Ep 229 Reality TV, Comedy, and Cultural Adventures
Saadia Khan 0:05
Welcome to Immigrantly, the podcast that explores the intersection of identity, culture and belonging. I am your host Saadia Khan. I hope this episode finds you well as we dive into the joys and challenges of the summer season ahead.
Saadia Khan 0:21
Now, to be honest, the start of summer and warmer weather is a time of both excitement, and for me, a touch of trepidation. And I'll tell you why. I'm not the biggest fan of scorching temperatures I grew up in Pakistan with temperatures in summer can go as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So yeah, I don't like it. But I'm learning to find ways to beat the heat. Eating watermelon is one such remedy.
Saadia Khan 0:55
Before I talk about our guest today, which I am going to get to very soon, I want to share a podcast that captivated my attention. Now those of you who know me know that I consume podcasts on a daily basis. And believe me when I say this, I devoured the first five episodes in just one day.
Saadia Khan 1:19
I'm talking about the podcast called Scamanda. It's a true story that will leave you both fascinated and incensed.
Saadia Khan 1:27
Scamanda basically tells the unsettling tale of a woman, Amanda C. Reilly, who fabricated an illness exploiting the kindness and generosity of others for personal gain. And I kid you not, it is a profoundly unnerving listen as the episodes unfolded, a sense of betrayal and absolute anger washed over me.
Saadia Khan 1:51
I was so pissed, honestly guys. It's so disheartening to think that while countless and I mean countless individuals genuinely struggled with their health, scammers like Amanda Riley manipulate the system depriving those meeting financial and emotional support.
Saadia Khan 2:10
And to be honest, it reminds us all of the dark side that lurks beneath seemingly innocent encounters and serves as a cautionary tale. So my dear listeners, as we embark on this episode of Immigrantly, I encourage you to take a pause and reflect on the power of trust, empathy and responsibility towards one another. And I really hope we can build a world where compassion prevails with deceit and genuine support reaches those who deserve it.
Saadia Khan 2:52
Talking about genuine people, stories and ideas, today's guest is a trailblazer of sorts in creating authentic stories through comedy. Anna Hossnieh is a writer, producer and podcaster. More specifically, she is a comedy producer at iHeartRadio have several podcasts like couples therapy, the daily Zeitgeist Creature feature and so many more. She's also the co-host of the podcast ethnically ambiguous where she talks about what it is like being a child of immigrants coping mechanisms she used in her past that resulted in turning points in her life and other random yet incredibly interesting topics like going to Magic Mike Live. In this episode, we talk about her personal obsession with reality TV, what got her into comedy, life as a child of Iranian immigrants, and some of her inspirations that she looked up to. So let's get started.
Saadia Khan 4:17
We are rolling.
Saadia Khan 4:19
Hi, Anna. How are you doing?
Anna Hossnieh 4:21
Good. How are you?
Saadia Khan 4:23
I'm good. How's the weather in LA?
Anna Hossnieh 4:25
We're in some sort of June gloom right now. It's nice, but it's overcast, but we do get a sunny day here and there.
Saadia Khan 4:33
Interesting because we have an overcast as well. The thunder in fact is roaring really. I hope we don't get that noise in our episode, but yeah, it's crazy. Last week there was smog and haze and this week, we get thunder.
Anna Hossnieh 4:48
Yeah. New York was really going through it last week with those fires.
Saadia Khan 4:52
It was. It's interesting because that particular day I was in the city to be on some other podcast and it was almost dystopian. I've never seen New York like that. Yeah, the skies looked orange, there was smog and haze. And then I see people puffing on cigarettes in a very nonchalant way.
Saadia Khan 5:17
It really reminded me of Lahore, my hometown where people really don't care. They will smoke while they see smoke and haze.
Anna Hossnieh 5:24
Yeah, I would not have gone outside. But you know, some people will risk at all.
Saadia Khan 5:28
So I wasn't sure how bad it was until I was in the city. And I was wearing masks, which obviously I had to I couldn't go without the mask. But once I was there, I realized how scary it was.
Anna Hossnieh 5:41
Oh, yeah.
Saadia Khan 5:42
So tell me, Anna, you've done a lot of comedy. So you've done comedy shows now you are producing a lot of comedy podcasts, the way I see it, you're basically telling authentic stories to humor.
Anna Hossnieh 5:56
I try to at least
Saadia Khan 5:57
Why humor?
Anna Hossnieh 5:58
I've always really just like to laugh. I think also, I want to say my upbringing was very tough. Like I was definitely raised and privileged, but I had tough, strict parents. There's sort of a lot of generational trauma, just from their backgrounds. And a lot of my joy came from laughing and being able to laugh. And my parents are actually very funny people. My dad's very goofy guy, and my mom, she has very, very dry humor. She's very sarcastic. So I've always just really enjoyed laughing. And I think comedy is so fun. And it's so freeing to like, try and find different ways to be funny or to have fun. Yeah, she's always been drawn to it.
