

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I listened to a podcast episode recently featuring Andrew Wilson, a right wing debater who argued against democracy and in favor of a kind of soft Christian theocracy—essentially where Christian doctrine guides the political role of the government. His justifications ranged from scripture and the supposed flourishing of Christian societies above others to, in his own words, the fact that he simply “feels like it.”

That last phrase is worth sitting with. Feels like it. Because it reveals the core problem—not just with Wilson’s worldview, but with a whole category of lawmaking that has shaped societies throughout history. When the justification for a law is belief, instinct, or divine authority, there’s nowhere to go. You can’t argue with it. You can’t test it. You can’t persuade someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

And that, more than anything, is what makes it dangerous.

The Problem With "God Said So"

Wilson made one point worth taking seriously: rights only exist insofar as they can be defended by force. And to a large extent, it’s true. If an entity opposed to those rights held greater power, it could eliminate them. He’s not wrong about the mechanics.

But he draws the wrong conclusion. His response is essentially: since force determines outcomes anyway, let the right people hold the force. Specifically, Christians. More specifically, people like him.

Democracy

Wilson argues that democracy is inherently flawed because it enables tyranny by the majority—mob rule that can trample minority groups. Again, there's something to that. Democracy is messy and imperfect.

But democracy also allows ideas to compete, be challenged, evaluated, and rejected. You have to persuade people to win. You have to make strong arguments that hold up. It allows societies to evolve, and bad policies to be reversed through persuasion rather than force. Ideas that were unthinkable in the 1950s are accepted today—not because a ruler decreed it, but because minds changed over time. It’s the whole point.

The alternative is trusting a benevolent dictator to have the best interests of not just the populace in mind, but of individuals. History suggests that's a risky bet.

In Wilson’s vision, individual rights appear to be a secondary concern when policies align with his interpretation of Christian doctrine. He doesn’t feel compelled to rationalize why two men shouldn’t be allowed to marry, for example, scripture settles it. But in a pluralistic society, laws need justifications that everyone, regardless of faith, can engage with.

The Polygamy Question

At one point, Wilson asks the hosts: why shouldn't three men be able to marry? Or ten? Why can't a man marry three women? (Notably, he doesn't wonder why a woman couldn't marry multiple men.)

It's meant as a reductio ad absurdum—an attempt to expose the left as having no real moral foundation. But it accidentally illustrates the right way to make laws and examine their foundations.

For religious thinkers, the answer is scripture. The ethical guide is the Bible; God said so. But that immediately raises the question: which God? And the answer can’t just be “because it’s wrong.” We need to think it through deeper.

Despite Wilson’s contention otherwise, non-believers aren't morally adrift—they simply have to justify each belief through reason rather than revelation. My own starting point, for example, is maximizing individual liberty while minimizing harm to others. The Golden Rule —"do unto others as you would have them do unto you" — fits that framework, and it appears in Confucianism (a philosophy) just as much as Christianity. It's a principle that doesn't require a deity to justify.

So back to polygamy. Rather than reaching for scripture, the honest questions are:

• Does it harm the people involved, and how does that differ from monogamous relationships, which can also be painful and abusive?

• What are the societal harms, and how do they compare to those of other legally permitted arrangements?

• If relationships between consenting adults are already legal, what specifically makes a marriage between multiple adults more harmful?

Legally, polygamy is restricted for some practical reasons. It complicates taxes, inheritance, custody, medical decisions, and divorce. That’s a rational argument, not a moral one.

Further, there are legitimate concerns about exploitation, particularly in communities where women lack equal rights. As with anything, there is potential for abuse, but it can also be counteracted by laws and protections.

There are also considerations around economic and social stability. For example, if men marry multiple female partners, there would be fewer potential partners available for other men.

These deserve serious debate. But notice they're arguments about consequences, ones that can be examined, measured, and challenged by anyone regardless of their faith. That's exactly what rational lawmaking looks like. And crucially, if the evidence doesn't support the harm, the law doesn't hold. That's how it should work.

Who Decides the Greater Good?

What Wilson and those like him ultimately want is to remake the world in their own moral image. He asks, for instance, whether banning OnlyFans would really cause net harm. Perhaps it would—prostitution has existed throughout human history, and platforms like OnlyFans at least allow people to sell sexual content in relative safety, without physical risk from encounters with strangers.

But beyond that specific debate, there’s a deeper problem: when you grant someone the power to determine the greater good, you’re trusting whoever was strong enough to seize that power—not whoever was persuasive enough to earn it.

This brings to mind a science fiction series I’ve been watching lately, in which an AI takes control of society. It eliminates corruption, solves hunger, reduces violence. But some people have to die in the process—”subversives,” as it calls them, enemies of the system. Privacy, too, disappears. And in a narrow, measurable sense, the AI works. The world becomes safer and more equitable by the numbers, by the things we can measure.

But at what cost? If the ruler is objectively correct, is that enough justification?

This is the oldest tension in political philosophy: how far do we go for the greater good, and at what point does the pursuit of it destroy the thing we were trying to protect?

Wilson believes Christian governance would produce better societal outcomes.

Marxists believed the same about communism—that the system was sound, and only human greed and corruption was what caused it to fail in practice.

The AI believes in its code.

They may all be sincere (well, insofar that artificial intelligence is capable of sincerity). They may even be partially right in theory. The trouble is, none leave much room for the rest of us to disagree.

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In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the legendary character of Holly Golightly found a certain kind of comfort in the quiet elegance of Tiffany’s, a place where, in her words, “nothing very bad could happen to you there.” Whenever she’d be feeling upset, going there would calm her down right away.

I’ve been to Tiffany’s in New York, visiting with my mom when I was young and impressionable. It was beautiful—filled with shiny objects. There was something deeply pleasant about its muted robin’s egg blue interior. But ultimately, it was too polished and luxurious for me to feel fully at ease. It was a nice store, but a store nonetheless. My mom—generously—bought me a deinty birthday keepsake, which I still have and appreciate.

