May 9, 2021

Laughter is Medicine with Maz Jobrani, Tehran, and Mostafa Purmehdi

Laughter is Medicine with Maz Jobrani, Tehran, and Mostafa Purmehdi

Two brilliant comics and a wise professor join our talk. Comics (and fellow hanvatans) Maz Jobrani and Tehran help us to explore the healing that happens in our society when we have levity.
The principle function of laughter is the creation and the deepening of our social bonds. Laughter is a social tool, a form of communication conversations, if you've noticed that have laughter in them are the most long lasting.
Laughter is a signal that says I'm wanting to engage with you further. It's a way to test the boundaries of our relationships and it's medicine.

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Two brilliant comics and a wise professor join our talk. Comics (and fellow hanvatans) Maz Jobrani and Tehran help us to explore the healing that happens in our society when we have levity.

The principle function of laughter is the creation and the deepening of our social bonds. Laughter is a social tool, a form of communication conversations, if you've noticed that have laughter in them are the most long lasting.

Laughter is a signal that says I'm wanting to engage with you further. It's a way to test the boundaries of our relationships and it's medicine.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Matt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to a special edition of our friendly world with laundry mat.

Fawn: [00:00:05] Yes, we have three amazing people. We have, a university professor Mostafa Purmehdi.  We have two amazing comics, TV, personalities, movie personalities. It's

Matt: [00:00:17] a slash slash slash slash so many things.

Fawn: [00:00:20] Maz Jobrani and Tehran. And they could only be with us for like 40 minutes. and

Matt: [00:00:27] We start the conversation with Mostafa they come in, they come, we continue the conversation with Mostafa.

Fawn: [00:00:33] Yeah. They come in about the 10 minute point. I think of our show and then they leave and we kept the conversation going. We just kept talking, couldn't stop ourselves.

Their time is very tight and they had to go onto their podcast, which is "Back to School with Maz Jobrani".  We hope you enjoy have fun. Here it is…

 

Laughter is Medicine with Maz Jobrani and Tehran and University Professor, Mostafa Purmehdi

[00:00:00] Fawn: [00:00:00] Hello friends. Hello. Hello. Welcome to our friendly world. Today, we have three very special guests. I'm going to get right into it. Two of them will show up in about, 10 minutes, but, right now we have a very dear friend Mostafa Purmehdi.

Mostafa: [00:00:17] Hey.

Fawn: [00:00:19] Hello.

Mostafa: [00:00:21] Hi Matt. It's so nice to be on the show.

Fawn: [00:00:24] A little background on our friend Mostafa,Mostafa is this brilliance university professor.

He is a social scientist with a PhD in marketing. His website is NEX3.xyz  it's spelled N E X three dot X, Y, Z. If you want to get ahold of him, please do he, Mostafa is my mentor. over the summer or during the pandemic of 1920, 19, 20, 20, 20. Um,

Mostafa: [00:00:53] That was a while back.  We go way back way back.

Fawn: [00:00:58] We do go way [00:01:00] back. Yeah. You were the most amazing mentor to me, not just to me, but our little girls, you just immediately fit in with the whole family. Well, I mean, you're the most brilliant professor because you have such a kind gentle way to explain the most complex things that really angrify me, that's my own word, that I use in the house, like I'm angrified.  Seriously, I get so frustrated, especially with economics and business. And it just seems like  things are set up from my perspective in such a way for you to never understand economy and business,. It's meant for this certain group over here.

And I always felt like an outcast. And the way you explained it to me is exactly what I needed. It was a caring, human being with a soft voice, just breaking things down for me [00:02:00] in the most simple way. But we were talking about complex issues having to do with business.

Mostafa: [00:02:07] Oh, it's my pleasure. I actually, , get a kick out of being able to present, , ideas to people and see that, thing in their eyes when they actually, when the penny drops for people, that's what I really go for, and, , it's been a pleasure working with you and Matt on this project.

It's a fantastic project. I'm really happy that I I've had,  an involvement with it.

Fawn: [00:02:33] Thank you so much. And can I, do you mind if I read a little bit about your bio?

Mostafa: [00:02:42] Oh, not at all. It helps with my vanity.

Fawn: [00:02:46] So  there are so many acronyms. Like when Matt come, when Matt used to come home from work, I'm like, honey, how was your day?

And he would have sentence after sentence, like paragraphs of just acronyms, [00:03:00] describing his day. I didn't understand. But, so here are a lot of, a lot more that I still don't understand. You're an LTA lecturer at the university of Frazier Valley. I don't know what LTA means.

Oh, LTA  means limited term appointment.

Mostafa: [00:03:14] I still don't know what it means. Yeah.  It is, uh, one of the most prestigious acronyms in our business.  I changed my  position, , in the pandemic when I decided for the move, uh, I used to be a professor at the university of Colorado at Boulder,

Fawn: [00:03:35] A, Leeds school of business, right.

Mostafa: [00:03:38] Leeds School of business. That's correct. And, I was contemplating on my move, but I was not really aware of the pandemic that was about to hit. And, uh, so what happened was, with the budgeting of the university, , there were some hiccups due to the pandemic and the fact that the, international student [00:04:00] enrollments were going down.

So my position became, a limited term appointment because, at the time of the pandemic, the universities were not really sure what the outlook of their market would be after the pandemic. Right. So, uh, yeah. Uh, that's how that's, uh, you know, a lot of industries actually took a hit, uh, due to the pandemic; tourism industry, uh, you know, airlines,  hotels, restaurants, uh, including many other ones.

 We're going to have a different world after this.

Matt: [00:04:40] Yeah, no, absolutely. In the computer world, all the rules are getting written, , even from how much office space, a given company needs, or, where we are geographically scattering, your employees is starting to look more and more attractive.

Mostafa: [00:04:53] This is going to be one of those instances of history that we will be looking back at. [00:05:00] And we'll say, well, this changed the course of history, right?

Matt: [00:05:03] Yeah, no, we, we, we like to call those sea changes, but yeah, absolutely; sea, as an s e a.

Mostafa: [00:05:09] right? Yeah. So, yeah now I'm in Canada, actually in the university of the Fraser Valley, it's a fantastic institution.

I'm really proud of what is being done.  I'm in the school of business, I teach marketing, consumer behavior,  analytics, statistics, and, uh, It's just a, I'm getting a kick out of it. The university stands for a lot of,  really, , excellent values of inclusivity , respect, , all the things that you'd be excited to talk about in your podcast.

Fawn: [00:05:44] And I also wanted to share what you do with technology. You're on the cutting edge. You're doing some amazing work,  Mostafa with technology.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Mostafa: [00:05:56] Absolutely. Yes. , I'm very much interested in,  [00:06:00] how technology changes human beings.

My,  research is about consumer behavior and marketing strategy.  Technology has an impact on both of them in a way people go about their lives, the type of solutions they find and they choose for their problems,   and also in the way businesses work and, equilibrate in the markets.

 I'm very much interested in that. I follow AI, artificial intelligence.  I have a sister who is a, a fantastic researcher in the field of AI. She works for,  Erickson company and they're working on a lot of cool projects that,  are going to literally shape the future of telecommunications, uh, like the variable of it, 5g networks.

Um, and, uh, I am personally am interested in blockchain.  Now blockchain is one of those, Equalizer forces [00:07:00] that we're gonna hear a lot about in the next,  five to 10 years. And it's going to,  basically distribute power, , in the general sense of the world to the world.  When you look at, for example, how, in many cases we give power to third parties to,  balance the transaction, oversee it, and make sure that both ends of the transaction are actually getting their bargain.

Right. Uh, blockchain does that automatically through its code. And we will have better systems in the future,  things that governments do today, banks do, , third party,  global organizations do,  in terms of, upholding consumer standards and all that. They will be, monitored and enforced through the [00:08:00] code, which is untamperable,  and is something that is open source.

Everybody will have access to it. It is really fascinating how it's going to change our world. And yeah.

Matt: [00:08:12] It's another example of kind of the democratization that we're seeing due to the internet. I mean, we saw that as far as, , how we can talk to others. There was the Egypt spring protests, for instance, where they sent Facebook messages to let people know where they should and shouldn't be, and that's, you know, outside of,  government  regulation  and,  I think a blockchain will take us further in that direction for sure.

And just make everything more and more level the field

Mostafa: [00:08:37] level the field leveling the field it is, I love the keyword you used Matt,  #democratization hashtag democratization of the data is actually what's happening. It's what they say is,  blockchain is doing to the world what internet did in the 1990s, the internet, as you know, we dub [00:09:00] it as internet is internet of communication for the most part,

Matt: [00:09:05] right.

Mostafa: [00:09:05] Blockchain is going to be the internet of transactional data.  We can dub it as internet of money, how value is transferred and exchanged. So, it's going to be fantastic. I can go on for hours about blockchain. Uh, don't want to get me started on that.

Fawn: [00:09:25] I do. I do want to get you started on it Mostafa, because I mean our kids too, by the way, they love you so much. They ask about you all the time.

Mostafa: [00:09:35] I love them too, they're really cute girls and they're very, very sweet.

Fawn: [00:09:40] Thank you. Thank you really are. They really are. And I just, I'm so grateful that you're in our lives because we need you and we love you.

Um, I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, here's what I was gonna say. I know that you're a little bit shy. You tend to run a little bit shy, [00:10:00] but can we do a whole show on this? Because I know our friends are going to be here soon knocking on the door, the virtual door. Um, do you mind, can we, because I mean, Matt, this is right up your alley too.

Yeah. I

Matt: [00:10:12] have tons of questions.

Fawn: [00:10:15] Oh, sure. Well, is that okay? Can we do a special show on this, like in the next few days? So, um, okay. Well, let's see. I, I know that our friends are going to come in any second now and let's see here is where I will do an edit and, and describe exactly who they are. But friends, we have two friends, we have two amazing guests coming.

Also amazing is of course our dear friend Mostafa

Mostafa: [00:10:51] I'm very excited to, uh, to see them too. I'm a big fan  of  both of them.

Fawn: [00:10:57] I am too. They, they are [00:11:00] both really brilliant comics, standup comedians. They are incredibly intelligent, actually Mostafa, you and Tehran so our guests are Maz Jobrani and Tehran you and Tara have a lot in common.

I mean, this guy gets on stage with,  his Tehran hat and his bathrobe, but he is legit. That's super, super smart. Like this guy.

Matt: [00:11:30] Well, he, he is a lawyer, so I'm not hundred percent. No, I'm kidding. Oh, that's my last, that's my last check out the day, by the way. Hold on. There's no way I'm even going to

Fawn: [00:11:39] hold on.

So Tehran is a double undergraduate degree, has a double undergraduate degree, a master's and he's a lawyer.  His master's is in economics, Mostafa this guy, I mean, but I

Mostafa: [00:11:55] mean, you, you never know, you know, uh, [00:12:00] watching him on the internet. I know of Tehran. I've seen him, uh, on YouTube and the guy is so approachable. You never think he's a lawyer or an economist,

Fawn: [00:12:11] right? I mean, a master's in economics and well, I guess, but that that's typical of our culture where education is huge for us. Which is yet another reason I've always felt like an outcast because I never had the traditional route with anything with not with my photography career, not with anything.

It's like, I've just been an outsider. And as far as education, I couldn't afford to stay in, Oh, they're here. I couldn't here. They are. They're here. I couldn't afford to stay in university. I had to pay for everything myself. I didn't have that normal. You know, your parents are going to help, are going to pay for your college education.

Maz [00:13:00] Jobrani is here. Hello? We're recording already. Maz! Welcome. Welcome. Doing well. We're now waiting for Tehran to show up Maz, Hello!  I'm Fawn by the way. This is my husband, Matt love. And we

Maz: [00:13:17] have, how are you

Mostafa: [00:13:19] doing? Well,

Fawn: [00:13:20] little excited. We're so excited. I'm really,

Maz: [00:13:23] I'm texting Tehran right now to  let them know we're here

Fawn: [00:13:26] and I want you to also meet Mostafa Purmehdi

he is my mentor.

Mostafa: [00:13:34] Pleasure to meet you.

Maz: [00:13:36] Pleasure to meet you. Nice to meet you, buddy.

Fawn: [00:13:40] Mostafa is a university professor, major PhD.  In marketing, he,

Maz: [00:13:46] where do you teach Mostafa?

Mostafa: [00:13:47] Well, right now I'm teaching in Vancouver, in University of  Fraser Valley.  I used teach at the University  of Colorado, , up until the pandemic.

Maz: [00:13:56] Uh, Oh, wow.

Fawn: [00:13:58] And that's how we met [00:14:00] Mostafa was my mentor during the summer. Was it no, this time, last year, right? Mostafa?

 So some years ago, Matt and I started this,  social movement. We believe in the art of friendship.  My background is actually as a photographer, I'm a still photographer and I've been shooting for a few decades now. And I traveled around the planet,  documenting what I was seeing. Uh, really my whole mission was to show that we're all one family.

So I photographed different tribes from around the world. And I put a book together, that's titled I Am - A Family Photo Album. And so. Matt, Matt, this is Matt.

Matt: [00:14:42] Hello.

