David Remnick

I'm David Remnick, and each week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Walz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne the God, and so many more.

That's all on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known.

I'm David Remnick, and each week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Walz, Katonji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne the God, and so many more.

That's all on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

When protests ignited across Iran in December and reports emerged that the regime was killing thousands of protesters, Donald Trump threatened to intervene then and there.

He did not.

But the Pentagon began building up a huge military presence around the Gulf region.

And meanwhile, the regime, it turns out, may have killed as many as 30,000 of its own people, according to some estimates.

Iran has seen huge protests in the country before.

And the regime has responded with violence before.

But this time seems something of a different order of magnitude.

Some Iranians who oppose the regime have been in the crazy position of hoping for the U.S.

to strike, to bomb their own country, even if it leads to full-scale war.

Reporter Cora Engelbrecht has been recording her conversations with people in Iran about what that could all mean.

Now we've altered or overdubbed their voices to protect these people from reprisal.

Voices from Iran.

All of these people asked to remain anonymous.