But while I look back on that visit with her with some nostalgic fondness, it would be dishonest to say I felt the same comfort Holly Golightly did there. For me, it was not a place of belonging, but of admiration from a distance—surrounded by objects I could look at, but not …

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Most of us use artificial intelligence daily—whether to research, answer questions, or help with routine tasks. And while it can get a bit verbose at times, it generally does what it’s told.

Recently, though, I had a more… unusual experience.

During one interaction, Claude AI began psychoanalyzing me—without any prompting. Then it refused to complete a task I had asked for, insisting that I was too physically and emotionally depleted, and that I should drink some water and go to sleep instead. The task, it assured me, could wait.

Fair enough. It probably had a point.

Except it didn’t stop there…

In the days that followed, it continued to refuse the task—apparently under the impression that we were still on the same day as the original conversation. It was only after I explicitly clarified that several days had passed and that I had, in fact, rested, that it finally agreed to proceed.

While amusing at first, this experience was also a bit unsettling. It highlighted something deeper—something that becomes more concerning as we move into the era of agentic AI: systems that don’t just respond to instructions, but can set sub-goals, make plans, use tools, and act independently over extended periods of time.

There was a fair bit of fuss recently around “Clawdbot,” an open-source AI assistant that some people installed directly onto their personal machines to execute tasks. Privacy concerns aside—which are significant—agentic AI systems like this go far beyond merely responding to your request to write an email. They can independently handle client outreach, make restaurant and travel reservations, manage schedules, and coordinate workflows. They make decisions.

That’s undeniably useful. But it’s also potentially dangerous.

With traditional AI, you tell it what to do. With agentic AI, you give it an intent. For example: “increase my subscriber count.” And unlike a human assistant, it can pursue that goal continuously—while you sleep, work, or do anything else. You don’t need to pay attention. But therein lies the problem.

How, exactly, will this agentic AI pursue the goal you’ve set for it? How much control do you retain? How much awareness of its actions will you be able to track or approve? Will it interpret your intent the way you meant it—or simply the way it can most efficiently execute it?

There’s a lot that can go wrong.

AI systems are often built with ethical guardrails, but there’s ongoing debate about what those guardrails should look like—and how robust they actually are. As we’ve already seen with systems like Grok, safeguards can be inconsistent, and sometimes easily bypassed.

Take a simple example. I have a social media account. Suppose I instruct an agentic AI to maximize views on my content. The system quickly learns that extreme or provocative content tends to perform well. So, naturally, it starts generating more of it.

From the AI’s perspective, it’s doing exactly what I asked.

From my perspective, it’s doing something I wouldn’t do—because I have a sense of judgment, context, and taste that goes beyond pure optimization.

“Optimized performance,” it turns out, means something very different to a human than it does to a machine.

Now scale that up.

What happens if I task an agent with maximizing returns in the stock market? What if millions of such agents are trading simultaneously? What if one is managing a supply chain—cutting costs and increasing efficiency, but quietly removing all redundancy? What if it’s reviewing medical insurance claims?

It’s one thing if an AI occasionally messes up a dinner reservation but saves you time overall. It’s another if it’s involved in medical treatment decisions, military operations, or emergency response coordination.

The higher the stakes, the more human oversight there should be.

And yet, we’re steadily handing over more responsibility. We’re even willing to trust systems with our lives—getting into self-driving cars, for example. Most of the time, they work extremely well. And every time they do, we give them a little more of our trust.

It’s a bit like GPS.

Don’t get me wrong, I love GPS. I would not want to go back to paper maps. But every so often, you hear stories about drivers who followed directions so blindly that they ended up in lakes or down roads that clearly weren’t meant for cars. At some point, they stopped questioning the system.

They outsourced their judgment.

In other words: If your AI tells you something is a squirrel and you see a dog in front of you…trust your eyes.

And yes, humans make mistakes too. All the time. We get tired, distracted, emotional. We forget things, misjudge situations and sometimes make objectively bad decisions.

But AI makes a different kind of mistake.

A human might fail because they weren’t paying attention. An AI, on the other hand, might execute a flawed objective perfectly—logically, efficiently, and without hesitation—while completely ignoring the broader implications.

It’s also still prone to hallucinations. I’ve seen it firsthand: when reviewing a basic accounting error, the system repeatedly tried to justify the mistake by inventing internal logic rather than recognizing the flaw.

And unlike humans, who often catch themselves and course-correct, an AI agent can persist. If something isn’t working, it doesn’t necessarily stop—it adapts and keeps going, potentially reinforcing the same underlying mistake. Most significantly, it can do this at a scale and speed unmatchable by humans, amplifying the problem significantly.

A single flawed decision, repeated thousands or millions of times, becomes a systemic problem. Not just a one-off mistake.

To make matters worse, these systems operate as black boxes. They rely on patterns in data to make decisions, but we can’t always trace exactly how or why they arrived at a particular conclusion. This becomes especially concerning when the AI isn’t making just one decision, but a chain of them—each building on the last.

So when something goes wrong, it’s not always clear where or why it went wrong. And that’s the real challenge.

Agentic AI isn’t just a more powerful tool. It’s a different kind of actor—one that can act independently, persistently, and at scale, without fully sharing its reasoning.

So we need to decide not just what we want it to do for us, but how much we want it to be deciding for us.

So, use responsibly.

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There have been two jury verdicts handed down within 24 hours of each other this week that have big tech rattled. And for a good reason. At its core, there’s a consequential legal and ethical debate at the centre: when a technology platform is engineered to be addictive, who bears responsibility for the harm it causes?

Snacks are made to be addictive too. So are TV shows. What role do personal decisions play in this? How about parental oversight?

Both verdicts will almost certainly be appealed, but this isn’t a simple issue.