 I'm a software developer and, , my key focus is helping people solve problems, which kind of makes me forces me on some levels to become,  very empathic because,  obviously when you can't do something on your computer, it's very frustrating and you're get very emotional and it's about [00:15:00] sorting through those emotions and really hearing what the person has to say and really connecting with them and helping them solve their problems.

Maz: [00:15:07] That's cool. And you guys are located in the Bay area?

Fawn: [00:15:10] No, we are in Boulder,

Maz: [00:15:13] Colorado, Boulder.

Matt: [00:15:14] Actually, we used to live in the Bay area,

Maz: [00:15:16] condolences on the most recent incidents.

Matt: [00:15:19] Yes.

Fawn: [00:15:20] Um, we are like nomads. We have been going from place to place around the world, trying to figure out where we belong and haven't found it quite yet, which is one of the reasons why we brought you here today.

I'll get into that in just a second. Um, but I guess I wanted to give you a little bit more information about us. We,

Maz: [00:15:41] no problem. I'm listening to, while I'm talking to Tehran I guess he doesn't have the link. He lost it somehow. So I'm sending it to him.

Fawn: [00:15:47] Thank you for doing that by the way. Thank you so much.

Maz: [00:15:50] No problem.

But go on. I'm listening.

Fawn: [00:15:52] So between my work and Matt's work, we're a total opposites, first of all, we decided, [00:16:00] first of all, where, wherever I traveled to whatever country I was in, I felt like I was at home. I felt like I was meeting spirit friends, like spirit family, friends, like it was a big family reunion wherever I went.

I had no trouble making friends. But as I explained through all of our episodes, , growing up as an Iranian in Southern California, I was raised in Los Angeles. I did see the w what's. It was, it was like night, the night and day, a difference between cultures and I was straddling both.  I was never embraced by my Iranian heritage.

And I was, I was not embraced by my own family and I was never fully embraced by the American culture. So I was always like, like when you first came in while we were talking today, I was saying how I always felt like an outcast, whether it was,  going to university [00:17:00] to,. I mean, everything, my photography work even, you know, never quite fit into any particular niche.

I was always on my own, but anyway, what I, one of the things I noticed was the disparaging quality and the different cultures. And then as I traveled around, I noticed every time I came back to the United States, what a big problem we have in our society here and how I really believe that that's the reason for so many problems is because there's a fracture of our relationships.

And it started with families how,  growing up and watching my friends who were totally Caucasian, American being told, all right, buddy, you're out at age 18. And to me, I was like, wow. It's like, they ha they have a lease and it will be up upon graduation from high school and they're out and in our culture, you don't leave.

And then when I was trying to [00:18:00] leave, my family was, it's a different story. I have a way different relationship with my family than most Persians do, but I had to completely cut them off completely.

Maz: [00:18:11] They had a lease you got rid of them.

Fawn: [00:18:14] I tried not to. I had many, many, many, many, many, many, many years of therapy to actually finally break the ties.

And I finally did, and I did it at a very late age, you know, and, um, but I had to because to start a whole like Matt and I met in the martial arts, and we always talk about your circle and your circle needs to be pure. Oh, he's here.

Matt: [00:18:41] Accept (Tehran into Zoom)

Maz: [00:18:43] I would say, I would say we should start recording soon too. We could keep talking about, we talk about that's fantastic, but I, I know we gotta be done by about 10 45.

Oh,

MAs. We have been, we have been recording. Oh, you have been. Oh,

great. Okay, good, good. Okay. It didn't show on my end because I usually, I [00:19:00] record. Okay, go ahead.

Fawn: [00:19:01] Well, the thing is we have this, so I'm a photographer. And before the pandemic, I was ready to start shooting again. So we have all this fancy equipment that you don't see yet.

So we record and not like a traditional way. Tehran, are you here?

Maz: [00:19:15] It takes a minute to talk.

Fawn: [00:19:17] He is he's so adorable. Oh my goodness.

Tehran, Welcome. Hi, I'm Fawn. It's such a pleasure to meet you. I want you to meet, um, my husband, my true love. This is Matt.

Tehran: [00:19:33] Hi Matt. The true love. You know what I feel like. You're my true love. I don't know.

Fawn: [00:19:38] Thank you. And we have a very dear friend. Actually, you guys have a lot in common. This is Mustafa Purmehdi.

Tehran: [00:19:47] Also half black, half Persian. I'm Mostafa how are you

Mostafa: [00:19:51] That's right! Yeah. How are you?

Tehran: [00:19:54] I'm great..

Mostafa: [00:19:55] I just realized that you have done a degree in law. Yeah. I was just [00:20:00] telling Fawn that, uh, the guy is so approachable. You never know he's a lawyer.

Fawn: [00:20:06] Well, most of I tell them, tell them your background.

Mostafa: [00:20:10] Yeah. So, um, I am a professor of marketing. I teach in Vancouver at the university of Fraser Valley. Now I used to teach in Boulder, Colorado. That's where I actually met,  Fawn, Matt. , I think it's a cool story , to talk about. It was early in the pandemic and CU Boulder, the university I was working for at the time was, , having this initiative to,  support local businesses, local entrepreneurs.

So they matched these,  volunteer, professors with local startups. I was matched with Fawn, not really knowing that she was Persian.  We were just trying to,  help  these businesses on the growth stage,  to keep their momentum. And I, , was really excited to understand that Fawn [00:21:00] was  Iranian.

And,  she was working on this very fantastic cultural product, which is like a foundation, uh, and one aspect of which is this podcast. So that's how we know each other. 

Fawn: [00:21:14] And while Mostafa was  talking about SWAT analysis, like all this, all these things I didn't understand. I have, I feel like I am a Persian Iranian with amnesia, because I was just telling Maz the whole story. And now we're running out of time. I'm sorry. I'll try to make it really quick. You guys. So we started this, this movement, it's a social movement, really? We started a matchmaking service because I was trying to tell Maz that as a photographer, traveling from country to country photographing different tribes, working on my book, I really noticed what was happening.

Every time I came back to the United States, I saw I, it was illuminated, it was so clear to me what our deepest problems are. And so we decided, and I, and honestly, I, we made friends wherever we [00:22:00] met and one of the things was, I was always trying to escape LA. I was just telling Maz, Terran that I had to completely cut my family off, which is a region.

A reason why I have amnesia is, , first of all, I haven't spoken Farsi in years. Mostafa has  tried to talk to me during the summer and I froze because I couldn't understand what he was saying, because I'm like, can you slow down? It was so weird. And when you were teaching me SWAT analysis, I kept hearing from my past, like, one of them was  OSTOD and so just last week I'm like, Mostafa, I think I know what it means, but can you explain OSTODto me?

And he's like, yeah. It's like someone knowledgeable. That's a professor. I'm like, that's you. Okay. So it started to come back to me. And one of the reasons  I'm having you Maz and you Tehran, on here is because our show is about reconnecting. Our show is about our [00:23:00] interconnectedness as human beings around the world.

It's about friendship and we believe that everything. Everything comes down to the art of friendship and so much can be solved with that. Not just, I mean, we focus on the loneliness epidemic, but really it's way more than that. And so I'm all over the place, but what happened was, as I traveled, I realized there's a friendship issue and we had no problems making friends.

And because I cut off my family, I was always trying to get away from Los Angeles, which is where I grew up. We moved there when I was six months old and I spent a little bit of time in Iran, like in the first half of first grade and then half of second grade, but that was it. And my family didn't talk. I have an absurd family, we didn't speak.

So I didn't speak Farsi that much. And they didn't speak English either. So there was not a lot of communication going on. So I spent most of my life just listening and watching people, not just my [00:24:00] family, but  my relatives, watching all my friends, watching. Our society. I was always quietly watching and taking notes.

And so,  we started this thing because of my original mentor, which is actually a city. So, which I'll tell you a little bit, really quick, turn out to be my mentor. I grew up near Santa Monica. I went to Santa Monica as a child on my bicycle would ride forever to sit on this little part of the beach. And I would sit there.

I don't even know what meditation was back then. You know, now I'm one of the things I am is a yoga instructor and all of that. So, and I have a huge influence of brought about by the Indian culture. I spent time with Swami Rama. I was a documentary photographer photographing physicians in the foothills of the Himalayas, where they combined Ponchakarma with open-heart surgery, like [00:25:00] total blending of cultures and sciences.

 

One of the things I want us to talk about, and I'm going to let you guys talk.

I know it seems like I'm talking forever, but one of the things that happened was Santa Monica became my original mentor. I didn't realize this growing up, but she was always there. And I was always sucked back to LA. I was always trying to escape it. I lived in all these other places, worked in all these other cities, but always sucked back to LA.

Never understood why until, uh, the very final, last time was Santa Monica. It turned out to be my mentor and it was the catalyst for creating what we created now, what we're working on now, which in a, it was like a bubble of time, 13 year period, where I learned the true art of friendship and community of all places, Los Angeles for me was like, I can't believe I'm learning this here. It was like living in Italy 800 years ago, this tiny little area in Santa Monica, we lived on Main Street. [00:26:00] We were all family, all of us. Like if you look at just our tattoos, like the group of friends, we hung out with, you had everything from beautiful Maori designs to, you know, the, the numbers from Auschwitz.

But we all skateboarded together. Rollerbladed we went to happy hour. We were, there was no ages. I'm no sexism, none of that, no ism. We were family and it was such a beautiful village. It didn't last. We ended up, it ended up, , like bubble kind of bursts. You know, it gets thin and disappears. That's what happened.

But the lessons carried on, which brings me to today. , our show, our podcast,  it's called Our Friendly World with Fawn and Matt. We talk about the art of friendship. And how it's the key to social economic and racial wellbeing are topics usually range from anything, from our experience with martial arts, our rituals in society, [00:27:00] everything in life we talk about because that's what friendship is.

We talk about everything. It's about showing up for one another. So to begin with, I always start our show with a nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica. And today it's the bowling ball. This was the beginning of all of our bonds coming together. We lived in this big, big building on main street in Santa Monica.

You can't miss it. It's the huge basically city footprint is the building. And on the bottom level you had. It's I'm sure it's still there. The one life grocery store.  It wasn't just that building. It was everyone within like a eight block radius. We were all friends. And so the bowling ball, we in the middle of the night, one night we were coming upstairs to the second floor and we are standing in front of this bowl, all that's there and we're like, [00:28:00] bowling ball.

What are you doing here? And we started laughing hysterically. We took the bowling ball. We took it to the second floor and we had these long hallways and we started rolling the bowling ball and it was a few of us. We had, uh, we were friends and we started rolling it's in the middle of the night and it's making all this noise and we're trying to whisper.

We're like howling with laughter whispering, trying to be quiet, but we're rolling the ball. And then I found out one of the neighbors who never came out, there was one guy who won the lottery, but no one ever saw him. He was watching us from the peep hole and he would send us notes. We never saw this man, but anyway, so we were all involved with this bowling ball that made us laugh so hard.

It turned out that we were new to the building. And what was happening was people would leave things in between floors. So we would find couches and beautiful coffee tables and like China, and like you name it. We would find the most [00:29:00] amazing treasures. The first one was this bowling ball and it brought us all together and it just created so much laughter. So the wisdom of this, the wisdom of this nugget of information is this: the principle function of laughter is the creation and the deepening of our social bonds. Laughter is a social tool, a form of communication conversations, if you've noticed that have laughter in them are the most long lasting.

Laughter is a signal that says I'm wanting to engage with you further. It's a way to test the boundaries of our relationships and it's medicine. As a yoga person, , I talk about the  parasympathetic nervous system. That's what eases your nerves, the most particular nerve it's called the Vegas nerve.

This thing controls, mood, your immune response, your digestion, your heart rate. It goes [00:30:00] from your brain all the way down to the depths of your, digestive system . And I think laughter totally stimulates and enhances this whole system. It's  called a Vogel tone.

When you breathe a certain way and you use certain muscles in your face,  it massages you,  it releases toxins. It just heals you. And I think that's what you do. I not, I think, butMaz and Tehran that's what you do. And that's one of the reasons I have you here today with us is not to just not just to reconnect me with my background, but to talk about your work as ambassadors of light and laughter. For example, I'm going to stop talking in a second, but like when Matt, Matt goes to sleep really early, he starts his day at three 30 in the morning.

And so we have two little girls and confession. We love the TV when you're asleep. So we sit on the [00:31:00] couch and just to let you know our little girls. We're original homeschoolers, by the way, like before we're not pandemic homeschoolers, they're these two genius girls and we wanted them to remain vibrant and completely open to loving to learn, but they know what's going on.

I've taught them everything from the very beginning. They know what's up. And so when we, and I know they're scared, I know I'm scared every day we know exactly what's going on around the globe, but at the end of the day, we're watching Trevor Noah. And on Saturday nights we watch SNL and you should hear the howling squealing laughter these girls have, and it just washes away all the fear and the stress that I know they have also.

And that's what you do. And I just, I want to thank you so much. Maz and Tehran. Thank you for coming. You beautiful human beings. Mostafa thank [00:32:00] you for coming because I've been such an outcast, uh, within our Persian community and something transformed Mostafa when you and I met and I'm so grateful.