Saadia Khan 6:41
But how do you strike that balance between being comedic and not discounting the stories that you're telling.
Anna Hossnieh 6:48
I think it's all about being authentically like yourself, you know, unless I'm like writing something for someone to be a certain character, like a lot of our humor just comes like on Ethically Ambiguous. It's just us being ourselves and finding humor and sort of certain behavior or just what is happening in the world.
Anna Hossnieh 7:09
Because sometimes you go, like, I just can't help but laugh at how ridiculous everything is. Or even just like how we treat certain parts of the world, you're like, it's almost comical how we at times in this country, like, never learn. We just refuse to take all the hints around us. So how we could have improved in a certain way, or how to go about treating certain countries in the news, like, after a while, you're like, you just kind of have to laugh. Because if I don't laugh, I'll cry.
Saadia Khan 7:37
Why do you think people refuse to do that in America? Why are they not taking those hints?
Anna Hossnieh 7:43
I think as a country, we really struggle to change.
Anna Hossnieh 7:47
Like, I think, you know, we have this progressive side of the country that really is sort of taking in what's happening around the world, people are becoming a little bit more empathetic, people are listening, we're starting to care more, but then like, you see this whole progressive side, and then you see like a whole other side, that's like, no, I don't want to change. I like how my country was.
Anna Hossnieh 8:07
The status quo is important. I can't understand that side in the same way that they can't understand our side, you know, and I think that's the biggest struggle in this country is like, we are such individuals that we just refuse to see the other person's side. Like, I refuse to understand why someone wouldn't want to hear like, I'm like, why wouldn't you want to change? Like, why wouldn't you want to change for the better with the like, climate of the country? Like, why don't you want to help? Why don't you want to acknowledge certain things that are happening?
Anna Hossnieh 8:38
And then the other side's like, well, why don't you want to see my way, which is, you know, in my opinion, wrong. So there you go. I don't know, I think we're also stubborn in our way of doing things. And I guess that's the American way is to be stubborn, really.
Saadia Khan 8:52
That is the American way.
Saadia Khan 8:54
But I also think the other side is mostly comfortable in the status quo, right?
Anna Hossnieh 9:00
Yeah.
Saadia Khan 9:01
They have the privileges that marginalized communities don't have. So there isn't much at stake for them right through change. How would that change manifests for them? Right?
Anna Hossnieh 9:14
Yeah.
Saadia Khan 9:15
So it's a intrinsically human and selfish response. But I still want to connect with that side. Yeah. Because as you said, we are in a way living in our silos and our bubbles. How do we connect? Through humor maybe?
Anna Hossnieh 9:30
humor does tend to transcend you know, we can all be like, we all really like this TV show, or we all really liked this movie, because it's so funny. Even though we don't really see eye to eye on other aspects of our lives.
Saadia Khan 9:42
You're right.
Saadia Khan 9:43
Do you have any comedic inspirations, something that really influenced you when you were producing comedy shows and now that you're producing podcasts?
Anna Hossnieh 9:52
A lot of my comedy inspiration comes from like stuff that my parents showed me. Like growing up, my dad really loved Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor like my dad really enjoyed these comedians and would show me a lot of their work.
Anna Hossnieh 10:08
It almost is like I've always always been very inspired by sort of like older man humor, if it makes sense. Like, I've always found that very interesting of how these older men were able to project their comedy onto younger generations. Like I found Gene Wilder is always such like, his comedy is so goofy, there's these movies that he's done that are just so odd that you're like, it's funny, like, they're very interesting style of humor that you maybe you wouldn't see from like the Bill Cosby type, which his humor was all about, like his family and being a father.
Anna Hossnieh 10:42
But then you know, you go and you see like, Gene Wilder is doing bits about like, you want to see the fastest draw in the world. And he's just not even moving his hand. And he's like, you want to see it again. And you're like, you need to move his hand. That's, that's the whole joke is he's not even he's not doing anything.
Anna Hossnieh 10:56
You know, he just found a very interesting way to bring you into this like very silly humor. And I think a lot of my humor is is inspired by that. I sort of like very odd, silly comedy,
Saadia Khan 11:08
Older men comedy. Yeah.
Anna Hossnieh 11:10
It's almost like dad jokes in a way.
Anna Hossnieh 11:12
But not because they were you know, they were also like, all beyond, you know, like Gene Wilder was ahead of his time. Alan Alda was a very interesting comedian. I watched a lot of M-A-S-H growing up, because that's just what my dad liked.