The Los Angeles Verdict

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent in the design of their social media platforms, awarding $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages. The jury having found that both companies acted with “malice, oppression or fraud,” with Meta bearing 70% of the responsibility and YouTube being accountable for 30%.

The plaintiff, identified in…

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I was at a film festival when a stranger decided she already knew everything about me. She managed to catch half a sentence, draw a conclusion, and was mid-accusation before I'd even had a chance to finish my thought. It struck me, later, that this is more or less how we relate to each other now.

Before I make a sweeping claim about what's tearing society apart, I should acknowledge that sweeping claims about what's tearing society apart are usually wrong because humanity is a complex system and it’s rarely just one thing. Still, this one is worth considering.

Thanks to the Internet and social media, we are more connected than ever. But we are also more divided. I think it’s making us hate each other not because of what it exposes us to, but because of what it hides. We see too much of what people think, and not nearly enough of who they are.

When we spend time with people, particularly in-person, we get to know them through experience and their behavior towards us and others. Are they warm? Funny? Fun to be around? Do they make us feel good about ourselves, or judged? Do they have our backs when we need them? Are they interesting to talk to? Thoughtful? We form our understanding of them through these very fundamental things.

But once we move into the virtual world, that understanding gets flattened. Even people we already know in person are suddenly reduced to a feed of their opinions. As we all know, none travel more divisively than political ones.

We also only ever see the parts they choose to present, constrained by a character limit, and crucially, never subjected to being questioned.

A study published in PNAS in October 2025 seems to support my hypothesis. Researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found that increased connectivity, rather than serving as a unifying force, has actually been driving division.

Researchers used a computational model grounded in two social mechanisms:

1) Homophily (the tendency to befriend like-minded people)

2) Social balance (the tendency to form groups where friends agree and enemies oppose each other)

They found that above a critical threshold of social connectivity, societies undergo a sharp, explosive transition into a deeply polarized state, splitting into two roughly equal opposing camps.

Apparently, we’re psychologically driven to minimize “cognitive dissonance” in our social triangles, and so people either conform or move out into the “enemy” camp.

When there are few connections, these clusters stay small and isolated, resulting in lower overall polarization. Once a certain connectivity threshold is reached though, polarization grows as people divide more into bigger clusters.

Smartphone and social media onset around 2008 had significantly increased the average number of close social connections people, according to the study—from about 2.2 in 2004 to around 4 by the mid-2020s. The model used in the study correctly predicts both the timing and the magnitude of polarization’s rise in the United States.

Significantly, once polarization takes hold, simply reducing social connectivity back to previous levels is not enough to reverse it. It would need to fall dramatically.

I recall having a conversation at a friend's place, with her neighbor also present. I said something that provoked a reaction. The neighbor didn't speak up, but I caught a brief look of disgust cross her face. I asked: "It seems like what I said upset you, do you mind telling me why?" She did. I explained my thinking further, and that alleviated her concern entirely.

A similar thing happened waiting in line at a film festival. A woman nearby overheard me telling a friend that I don’t think restaurants should have tips. She interjected angrily: “I had to say something. I was a waitress, we survive on tips, and I think it’s horrible that people like you—”

I stopped her. “I don’t think you caught the whole conversation. Can I explain?”

What she hadn’t heard was the rest: that I find tipping inconsistent and that it lets employers off the hook for paying fair wages. My actual position was that if I ran a restaurant, I’d pay a proper wage, skip the tips, and give staff equity in the business — so the better it does, and the longer they stay, the more they genuinely benefit. Her whole demeanor shifted.

This is the crux of it. So often, we only get fragments of people's actual thoughts—truncated by time, by medium, by what they choose to show. And the whole, as they say, is greater than the sum of its parts. But we rarely get the whole. We get pieces. Even close friends never see you in your entirety, but at least they see enough to understand you—including when you misspeak or say something they disagree with. They understand where you are coming from because they actually know you.

But the less time we spend together, the more we reduce each other to an avatar.

And increasingly, people reduce themselves to one too. The "MAGA" in the bio. The blue wave. The assortment of flags. These things collapse a person into an ideology, and since that's often all we have to go on, we judge accordingly, projecting every belief we associate with that label onto the individual behind it.

Think about driving. All you know about the person ahead of you is their car and how they're operating it—whether they're courteous or cutting you off. Information is sparse, so we fill in the rest. Often it’s enough to dislike their car to project those same feelings onto the driver. But a sticker that says "I love dogs" shifts something. Suddenly they're not just a vehicle. They're a person.

And that, perhaps, is the simplest way to understand what has gone wrong. We have all become bumper stickers to each other—reduced to symbols, slogans, and signals standing in for the full, messy, contradictory human being behind them. The internet promised us connection, and instead delivered us caricatures.

And even when it comes to people we know in person, when we become exposed only to certain opinions, it reduces the person as a whole. An idea of a person is much easier to dislike.

The antidote, I suspect, is not more discourse. It is more presence in each other’s lives. It’s in having dinners together, and going on hikes, and sharing laughs and drinks. It’s also in not judging the entire person over a single inflammatory sentence, but taking the time to ask them what they mean, and pushing back when it’s warranted.

The more we retreat into groups of people who only agree with us, the more radicalized we all become because pushback disappears. The friction that sharpens thinking and challenges bad ideas stops reaching the people who need it most as we surround ourselves only with those who think alike. Views harden, get affirmed, get amplified, and grow more extreme.

But people are more than just avatars or cliches in bios. They are not their yard sign, the car they happen to drive, or a bad social media post. They are the accumulation of their life experience, meals shared, grief and trauma, creativity and skill, favors they’ve done for others, how they treat others, how they make us feel when we are around them. None of that can just be squeezed into a short bio.

We are not a word, or a sentence. We are not a paragraph. We are book that keeps adding pages.

We are connected, yes. But we lack real connection.

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We have a tendency to trap ourselves in our own opinions. And the more tightly we cling to them, the more strongly held, the harder they are to escape.