And one of the things that happened right around, we met was during the pandemic. I was trying to get some Persian ingredients. We love to cook around here. We're crazy vegan. And we, we needed rosewater and I wasn't, I didn't want to go there. Boulder is crazy. Nobody wears masks, nobody cares. And so I'm like, I'm not going out there.

I'm not going to risk it. So I found this great store called the Persian basket and I've ordered some stuff. And then we, we started to have this, uh, That could conversation via email and , the way they spoke to me made me cry because I felt so embraced by them. And we became friends with the owners and I'm going to have them on the show as well.

 One of the words  that I learned from them [00:33:00] is HAMVATAN. I don't know what it meant. I kind of felt like I knew what it meant, but I had to look it up. And I talked to Mostafa about it.  I got the meaning and that's today's topic.

Is that it Hamvatan is,  people who have a connection with one another countrymen, compatriots, Landsman, , fellow citizen, a person born residing, or holding citizenship in the same country. We're  the same,  something we have in common.  That's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the United States.

The quality of our relationships are so crucial to our survival.  I want to dive deep in the little time we have,  dive into our current world's  social structure.

Things are so complicated right now, more than ever before. There's this profound moment in history that we're living in right now , the U.S, our status, our innovation, also our entitlement [00:34:00] and ignorance.

  It's really  a human thing, really because. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the United States, we've never been without war. We have always been at war. And what kind of toll does that take on human beings? We're not even realizing how much stress we're under, how much grief we have, until we leave.

Right. And so I want to talk about that. I want to talk about true home. What is it? And with that, I will stop talking now. I took up most of the time. I'm sorry.

So where do we go from here?

Maz: [00:34:36] It feels like we just had a therapy session. I got to look up and go, your time is up. Uh, no, it's good. It's good that you talked and you hit on a lot of subjects. Listen. Um, I'm happy that you guys are doing what you're doing and you're right. I think laughter I mean, I'll let Tehran give his reason, but the reason I got into comedy was because I was a comedy fan.

The way that [00:35:00] your daughters like to laugh? I like to laugh. Uh, when I was a kid I used to watch Saturday night live, um, and I didn't know what it was, but it probably was a way to deal with anxieties and stresses caused by being in a, in a home that, um, was going through, you know, our family, like your family came from a revolution.

So there's probably turmoil at the home. There's probably turmoil at school cause you're dealing with a new world and you're dealing with kids that don't know you, you're dealing with kids that you don't know. And so there's a lot of stuff there. And laughter I think is a great tool for, like you said, um, uh, touching you in a, uh, in a way that, that, that, that takes away some of these anxieties takes away some of the unknowns. It can connect people, which is when we're at shows, we do a show and there's not just one person, but maybe 50 people or a hundred people laughing [00:36:00] together. So it connects people and you see it in cultures, Fawn, I think maybe you saw it sometimes.

I mean, the Iranian culture is pretty good with telling jokes, but there are people in our community that are very serious. There are people in some of the Arab cultures that I visit, um, that were of an older generation that were more, um, more, uh, I'm committed to this idea of being serious and being respectful of elders rather than laughing.

And so I seen, I did an event one time for, um, I think it was Royal Jordanian, but it was a lot of. Uh, executives and they all seemed very serious. Now, maybe it could have been also, they probably didn't speak English that well, and I was doing the show in English and they were speaking. They, they spoke Arabic.

But, um, I think that you guys are onto something when you talk about what you said about laughter. And so I got into comedy because I was a fan of comedy. Um, Tehran, why did you get into comedy

Tehran: [00:36:58] because of you? I was [00:37:00] doing comedy and then Maz came to town and had me on stage and then encouraged me to do comedy.

And next thing you know, I was doing comedy. That's how it works.

Mostafa: [00:37:12] Maz is a pioneer. I remember it was the first person I saw, uh, as an Iranian doing stand up and I was like, wow, this is possible.

Maz: [00:37:22] Yeah. And that's well, that's also part of that is the timing. I think I'll go back to Fawn again with her Iranian family.

I think most people of my generation, most of my friends bought into this idea going back to serious versus humor, bought into the idea that they needed to listen to their parents, to be doctors and lawyers and engineers or whatever else the family wanted them to do. So that was the first generation.

And the way I explained it is my parents like Fawn. I came when I was six years old, we come to America. A lot of times when immigrants come to America, they set up shop. They either get a business going. They do something, buy [00:38:00] property, whatever it is, but they get here, they bring their kids, they work hard with the intention of having those kids do what those parents want them to do, which usually entails some sort of job or career that is, um, has a good reputation, uh, has a good name.

And has a secure future. I think, I don't think parents are looking, to  be detrimental to their kids' future. I think they just want a good future, a secure future. So those things, this is the first generation that comes then their kids end up being the lawyers, doctors, engineers, somehow Mostafa, I broke out.

And I think that somehow happened the same way. Uh, Fawn and Matt's kids are experiencing comedy was that I experienced comedy and it opened my eyes. And I said, I want to do that. And even when I said, I want to do that, and my parents kept saying, no there's how do you do that? Nobody knows. How, how do you become a comedian?

Nobody there's not, there's no grad school. There's no, uh, 401k. There's no [00:39:00] corporate company you go work for. So it took a lot of, but heading butts, uh, butting heads until I was 26 years old. That's how long it took a lot of comedians start when they're 16, 17, I was 26. I tried a bunch of other things and kept running into the idea that this is not for me.

And when I was 26 is when I had the light bulb moment, which is you live once and you should live for yourself, make yourself happy first. And then you can make those around you happy. And if you're lucky enough, you can go on and possibly make others that you don't even know around the world happy. And so when you say I'm a pioneer, I was a pioneer simply because I broke out of that group of my friends and did this before anybody else, because now the world we live in, we have people like Tehran and Max Amini and, uh,Amir K actually back then we had Omid Djalili who was out of England as well.

So there was the two of us, but then suddenly it grew and grew and grew. And it's beautiful now, because now you look out [00:40:00] there and there's a whole generation of people and people now below us, younger than us who were realizing you can do this for a career.

Fawn: [00:40:09] Everyone has their talents. Everyone has their gifts.

And I think when you're under duress and you need to survive,  you do what you have to, and there's no sense of leisure to say I'm going to pursue the arts.  I think there's a lot we need to be concerned about in society when there is no art, because that means something's really wrong.

When  emotions aren't created, when art isn't created, there's a big problem. And I think as immigrants, there is no leisure, there's no ability; there's no capacity for anything other than survival. So there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of, you know, you better fall in this line and if you put your toe over the line. You're you're, it's just [00:41:00] not okay. And so that's what I think what happened with me. Um, but it, and then I just feel like I got into the state where there's no sense of HAMVATAN to anything  meaning, like I don't belong to anyone. I, I haven't, this is the first time I've been speaking with any Persian people.

We've Matt and I have been moving from place to place trying to figure out where we belong and, and most of the places we've lived, I'm the only non white person around and it's hectic. And the girls see it. Matt kind of, you're pretty oblivious to it, but like, I'm sorry, but it's true. Like at the airport.

Oh my God. I'm not

Matt: [00:41:46] going to disagree with you. I'm just going to say, thanks.

We'll cruise on. He's gone. And I'm being held up and frisked. Like ever since it's just, I used to love traveling guys. The airport was my, my happy [00:42:00] place. And then nine 11 happened and then traveling with my husband and people don't think we're together the way I get treated.

And then he's gone thinking Fawn's right behind me and I'm not, I'm held back by security anyway. Um, what was I saying? There's no sense of belonging and that's what I really want to talk about is how can you guys explain to me what's been going on? Because, because I've been away from Persian people and my culture for so long, I recently started to look at what's out there and I came across Tehran and I came across all these amazing artists that are doing amazing things.

And not only that, but they speak Farsi so fluently. Like I remember when I was a kid, I would listen to reporters. Persian Iranian reporters speak and it was a different speak.  It's like a book book speak. How do you describe it? It's like, I couldn't understand what they were saying.

[00:43:00] Mostafa: [00:43:00] Yeah. The tone has changed.

Definitely.

Fawn: [00:43:02] Nope. Like they speak it's so intellectual. Like, I don't know. My stupid mind was like, Hey, since I've left, the whole Persian community has disappeared. And then all of a sudden I realized, wow, all these young people have their community. They're part of their beautiful culture and they have no Persian accent and they're, they're doing phenomenal things.

They're amazing leaders in our society. And I just feel left out. I want back in guys, not that I was ever in, but. I want to know what's going on. I want, I want to truly understand our roots. And like, even on our show, we talk about, we get into words, we get into, like, we look into the etymology of everything and where it comes from and looking at Latin roots.

But I'm like: Mostafa, where do I go to find out our roots for our [00:44:00] words, it's not Latin, is it? It's not

Mostafa: [00:44:03] right? What are words are not, no. But so we use the word HAMVATAN, I think Maz and Tehran also know of this word. Uh, but in English you used the word compatriots, uh, which, uh, you know, from Latin, if you want to talk about it, Patria is like the father's land and com patria means the land that we share.

So, uh, HAMVATAN in a way means,  people who share the same land. Probably goes,

Tehran: [00:44:35] actually it goes way beyond that Mostafa. So I think a lot of times, because a lot of Iranians are in it, they don't realize it, which is where I come in to play. I get to look at the same box, but from outside the box and know what I'm looking into.

And that's a huge difference. A lot of people, when they are part of something, they're just in the box and when they're in the box, they know [00:45:00] they're in the box. They're part of the box. They live in the box, but they don't see it from, without I get to do that as the person who's mixed in with Farsi words, Farsi words break down to their linguistic roots, every single word breaks down to whatever the root of the word is.

(Speaking in Farsi about the structure of the word) it gives meaning to the word itself. So let's examine the word HAM-VA-TAN it doesn't mean same nation. That's actually the misconception. It means we are all, and our skin, but our skin and our essence HAM + VA + TAN ham is a word, VA   is a word, TAN is a word. So when you put them together, you save them so quickly. You don't break them down. It's much like in Farsi where we say, "KHODA" - God, but we forget that those root comes from "KHOD" (ME). That's Now a KHOD AH. [00:46:00] Right? The root comes from me. So it starts with me ham that time we us, there is no limitation.

There's no limitation to us and our essence are shared. So while it's broken down now to nationality, the truth of it is we are all HAMVATAN.

Fawn: [00:46:23] That's exactly where I was hoping this would go, Tehran, you. Oh my God. I love you so much. Thank you for that. That is perfect.

Tehran: [00:46:34] The truth usually is perfect.

Maz: [00:46:36] That's the truth. The truth will set you free.

Tehran: [00:46:39] Thank you, Maz.

Fawn: [00:46:40] The truth is perfect. It is the simple, that is the most profound.   When we were talking about HAMVATAN and VATAN and HAM, and then I w I was like, Oh, wait a minute.

So "Bo ham" is a word meaning together, right? Well, I'm, it's

Tehran: [00:46:58] two words, but [00:47:00] yes, it means together. "Ham" "HAMEH" it's that's the that's, it's the concept of togetherness.

Fawn: [00:47:07] Right. And that's, that's my whole point with our whole social movement. Our whole friendship movement, the art of friendship is what I'm trying to convey.

What I'm having people try to relearn. Even us, for us to relearn is that we belong to each other. That my heart is your home. Your home is my heart. My heart is your home. Am I making sense? Yes. Matt is quiet because he's the only non-Persian here.

Matt: [00:47:38] The other thing is, is I like to think I'm funny. So I'm not even going to go there.

Maz: [00:47:42] I'm sure you are funny, my friend.

Matt: [00:47:45] Thank you. That's

Tehran: [00:47:47] all I can tell you. Do you know your ethnic roots, your, your origin? Do you know them? Oh, I'm

Matt: [00:47:53] I'm, I'm, I'm a kind of a Northern European mongrel, but yeah.

Tehran: [00:47:57] Because you would be surprised the"IR" in [00:48:00] Ireland for example, and the "IR" in Iran mean exactly the same thing.

They come from a very similar place, the land of the Aryan, but not Aryans the way that is described post, uh, 1930s in, Nazi Germany, but the truth of the group of people, cultural understanding, and belief and belonging of an ethnicity of people. That's interesting. Yeah,

Matt: [00:48:23] absolutely.

Fawn: [00:48:24] So I'm not crazy. We are truly interconnected,

Tehran: [00:48:27] right?

Of course. That's why Farsi is an Indo-European language.

Fawn: [00:48:32] It is.

Mostafa: [00:48:33] Yeah, it is. It is European language. That's right. What does that

Fawn: [00:48:38] even mean? Can you break that down for me real quick? And

Tehran: [00:48:41] Indo-European languages specifically a language that exists, uh, in the European and, and the basically sub-continent of India, parts of the world, which is why it's different from Arabic.

Even though we share approximately 40% of the same vocabulary as Arabic, Arabic, and Farsi are [00:49:00] very different languages and the way they are cultivated, even though we share a lot of vocabulary. So people misinterpret so Farsi as a language would be much closer to Italian or French than it would be to Arabic as a language.