Saadia Khan 11:23
You're absolutely right. Whatever our parents watch, we tend to have some kind of, I don't know, endearment towards that my dad used to watch a lot of Western movies. And I don't know why. And most of them were very problematic if I were to go back and watch them today. And yet western movies evoke certain emotions in me because of my dad.
Saadia Khan 11:52
But Anna, you also like reality TV, what got you into reality TV? Is there any specific show nowadays that you're binging?
Anna Hossnieh 12:01
Oh, I watched so much reality TV, I watch almost all the housewives, basically anything that goes on Bravo, a lot of the Netflix ones as well, like Love is Blind and Ultimatum. You know, I think reality TV is also very funny.
Saadia Khan 12:13
It is funny.
Anna Hossnieh 12:14
I think it's so goofy. Like, they really like the editors do strong work in portraying people, and they create very silly situations. And I also think humans are naturally just very funny when they go about their day, you know, like, people do really silly stuff. And I can really find humor in a lot of stuff, just like conversations people are having, or just the way people are acting and just people's facial expressions when they're reacting to people. Like I love all that like reality TV is incredible, because you're having these people who are potentially just sort of open to being authentically themselves, even if it makes them look like really sort of unhinged in a way like you're a wacko, you know, and you're like, Wow, you're so confident in this sort of behavior that I can't help but respect. I could never do that. Like, I would never want to show myself that openly on a reality television show.
Anna Hossnieh 13:09
Because people really go for it. They'll show their true emotions. They'll be like, You know what, I've had enough. And I'm going to, like, start yelling at you. And you're like, whoa, really? Like that's the move? And that's I find very interesting. I'm very entertained by that. Because I'm, like, good for you. Like you're just being yourself, and you're letting us watch it.
Saadia Khan 13:28
But how much do you think it's scripted, though?
Anna Hossnieh 13:30
I wouldn't say it's scripted. But I would say it's very, like storyline based.
Anna Hossnieh 13:34
So I don't know how scripted it was in the early days, I think it's become more scripted, because it's become more popular. So like, the more we want to watch certain person, they go like, okay, well, you know, I'm going on my show, I need a storyline. How am I going to portray myself to the audience, so they find me interesting and fun?
Anna Hossnieh 13:51
So like, I think people will be like, Well, my storyline this year is that I am trying to adopt my stepson or something, or, you know, that's just one example. But like, or they'll be like, I'm finding out my husband had an affair or something like even if they potentially know something, they might sort of plan around to try and find something out again, on camera. So I think like, I wouldn't say, it's like fully scripted, but it's definitely I think, altered to bring maybe something that happened off camera on camera.
Saadia Khan 14:21
And if you had the resources and opportunity to create a reality TV show, what would that show look like? Is there a particular theme that you would want to explore through that show or something that you've thought about or even part of your identity and your living or your lived experience that you may want to explore through that?
Anna Hossnieh 14:45
One of my early jobs was actually in reality television development when I moved to LA, genuinely like I felt like everything I was pitching had already been done. You know, it's funny after I left reality TV development, I said I would never like work in it again. I would just didn't enjoy it because I did find working in it somewhat a little darker than I would have preferred. It wasn't that great of an experience. And I felt it to be sort of gross behind the scenes, which is, you know, my own sort of quantum of being like, it's so gross, but I love to watch it.
Saadia Khan 15:14
That's exactly what reality TV is.
Anna Hossnieh 15:17
Honestly, I don't know, I don't know what I would do myself. I think I really pushed that away from me. I can't think. It's too dark behind the scenes. I don't want to be involved.
Saadia Khan 15:27
You know, the one that I'm really enjoying is Indian matchmaking. It's problematic in some ways, but I'm so glad that it has in a way mainstreamed arranged marriage or the concept of arranged marriage, which was considered so alien in American psyche, right? Yeah. And I grew up with that concept. So I am glad that it exists. And it's been mainstreamed and people are enjoying it.
Anna Hossnieh 15:54
It's pretty fun.
Saadia Khan 15:55
And I'm a fan of Sima Aunty. So if she's listening, I really want to interview her.
Anna Hossnieh 16:00
My favorite thing about her is how she's so unimpressed. When anyone has like standard. Like, this is what I'm looking for. She's like, you can't have that all. 50% That's all I can give you.
Saadia Khan 16:11
You're absolutely right. She has statistics to back it up. And I don't know where she gets those statistics from family is important. 60-70% you see them just fine.
Anna Hossnieh 16:24
60 to 70% is giving up quite a bit. That's the absolute best she could do for
Saadia Khan 16:31
now, so at least for all of us. We've just done 70% Those of us who are in relationships 70%. It is. It's really funny. And then they have Jewish matchmaking, which was so interesting. I watched that too. So Indian matchmaking was more like, you know, South Asian stories I could relate to it.