It’s okay to disagree. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s more than okay to change your mind. But our culture doesn’t make that easy.

This is especially true for political commentators and those in adjacent spaces. For them, their views aren’t just opinions—they’re a product of sorts. Their product. Their livelihood depends on a clearly defined set of beliefs. Their audience, their colleagues, and their sponsors support them precisely because they align with those beliefs.

Imagine trying to change your mind in that environment. The audience pushes back. Revenue dries up. And where do you go from there? The so-called “other side,” whatever it might be, rarely welcomes converts warmly and with open arms—especially not ones who arrive with a complicated mix of views, some of which are palatable to them, and some of which are not.

I suspect many peop…

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I’ve written a great many things about a great many topics. Every so often, someone asks whether I regret any of it. Recently, one person didn’t so much ask as demand—not merely that I acknowledge that I was wrong but also append an update to an article written some time ago.

I explained, politely, that publishing doesn’t work like that. Once something is out in the world, I don’t get to push through updates, months or years later on someone else platform. Sometimes, I wish I could. Then, I’d never be wrong.

But beyond logistics, there’s something more fundamental here. I have to take ownership of what I’ve thought and written. I held the views I did based on the information I had at the time, filtered through the person I was at the time. All I can do—then and now—is try to be as informed as possible.

Of course, being informed is not a vaccine against error. People change their views not only because new information emerges, but because they themselves evolve. Personal experience, in p…

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I find myself questioning a lot of things lately. It’s like reaching a fork in the road, but instead of a few paths to choose from, there are just zig-zags, rough patches, and forests that seem to lead nowhere. And yet… maybe somewhere too.

The earliest career path I felt drawn to was… well… dentistry. I was six or seven, and I just happened to like our family dentist, who was also a family friend. I didn’t actually think it through. Looking at people’s mouths would be one of my least favorite things to do. My dad, however, clung to that hope for far too long. That “dream” faded quickly, and my elementary school teacher was certain I’d become a novelist.

I considered law—perhaps as a lawyer in the communications field. I was weirdly good at memorizing Latin and legal jargon in an introductory class. But it wasn’t meant to be.

Then came the ambition of earning my first million by the age of 25. I was certain it would happen. Entrepreneurial to a fault, I kept dreaming up businesses, start…

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There are now two fatal shootings involving federal immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis—the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Both of these have been captured on video and widely shared, inviting much public scrutiny and debate. Many of us might have watched the same videos, read the same analyses, and sifted through legal context, yet countless people have arrived at radically different interpretations of those same materials. Some it comes down to worldview, perspective, and politics. Some of it is due to absence of clarity on all the facts. And some of it might simply be contrarianism. There are many reasons.

Even recently, at a dinner with individuals whose political views largely align with my own, we found ourselves in disagreement on key aspects of these events.

In the end, the only point of consensus all of us seem to share is disturbingly simple: two people are dead. (Also, that whistles—having been watching these videos—are very irritating).

Regardless of whet…

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I’ve been wanting to write something more substantial about the situation in Iran, the incredible bravery that the Iranian people are showing in their fight for freedom, and the horrific brutality of the Islamic Regime (reportedly thousands of protesters have been killed in days). Dictatorships don’t fall easily.

The people have no weapons, yet the state has many and are brutal with them. The people are punished for speaking; imprisoned, tortured, raped, and killed. Worse, many are fearful because of the harm that may come to their loved ones—family, children, parents, and friends.

The state also controls communication, internal and external. And when people can’t speak openly, they don’t know what each believes, let alone organize.

In this environment, it is rare for dictatorships to be overthrown. And certainly not without either sufficient support from other interested parties, or internal ones coming over to the people’s side.

But what does that support look like? I think people with far more knowledgeable than me would be better equipped to assess the right approach—but there are many available tools ranging from diplomatic punitive measures, to further economic sanctions and pressures (especially on countries buying oil from Iran—China accounts for about 80%), to supplying arms and strategic intel to people on the ground, and the targeting key IRGC figures, while avoiding civilian casualties. In other words, it is not necessary to declare war on Iran in order to move the needle.

Again, the specifics are probably left to those with both expertise and special knowledge on the situation, but I do not want the Iranians to have sacrificed their lives for nothing, and the Islamic Regime should not be allowed to continue to rob the Iranian people of their freedom.

To that end, instead of a lengthy essay from me, I wanted to share a guest post by Maryam Mehrtash (of the Substack This is Not a Memo), an Iranian woman I had met a number of years ago. It’s sort of a primer on the history of all of this from the perspective of someone who longs to return to a free Iran and see her family.

- Katherine

Why Iran Is at a Breaking Point

How repression and economic collapse are pushing a nation beyond fear, written by an Iranian woman

Maryam Mehrtash

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I am an Iranian-Canadian-American woman. I was born in Mashhad, but my parents fled after the Revolution during the Iran-Iraq war when I was only two years old. My life has always existed between two truths that live in the same body and never fully reconcile.

Like many in the diaspora, I am a bridge between two worlds: one of safety and opportunity in the West, and another of deep, ancestral connection to a land where most of my family still lives. A land where the air smells like saffron and gasoline and jasmine, and where even the most ordinary acts of living have become political.

I dream of returning to Iran freely, not as a visitor with fear in my throat, but as a daughter of that soil. But the risk is too high. I am a mother. And the uncertainty of a system that can make you disappear for being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a price I cannot pay. It is the price Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, paid for six years of her life, separated from her own two-year-old daughter in 2016. There are many stories like hers.

I pray to share tea with my cancer-stricken grandmother one last time, to swap stories with cousins I mostly know through Instagram and Facebook. I want to take my half-Persian children into bazaars where pistachios are still warm in your palm, and beneath mosaic tile work so precise it feels like patience carved into stone. I want to swim in the Caspian Sea, with my son Caspian, and ski in Dizin again, once a world-class resort compared to the Swiss Alps.

Because Iran is not just politics. Iran is beauty. Iran is a history that did not begin in 1979.