However, there are certain things in Farsi that are very unique to the concept of Farsi. For example, in Farsi, There is no gender in the language. Gender is something that's introduced much, much later going past,  the Islamic revolutions. And when I say that, I mean the original ones and the thousands, not the one in 1979. The concept of gender  as we are talking were of female and male names, but originally gender names did not exist in Iran, which is why we have a lot of overlapping names.

But also I can never say "she" in Iran. I can never say "he". I can just say "you", "them", "us", but I cannot differentiate gender [00:50:00] whys. I have to explain that, which is a concept in the, in the original Persian empire, there was no difference between men and women.

Fawn: [00:50:08] How did you learn all this?

Tehran: [00:50:10] There are these amazing things in the world called books.

And a lot of people don't utilize them. They actually just take information from other people and then just keep playing telephone with that information. And then basically they, they disseminate that information as if it's true, when there are actual understandings of this information and people who are these mysterious things that Americans have forgotten, for example, called experts, they're experts.

These are people who actually studied a subject and they actually know a lot about this subject. More importantly, uh, from these books and these experts, people just assume that their personal experience is the ultimate truth. When it's not, there's a much bigger part of a story than that. And these experts with this research and their knowledge, and then you [00:51:00] go and digest this information and then add your own personal experience to it.

And that creates. More information. It's it's an amazing process. Yeah. There's an

Maz: [00:51:09] interesting tidbit. Um, P people in America spend more on lottery tickets than they do on books, just a heads up. So they want to get rich quick as opposed to learning how to possibly better themselves and get rich. Um, you guys, we've got to get off in about two minutes, so we should start wrapping it up.

I

Fawn: [00:51:28] don't even know how to wrap it up. I'm going to turn it over to you guys. I don't know.

Tehran: [00:51:33] I will say this, that if the world had more Fawns and Matts in the world, the world would be a much better place.

Matt: [00:51:40] Honestly, if the world had more comedians, sorry, sorry for this. But I'm going to throw it right back to you showing us the, the universality of our experiences.

I think this world would be a much more peaceful place.

Tehran: [00:51:53] Let me, let me correct that man. Good comedians. Good comedian, great

Maz: [00:51:57] comedians. Let me not let, [00:52:00] I don't want to leave Mostafa out cause he might not be a comedian, but you can tell he's a sweet soul. So let's just say if the world could just have more people like that are on this podcast, it would be a better place.

Tehran: [00:52:13] Basically. We were the only people in the world. It'd be a great place to do the quick place to wrap it up. Love it. Basically. We are the only ones that count your welcome society.

Fawn: [00:52:26] Thank you for being here. You guys, I hope to have you back so we can get into it more .  Again, thank you for your time. We love you. I mean, Maz the first time I heard you was, , I thought it was just me who had an American citizenship with an American passport with Tehran Iran written on it, which really was hard after nine 11.

When you were talking about that, just that brought a healing for me. Thank you so much. I love you. We love you so much.

Tehran: [00:52:56] You want to know something funny? Yes. I wasn't born [00:53:00] in Iran and yet my passport also says Tehran, how crazy that is actually technically a truth. That is technically a very, that is a true truth.

C you

Maz: [00:53:10] guys best see your daughters. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

ALL: [00:53:15] Bye. Mostafa joon what's best to you and your yours, right?

Fawn: [00:53:19] Mostafa! Uh, that went way too fast. Oh, wow. Oh,

Matt: [00:53:26] I'm exhausted. And I didn't do, I said 20 words and you're you should probably cut me out of what I said. No, but I think I gave you a breather. So I think that that was the most important. I,

Fawn: [00:53:37] I was really nervous guys. I really look up to these people, you know, we rarely have guests on our show.

Mostafa, you know, this

Matt: [00:53:45] and here  we are with three guests on one show.

Fawn: [00:53:47] I mean, and, and yeah. And then to, to have them, I mean, they're world renown comics,

Matt: [00:53:56] They are very patient. They are very loving and they are [00:54:00] great. I am sure. Hundred percent sure they are great hosts.

Fawn: [00:54:04] Yeah. I mean, and that's also the Persian thing. right, Mostafa? We know how to, we know how to host. We know how to invite people to our homes,

Mostafa: [00:54:12] That's a big thing for us,  to, , show hospitality.  We really care about that.  There's this whole concept of "AYDE DEDANY" (in Farsi, means to see one another  during the holiday) , which in the Norooz (Persian New Year) we do.  Families visit one another and, when you visit a family, they have to  pay you a revisit, you know, uh, in a way.

So, you know, just return the visit and  in the next visit, you know, you have to at least go up to the standard, the standards that you saw in the first visit. So it's God, that's, that's,

Matt: [00:54:50] that's so funny because there is a native American tribe. I'm going to butcher it. The Tlingit who have a very similar thing.

If you get invited over for a party, [00:55:00] you're expected to invite your host over to a party and literally give them more what they end up distributing, like most of their wealth , during these parties. And this was back in the day,  and you're expected to invite them to your house and give them even more stuff.

And, and it's this cycle. And so there's like basically the entire community is responsible for inviting the entire community over to their place for a party

Mostafa: [00:55:23] equate pain effect. Right? Exactly. That's what we have too.  And growing up, sometimes it got painful for the kids. It was too much pressure,

Fawn: [00:55:34] you know, we have to back up, we have to explain what we're talking about.

So what Mostafa is referring to is, , Eid Nowruz which is the Persian new year. And it's really the beginning of spring and Mostafa,  you taught me that it was Omar Khayyam most people know him as Omar Khayyam. How to PR how do you, how do Americans pronounce this [00:56:00] Omar Khayyam

Mostafa: [00:56:01] uh, well, first of all, they cannot do the "KH" (sound of the alphabet that doesn't exist in English) right.

The flat. Uh, but they say Omar Khayyam

Fawn: [00:56:10] y'all. Could you tell us how he started the whole time situation? Yeah,

Mostafa: [00:56:15] so,  Nowruz,  is a  long lasting tradition over 3,000 years.

Fawn: [00:56:22] It literally means new day, right?

Mostafa: [00:56:24] It means new day and it is the , advent of the spring  and it coincides with spring Equinox.

That's when the spring begins. In the Northern hemisphere. And the Persians, have been able to calculate the moment that Spring starts; which is basically when the sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes the night and day. Now the one Persian guy who calculated this to the minute is Omar Khayyam [00:57:00] who is a superb person.

You know, He's was a fascinating guy and

Fawn: [00:57:05] most people just know him as a poet.

Mostafa: [00:57:09] Yes, that's right. And it's because the poems of Omar Omar Khayyam have been translated into English. I believe it was around,  1859 when, , Edward Fitzgerald, this English fellow, translates these poems and publishes them.

 It takes a few years before they become popular, which is a lesson of business strategy I like to talk about in my classes, but when they,  become popular, they take the world by storm. And, uh, it is estimated that it is this, this book of poems is the best selling a book of poems in the world by the number of, uh, volumes is sold; number of copies actually it's sold. [00:58:00]

 1859 that's when, Darwin actually published his work. The world was interested in new ideas about its past and what the world the universe is about. So the poems of Khayyam are also about the universe, the time, uh, what went on before us what's coming in the future. So it really was timely content  at the time that it was published.

And,  you be surprised that when it became popular, there were dining clubs in London, uh, dedicated to this book and these poems. So people would get together, I would assume weekly or monthly or what, but on occasion they would get together dine and have a night of poetry and recite these poems.

It even came to America. You'd find it surprising that, we had Omar [00:59:00] Khayyam clubs in America as well. So it's really interesting this guy. He's a poet. We know that, but he was also a mathematician. He's written several books. One is this book about differential mathematics. It describes how to find solutions for two parameter equations for the first time, 500 years before Newton did.  He's got a book on music. He's got a book on algebra. This guy has been so influential on the side of his scientific character. One area on the moon. Uh, I'm not sure you know what it is, but I think it's one of the volcanic  things on the moon has been named after Omar Khayyam

yeah, because he was an astrologer too. And this where I'm trying to tie it back to the whole idea of Nowruz,  he was commissioned by the King of his time to create the most [01:00:00] advanced observatory to study the Celestials and create an accurate calendar. At the time, this is post Islam.

So Arabs have invaded Persia.  The language has changed to Arabic from Farsi.  The calendar has changed to the Arabic calendar, which by the way, was a lunar calendar. So it's based on the circulation of moon around the earth. And the  the King, the Shaw wanted to create a solar calendar, which is about a rotation of earth around the sun.

Now, little interesting tidbit: we're talking about almost 500 years before Galileo altered his ideas about how  the earth is not the center of the universe, and it's revolving around other objects. Omar Khayyam had already written books about this 500 [01:01:00] years before that created this calendar that's the most accurate calendar to date, even more accurate than the Gregorian calendar. And he really helped the whole Persian, traditional Nowruz to gain legitimacy in the sense that we are the  the people who can who basically observe the advent of spring and celebrate that. Millions of families do that today, uh, to Iran, other countries as well. That there are people in central Asia, East Asia, in the Balcones area in Europe who celebrate Nowruz, which is fantastic.

 Fawn: [01:01:42] Wow. Thank you so much for that. I love it when you talk, I love learning from you. And I mean, this is what I was trying to get at  with Moz and Tehran and talking about the  feeling like  when you reach capacity, when you're under so much [01:02:00] duress, when you are constantly at war that you tend to become really selfish and myopic, and that you're not able to, to be more caring for your fellow human being, because you're always at such a survival mode and that's where you live and it causes you to contract and it causes you to become a little bit ignorant of the grander scheme of things in the universe.

There's so much to learn. There is so much to experience and I'm so grateful for you being here Mostafa, not just on our podcast, but in our lives. So we can have these discussions and really learn. Thank you. And, you know, to have these conversations is so important amongst friends, because we've all been gathering information here and there, and it's really important for us to share.

And that is what true friendship is.

[01:03:00] Matt: [01:02:59] Absolutely.

Fawn: [01:03:00] We need to grow. We need to keep expanding our universe

Matt: [01:03:04] and sharing our experiences and really going through and in the process of sharing, get more stories and more understanding and, understand how universal, the human experience can be.

Fawn: [01:03:18] You said it perfectly Matt; to have more understanding, more understanding would change everything overnight, bring light to things that have been  embedded in the dark and creating so many problems that are unnecessary. So I guess let's continue this conversation. We want to talk about technology with you next.

So in a few days, can we get back back on the horn? What do you call this? But back on the mic, if you will,

Mostafa: [01:03:51] I'll be happy to thank you.

Fawn: [01:03:53] Thank you so much for being here with us. And I hope I didn't. I know I talked way too much during the show.

Matt: [01:03:59] You were [01:04:00] so excited.

Mostafa: [01:04:01] Um, yeah, I think she was excited seeing Maz and Tehran

Fawn: [01:04:06] I barely looked at them on screen because every time I did, I freaked out.

Cause I'm like, Maz is not smiling. (Laughter, Fawn laughs nervously) I hope people enjoyed it. I have no idea how that went

Matt: [01:04:19] and, and they both had, I think, a good opportunity. But yeah, it was good, honestly.

Fawn: [01:04:25] All right, folks. Well, I I'm, I'm going to go hide under the covers now.

Matt: [01:04:30] She was going to have outbursts for the rest of the day all day tomorrow, at least.

Fawn: [01:04:33] Yes. That's what I do.  All right, everybody. We will talk to you in a few days, have a beautiful every day and make sure you visit our websites either our friendly world.com or our friendly world podcast.com.  Look for Mostafa, hit all his information is there he's the most amazing teacher and you do one-on-ones with people.

You do special [01:05:00] classes. Um, check them out, check them out. His website again is NEX3dot X, Y, Z. That's next three dot X, Y, Z. Mostafa is the most brilliant teacher you guys. Check them out.

Mostafa: [01:05:16] Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being with you and Matt today. I

Fawn: [01:05:20] love you. We love you. Our whole family loves you.

All right, friends, talk to you in a little bit. Be

Mostafa: [01:05:27] well, bye bye.

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to a special edition of our friendly world with laundry mat.

Fawn: [00:00:05] Yes, we have three amazing people. We have, a university professor Mostafa Purmehdi.  We have two amazing comics, TV, personalities, movie personalities. It's

Matt: [00:00:17] a slash slash slash slash so many things.

Fawn: [00:00:20] Maz Jobrani and Tehran. And they could only be with us for like 40 minutes. and

Matt: [00:00:27] We start the conversation with Mostafa they come in, they come, we continue the conversation with Mostafa.

Fawn: [00:00:33] Yeah. They come in about the 10 minute point. I think of our show and then they leave and we kept the conversation going. We just kept talking, couldn't stop ourselves.

Their time is very tight and they had to go onto their podcast, which is "Back to School with Maz Jobrani".  We hope you enjoy have fun. Here it is…

 

Laughter is Medicine with Maz Jobrani and Tehran and University Professor, Mostafa Purmehdi

[00:00:00] Fawn: [00:00:00] Hello friends. Hello. Hello. Welcome to our friendly world. Today, we have three very special guests. I'm going to get right into it. Two of them will show up in about, 10 minutes, but, right now we have a very dear friend Mostafa Purmehdi.