Saadia Khan 16:49
Jewish matchmaking was more of a learning experience so I learned so much about Jewish community through that show. It is incredible. Yeah, I'm really impressed with the makers and what they're doing with these shows.
Anna Hossnieh 17:00
Yeah, that one's on my list. I need to watch. I just finished season three of Indian matchmaking. So I need to, I gotta start watching Jewish Matchmaking. Yeah, I watch all of them. Anything that drops, I'm like, add to the list.
Saadia Khan 17:13
You know, the interesting thing is, I used to watch all the housewives of this and that. And then I realized I was internalizing a lot of behavior. And every time I would watch these shows, I would become angry and bitchy.
Saadia Khan 17:30
And I was like, I don't like myself when I watch this, because then I tend to behave a certain way. So I cannot watch those shows. But I'm fine with Love is Blind, and Matchmaking and all of that stuff.
Anna Hossnieh 17:43
Yeah.
Saadia Khan 17:44
Anna, I was listening to a podcast interview of yours. And you talk about your upbringing, how your childhood was not normal, in a way because of the food that you ate and the culture that you had within the confines of your home. And it got me thinking the term normal, it just did not sit well with me. And I know a lot of us use that, right? Especially children of immigrants say that their childhood was not normal. But to me, the term has such a negative connotation, right?
Saadia Khan 18:19
Because what you're seeing is what's not normal is probably not good, because a lot of times people will conflate not normal with not good, but what you were experiencing at home? Is your parents normal? Is Iranian culture normal? So do you think that would does injustice to the idea of saying that your experience was uncommon, or it was unique rather than normal?
Anna Hossnieh 18:45
Yeah, normal is what is like projected on me by like the outside world. And as a child, I'd be like, Oh, I don't fit in. My family is not normal, which is just like a projection of what I was getting off society, because I thought I had to fit in. There is no normal.
Saadia Khan 19:01
Right.
Anna Hossnieh 19:02
You know, and I think that was just my own childhood mind being like, How can I fit in? And it's like, Well, I actually don't know what's going on in people's homes. Like, I don't know, what they're experiencing either. And, yeah, I think it was just kind of a, an issue within myself. And I do feel like we use normal as like a way to be like, Oh, that's sort of how it's supposed to be. I feel like language has also progressed in such a way because someone could be gay, straight or trans.
Anna Hossnieh 19:31
You know, I feel like in the day, we'd be like, Oh, they're not trans. They're like, you know, a normal person or something like that. And I feel like we would use these, this language that was like, it would actually set us back. It's like, oh, you're saying that trans is not normal. And that's not how we should be talking about, you know, a person who's trans because they are normal. They're a person, you know, they just have chosen to live on a side of the life that they feel more comfortable and we shouldn't just say they're normal. So we should, you know, have more language that reflects that. Like saying, cis, you know, this person has cis, they're not normal. We're all normal humans existing, you know.
Anna Hossnieh 20:06
So I do find that we do throw around the word normal, and we are sort of progressing past it. And I do want to progress past it myself, because now I don't really feel like I wasn't normal growing up, you know, like, that wasn't really the case. We were all normal. I was just feeling I didn't fit in because I was the only Iranian.
Saadia Khan 20:24
You talk a lot about this on your podcast, Ethnically Ambiguous, right? And you mentioned in an interview that you want through this podcast to inform people about what is going on in the Middle East and normalizing Middle Eastern culture and Islam is a big part of the show. Why is that goal so important to you?
Anna Hossnieh 20:47
In my case, like after the Iranian Revolution, and things were kind of terrible for Iranians, like people had such an interesting view about Iranians that wasn't positive. And then you have like, 9/11, like you have these sort of moments in history that basically changed the perspective of how they view the Middle East, like all of a sudden, the Middle East was about terrorism, or, you know, movies were about how we would be portrayed as terrorists, if you needed an enemy.
Anna Hossnieh 21:13
You know, there was an era where it was like Russians was like the Cold War, and then it shifted, and now it's like Middle Easterners are the enemy, they're terrorists, who knows what's going on over there?
Saadia Khan 21:22
And Muslims are the boogeyman, right?
Anna Hossnieh 21:24
Right. And I grew up with that. And it was the status quo. And I was always like, well, I feel like I'm always trying to explain to people tell me like, well, totally like that, like, up into the Middle East. Like it's not war torn. Like, you know, there are certain areas, but a lot of those areas are war torn because of America, you know, like we're feeding weapons into that region, you know, or going in there and being like, well, we'll save you that's like, the reality is we're just causing more problems and, you know, disabling further what's going on.
Anna Hossnieh 21:53
And it's all just one like, very horrible cycle that we refuse to exit. And after a while, I realized like, oh, well, I could have a platform, you know, like, I have access right now. Because I'm working in podcasting. We should just make the podcast and try and do it.