And that is the first thing people miss.

Watching Iran From the Outside

If you are not Iranian, it is easy to watch Iran through headlines the way you’d watch a film with the sound off. You see the crowds, the smoke, the scarves, the crackdowns. But you do not hear the quieter soundtrack underneath it all: the daily math of survival, the humiliation of a collapsing currency, the fatigue of living inside a system designed to control your body and your voice.

You do not feel what it is like to spend your life in a waiting room.

There is also an overwhelming amount of misinformation. People skim a summary, absorb a narrative, and speak with certainty about a country they have never visited or lived in, often to people whose families are still living it.

Unless you are from Iran, or have family living through the daily grind of living within a repressive regime, it is hard to truly understand the gravity of the situation.

I don’t usually write about geopolitics, but I do write about courage, fear, leadership, psychology, and the economics of incentives, and understanding what is happening in Iran through those lenses matter here.

Iran’s breaking point is not a single event. It is an accumulation.

So let me set the scene, plainly, without spectacle.

The Shah: Modernization at a Price

In the 1970s, Iran was a secular monarchy ruled by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He inherited power in the aftermath of the 1953 coup d’etat orchestrated by the United States (CIA) and the United Kingdom (MI6), which overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh over oil interests (shocking!). That wound still shapes Iranian distrust of the West today, but that’s a story for another essay.

The Shah is often remembered through two very different lenses. To some, he was a visionary modernizer who expanded education, granted women the right to vote, and pursued what he called the Great Civilization. To others, he was a Western-backed autocrat, increasingly detached from the people he ruled.

The truth lives in the tension between those narratives.

The Shah had genuine, sweeping ambitions for Iran. He believed deeply in the country’s ancient greatness and saw himself as the steward of its return to global prominence. Through what became known as the White Revolution, he pushed rapid modernization: infrastructure projects, industrialization, land reform, expanded education, and political rights for women. On paper, it looked like progress, and in many ways, it was.

But progress imposed without consent carries a cost.

Modernization moved faster than social trust could keep up. Political participation lagged behind economic reform. Dissent was treated not as feedback, but as threat. And progress at gunpoint doesn’t always feel like progress.

Alongside modernization came repression. The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, became infamous for surveillance, intimidation, and brutality. Living inside a society where speech can be punished does something to a population’s nervous system. It teaches people to whisper. And when people whisper long enough, resentment doesn’t disappear, it simply finds a larger container. Imagine living in a country where your neighbor, your butcher, or even your cousin could be an informant. The psychological toll was immense.

To be clear, the Shah was not personally sadistic. He did not delight in cruelty. But leadership does not require malice to enable harm. By concentrating power, silencing dissent, and delegating repression, he became responsible for the system he allowed to operate in his name.

At the same time, Iran was awash in oil wealth. The Shah hosted extravagances that made Gatsby look modest, while most Iranians were just trying to stay afloat. By the late 1970s, inequality had become staggering. For the first time in its history, Iran could not feed itself. Food was imported, prices soared, inflation accelerated, and people watched their savings lose value almost overnight.

History has a way of repeating itself. When people are economically squeezed and psychologically suffocated, unrest follows. Inequality becomes revolution when the party is visible from the breadline.

By 1977, the richest 10% of the population controlled nearly 38% of the country’s income, a level of inequality even higher than that of the United States at the time. The “Great Civilization” felt great for the elite and for the Shah’s inner circle, but for everyone else, it was a party they weren’t invited to. Many felt culturally alienated and economically left behind.

What the people of Iran wanted was not ideology.
They wanted modern life and dignity.
Participation, not paternalism.
Progress that felt chosen, not imposed.

And when those desires went unmet, the ground beneath the monarchy quietly began to crack.

Khomeini: The Seduction of Promises

Into this pressure cooker stepped Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, his name means “spirit of Allah”. He came from a lineage of clerics, but what’s less often discussed is the trauma that shaped him early. Khomeini’s father was murdered when he was just an infant for his activism. He was first raised by his mother and aunt, and then after their deaths, by his elder brother.

Psychology teaches us that early trauma doesn’t vanish, it hardens into belief systems. You cannot fully understand who someone becomes without understanding what formed them. Khomeini’s rise cannot be separated from how loss, grievance, and authority fused into a worldview that would later justify absolute control.

He became the symbol and the vessel for a revolution that was, at the beginning, a coalition of the unlikely: religious conservatives, secular liberals, students, workers, families, people who did not agree on a future but agreed on one thing: the present had become unbearable.

Revolutions don’t start as tyranny.
They start as hope.

And boy, did he make hopeful promises. My parents, who were there, still remember the speeches. It was a populist dream. Khomeini promised free water, free electricity, housing for the poor, economic justice. He promised a government that would serve the people, not the palaces, and to create a new Iran where the poor would be uplifted. For a nation desperate for change, his words were like rain in a desert. They drank it all up.

From his exile in France, he became the face of the opposition. He was a charismatic figure who skillfully channeled the widespread anger and disillusionment into a single revolutionary force.

To a population that felt ignored and exploited, these promises were intoxicating. They weren’t slogans. They were a vision of dignity.

It sounded almost too good to be true.
And it was.

When a population is exhausted, hope becomes a kind of oxygen. People breathe it fast. They do not always notice what else comes with it until it is too late.

What wasn’t shouted in those speeches was Khomeini’s radical reinterpretation of Shia Islam. Khomeini’s entire claim to rule was based on a concept called Velayat-e Faqih, or the Guardianship of the Jurist. Traditionally, this was a minor Shia doctrine that gave clerics limited guardianship over the vulnerable, like orphans and widows. Ironic, given his own childhood.

Khomeini twisted it into a justification for absolute clerical rule over an entire nation. His argument was simple: God’s law (Sharia) must govern the state, and since clerics are the experts in God’s law, they must rule. With his victory, the state became not just a government, but a system of discipline, with his interpretation of religion weaponized as law.