Mostafa: [00:00:17] Hey.

Fawn: [00:00:19] Hello.

Mostafa: [00:00:21] Hi Matt. It's so nice to be on the show.

Fawn: [00:00:24] A little background on our friend Mostafa,Mostafa is this brilliance university professor.

He is a social scientist with a PhD in marketing. His website is NEX3.xyz  it's spelled N E X three dot X, Y, Z. If you want to get ahold of him, please do he, Mostafa is my mentor. over the summer or during the pandemic of 1920, 19, 20, 20, 20. Um,

Mostafa: [00:00:53] That was a while back.  We go way back way back.

Fawn: [00:00:58] We do go way [00:01:00] back. Yeah. You were the most amazing mentor to me, not just to me, but our little girls, you just immediately fit in with the whole family. Well, I mean, you're the most brilliant professor because you have such a kind gentle way to explain the most complex things that really angrify me, that's my own word, that I use in the house, like I'm angrified.  Seriously, I get so frustrated, especially with economics and business. And it just seems like  things are set up from my perspective in such a way for you to never understand economy and business,. It's meant for this certain group over here.

And I always felt like an outcast. And the way you explained it to me is exactly what I needed. It was a caring, human being with a soft voice, just breaking things down for me [00:02:00] in the most simple way. But we were talking about complex issues having to do with business.

Mostafa: [00:02:07] Oh, it's my pleasure. I actually, , get a kick out of being able to present, , ideas to people and see that, thing in their eyes when they actually, when the penny drops for people, that's what I really go for, and, , it's been a pleasure working with you and Matt on this project.

It's a fantastic project. I'm really happy that I I've had,  an involvement with it.

Fawn: [00:02:33] Thank you so much. And can I, do you mind if I read a little bit about your bio?

Mostafa: [00:02:42] Oh, not at all. It helps with my vanity.

Fawn: [00:02:46] So  there are so many acronyms. Like when Matt come, when Matt used to come home from work, I'm like, honey, how was your day?

And he would have sentence after sentence, like paragraphs of just acronyms, [00:03:00] describing his day. I didn't understand. But, so here are a lot of, a lot more that I still don't understand. You're an LTA lecturer at the university of Frazier Valley. I don't know what LTA means.

Oh, LTA  means limited term appointment.

Mostafa: [00:03:14] I still don't know what it means. Yeah.  It is, uh, one of the most prestigious acronyms in our business.  I changed my  position, , in the pandemic when I decided for the move, uh, I used to be a professor at the university of Colorado at Boulder,

Fawn: [00:03:35] A, Leeds school of business, right.

Mostafa: [00:03:38] Leeds School of business. That's correct. And, I was contemplating on my move, but I was not really aware of the pandemic that was about to hit. And, uh, so what happened was, with the budgeting of the university, , there were some hiccups due to the pandemic and the fact that the, international student [00:04:00] enrollments were going down.

So my position became, a limited term appointment because, at the time of the pandemic, the universities were not really sure what the outlook of their market would be after the pandemic. Right. So, uh, yeah. Uh, that's how that's, uh, you know, a lot of industries actually took a hit, uh, due to the pandemic; tourism industry, uh, you know, airlines,  hotels, restaurants, uh, including many other ones.

 We're going to have a different world after this.

Matt: [00:04:40] Yeah, no, absolutely. In the computer world, all the rules are getting written, , even from how much office space, a given company needs, or, where we are geographically scattering, your employees is starting to look more and more attractive.

Mostafa: [00:04:53] This is going to be one of those instances of history that we will be looking back at. [00:05:00] And we'll say, well, this changed the course of history, right?

Matt: [00:05:03] Yeah, no, we, we, we like to call those sea changes, but yeah, absolutely; sea, as an s e a.

Mostafa: [00:05:09] right? Yeah. So, yeah now I'm in Canada, actually in the university of the Fraser Valley, it's a fantastic institution.

I'm really proud of what is being done.  I'm in the school of business, I teach marketing, consumer behavior,  analytics, statistics, and, uh, It's just a, I'm getting a kick out of it. The university stands for a lot of,  really, , excellent values of inclusivity , respect, , all the things that you'd be excited to talk about in your podcast.

Fawn: [00:05:44] And I also wanted to share what you do with technology. You're on the cutting edge. You're doing some amazing work,  Mostafa with technology.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Mostafa: [00:05:56] Absolutely. Yes. , I'm very much interested in,  [00:06:00] how technology changes human beings.

My,  research is about consumer behavior and marketing strategy.  Technology has an impact on both of them in a way people go about their lives, the type of solutions they find and they choose for their problems,   and also in the way businesses work and, equilibrate in the markets.

 I'm very much interested in that. I follow AI, artificial intelligence.  I have a sister who is a, a fantastic researcher in the field of AI. She works for,  Erickson company and they're working on a lot of cool projects that,  are going to literally shape the future of telecommunications, uh, like the variable of it, 5g networks.

Um, and, uh, I am personally am interested in blockchain.  Now blockchain is one of those, Equalizer forces [00:07:00] that we're gonna hear a lot about in the next,  five to 10 years. And it's going to,  basically distribute power, , in the general sense of the world to the world.  When you look at, for example, how, in many cases we give power to third parties to,  balance the transaction, oversee it, and make sure that both ends of the transaction are actually getting their bargain.

Right. Uh, blockchain does that automatically through its code. And we will have better systems in the future,  things that governments do today, banks do, , third party,  global organizations do,  in terms of, upholding consumer standards and all that. They will be, monitored and enforced through the [00:08:00] code, which is untamperable,  and is something that is open source.

Everybody will have access to it. It is really fascinating how it's going to change our world. And yeah.

Matt: [00:08:12] It's another example of kind of the democratization that we're seeing due to the internet. I mean, we saw that as far as, , how we can talk to others. There was the Egypt spring protests, for instance, where they sent Facebook messages to let people know where they should and shouldn't be, and that's, you know, outside of,  government  regulation  and,  I think a blockchain will take us further in that direction for sure.

And just make everything more and more level the field

Mostafa: [00:08:37] level the field leveling the field it is, I love the keyword you used Matt,  #democratization hashtag democratization of the data is actually what's happening. It's what they say is,  blockchain is doing to the world what internet did in the 1990s, the internet, as you know, we dub [00:09:00] it as internet is internet of communication for the most part,

Matt: [00:09:05] right.

Mostafa: [00:09:05] Blockchain is going to be the internet of transactional data.  We can dub it as internet of money, how value is transferred and exchanged. So, it's going to be fantastic. I can go on for hours about blockchain. Uh, don't want to get me started on that.

Fawn: [00:09:25] I do. I do want to get you started on it Mostafa, because I mean our kids too, by the way, they love you so much. They ask about you all the time.

Mostafa: [00:09:35] I love them too, they're really cute girls and they're very, very sweet.

Fawn: [00:09:40] Thank you. Thank you really are. They really are. And I just, I'm so grateful that you're in our lives because we need you and we love you.

Um, I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, here's what I was gonna say. I know that you're a little bit shy. You tend to run a little bit shy, [00:10:00] but can we do a whole show on this? Because I know our friends are going to be here soon knocking on the door, the virtual door. Um, do you mind, can we, because I mean, Matt, this is right up your alley too.

Yeah. I

Matt: [00:10:12] have tons of questions.

Fawn: [00:10:15] Oh, sure. Well, is that okay? Can we do a special show on this, like in the next few days? So, um, okay. Well, let's see. I, I know that our friends are going to come in any second now and let's see here is where I will do an edit and, and describe exactly who they are. But friends, we have two friends, we have two amazing guests coming.

Also amazing is of course our dear friend Mostafa

Mostafa: [00:10:51] I'm very excited to, uh, to see them too. I'm a big fan  of  both of them.

Fawn: [00:10:57] I am too. They, they are [00:11:00] both really brilliant comics, standup comedians. They are incredibly intelligent, actually Mostafa, you and Tehran so our guests are Maz Jobrani and Tehran you and Tara have a lot in common.

I mean, this guy gets on stage with,  his Tehran hat and his bathrobe, but he is legit. That's super, super smart. Like this guy.

Matt: [00:11:30] Well, he, he is a lawyer, so I'm not hundred percent. No, I'm kidding. Oh, that's my last, that's my last check out the day, by the way. Hold on. There's no way I'm even going to

Fawn: [00:11:39] hold on.

So Tehran is a double undergraduate degree, has a double undergraduate degree, a master's and he's a lawyer.  His master's is in economics, Mostafa this guy, I mean, but I

Mostafa: [00:11:55] mean, you, you never know, you know, uh, [00:12:00] watching him on the internet. I know of Tehran. I've seen him, uh, on YouTube and the guy is so approachable. You never think he's a lawyer or an economist,

Fawn: [00:12:11] right? I mean, a master's in economics and well, I guess, but that that's typical of our culture where education is huge for us. Which is yet another reason I've always felt like an outcast because I never had the traditional route with anything with not with my photography career, not with anything.

It's like, I've just been an outsider. And as far as education, I couldn't afford to stay in, Oh, they're here. I couldn't here. They are. They're here. I couldn't afford to stay in university. I had to pay for everything myself. I didn't have that normal. You know, your parents are going to help, are going to pay for your college education.

Maz [00:13:00] Jobrani is here. Hello? We're recording already. Maz! Welcome. Welcome. Doing well. We're now waiting for Tehran to show up Maz, Hello!  I'm Fawn by the way. This is my husband, Matt love. And we

Maz: [00:13:17] have, how are you

Mostafa: [00:13:19] doing? Well,

Fawn: [00:13:20] little excited. We're so excited. I'm really,

Maz: [00:13:23] I'm texting Tehran right now to  let them know we're here

Fawn: [00:13:26] and I want you to also meet Mostafa Purmehdi

he is my mentor.

Mostafa: [00:13:34] Pleasure to meet you.

Maz: [00:13:36] Pleasure to meet you. Nice to meet you, buddy.

Fawn: [00:13:40] Mostafa is a university professor, major PhD.  In marketing, he,

Maz: [00:13:46] where do you teach Mostafa?

Mostafa: [00:13:47] Well, right now I'm teaching in Vancouver, in University of  Fraser Valley.  I used teach at the University  of Colorado, , up until the pandemic.

Maz: [00:13:56] Uh, Oh, wow.

Fawn: [00:13:58] And that's how we met [00:14:00] Mostafa was my mentor during the summer. Was it no, this time, last year, right? Mostafa?

 So some years ago, Matt and I started this,  social movement. We believe in the art of friendship.  My background is actually as a photographer, I'm a still photographer and I've been shooting for a few decades now. And I traveled around the planet,  documenting what I was seeing. Uh, really my whole mission was to show that we're all one family.

So I photographed different tribes from around the world. And I put a book together, that's titled I Am - A Family Photo Album. And so. Matt, Matt, this is Matt.

Matt: [00:14:42] Hello.

 I'm a software developer and, , my key focus is helping people solve problems, which kind of makes me forces me on some levels to become,  very empathic because,  obviously when you can't do something on your computer, it's very frustrating and you're get very emotional and it's about [00:15:00] sorting through those emotions and really hearing what the person has to say and really connecting with them and helping them solve their problems.

Maz: [00:15:07] That's cool. And you guys are located in the Bay area?

Fawn: [00:15:10] No, we are in Boulder,

Maz: [00:15:13] Colorado, Boulder.

Matt: [00:15:14] Actually, we used to live in the Bay area,

Maz: [00:15:16] condolences on the most recent incidents.

Matt: [00:15:19] Yes.

Fawn: [00:15:20] Um, we are like nomads. We have been going from place to place around the world, trying to figure out where we belong and haven't found it quite yet, which is one of the reasons why we brought you here today.

I'll get into that in just a second. Um, but I guess I wanted to give you a little bit more information about us. We,

Maz: [00:15:41] no problem. I'm listening to, while I'm talking to Tehran I guess he doesn't have the link. He lost it somehow. So I'm sending it to him.

Fawn: [00:15:47] Thank you for doing that by the way. Thank you so much.

Maz: [00:15:50] No problem.

But go on. I'm listening.

Fawn: [00:15:52] So between my work and Matt's work, we're a total opposites, first of all, we decided, [00:16:00] first of all, where, wherever I traveled to whatever country I was in, I felt like I was at home. I felt like I was meeting spirit friends, like spirit family, friends, like it was a big family reunion wherever I went.

I had no trouble making friends. But as I explained through all of our episodes, , growing up as an Iranian in Southern California, I was raised in Los Angeles. I did see the w what's. It was, it was like night, the night and day, a difference between cultures and I was straddling both.  I was never embraced by my Iranian heritage.

And I was, I was not embraced by my own family and I was never fully embraced by the American culture. So I was always like, like when you first came in while we were talking today, I was saying how I always felt like an outcast, whether it was,  going to university [00:17:00] to,. I mean, everything, my photography work even, you know, never quite fit into any particular niche.

I was always on my own, but anyway, what I, one of the things I noticed was the disparaging quality and the different cultures. And then as I traveled around, I noticed every time I came back to the United States, what a big problem we have in our society here and how I really believe that that's the reason for so many problems is because there's a fracture of our relationships.