Anna Hossnieh 22:09
And I think the big push was when Trump took office. So this was early 2017. I was in Iran when he did his whole Muslim ban thing. So I'm sitting in a country that he's saying is like, banned. And I'm like, I'm an American citizen, like, how dare you and also, I'm like reading the news and watching all these different Middle Easterners, people from the SWANA region be harassed trying to come into this country being held by customs saying, like, you can't come in, you have a green card. It's like, well, guess what, in this country, a green card means you're allowed to be here, right? All of a sudden, because you were in, I don't know, like Iraq, or like, you can't come into this country, like, what are you talking about? This is horrible. It's like, all of a sudden, now we're once again being painted in this way.
Anna Hossnieh 22:53
And at the time, I was like, 2017, how are we still acting like this? It's 2017. You know, obviously, four more years to come, we'd be like, okay, this is the country we're living in. It's very divided.
Saadia Khan 23:04
It's gotten a lot worse, though. Yeah. You see a lot more divide. You see a lot more bigoted rhetoric. Yeah. Because it's been normalized ever since Trump took office, right? Yeah, people thought it will just go away. Once he leaves. It hasn't it has stayed.
Anna Hossnieh 23:21
It opened the door for us to be like, Oh, this is very real. This is how people feel in this country. We were so naive back in 2017. We had no idea.
Anna Hossnieh 23:30
I was able to come back into the country, obviously. But it was a process. And it was probably the most stressful time of my life. Like I remember, while I was there, I was so stressed out about the idea of reentering the country because I just we didn't know what was going to be like, yeah, I was so stressed out about everything going on. I didn't even get my period for a month like my body was shutting down like I was that internalized, like all the fear and what's going on. And like, I don't even think I closed my eyes during the flight to LA like, I was so nervous. And I remember when we landed, we all start to get up. And they came in and said, everyone sit down and I was on a Turkish Airlines flight. So I was like, they know we're coming from a certain region in the world that is not really, you know, looked upon well right now. And they came in and they just one by one picked up all the sort of like young men who would fall under the criteria of what a terrorist could be, and pulled them off the plane. And I was like, oh my god, like we are in this world again, like this is happening again. They are pinpointing men that they think could be terrorists and pulling them off the plane before anyone else and taking them to an undisclosed location.
Anna Hossnieh 24:42
I'm like listening to people's parents being like, where did you take my son? That's my son. Where did you take my son just now and then being like, we have no information. And this was happening where as soon as we landed into LAX. It was either late February. of 2017 or early March, I can't remember exactly when I came back.
Saadia Khan 25:03
So this was basically happening in the US.
Anna Hossnieh 25:07
This was in the US, oh, this was probably like a month after he did the Muslim ban because I was in Iran that year for like a month and a half. And at that point, it had somewhat calmed down in the media. But it was definitely very much that behind the scenes, they were definitely still targeting and profiling people. I remember being like sick, like you can't do or say anything.
Saadia Khan 25:28
And to be clear that profiling has continued for the last 23 years. It hasn't stopped Democrats or Republicans, they have not stopped profiling. Now, during Trump's time, of course, it was more blatant and was normalized, and it was more in your face. But these things aren't happening. And there are very few people who are talking about this stuff. Yeah.
Saadia Khan 25:52
Anna, why did you go to Iran?
Anna Hossnieh 25:54
It was the one year anniversary of my uncle's death. It's hard to travel to Iran because the timezone it's like, your whole day flipped. So you have to stay for a while in order to like it takes me about a week just to adjust my body.
Saadia Khan 26:08
Same as going to Pakistan. Oh, yeah. You know, you have to go at least for a few weeks. Otherwise, it's not worth the trip. Yeah. So do you have family back home?
Anna Hossnieh 26:17
All my family's back home, yeah.
Saadia Khan 26:19
So how was the experience in 2016?
Anna Hossnieh 26:21
You know, in 2016, it wasn't bad. 2017 There was definitely an energy where all my family's being like, welcome to be living under a regime. And I'd be like, wait, what? Because they were like Trump, good luck. And I was like, oh, no, but that's actually the last time I went back the amount of stress I had there, because he had called the Muslim ban is just so much going on. We all just sort of decided we wouldn't go back when Trump was still president, because it was just so stressful.
Anna Hossnieh 26:48
I was gonna go back again, February 2020. My mom ended up going and then COVID happened to my mom got stuck in Iran for a while because of flights all kept getting canceled. So she was there early February, and then was stuck until about like late April. We couldn't get her out. So I haven't gone back. I do plan to go back because this is the longest I've waited to go back.
Saadia Khan 27:19
I saw a pinned tweet a letter that you wrote your grandmother, so your grandmother passed away last year, my condolences.
Anna Hossnieh 27:26
Oh, she died in 2020. That's what I was gonna go back for. Oh, she died in 2020. She died early February 2020.