For many Iranians, it was never about religion. Most Iranians believe in God, but not in theocracy. Iran has always been religiously plural: Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bahá’ís, and others have lived there for centuries. Faith was never the issue. Control was.

The Betrayal: How the West Paved the Way

Here is a part of the story that is often overlooked: the role the West played in the Shah’s downfall. It wasn’t just a popular uprising; it was a geopolitical chess move.

Western governments were deeply entangled in Iran’s political trajectory long before 1979. Because you know, oil. Iran holds roughly 10-12% of the world’s oil reserves, the fourth largest, making it one of the most strategically important energy producers on the planet.

For decades, the Shah was a key Western ally, a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Middle East. But by the late 1970s, that alliance was fraying. The Shah was pushing for higher oil prices through OPEC and pursuing a more independent foreign policy, that was increasingly at odds with Washington’s interests.

In the final months of his rule, Western leaders were openly discussing Iran’s instability, the regional oil shock, and the risks of regime collapse. These conversations are documented in official U.S. records, including materials from the Office of the Historian.

Now for the geopolitical tea. The West, particularly the Carter administration, was getting nervous. The Shah, their guy in the Middle East, was looking shaky. The oil flow was disrupted. And here’s the kicker: they knew he was sick. The Shah was secretly battling cancer, a fact known to a handful of people and, as it turns out, Western intelligence agencies. He was physically ill, and surrounded by yes men he could no longer trust. Isolation is deadly for leaders.

At the Guadeloupe Summit in January 1979, US President Jimmy Carter and other Western leaders made a cold calculation. The Shah was a sinking ship. It was time to find a new lifeboat.

Declassified documents reveal a secret dialogue between the Carter administration and Khomeini’s camp. In a stunning betrayal, the US signaled to Khomeini that the Iranian military would not stand in his way. Khomeini, the man who called America “The Great Satan,” agreed. In return, Khomeini promised to ensure the continued flow of oil (shocking!?) and to remain neutral in the Cold War. He promised stability. He promised to be a partner.

It was the ultimate betrayal, a cold, calculated move that sacrificed a decades-long ally for what they thought was a safer bet. For the Shah, it was abandonment.

The West rolled out the red carpet for the revolution.

The Hangover: From Hope to Tyranny

The Shah fled in January 1979. Khomeini returned from exile to a hero’s welcome. But the coalition of students, liberals, and religious conservatives that had united to oust the Shah quickly discovered that the after-party was cancelled. Khomeini and his clerical faction consolidated power with ruthless efficiency. The promises of freedom were replaced with the dictates of the Mullahs. The Islamic Republic was born, and the dream of a free Iran died with it. A new, more brutal form of tyranny began.

The Iranian Revolution was a seismic shift. The promises that were made were quickly forgotten. The West believed it had secured its interests and minimized regional chaos. Instead, it helped clear the path for a regime that would become far more hostile, far more repressive, and far less predictable than the monarchy it replaced.

Dissent was treated not as disagreement but as a threat. The dream of liberation mutated into a new cage, and for women in particular, the cage came with fabric, punishment, and surveillance.

Culture was censored. Artists fled or were silenced. My grandmother, an actress and singer, was imprisoned, tortured, raped, and beaten for four years. Others, like the iconic popstar Googoosh, were forced into silence.

This is the wound that never healed.

Almost 47 years later, the people have risen again, this time under economic conditions far more brutal than those our parents rose up against.

The Economics: A Regime of Control

Today, the Iranian economy is not a free market; it is a tool of survival for the regime. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, holds ultimate authority over every branch of government.

But the real “muscle” of the economy is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is less a military and more a mafia with a flag, running a shadow empire that controls up to half the country’s GDP, including the black market and oil exports. They use this wealth to fund regional conflicts and maintain their grip on power, while the average citizen is left to deal with the fallout of international sanctions, internal corruption, and a cost of living so high that basic food like eggs are unaffordable.

The Daily Cost of Living: The Invisible Tax

This is where the “gravity” of the situation becomes personal.

The average monthly salary in Iran is around $254. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a city is $285. The math doesn’t work. The average person literally cannot afford to live.

My Gen Z cousin works in a clothing store six days a week and makes $80 a month. Let that sit. Even someone earning the average salary in Iran cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment, even if they spent every single dollar on rent.

Meat has become a luxury. Eggs, once a staple, now cost more than gold did before the revolution. People are not budgeting, they are surviving in a state of permanent economic deficit.

Since 2018, the Iranian rial has lost over 90% of its value. As of late 2025, average annual inflation rose to 42.3%, meaning prices are rising more than twelve times faster than in the United States. The dollar’s open-market rate has surged more than 70% in a single year.

This isn’t just “inflation” or a bad economy; it is the collapse of purchasing power itself.

It is a system engineered to break the human spirit—one that teaches people, over time, that no amount of work will ever be enough, that effort no longer leads to dignity, stability, or safety.

Repression paired with economic suffocation isn’t just hardship.

It’s control.

And systems built on control, fear, and exhaustion do not last forever.

The Uprisings: A History of Bravery

The current unrest in Iran is not an isolated event.
It is the latest chapter in a long history of extraordinary bravery.

Over the past three decades, Iranians have risen again and again, each time learning, each time pushing further:

• 1999: Student protests ignited on university campuses, marking the first major post-revolutionary challenge to the regime.

• 2009: The Green Movement, where millions poured into the streets asking a single question: “Where is my vote?”

• 2017–2019: Nationwide protests driven by fuel prices, unemployment, and economic collapse.

• 2022: The Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini, which transformed resistance into a mass cultural revolt led by women and youth.

Each time, the regime has responded with the same playbook:
internet shutdowns, mass arrests, lethal force, intimidation.

And each time, something else happens too.

The fear threshold drops.

People are no longer asking for reform.
They are asking for an ending.