And it started with families how,  growing up and watching my friends who were totally Caucasian, American being told, all right, buddy, you're out at age 18. And to me, I was like, wow. It's like, they ha they have a lease and it will be up upon graduation from high school and they're out and in our culture, you don't leave.

And then when I was trying to [00:18:00] leave, my family was, it's a different story. I have a way different relationship with my family than most Persians do, but I had to completely cut them off completely.

Maz: [00:18:11] They had a lease you got rid of them.

Fawn: [00:18:14] I tried not to. I had many, many, many, many, many, many, many years of therapy to actually finally break the ties.

And I finally did, and I did it at a very late age, you know, and, um, but I had to because to start a whole like Matt and I met in the martial arts, and we always talk about your circle and your circle needs to be pure. Oh, he's here.

Matt: [00:18:41] Accept (Tehran into Zoom)

Maz: [00:18:43] I would say, I would say we should start recording soon too. We could keep talking about, we talk about that's fantastic, but I, I know we gotta be done by about 10 45.

Oh,

MAs. We have been, we have been recording. Oh, you have been. Oh,

great. Okay, good, good. Okay. It didn't show on my end because I usually, I [00:19:00] record. Okay, go ahead.

Fawn: [00:19:01] Well, the thing is we have this, so I'm a photographer. And before the pandemic, I was ready to start shooting again. So we have all this fancy equipment that you don't see yet.

So we record and not like a traditional way. Tehran, are you here?

Maz: [00:19:15] It takes a minute to talk.

Fawn: [00:19:17] He is he's so adorable. Oh my goodness.

Tehran, Welcome. Hi, I'm Fawn. It's such a pleasure to meet you. I want you to meet, um, my husband, my true love. This is Matt.

Tehran: [00:19:33] Hi Matt. The true love. You know what I feel like. You're my true love. I don't know.

Fawn: [00:19:38] Thank you. And we have a very dear friend. Actually, you guys have a lot in common. This is Mustafa Purmehdi.

Tehran: [00:19:47] Also half black, half Persian. I'm Mostafa how are you

Mostafa: [00:19:51] That's right! Yeah. How are you?

Tehran: [00:19:54] I'm great..

Mostafa: [00:19:55] I just realized that you have done a degree in law. Yeah. I was just [00:20:00] telling Fawn that, uh, the guy is so approachable. You never know he's a lawyer.

Fawn: [00:20:06] Well, most of I tell them, tell them your background.

Mostafa: [00:20:10] Yeah. So, um, I am a professor of marketing. I teach in Vancouver at the university of Fraser Valley. Now I used to teach in Boulder, Colorado. That's where I actually met,  Fawn, Matt. , I think it's a cool story , to talk about. It was early in the pandemic and CU Boulder, the university I was working for at the time was, , having this initiative to,  support local businesses, local entrepreneurs.

So they matched these,  volunteer, professors with local startups. I was matched with Fawn, not really knowing that she was Persian.  We were just trying to,  help  these businesses on the growth stage,  to keep their momentum. And I, , was really excited to understand that Fawn [00:21:00] was  Iranian.

And,  she was working on this very fantastic cultural product, which is like a foundation, uh, and one aspect of which is this podcast. So that's how we know each other. 

Fawn: [00:21:14] And while Mostafa was  talking about SWAT analysis, like all this, all these things I didn't understand. I have, I feel like I am a Persian Iranian with amnesia, because I was just telling Maz the whole story. And now we're running out of time. I'm sorry. I'll try to make it really quick. You guys. So we started this, this movement, it's a social movement, really? We started a matchmaking service because I was trying to tell Maz that as a photographer, traveling from country to country photographing different tribes, working on my book, I really noticed what was happening.

Every time I came back to the United States, I saw I, it was illuminated, it was so clear to me what our deepest problems are. And so we decided, and I, and honestly, I, we made friends wherever we [00:22:00] met and one of the things was, I was always trying to escape LA. I was just telling Maz, Terran that I had to completely cut my family off, which is a region.

A reason why I have amnesia is, , first of all, I haven't spoken Farsi in years. Mostafa has  tried to talk to me during the summer and I froze because I couldn't understand what he was saying, because I'm like, can you slow down? It was so weird. And when you were teaching me SWAT analysis, I kept hearing from my past, like, one of them was  OSTOD and so just last week I'm like, Mostafa, I think I know what it means, but can you explain OSTODto me?

And he's like, yeah. It's like someone knowledgeable. That's a professor. I'm like, that's you. Okay. So it started to come back to me. And one of the reasons  I'm having you Maz and you Tehran, on here is because our show is about reconnecting. Our show is about our [00:23:00] interconnectedness as human beings around the world.

It's about friendship and we believe that everything. Everything comes down to the art of friendship and so much can be solved with that. Not just, I mean, we focus on the loneliness epidemic, but really it's way more than that. And so I'm all over the place, but what happened was, as I traveled, I realized there's a friendship issue and we had no problems making friends.

And because I cut off my family, I was always trying to get away from Los Angeles, which is where I grew up. We moved there when I was six months old and I spent a little bit of time in Iran, like in the first half of first grade and then half of second grade, but that was it. And my family didn't talk. I have an absurd family, we didn't speak.

So I didn't speak Farsi that much. And they didn't speak English either. So there was not a lot of communication going on. So I spent most of my life just listening and watching people, not just my [00:24:00] family, but  my relatives, watching all my friends, watching. Our society. I was always quietly watching and taking notes.

And so,  we started this thing because of my original mentor, which is actually a city. So, which I'll tell you a little bit, really quick, turn out to be my mentor. I grew up near Santa Monica. I went to Santa Monica as a child on my bicycle would ride forever to sit on this little part of the beach. And I would sit there.

I don't even know what meditation was back then. You know, now I'm one of the things I am is a yoga instructor and all of that. So, and I have a huge influence of brought about by the Indian culture. I spent time with Swami Rama. I was a documentary photographer photographing physicians in the foothills of the Himalayas, where they combined Ponchakarma with open-heart surgery, like [00:25:00] total blending of cultures and sciences.

 

One of the things I want us to talk about, and I'm going to let you guys talk.

I know it seems like I'm talking forever, but one of the things that happened was Santa Monica became my original mentor. I didn't realize this growing up, but she was always there. And I was always sucked back to LA. I was always trying to escape it. I lived in all these other places, worked in all these other cities, but always sucked back to LA.

Never understood why until, uh, the very final, last time was Santa Monica. It turned out to be my mentor and it was the catalyst for creating what we created now, what we're working on now, which in a, it was like a bubble of time, 13 year period, where I learned the true art of friendship and community of all places, Los Angeles for me was like, I can't believe I'm learning this here. It was like living in Italy 800 years ago, this tiny little area in Santa Monica, we lived on Main Street. [00:26:00] We were all family, all of us. Like if you look at just our tattoos, like the group of friends, we hung out with, you had everything from beautiful Maori designs to, you know, the, the numbers from Auschwitz.

But we all skateboarded together. Rollerbladed we went to happy hour. We were, there was no ages. I'm no sexism, none of that, no ism. We were family and it was such a beautiful village. It didn't last. We ended up, it ended up, , like bubble kind of bursts. You know, it gets thin and disappears. That's what happened.

But the lessons carried on, which brings me to today. , our show, our podcast,  it's called Our Friendly World with Fawn and Matt. We talk about the art of friendship. And how it's the key to social economic and racial wellbeing are topics usually range from anything, from our experience with martial arts, our rituals in society, [00:27:00] everything in life we talk about because that's what friendship is.

We talk about everything. It's about showing up for one another. So to begin with, I always start our show with a nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica. And today it's the bowling ball. This was the beginning of all of our bonds coming together. We lived in this big, big building on main street in Santa Monica.

You can't miss it. It's the huge basically city footprint is the building. And on the bottom level you had. It's I'm sure it's still there. The one life grocery store.  It wasn't just that building. It was everyone within like a eight block radius. We were all friends. And so the bowling ball, we in the middle of the night, one night we were coming upstairs to the second floor and we are standing in front of this bowl, all that's there and we're like, [00:28:00] bowling ball.

What are you doing here? And we started laughing hysterically. We took the bowling ball. We took it to the second floor and we had these long hallways and we started rolling the bowling ball and it was a few of us. We had, uh, we were friends and we started rolling it's in the middle of the night and it's making all this noise and we're trying to whisper.

We're like howling with laughter whispering, trying to be quiet, but we're rolling the ball. And then I found out one of the neighbors who never came out, there was one guy who won the lottery, but no one ever saw him. He was watching us from the peep hole and he would send us notes. We never saw this man, but anyway, so we were all involved with this bowling ball that made us laugh so hard.

It turned out that we were new to the building. And what was happening was people would leave things in between floors. So we would find couches and beautiful coffee tables and like China, and like you name it. We would find the most [00:29:00] amazing treasures. The first one was this bowling ball and it brought us all together and it just created so much laughter. So the wisdom of this, the wisdom of this nugget of information is this: the principle function of laughter is the creation and the deepening of our social bonds. Laughter is a social tool, a form of communication conversations, if you've noticed that have laughter in them are the most long lasting.

Laughter is a signal that says I'm wanting to engage with you further. It's a way to test the boundaries of our relationships and it's medicine. As a yoga person, , I talk about the  parasympathetic nervous system. That's what eases your nerves, the most particular nerve it's called the Vegas nerve.

This thing controls, mood, your immune response, your digestion, your heart rate. It goes [00:30:00] from your brain all the way down to the depths of your, digestive system . And I think laughter totally stimulates and enhances this whole system. It's  called a Vogel tone.

When you breathe a certain way and you use certain muscles in your face,  it massages you,  it releases toxins. It just heals you. And I think that's what you do. I not, I think, butMaz and Tehran that's what you do. And that's one of the reasons I have you here today with us is not to just not just to reconnect me with my background, but to talk about your work as ambassadors of light and laughter. For example, I'm going to stop talking in a second, but like when Matt, Matt goes to sleep really early, he starts his day at three 30 in the morning.

And so we have two little girls and confession. We love the TV when you're asleep. So we sit on the [00:31:00] couch and just to let you know our little girls. We're original homeschoolers, by the way, like before we're not pandemic homeschoolers, they're these two genius girls and we wanted them to remain vibrant and completely open to loving to learn, but they know what's going on.

I've taught them everything from the very beginning. They know what's up. And so when we, and I know they're scared, I know I'm scared every day we know exactly what's going on around the globe, but at the end of the day, we're watching Trevor Noah. And on Saturday nights we watch SNL and you should hear the howling squealing laughter these girls have, and it just washes away all the fear and the stress that I know they have also.

And that's what you do. And I just, I want to thank you so much. Maz and Tehran. Thank you for coming. You beautiful human beings. Mostafa thank [00:32:00] you for coming because I've been such an outcast, uh, within our Persian community and something transformed Mostafa when you and I met and I'm so grateful.

And one of the things that happened right around, we met was during the pandemic. I was trying to get some Persian ingredients. We love to cook around here. We're crazy vegan. And we, we needed rosewater and I wasn't, I didn't want to go there. Boulder is crazy. Nobody wears masks, nobody cares. And so I'm like, I'm not going out there.

I'm not going to risk it. So I found this great store called the Persian basket and I've ordered some stuff. And then we, we started to have this, uh, That could conversation via email and , the way they spoke to me made me cry because I felt so embraced by them. And we became friends with the owners and I'm going to have them on the show as well.

 One of the words  that I learned from them [00:33:00] is HAMVATAN. I don't know what it meant. I kind of felt like I knew what it meant, but I had to look it up. And I talked to Mostafa about it.  I got the meaning and that's today's topic.

Is that it Hamvatan is,  people who have a connection with one another countrymen, compatriots, Landsman, , fellow citizen, a person born residing, or holding citizenship in the same country. We're  the same,  something we have in common.  That's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the United States.

The quality of our relationships are so crucial to our survival.  I want to dive deep in the little time we have,  dive into our current world's  social structure.

Things are so complicated right now, more than ever before. There's this profound moment in history that we're living in right now , the U.S, our status, our innovation, also our entitlement [00:34:00] and ignorance.

  It's really  a human thing, really because. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the United States, we've never been without war. We have always been at war. And what kind of toll does that take on human beings? We're not even realizing how much stress we're under, how much grief we have, until we leave.

Right. And so I want to talk about that. I want to talk about true home. What is it? And with that, I will stop talking now. I took up most of the time. I'm sorry.

So where do we go from here?

Maz: [00:34:36] It feels like we just had a therapy session. I got to look up and go, your time is up. Uh, no, it's good. It's good that you talked and you hit on a lot of subjects. Listen. Um, I'm happy that you guys are doing what you're doing and you're right. I think laughter I mean, I'll let Tehran give his reason, but the reason I got into comedy was because I was a comedy fan.

The way that [00:35:00] your daughters like to laugh? I like to laugh. Uh, when I was a kid I used to watch Saturday night live, um, and I didn't know what it was, but it probably was a way to deal with anxieties and stresses caused by being in a, in a home that, um, was going through, you know, our family, like your family came from a revolution.

