Pardis Mahdavi

And, you know, if we're talking about punctuation being political, we can point to hyphens.

We had a chat quite a while ago with, uh, Dr. Pardis Mahdavi, University of Arizona, about her book Hyphen.

And like you do in On the Mark, she mentions the hyphen as a signifier of identity, but also it's something that's going away.

Could you tell me a little bit about how you feel about hyphens?

I love hyphens.

Of course, I don't want any punctuation to get [laughs] lost or to be buried or, or something.

And, um, I actually share with, uh, Pardis Mahdavi that we're both Iranian.

And, um, I have, uh, Iranian German roots, so my parents are Germ- My mom is German, my dad is Iranian.