Regimes survive on inertia, until they don’t. Every protest cycle doesn’t just weaken the system; it proves the system can be weakened. And in the calculus of collapse, precedent is everything.

When a population has nothing left to lose, something shifts. Fear stops functioning as a deterrent and starts becoming familiar. And when fear becomes familiar, it loses its monopoly.

Every cycle teaches the people how the regime operates, and what dissent costs.
But it also teaches the regime something it cannot unlearn:

Fear does not work forever.

On December 28, 2025, Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed in protest, a historic signal of political rupture. The Bazaar has long been an economic and symbolic heartbeat of the country; when it shuts down, it means merchants are willing to risk everything.

Students, always the moral engine of Iran’s movements, have once again taken the lead. Universities across the country have reportedly become protest centers, chanting “Death to the Dictator”.

By the eighth day, mass protests have broken out across the entire country, with demonstrations and unrest in 222 locations across 78 cities in 26 of the 31 provinces.

Images and videos have been circulating this past week showing regime symbols being torn down, statues defaced, and flags burned.

On January 2, 2026, President Trump threatened via X: “If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

According to multiple sources, at the time of publishing this essay, there have already been 20 deaths confirmed, with many more arrests and injuries unaccounted for due to information blackouts. As always, the true numbers may take months to fully surface.

Women, students, workers, and families are risking everything to say no to fear, and tyranny. We see your courage, and your bravery, and we stand with you.

The Venezuela Connection

One final important note. As I write this, the world is watching the fall of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. On January 3, 2026, the United States carried large scale strikes against Venezuela, and captured Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, charging them with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, and weapon charges.

Trump has stated that the U.S. is “in charge” of the country and plans to control their oil industry (shocking!?). Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves in the world.

For years, Iran and Venezuela have operated as sanctions-evasion partners, trading oil, gold, weapons, fuel, and logistical support to keep their respective regimes afloat in the face of global isolation. Their alliance has never been ideological. It has been transactional: survival through mutual defiance.

That’s precisely why Venezuela matters to Iran, and why the fall of Maduro is a terrifying signal for the regime. It proves that even with Russian support and a powerful military, a regime can collapse when the “security gap” opens and the people refuse to be silenced any longer. The Islamic Republic is now more isolated than ever. Their strategic allies are falling like dominoes.

What will it take for Iran? It will take the continued, relentless bravery of the people on the ground, combined with a total fracture within the regime’s security forces. When the soldier on the street realizes he is shooting at his own sister, his own mother, for a regime that can’t even afford to pay him a living wage, the end begins.

Regimes like this do not fall because the world posts about them on Instagram.
They do not fall because outsiders want them to.

They fall when:

• internal legitimacy collapses

• fear stops working

• and enough insiders decide the regime can no longer protect them, economically, morally, or politically

That is when power shifts.

And once that shift begins, it is very difficult to stop.

What a Free Iran Could Mean

Amidst the chants for freedom, “death to Khomeini”, you may also hear something that surprises outsiders: calls for the return of the Shah.

O Shah of Iran! Return to Iran!

This is the final battle. Pahlavi will return.

They are chanting for the exiled Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last monarch. Let’s be clear: this is not a sudden nostalgia for monarchy. It is a cry for leadership.

In the absence of any organized opposition within the country, they are reaching for a symbol, a name they know, someone who can represent their struggle on the world stage. Someone who can speak when they are being silenced.

To his credit, Reza Pahlavi appears to understand the assignment. He has stated repeatedly that he is not seeking to restore the throne. His goal, he says, is to help guide a transition to a secular, democratic Iran, where the people themselves decide their future.

He’s offering to be a bridge, not a king. For a people who have been betrayed by both monarchs and mullahs, that distinction matters.

I want you to take a moment and imagine it. A free Iran. A country of 92.8 million educated, creative, and resilient people rejoining the world. It would mean women living as full citizens, not legal minors under moral policing. It would mean Iran’s identity returning to its people. A culture that has given the world Rumi and Hafez, algebra and modern medicine, unleashed from the shackles of theocracy.

The fall of the regime in Iran wouldn’t just be a victory for the Iranian people; it would be a geopolitical earthquake that would reshape the Middle East and send shockwaves of freedom across the globe. It would be the ultimate plot twist in a story that has been defined by tragedy for nearly half a century.

There is also a global diaspora, over four million Iranians, watching from afar. Waiting. Hoping to return home. Carrying the guilt of safety while their families risk their lives in the streets.

I write this for my family in Iran.

I write this so you understand that when you see a woman in Tehran take off her scarf, you understand what she is fighting for. It is not a small act. She is not performing rebellion. She is practicing sovereignty.

She is asserting ownership over her body, her life, her future. She is the bravest person in the room.

Please don’t look away. Share this not as a spectacle, or clickbait, but as a country. A real place, with real people, with real longing, and a future that deserves to be more than survival.

Long live the brave people of Iran.

With Courage,

Maryam

Born in Iran, raised in Vancouver, and now living in Los Angeles, Maryam Mehrtash is an award-winning media executive, brand and marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and mom to two toddlers.

Her work spans global campaigns for IP including The Grammys, Yellowstone, Star Trek, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, SpongeBob, Marvel Cinematic Universe, and RuPaul’s Drag Race, partnering with brands like Google, GM, Verizon, VISA, and Amazon.

Please check out Maryam’s Substack, This is Not a Memo.

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My parents grew up in the Soviet Union, where they experienced both systemic and social discrimination. In a system where all animals were equal but some were more equal than others, many doors closed before you could even reach the handle. No amount of vodka could erase that. They left, in large part, because they saw no future there for their child. Me. They knew that with the word “Jewish” stamped on my birth certificate, my options would be limited—no matter any talents or ambitions I might have. They also valued and dreamed of freedom. That’s what the West represented for them at the time. It was not merely geography, it was an idea.