So there's probably turmoil at the home. There's probably turmoil at school cause you're dealing with a new world and you're dealing with kids that don't know you, you're dealing with kids that you don't know. And so there's a lot of stuff there. And laughter I think is a great tool for, like you said, um, uh, touching you in a, uh, in a way that, that, that, that takes away some of these anxieties takes away some of the unknowns. It can connect people, which is when we're at shows, we do a show and there's not just one person, but maybe 50 people or a hundred people laughing [00:36:00] together. So it connects people and you see it in cultures, Fawn, I think maybe you saw it sometimes.

I mean, the Iranian culture is pretty good with telling jokes, but there are people in our community that are very serious. There are people in some of the Arab cultures that I visit, um, that were of an older generation that were more, um, more, uh, I'm committed to this idea of being serious and being respectful of elders rather than laughing.

And so I seen, I did an event one time for, um, I think it was Royal Jordanian, but it was a lot of. Uh, executives and they all seemed very serious. Now, maybe it could have been also, they probably didn't speak English that well, and I was doing the show in English and they were speaking. They, they spoke Arabic.

But, um, I think that you guys are onto something when you talk about what you said about laughter. And so I got into comedy because I was a fan of comedy. Um, Tehran, why did you get into comedy

Tehran: [00:36:58] because of you? I was [00:37:00] doing comedy and then Maz came to town and had me on stage and then encouraged me to do comedy.

And next thing you know, I was doing comedy. That's how it works.

Mostafa: [00:37:12] Maz is a pioneer. I remember it was the first person I saw, uh, as an Iranian doing stand up and I was like, wow, this is possible.

Maz: [00:37:22] Yeah. And that's well, that's also part of that is the timing. I think I'll go back to Fawn again with her Iranian family.

I think most people of my generation, most of my friends bought into this idea going back to serious versus humor, bought into the idea that they needed to listen to their parents, to be doctors and lawyers and engineers or whatever else the family wanted them to do. So that was the first generation.

And the way I explained it is my parents like Fawn. I came when I was six years old, we come to America. A lot of times when immigrants come to America, they set up shop. They either get a business going. They do something, buy [00:38:00] property, whatever it is, but they get here, they bring their kids, they work hard with the intention of having those kids do what those parents want them to do, which usually entails some sort of job or career that is, um, has a good reputation, uh, has a good name.

And has a secure future. I think, I don't think parents are looking, to  be detrimental to their kids' future. I think they just want a good future, a secure future. So those things, this is the first generation that comes then their kids end up being the lawyers, doctors, engineers, somehow Mostafa, I broke out.

And I think that somehow happened the same way. Uh, Fawn and Matt's kids are experiencing comedy was that I experienced comedy and it opened my eyes. And I said, I want to do that. And even when I said, I want to do that, and my parents kept saying, no there's how do you do that? Nobody knows. How, how do you become a comedian?

Nobody there's not, there's no grad school. There's no, uh, 401k. There's no [00:39:00] corporate company you go work for. So it took a lot of, but heading butts, uh, butting heads until I was 26 years old. That's how long it took a lot of comedians start when they're 16, 17, I was 26. I tried a bunch of other things and kept running into the idea that this is not for me.

And when I was 26 is when I had the light bulb moment, which is you live once and you should live for yourself, make yourself happy first. And then you can make those around you happy. And if you're lucky enough, you can go on and possibly make others that you don't even know around the world happy. And so when you say I'm a pioneer, I was a pioneer simply because I broke out of that group of my friends and did this before anybody else, because now the world we live in, we have people like Tehran and Max Amini and, uh,Amir K actually back then we had Omid Djalili who was out of England as well.

So there was the two of us, but then suddenly it grew and grew and grew. And it's beautiful now, because now you look out [00:40:00] there and there's a whole generation of people and people now below us, younger than us who were realizing you can do this for a career.

Fawn: [00:40:09] Everyone has their talents. Everyone has their gifts.

And I think when you're under duress and you need to survive,  you do what you have to, and there's no sense of leisure to say I'm going to pursue the arts.  I think there's a lot we need to be concerned about in society when there is no art, because that means something's really wrong.

When  emotions aren't created, when art isn't created, there's a big problem. And I think as immigrants, there is no leisure, there's no ability; there's no capacity for anything other than survival. So there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of, you know, you better fall in this line and if you put your toe over the line. You're you're, it's just [00:41:00] not okay. And so that's what I think what happened with me. Um, but it, and then I just feel like I got into the state where there's no sense of HAMVATAN to anything  meaning, like I don't belong to anyone. I, I haven't, this is the first time I've been speaking with any Persian people.

We've Matt and I have been moving from place to place trying to figure out where we belong and, and most of the places we've lived, I'm the only non white person around and it's hectic. And the girls see it. Matt kind of, you're pretty oblivious to it, but like, I'm sorry, but it's true. Like at the airport.

Oh my God. I'm not

Matt: [00:41:46] going to disagree with you. I'm just going to say, thanks.

We'll cruise on. He's gone. And I'm being held up and frisked. Like ever since it's just, I used to love traveling guys. The airport was my, my happy [00:42:00] place. And then nine 11 happened and then traveling with my husband and people don't think we're together the way I get treated.

And then he's gone thinking Fawn's right behind me and I'm not, I'm held back by security anyway. Um, what was I saying? There's no sense of belonging and that's what I really want to talk about is how can you guys explain to me what's been going on? Because, because I've been away from Persian people and my culture for so long, I recently started to look at what's out there and I came across Tehran and I came across all these amazing artists that are doing amazing things.

And not only that, but they speak Farsi so fluently. Like I remember when I was a kid, I would listen to reporters. Persian Iranian reporters speak and it was a different speak.  It's like a book book speak. How do you describe it? It's like, I couldn't understand what they were saying.

[00:43:00] Mostafa: [00:43:00] Yeah. The tone has changed.

Definitely.

Fawn: [00:43:02] Nope. Like they speak it's so intellectual. Like, I don't know. My stupid mind was like, Hey, since I've left, the whole Persian community has disappeared. And then all of a sudden I realized, wow, all these young people have their community. They're part of their beautiful culture and they have no Persian accent and they're, they're doing phenomenal things.

They're amazing leaders in our society. And I just feel left out. I want back in guys, not that I was ever in, but. I want to know what's going on. I want, I want to truly understand our roots. And like, even on our show, we talk about, we get into words, we get into, like, we look into the etymology of everything and where it comes from and looking at Latin roots.

But I'm like: Mostafa, where do I go to find out our roots for our [00:44:00] words, it's not Latin, is it? It's not

Mostafa: [00:44:03] right? What are words are not, no. But so we use the word HAMVATAN, I think Maz and Tehran also know of this word. Uh, but in English you used the word compatriots, uh, which, uh, you know, from Latin, if you want to talk about it, Patria is like the father's land and com patria means the land that we share.

So, uh, HAMVATAN in a way means,  people who share the same land. Probably goes,

Tehran: [00:44:35] actually it goes way beyond that Mostafa. So I think a lot of times, because a lot of Iranians are in it, they don't realize it, which is where I come in to play. I get to look at the same box, but from outside the box and know what I'm looking into.

And that's a huge difference. A lot of people, when they are part of something, they're just in the box and when they're in the box, they know [00:45:00] they're in the box. They're part of the box. They live in the box, but they don't see it from, without I get to do that as the person who's mixed in with Farsi words, Farsi words break down to their linguistic roots, every single word breaks down to whatever the root of the word is.

(Speaking in Farsi about the structure of the word) it gives meaning to the word itself. So let's examine the word HAM-VA-TAN it doesn't mean same nation. That's actually the misconception. It means we are all, and our skin, but our skin and our essence HAM + VA + TAN ham is a word, VA   is a word, TAN is a word. So when you put them together, you save them so quickly. You don't break them down. It's much like in Farsi where we say, "KHODA" - God, but we forget that those root comes from "KHOD" (ME). That's Now a KHOD AH. [00:46:00] Right? The root comes from me. So it starts with me ham that time we us, there is no limitation.

There's no limitation to us and our essence are shared. So while it's broken down now to nationality, the truth of it is we are all HAMVATAN.

Fawn: [00:46:23] That's exactly where I was hoping this would go, Tehran, you. Oh my God. I love you so much. Thank you for that. That is perfect.

Tehran: [00:46:34] The truth usually is perfect.

Maz: [00:46:36] That's the truth. The truth will set you free.

Tehran: [00:46:39] Thank you, Maz.

Fawn: [00:46:40] The truth is perfect. It is the simple, that is the most profound.   When we were talking about HAMVATAN and VATAN and HAM, and then I w I was like, Oh, wait a minute.

So "Bo ham" is a word meaning together, right? Well, I'm, it's

Tehran: [00:46:58] two words, but [00:47:00] yes, it means together. "Ham" "HAMEH" it's that's the that's, it's the concept of togetherness.

Fawn: [00:47:07] Right. And that's, that's my whole point with our whole social movement. Our whole friendship movement, the art of friendship is what I'm trying to convey.

What I'm having people try to relearn. Even us, for us to relearn is that we belong to each other. That my heart is your home. Your home is my heart. My heart is your home. Am I making sense? Yes. Matt is quiet because he's the only non-Persian here.

Matt: [00:47:38] The other thing is, is I like to think I'm funny. So I'm not even going to go there.

Maz: [00:47:42] I'm sure you are funny, my friend.

Matt: [00:47:45] Thank you. That's

Tehran: [00:47:47] all I can tell you. Do you know your ethnic roots, your, your origin? Do you know them? Oh, I'm

Matt: [00:47:53] I'm, I'm, I'm a kind of a Northern European mongrel, but yeah.

Tehran: [00:47:57] Because you would be surprised the"IR" in [00:48:00] Ireland for example, and the "IR" in Iran mean exactly the same thing.

They come from a very similar place, the land of the Aryan, but not Aryans the way that is described post, uh, 1930s in, Nazi Germany, but the truth of the group of people, cultural understanding, and belief and belonging of an ethnicity of people. That's interesting. Yeah,

Matt: [00:48:23] absolutely.

Fawn: [00:48:24] So I'm not crazy. We are truly interconnected,

Tehran: [00:48:27] right?

Of course. That's why Farsi is an Indo-European language.

Fawn: [00:48:32] It is.

Mostafa: [00:48:33] Yeah, it is. It is European language. That's right. What does that

Fawn: [00:48:38] even mean? Can you break that down for me real quick? And

Tehran: [00:48:41] Indo-European languages specifically a language that exists, uh, in the European and, and the basically sub-continent of India, parts of the world, which is why it's different from Arabic.

Even though we share approximately 40% of the same vocabulary as Arabic, Arabic, and Farsi are [00:49:00] very different languages and the way they are cultivated, even though we share a lot of vocabulary. So people misinterpret so Farsi as a language would be much closer to Italian or French than it would be to Arabic as a language.

However, there are certain things in Farsi that are very unique to the concept of Farsi. For example, in Farsi, There is no gender in the language. Gender is something that's introduced much, much later going past,  the Islamic revolutions. And when I say that, I mean the original ones and the thousands, not the one in 1979. The concept of gender  as we are talking were of female and male names, but originally gender names did not exist in Iran, which is why we have a lot of overlapping names.

But also I can never say "she" in Iran. I can never say "he". I can just say "you", "them", "us", but I cannot differentiate gender [00:50:00] whys. I have to explain that, which is a concept in the, in the original Persian empire, there was no difference between men and women.

Fawn: [00:50:08] How did you learn all this?

Tehran: [00:50:10] There are these amazing things in the world called books.

And a lot of people don't utilize them. They actually just take information from other people and then just keep playing telephone with that information. And then basically they, they disseminate that information as if it's true, when there are actual understandings of this information and people who are these mysterious things that Americans have forgotten, for example, called experts, they're experts.

These are people who actually studied a subject and they actually know a lot about this subject. More importantly, uh, from these books and these experts, people just assume that their personal experience is the ultimate truth. When it's not, there's a much bigger part of a story than that. And these experts with this research and their knowledge, and then you [00:51:00] go and digest this information and then add your own personal experience to it.

And that creates. More information. It's it's an amazing process. Yeah. There's an

Maz: [00:51:09] interesting tidbit. Um, P people in America spend more on lottery tickets than they do on books, just a heads up. So they want to get rich quick as opposed to learning how to possibly better themselves and get rich. Um, you guys, we've got to get off in about two minutes, so we should start wrapping it up.

I

Fawn: [00:51:28] don't even know how to wrap it up. I'm going to turn it over to you guys. I don't know.

Tehran: [00:51:33] I will say this, that if the world had more Fawns and Matts in the world, the world would be a much better place.

Matt: [00:51:40] Honestly, if the world had more comedians, sorry, sorry for this. But I'm going to throw it right back to you showing us the, the universality of our experiences.

I think this world would be a much more peaceful place.

Tehran: [00:51:53] Let me, let me correct that man. Good comedians. Good comedian, great

Maz: [00:51:57] comedians. Let me not let, [00:52:00] I don't want to leave Mostafa out cause he might not be a comedian, but you can tell he's a sweet soul. So let's just say if the world could just have more people like that are on this podcast, it would be a better place.

