Hannah Jaffe-Walt

First voice memo, Nagin.

She's in her early 40s and lives in Tehran with her boyfriend, Amin.

This message and all the messages you're going to hear in the show is being read by an actor.

To protect everyone's identity in this show, we've changed people's names and we've asked Iranian and Iranian-American actors outside of Iran to listen to the messages and then record what people said and how they said it onto their phones as voice memos.

Some of the original messages were recorded in English.

Most were translated from Persian.

Once or twice we've changed a small phrase for clarity.

Okay, back to Nagin.

This is Pouya.

He's in his mid-30s.

He owns a pizza shop in Tehran.

Sara is in her early 30s.

She's talking here about checkpoints that have been set up all around the country by Iranian security forces, including the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Next voice memo is from an emergency nurse, Sylvia, in her late 20s.

She lives in Esfahan, central Iran.

Sylvia talked about something other people mentioned too, trying to use the sort of substitute, very limited internal internet the Iranian authorities have created.

The national intranet only works inside Iran.

It's its own system, tightly controlled and surveilled.

There are apps for messaging, texting inside the country, banking services.

There's an Iranian search engine called Toreb.