This podcast is based on the first of a series of blog posts I'm putting up about a trip I made to Iran, in the Autumn of 2018. I describe where I went in the country and some of the issues it faces. I crossed overland from Turkey, and made my way to Tabriz, and from there to the Alamut Valley, the home of a famous guild of Mediaeval assassins, who took on the oppressors of the poor. From there I travelled to Tehran, with a side trip to the resort town of Chalus, on the Caspian Sea. Then I went on to Isfahan, a famous planned city; and then Shiraz, home of poets and (before the Islamic Revolution) of Iran's wine-makers as well. The Shiraz area is also where Iran's ancient capital of Persepolis and the associated tomb-complexes of Naqsh-e Rostam and Pasagardae are found. And from there, to the famous, Star Wars-like desert city of Yazd, with its wind-catcher towers that drag air through people's houses in a natural form of air conditioning, and its Zoraostrian 'towers of silence', where the dead were laid out for vultures. I talk about Iran's problems with drought and various forms of oppression and enmity, and its amazing ancient culture that comes through in spite of all that.
