Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation11 Mai 2022

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Caspian Chef discusses returning to his Iranian roots after decades of assimilation

In this Growing Up Irooni we talk to Omid Roustaei, better known as the Caspian Chef. In this conversation, we discuss the process of coming to the United States on his own and figuring out his own path for assimilating into American culture as a means of survival. Omid has has a very rich and varied path, first studying biotech engineering, and then becoming a personal chef and yoga teacher, to pursuing a career in psychotherapy, to returning to cooking and his Iranian roots only in the past few years.This was one of the most fascinating conversations I've had- and we really go into some territory that I think will resonate with so many of us- life is certainly not linear, and we can see that in Omid's story. We talk about career and pursuing your dreams- he first went down the ‘traditional Iranian path' of becoming a biotech engineer and worked in that field for a while, before pivoting to the perhaps more American notion of pursuing his passion- cooking and psychotherapy. We also talked about the process of assimilation as a coping mechanism- what it means to arrive in a country and need to fit in. And finally, what led Omid back to the path of rediscovering his Iranian roots- from cooking Persian food, to becoming reacquainted with the Persian language, and to ultimately seek out and become part of the Iranian diaspora community again.I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Related links:

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(223)

Poetry | Rumi's beshnō een nay Intro

In this lesson, we go over one of Rumi's most famous poems, beshnō een nay, which means ‘listen to the reed flute,' with our friend Muhammad Ali of Persian Poetics. We go over the essence and meaning ...

9 Jun 202147min

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- House of Pod's Kaveh Hoda on being Iranian-American in Medicine

Kaveh Hoda is a physician, musician and host of the medical podcast House of Pod in San Francisco. His expertise is in gastroenterology, hepatology and, according to him, making fun of medical grifter...

7 Apr 202125min

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Persian Poetics, Growing Up in Detroit and Discovering the Love of Persian Poetry

My name is Leyla Shams, host of the Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation podcast. Today’s interview is with Mohammad Ali, better known as Persian poetics on both Instagram and twitter. He went vir...

24 Mar 202134min

Speak Lesson 71 | Nowruz (Vocabulary Sprint)

In this Persian (Farsi) lesson, we go over vocabulary associated with the most important Persian holiday, Nowruz. We'll learn about the haft seen table, and the items associated with the haft seen tab...

14 Mar 202117min

Poetry | Ahmad Shamlou's raz Part 3

In this lesson, we continue our study of Ahmad Shamlou's poem, Rāz. We learn the words and phrases in the second half of the poem.

8 Mar 202113min

Poetry | Ahmad Shamlou's raz Part 2

In this lesson, we go over the first half of Ahmad Shamlou's poem, Rāz.

24 Feb 202115min

Poetry | Ahmad Shamlou's raz Intro

In this lesson, we introduce the iconic Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou, and talk about his poem ‘Raz’ or راز, meaning ‘the secret’. Shamlou was born in 1925 in Rasht, and he died in 2000, after a few year...

10 Feb 202134min

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- John Ghazvinian on America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present

John Ghazvinian joins us to talk about his new book, America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present, a comprehensive new survey of the bilateral relationship, based on years of archival research in ...

26 Jan 202124min