Tehran: [00:52:13] Basically. We were the only people in the world. It'd be a great place to do the quick place to wrap it up. Love it. Basically. We are the only ones that count your welcome society.

Fawn: [00:52:26] Thank you for being here. You guys, I hope to have you back so we can get into it more .  Again, thank you for your time. We love you. I mean, Maz the first time I heard you was, , I thought it was just me who had an American citizenship with an American passport with Tehran Iran written on it, which really was hard after nine 11.

When you were talking about that, just that brought a healing for me. Thank you so much. I love you. We love you so much.

Tehran: [00:52:56] You want to know something funny? Yes. I wasn't born [00:53:00] in Iran and yet my passport also says Tehran, how crazy that is actually technically a truth. That is technically a very, that is a true truth.

C you

Maz: [00:53:10] guys best see your daughters. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

ALL: [00:53:15] Bye. Mostafa joon what's best to you and your yours, right?

Fawn: [00:53:19] Mostafa! Uh, that went way too fast. Oh, wow. Oh,

Matt: [00:53:26] I'm exhausted. And I didn't do, I said 20 words and you're you should probably cut me out of what I said. No, but I think I gave you a breather. So I think that that was the most important. I,

Fawn: [00:53:37] I was really nervous guys. I really look up to these people, you know, we rarely have guests on our show.

Mostafa, you know, this

Matt: [00:53:45] and here  we are with three guests on one show.

Fawn: [00:53:47] I mean, and, and yeah. And then to, to have them, I mean, they're world renown comics,

Matt: [00:53:56] They are very patient. They are very loving and they are [00:54:00] great. I am sure. Hundred percent sure they are great hosts.

Fawn: [00:54:04] Yeah. I mean, and that's also the Persian thing. right, Mostafa? We know how to, we know how to host. We know how to invite people to our homes,

Mostafa: [00:54:12] That's a big thing for us,  to, , show hospitality.  We really care about that.  There's this whole concept of "AYDE DEDANY" (in Farsi, means to see one another  during the holiday) , which in the Norooz (Persian New Year) we do.  Families visit one another and, when you visit a family, they have to  pay you a revisit, you know, uh, in a way.

So, you know, just return the visit and  in the next visit, you know, you have to at least go up to the standard, the standards that you saw in the first visit. So it's God, that's, that's,

Matt: [00:54:50] that's so funny because there is a native American tribe. I'm going to butcher it. The Tlingit who have a very similar thing.

If you get invited over for a party, [00:55:00] you're expected to invite your host over to a party and literally give them more what they end up distributing, like most of their wealth , during these parties. And this was back in the day,  and you're expected to invite them to your house and give them even more stuff.

And, and it's this cycle. And so there's like basically the entire community is responsible for inviting the entire community over to their place for a party

Mostafa: [00:55:23] equate pain effect. Right? Exactly. That's what we have too.  And growing up, sometimes it got painful for the kids. It was too much pressure,

Fawn: [00:55:34] you know, we have to back up, we have to explain what we're talking about.

So what Mostafa is referring to is, , Eid Nowruz which is the Persian new year. And it's really the beginning of spring and Mostafa,  you taught me that it was Omar Khayyam most people know him as Omar Khayyam. How to PR how do you, how do Americans pronounce this [00:56:00] Omar Khayyam

Mostafa: [00:56:01] uh, well, first of all, they cannot do the "KH" (sound of the alphabet that doesn't exist in English) right.

The flat. Uh, but they say Omar Khayyam

Fawn: [00:56:10] y'all. Could you tell us how he started the whole time situation? Yeah,

Mostafa: [00:56:15] so,  Nowruz,  is a  long lasting tradition over 3,000 years.

Fawn: [00:56:22] It literally means new day, right?

Mostafa: [00:56:24] It means new day and it is the , advent of the spring  and it coincides with spring Equinox.

That's when the spring begins. In the Northern hemisphere. And the Persians, have been able to calculate the moment that Spring starts; which is basically when the sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes the night and day. Now the one Persian guy who calculated this to the minute is Omar Khayyam [00:57:00] who is a superb person.

You know, He's was a fascinating guy and

Fawn: [00:57:05] most people just know him as a poet.

Mostafa: [00:57:09] Yes, that's right. And it's because the poems of Omar Omar Khayyam have been translated into English. I believe it was around,  1859 when, , Edward Fitzgerald, this English fellow, translates these poems and publishes them.

 It takes a few years before they become popular, which is a lesson of business strategy I like to talk about in my classes, but when they,  become popular, they take the world by storm. And, uh, it is estimated that it is this, this book of poems is the best selling a book of poems in the world by the number of, uh, volumes is sold; number of copies actually it's sold. [00:58:00]

 1859 that's when, Darwin actually published his work. The world was interested in new ideas about its past and what the world the universe is about. So the poems of Khayyam are also about the universe, the time, uh, what went on before us what's coming in the future. So it really was timely content  at the time that it was published.

And,  you be surprised that when it became popular, there were dining clubs in London, uh, dedicated to this book and these poems. So people would get together, I would assume weekly or monthly or what, but on occasion they would get together dine and have a night of poetry and recite these poems.

It even came to America. You'd find it surprising that, we had Omar [00:59:00] Khayyam clubs in America as well. So it's really interesting this guy. He's a poet. We know that, but he was also a mathematician. He's written several books. One is this book about differential mathematics. It describes how to find solutions for two parameter equations for the first time, 500 years before Newton did.  He's got a book on music. He's got a book on algebra. This guy has been so influential on the side of his scientific character. One area on the moon. Uh, I'm not sure you know what it is, but I think it's one of the volcanic  things on the moon has been named after Omar Khayyam

yeah, because he was an astrologer too. And this where I'm trying to tie it back to the whole idea of Nowruz,  he was commissioned by the King of his time to create the most [01:00:00] advanced observatory to study the Celestials and create an accurate calendar. At the time, this is post Islam.

So Arabs have invaded Persia.  The language has changed to Arabic from Farsi.  The calendar has changed to the Arabic calendar, which by the way, was a lunar calendar. So it's based on the circulation of moon around the earth. And the  the King, the Shaw wanted to create a solar calendar, which is about a rotation of earth around the sun.

Now, little interesting tidbit: we're talking about almost 500 years before Galileo altered his ideas about how  the earth is not the center of the universe, and it's revolving around other objects. Omar Khayyam had already written books about this 500 [01:01:00] years before that created this calendar that's the most accurate calendar to date, even more accurate than the Gregorian calendar. And he really helped the whole Persian, traditional Nowruz to gain legitimacy in the sense that we are the  the people who can who basically observe the advent of spring and celebrate that. Millions of families do that today, uh, to Iran, other countries as well. That there are people in central Asia, East Asia, in the Balcones area in Europe who celebrate Nowruz, which is fantastic.

 Fawn: [01:01:42] Wow. Thank you so much for that. I love it when you talk, I love learning from you. And I mean, this is what I was trying to get at  with Moz and Tehran and talking about the  feeling like  when you reach capacity, when you're under so much [01:02:00] duress, when you are constantly at war that you tend to become really selfish and myopic, and that you're not able to, to be more caring for your fellow human being, because you're always at such a survival mode and that's where you live and it causes you to contract and it causes you to become a little bit ignorant of the grander scheme of things in the universe.

There's so much to learn. There is so much to experience and I'm so grateful for you being here Mostafa, not just on our podcast, but in our lives. So we can have these discussions and really learn. Thank you. And, you know, to have these conversations is so important amongst friends, because we've all been gathering information here and there, and it's really important for us to share.

And that is what true friendship is.

[01:03:00] Matt: [01:02:59] Absolutely.

Fawn: [01:03:00] We need to grow. We need to keep expanding our universe

Matt: [01:03:04] and sharing our experiences and really going through and in the process of sharing, get more stories and more understanding and, understand how universal, the human experience can be.

Fawn: [01:03:18] You said it perfectly Matt; to have more understanding, more understanding would change everything overnight, bring light to things that have been  embedded in the dark and creating so many problems that are unnecessary. So I guess let's continue this conversation. We want to talk about technology with you next.

So in a few days, can we get back back on the horn? What do you call this? But back on the mic, if you will,

Mostafa: [01:03:51] I'll be happy to thank you.

Fawn: [01:03:53] Thank you so much for being here with us. And I hope I didn't. I know I talked way too much during the show.

Matt: [01:03:59] You were [01:04:00] so excited.

Mostafa: [01:04:01] Um, yeah, I think she was excited seeing Maz and Tehran

Fawn: [01:04:06] I barely looked at them on screen because every time I did, I freaked out.

Cause I'm like, Maz is not smiling. (Laughter, Fawn laughs nervously) I hope people enjoyed it. I have no idea how that went

Matt: [01:04:19] and, and they both had, I think, a good opportunity. But yeah, it was good, honestly.

Fawn: [01:04:25] All right, folks. Well, I I'm, I'm going to go hide under the covers now.

Matt: [01:04:30] She was going to have outbursts for the rest of the day all day tomorrow, at least.

Fawn: [01:04:33] Yes. That's what I do.  All right, everybody. We will talk to you in a few days, have a beautiful every day and make sure you visit our websites either our friendly world.com or our friendly world podcast.com.  Look for Mostafa, hit all his information is there he's the most amazing teacher and you do one-on-ones with people.

You do special [01:05:00] classes. Um, check them out, check them out. His website again is NEX3dot X, Y, Z. That's next three dot X, Y, Z. Mostafa is the most brilliant teacher you guys. Check them out.

Mostafa: [01:05:16] Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being with you and Matt today. I

Fawn: [01:05:20] love you. We love you. Our whole family loves you.

All right, friends, talk to you in a little bit. Be

Mostafa: [01:05:27] well, bye bye.

 

Maz JobraniProfile Photo

Maz Jobrani

Comedian, Actor, Podcast Host

Maz Jobrani is a comedian, actor and host of his own podcast, BACK TO SCHOOL WITH MAZ JOBRANI on the All Things Comedy Network. His new standup comedy special PANDEMIC WARRIOR is now available for streaming on PeacockTV. As an actor, he was most recently seen playing the loveable “Fawz” on the CBS comedy SUPERIOR DONUTS. He has made many appearances on television’s most popular shows including GREY’S ANATOMY, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, BETTER OFF TED, LAST MAN STANDING, and SHAMELESS. He has also been a regular guest on THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT AND THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN. Maz starred as the title character in the award-winning indie comedy, JIMMY VESTVOOD: AMERIKAN HERO, a feature which he co-wrote and co-produced. He has co-starred in many additional films, including Sydney Pollack’s THE INTERPRETER, Disney’s DESCENDANTS and Ice Cube’s FRIDAY AFTER NEXT. Maz’s other standup comedy specials include IMMIGRANT, which was filmed at the prestigious Kennedy Center and is a NETFLIX original, as well as 3 additional solo specials on SHOWTIME: BROWN AND FRIENDLY, I COME IN PEACE, and I’M NOT A TERRORIST, BUT I’VE PLAYED ONE ON TV. In the Spring of 2016 he performed at the White House where he had the privilege of introducing Michelle Obama. As a UC Berkeley alum, Maz gave the keynote speech to the graduating class of 2017. Maz served as the host for the 45th International Emmy’s in New York. He was a founding member of THE AXIS OF EVIL comedy tour, which aired on Comedy Central. He is a regular panelist on NPR’s WAIT WAIT DONT TELL ME and has given 2 TED Tal… Read More

Mostafa PurmehdiProfile Photo

Mostafa Purmehdi

Professor, Researcher, Art Dealer

social scientist with a PhD in marketing. I teach marketing at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) and provide consulting for various businesses on new product development, consumer behavior, and advanced technologies.

TehranProfile Photo

Tehran

TV/Radio personality, Comedian, Spokesperson, Events Host

Tehran SoParvazTehran-1½ Black, ½ Persian, and ½ Amazing; these are the ingredients that make Tehran “SoParvaz” one of the most dynamic entertainer newcomers today. Exploding on the SCENE hosting, performing, and throwing events from s Read More old out comedy shows to rock concerts his energy, excitement, and unique sense of humor have made him a formidable comedian/entertainer in his own right.
Hosting highly rated TV and Radio programs, the 25 yr old sharp witted Law student has been compared to a mix of Dave Chappelle and Stephen Colbert meet Maz Jobrani. Tehran has the best of both worlds. Hailing from the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., Tehran was born and raised in the United States to an Iranian father and a Black-Tehran-2American mother.
His parents chose the name Tehran as a reminder of his Persian roots and culture. Much of his clothes are custom made to proudly display the name Tehran. The nickname “SoParvaz” which is a more literal way of saying “So Fly” was added much later.
Speaking, reading, and writing Farsi, he has great respect for his Iranian heritage as well as his American side.
In his humor he encourages young Iranians to learn Farsi and appreciate Iranian culture. As a proud Iranian/American, Tehran has always been a leader in the community, working diligently toward a stronger, more united better tomorrow.
Tehran is definitely NO angel. In fact he is very “sheytoon.”

Being in trouble and getting out of it is part of his charm. From going to school to going to court, Tehran talks openly about his life exploits and lesson… Read More