Saadia Khan 27:35
Why did you decide to write that letter and then share it?
Anna Hossnieh 27:39
I did it for Women From The East, which is really lovely. It's run by a woman named Johanne.
Anna Hossnieh 27:45
And she asked me to contribute to like write a letter to someone in my family. And I think the death of my grandmother was very fresh. And I mean, I love my grandmother. This is my mother's mother. She's the only grandmother I knew, because my dad's parents both died when he was young. So I never got to spend any time with them. But my grandmother was my mom's mom was just a very important figure in my life. Like she mostly lived in Iran. But she did come and stay with us for a few years when we were young, and like, watched us and was almost like, you know, like an unofficial nanny without being a nanny, you know, like in, you know, our culture, like the grandparents very much like would raise us for the most part, you know, but it was tough because my parents had immigrated to a whole different country very far away.
Anna Hossnieh 28:30
So my grandma, when she was able to finally get a visa did come and stay with us for a while. And she just looks a lot like my mom. And there was something about that, and I look a lot like my mom. So the three of us just really looked alike our whole lives. There was just something about the three of us that I feel like we had a very special bond, me and my mom and my grandmother, even if she hadn't seen me for a year, like she knew immediately what I needed, or what I liked.
Saadia Khan 28:54
That's what grandmother's are for.
Anna Hossnieh 28:57
Yeah. We were very connected in that way where it's like, I might not see her for like a minute because of travel. But then when I would see her we'd almost like immediately fall back into like our routine, you know, and I really loved her. She was just such a kind woman. She always cared about us. She always wanted to take care of us. And I think it was very hard for her to have a so far away. It's like the only grandkids she never really got to see.
Anna Hossnieh 29:20
And yeah, and I was very devastated when she died because early 2020. I had spoken to her on the phone and I said this is the year I'm finally going to come back and see you again. And then she died like a month and a half later. And I was devastated. And I couldn't go to her funeral. I was going to meet my mom in Iran and then COVID happened. I do hope to go back and at least visit her grave you know, because she was a very, very special woman.
Saadia Khan 29:47
And what is about Iranian identity or Iran that people in America don't understand. Is there anything particular that they get wrong always?
Anna Hossnieh 30:00
People think the women are like incredibly oppressed because of what we see in the media. When I want to say Iranian women are some of the strongest women I've ever met sort of what we were just seeing with the protests and stuff like that was all run by young women who were fighting the regime, like they were the ones who are stepping up.
Anna Hossnieh 30:19
And I would say, like, almost every Iranian woman I know, is so headstrong, so willing to fight for what they love, and who they love and what they need. And I always found that incredible, like the matriarch of our family is my uncle's wife. In my mind, she's like, larger than life, you know, she always held the family together. I mean, she still holds the family together, even after her husband's death, and just seeing how she is the matriarch like she is the most important person in the family. She keeps everything together. And she was so strong when her husband died when everything felt like it was falling apart around her and she just wouldn't let you see her crumble like she was. So like, I'm here to take care of you, even though her husband just died. But that's just how they are intrinsically. They're just here to provide and to take care of you and to make you feel at home no matter what.
Saadia Khan 31:16
Is it true that Iran has one of the highest literacy rates among women?
Anna Hossnieh 31:21
I believe so. Yeah. The women of Iran are very smart. A lot of them are in university, a lot of them are, you know, studying to become engineers, and doctors and scientists, and they have strong STEM fields out there, like they work really hard. Honestly, Iranians are so smart. It's very incredible. I don't really always include myself in that. But I do think they are so smart. And they work really, really hard. And I think even in like the early 70s, before the Iranian revolution happened, Iranian students were the majority of foreign students in the country, like they all left Iran to go study. And I think that's why we have such an incredible vibrant Iranian population in the United States right now.
Saadia Khan 32:02
And you know what, it's so wrong to devalue that agency. When mainstream American media or even within political discourse, that agency is devalued, or it is sidelined, and people conflate governments with cultures and populations, right.
Saadia Khan 32:23
It's really sad. And that happens a lot with Iran. I mean, to be honest, it happens with the entire Muslim world. Pick any Muslim country whether Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, even Turkey surprisingly, yeah, but it happens a lot more with Iran, US Iran, relationships are just fraught with mistrust and anger and anxiety. And that's one thing that has persisted throughout history. And it's not going away anywhere. And it must be so painful for Iranian diaspora and Iranian population. Right?
Anna Hossnieh 32:57
Yeah. Especially with like sanctions on the country, like a lot of these people in Iran have to survive. Without the influx of goods and supplies coming into this country like that country fought hard when COVID hit, we lost a lot of people in that country, a lot of our doctors died, because they didn't have the amount, the right amount of PPE to protect themselves, but they still went to work every single day and tried to help. And you know, we lost many lives. And they fought hard to help their country even when their government wasn't necessarily being the most helpful in that situation. So I think they're a strong group of people.
