Your thoughts, how closely have you been following this?

Well, I have to confess that I did feel a little like FIFA scandal exhaustion by the end of the World Cup itself.

So I could not believe that he had decided to unveil this at this stage when already there was so much undermining of the credibility of FIFA as a you know an organization to administer World uh football tournaments I mean it seemed like it was at its lowest ebb and this really if if if anything um could split um FIFA it seems that something like this really could have these disastrous consequences well for FIFA but it might be actually beneficial for you know, world football if there was a different kind of mechanism that would emerge.

It's like we're in so many things with the architecture of post-World War II international institutions.

They're foundering, they're corrupt, they've lost legitimacy, and yet you don't quite know what is the way in which they could collapse and something better actually emerge, or will it just be chaos free for all? You know, we're at the same when it comes to, you know, the questions for FIFA.

But I think what was interesting to me about it, partly perhaps explaining some of these dynamics where there are smaller, more dependent countries in Africa and Asia that are still willing to you know support uh infantino support this proposal go along you know with decisions made in fifa is this broader sort of history of uefa having been the dominant kind of factor for the you know administration of football it's the wealthiest confederation uh you know brings in all the biggest money with the big leagues that people watch around the world.

And that it was for a long period of time under what was again, considered a very corrupt, uh, administration.

boy, can they get it done.

We have to do something better.

better.Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously when I heard the news at, like, 6:00 AM yesterday morning, I mean, um, I said, "Okay, today I'm going to download everything." [chuckles] I've not been great about backing up everything.

I'm gonna download everything.

And so, uh, it, it improved my habits, um, you know, just to archive everything.

And also, I started thinking a little bit about, okay, uh, how would I try and reconstitute something like the community and the program in some alternate, uh, mechanism? And I realized that while there are some other streaming sites and so on, YouTube is pretty uniquely among these media, um, kind of social and media companies, uh, or entities as kind of a monopoly compared to, you know, if you get kicked off of Facebook and banned there, you know, there's probably, you know, there's X, there's, uh, you know, ex-Twitter, there's Threads.

I mean, and, and Jay, you were saying, it used to be everybody was on, um, Twitter, X, and it's what made it a much more exciting place to be, because even with the siloing of who you follow and what comes on your feed, you did come across other people, and there were more opportunities for those kinds of exchanges.

Not that those exchanges in 144, [chuckles] you know, characters or whatever led to very substantive discussions, but at least you'd encountered views from other people, and people were, you know, retweeting and, uh, linking articles from media that maybe I wouldn't follow or come across.

Yeah.

But then my first question would be, can you kind of walk us through the broad historical arc from ancient Persia to the Islamic era and how the Persian world was transformed after the, you know, engagement or the, you know, the Arab Muslim conquest, et cetera?

cetera?Yeah.

Um, and I think really it's related, this, uh, kind of broader question of Persia versus the modern nation state in its current territorial boundaries of Iran is ki- is kind of related to that earlier and deeper history of pre-Islamic, um, uh, Persian Empire.

So there are the Persian peoples, Persian-speaking peoples, uh, mostly situated in Fars province and Khorasan, these parts of what is today Iran.

But on the basis of the long-settled, um, uh, agricultural civilization in the Iranian highlands, and particularly in these-- this province of Khorasan, um, a, you know, strong, integrated, um, polity was formed that managed then to integrate a lot, you know, by, you know, conquest and other things, integrate a lot of other peoples into, uh, these Persian empires.

The most famous and very long-lasting one of which the Achaemenid Empire in the Bronze Age of history that people will remember, um, you know, was a great, uh...

Well, they-- it's framed from the Western perspective as a great rival of the Greek cities, but in fact, actually these are vast, you know, domains and, you know, these Greek, uh, city-states on, you know, the, uh, you know, peninsula, um, uh, were, you know, a, a kind of border limit, you might say, of where the Persian Empire stretched.

Hmm.