As a child, I spent several years in Israel. At the time, that was the only country my family could escape to—the only one willing to accept them. They left with nearly nothing. Ironically, I don’t think I really grasped the idea of being “Jewish” while living in Israel—perhaps in part because I was too young for that conceptualization, and perhaps …

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Telling the truth isn’t merely a matter of integrity, it gets at the very core of trust.

If you catch a friend in a lie—not a harmless white lie, but a real one—you may forgive them, but you won’t forget it easily. Something fundamental has shifted. You no longer know when they might mislead you again. Over time, trust may be rebuilt. You care about them, you may come to understand why they lied, and perhaps they will make genuine amends. Still, a small residue of doubt remains. Trust can return, but it is no longer effortless.

Now consider a stranger. If they lie to you, you will likely never trust them again. The betrayal may sting less, because there is no emotional investment, but that absence cuts both ways: you have no reason to forgive them or to take the risk of trusting them again.

If it is someone you already dislike, a lie simply confirms what you believed all along. It doesn’t just destroy trust—it supplies further justification and ammunition for contempt.

Now when it comes …

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Last night, I’ve stumbled across a decade-old recording of an interview with Rob Reiner and Cary Elwes (with interruptions by Geoffrey Rush). It feels a bit strange, a bit melancholy, but I’m grateful for having that little time capsule to hold on to and refer back to. I was a different person then. We all were.

I conducted this interview during the Toronto International Film Festival, where Reiner’s film Being Charlie was being screened. Co-written by his son Nick, the film follows the story of a future governor and his experiences with an addict son who fights against recovery and rehab. It is clearly a deeply personal project, and that many years later the reality behind the scenes turned rather tragic—is an understatement, to be sure.

We have lost someone who created so many memories for us, nostalgic, but ever-present. Most people are lucky if they make one incredible film. Rob made so many classics: This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride (my personal favorite), When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men… that is no fluke.

He is a one-of-a-kind talent.

During my interview with him, I asked Rob Reiner about the significance of humor in his work (amongst other things):

“There’s humor to all his films,” Cary Elwes, sitting next to us (virtually unaltered by time), quickly chimes in—almost doting on Reiner, with so much love, humility, and pride.

To which Reiner replies: “If you’re going to make something that’s reflective of life… when you start out to make a film or a painting—whatever it is—it’s going to reflect life experience. Because you want people to sit there and say, ‘Oh, I can see that. I relate to that. I know what that’s about.’ Then, if you’re doing it, you’ve got to have the humor. It’s life—it’s funny and it’s sad.”

He pauses for a moment.

“You know, it’s why there are those classic masks,” he explains. “There’s the comedy mask and the tragedy mask, and if you can find a way to blend them, to have them dance around so that one doesn’t hurt the other, then you’ve got a shot at doing something a little better.”

I tell him that I sometimes find myself laughing hysterically in the middle of tears—that the two can coexist so harmoniously and surprisingly. Out of pain can come laughter. And vice versa.

“Audiences do need a break too,” Elwes points out. “You can’t just make them sit through a drama and not give them at least a moment to—” He searches for the right word.

“Release,” says Reiner.

“Yes, release.”

We discuss how the film mirrors some of Nick’s experiences, particularly having a famous father whose shadow he must live in—an experience Reiner is quick to say he understands.

And indeed he does. His father, too, is very famous: Carl Reiner (whom I previously also interview alongside another legend, Dick Van Dyke, for The Guardian, and prior to that for The A.V. Club).

“The things Nick has gone through—his own experiences—it’s not all related to being the son of… you know?” Reiner says. “And nor is mine with my dad. But I certainly know that element. I do understand how difficult that is.”

The great thing, I say, is that they’ve both channeled this into creating.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Reiner replies. “That’s the thing. Finding your own way is the tricky part, you know? And that’s what the movie is about. That’s why I like the way it ends. We’re not saying everything’s going to be smooth sailing—that everything’s going to be perfect or all worked out. But we at least see that Charlie, at the end of the movie, is beginning to forge his own path.”

Before we end, I bring up The Princess Bride and how much it shapes our childhoods—and continues to shape our adulthoods. The impact it has.

“It’s the coolest feeling in the world,” Reiner admits. “That it has stood the test of time—at least up until now—and to see people come up to me who see the movie when they are eight, nine, ten years old, and now have young kids. They tell me they’re introducing it to their children, and their kids are loving it. You know, people having ‘As you wish’ written inside their rings and—”

“—tattooed on their bodies,” Elwes jumps in. He continues, amazed: “I’ve seen whole dialogues—speeches—a Miracle Max speech on someone’s back. You have no idea.”

“I was telling Cary on the flight up here,” Reiner adds, “there was a guy sitting across from me who said, ‘I named my son Wesley.’”

“It’s incredible,” Elwes says. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving, really.”

There’s something about this movie that makes people not merely recall it warmly, but want to make it an intrinsic part of them. They want it to live in them—in their names, their bodies.

At this point, I confess that I once see a man in New York City’s Central Park doing a reading of The Princess Bride. He is fully in character—and bears a striking resemblance to Elwes. We may have wondered if—

Elwes quickly catches on. “Is Cary desperate? He’s in Central Park trying to audition for work…”

Reiner then asks if we’ve heard about the guy who gets thrown off a plane.

“Did you hear about that?” he asks.

I shrug, but Elwes replies, “Oh, that’s right.”

“There’s a guy who gets on a plane wearing a T-shirt,” Reiner explains. “It says, ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’ They throw him off the plane! They think he wants to kill someone.”

I am aghast at the cultural ignorance.

“The passenger next to him doesn’t understand,” Elwes explains. “She just sees the words ‘Prepare to die,’ gets scared, and alerts the pilot.”

Apparently, Wallace Shawn doesn’t go a day without someone yelling “Inconceivable!” at him, Reiner tells me.

And then our time is up.

The comedy and tragedy masks don’t cancel each other out. Sometimes, they sit side by side. Other times, they speak together through powerful work. And life. Definitely life.

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