Saadia Khan 33:36
Yeah. And these sanctions impact Iranian population, Iranian people a lot more than it really impacts the government. And that's the distinction that I hope people in the US can make and understand.
Saadia Khan 33:52
Oh, my God, can you hear the thunder roar?
Anna Hossnieh 33:54
Yeah.
Saadia Khan 33:55
It's crazy. It's so dark outside right now. Like, it's 1:44pm. But it seems like it's night. It's crazy.
Saadia Khan 34:02
I want to switch gears a bit and talk about the Daily Zeitgeist. So I was on that show. And I kid you not before going on that show. I was freaked out.
Anna Hossnieh 34:13
Really?
Saadia Khan 34:13
I didn't know what to talk about. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is the first time I'm being interviewed by two dudes, if I can call them that, but they are the kindest and sweetest guys that I've met. I haven't spoken to them. It was so much fun.
Saadia Khan 34:29
Now, when you were brought in, Jack O'Brien, who heads comedy at iHeartRadio. he wanted to diversify. Right? That was the goal.
Anna Hossnieh 34:39
Yes.
Saadia Khan 34:39
And how do we separate true representation and inclusion from tokenization, which happens so many times under the guise of diversity?
Anna Hossnieh 34:50
Yeah, I mean, we're really seeing that now who a lot of companies are like we hired a whole diversity team and as soon as things got tough, they were the first people we laid off and you're like, okay, that's not really how that works.
Anna Hossnieh 35:02
Yeah, I know. Jack. So I met Jack only like 2015 ish he hired me. We worked together at Cracked. And then we left Cracked.com together to start the LA Division at the time we were HowStuffWorks still, because iHeart came in acquired us later. But the one of the things that drew me in was Jack said no more white guys, no more straight white men running podcasting. And I was like, yes, that's somewhere I would want to work.
Anna Hossnieh 35:27
I don't want to do this. Like where I'm just like, you know, helping a bunch of straight white guys say the same stuff on. I can't do it. And also, I just started Ethnically Ambiguous at that point. I was like, this is the route I want to work in. And you know, Jack has always been really great about it, because he listens. It's hard to find a manager who listens and actually like takes your suggestions into consideration because it was just the two of us to begin with. And he said, let's go find me a co-host for Daily Zeitgiest. I guess we were developing dailies. I guess at that time, you know, we didn't know what it was called. We had all these really silly names of what we were going to call it. But he kept being like, I want it to be a show about the zeitgeist. And I was like, just call it the dailies. I guess you keep saying the word Zeitgeist. It feels like that's what it is.
Saadia Khan 36:08
Hmm.
Anna Hossnieh 36:09
So yeah, we were trying to like really figure out what does the LA division looked like since we were mostly working in comedy, because that's sort of what we enjoyed. And then we just went out. And we were just like, looking for people. We met Miles because Miles, his current wife worked at Cracked at the time. And so we found miles, we talked to a bunch of other people. And we kind of just started to bring in different people of color that we just enjoyed. And it was just me going out and being like, I really liked working with this person. I think they're great. Let's bring them in.
Anna Hossnieh 36:37
Jack would be like, Yes, great. Sounds good. Like, it's not like a diversity initiative or anything like that. It was just like a man who was just like in charge, but listening and allowing us to go out and bring in people from marginalized communities that we thought mattered.
Anna Hossnieh 36:53
And it didn't matter like, oh, how big of a following Do they have? Do they have this? Do they have that? Have they worked in this before? Because a lot of podcasting is gatekeeping like being able to work in Pro Tools, or, you know, Logic or Audition, it's not easy. These programs cost money, it's hard to train in them. And, you know, these are notoriously white spaces that are gate kept from people of color and marginalized communities. So that's kind of what we're doing, basically yeah.
Saadia Khan 37:19
But it must be a lot of work, right? The Daily Zeitgeist, it's like every single day producing a show, do you hope that at some point, it would be weekly or bi-weekly or something?
Anna Hossnieh 37:31
That's funny. The running joke is me saying, how about Weekly Zeitgeist?
Saadia Khan 37:35
So why not weekly?
Anna Hossnieh 37:37
So I think originally, The Daily didn't really exist yet. So we were like, trying to be like, let's be one of the first daily podcasts. Let's see if we can do it. And I remember all the executives at HowStuffWorks. Were like, Can you do it? It's just seems like you can't do it. We were like, We can do it. And we did do it for years now. We've been doing it since 2017. We were able to figure it out and make a daily podcast. And I think we ended up dropping in and 2018. But we spent like, you know, months troubleshooting, figuring it out, figuring out how to make this podcast work, how to like schedule, how to get people, how to get a writer into submitting stories for the guys, you know, like it took a while, but we really nailed down and got a very well oiled machine.
Saadia Khan 38:19
And people are hooked. Yes, I see so many people who are huge fans of the podcast,
Anna Hossnieh 38:25
You know, we worked very hard on it. Luckily, I don't have to be there for the day to day anymore. I have a team that works on the show. Now I'm just the executive producer, I still book every single guest on the show. But I don't have to show up to the recordings every day anymore. I used to be at every single recording every single day. And now I just oversee, I check in here and there, I'll pop in every once in a while, like I'll pop in like two or three times a week just to make sure everything's going well.
Saadia Khan 38:48
Do you have a particular guest in mind that you would really want to be on the show and you haven't been able to put them yet.
Saadia Khan 38:55
I would love to get like Hasan Minaj on the show. We've always been in talks about it Hasan and I lived in the same town growing up so we've always known each other but it's been a long discussion of can we get you on the show? Can we get you on the show? We haven't been able to he would be great on the show and Hari Kondabolu, but I recently did get Hari Kondabolu who's coming on the show soon.
Saadia Khan 39:14
Oh, I interviewed Hari too. He is a phenomenal comedian and conversationalist.
Anna Hossnieh 39:22
I think he's gonna be great when he comes on. I've been wanting to get him on for a while.
Anna Hossnieh 39:26
And I would love to get Reza Aslan on. He's come onto Ethnically Ambiguous, but I've never gotten him on Daily Zeitgeist. I guess I should reach out and see if he would do Daily Zeitgiest.
Saadia Khan 39:34
If you have his contact if you could share it with me too.
Anna Hossnieh 39:37
I will.
Anna Hossnieh 39:38
Oh, it's so interesting because I have a wish list and I don't know how to go about it. I've tried to reach out to their PR people a couple of times, but you know how it goes right? An independent podcast, reaching out, although we've been very lucky with some of our guests, but it's a constant struggle is there always gatekeepers, as you mentioned.
Saadia Khan 40:02
Anna, is being a comedian prerequisite for your shows?
Anna Hossnieh 40:06
I don't think, you know, because you know, like, I don't consider myself a comedian. I think Shireen and I aren't comedians but we have a good sense of humor. I think having a good sense of humor. And also having a interesting perspective on the world is more interesting to me than just being like, oh, I'm a comedian. I work at being a comedian because I think yeah, being a comedian is good. Then I know you're funny. But I also like people who are just interesting overall, they have their eye on sort of what's going on in the world. And then they also have sort of a funny perspective on what's going on in the world.
Saadia Khan 40:36
And they do it effortlessly. Right? Yes. It's like you don't have to be visibly comedian or act visibly comedian.
Anna Hossnieh 40:45
Yeah, yeah. Like me and Jack and Miles. Like, none of us are comedians. But I've never laughed harder than I've laughed with Miles and Jack, our sense of humors. And like our worldviews align in a way that we can find certain humor and things that just, you know, ruin us.
Saadia Khan 41:03
And in the end, if you were to define America, in a word, or a sentence or phrase or a paragraph, you pick.
Anna Hossnieh 41:10
I would say it's like a complicated wannabe utopia. That's what I would call it.
Saadia Khan 41:16
Oh my gosh, that's so good.
Anna Hossnieh 41:19
Because it is this world that is so looked upon like, America, that's where you go to make it. But it's this very complicated, and it's almost like a wannabe of what we used to be.
Saadia Khan 41:32
I'm probably going to borrow this from you, Anna, and use it in a lot of places. OI love. It's so true.
Saadia Khan 41:40
Thank you so much for coming on Immigrantly Anna, it was such a pleasure.
Anna Hossnieh 41:44
Thank you. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be on Immigrantly. It really is.
Saadia Khan 41:54
This was so much fun. Don't you think so? Anna is such a good sport.
Saadia Khan 42:00
And I had so many interesting moments, especially about the term "normal" and how we can replace it with something like "uncommon" or "unique," which is more palatable and more positive. What did you guys think of the episode I know I always ask this at the end of each episode, but I'm really curious to know now if you don't like writing emails, just send me a voice memo talking about how this episode resonated with you, what parts of the episode you really enjoyed, and what parts we could work on a little more.
Saadia Khan 42:36
This episode was produced by me written by Rainier Harris and me. The editorial review was done by Shei Yu. Our incredible editor who by the way, moved from New York to LA is Haziq Ahmed Farid. The theme Music for this episode and for Immigrantly is done by Simon Hutchinson.
Saadia Khan 42:57
Please do not forget to follow us on Immigrantly on Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter. You can find links to all these on our social media in the show notes. And there is another link that you can easily click on which is a link to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Until next time, take care.