Tom Holland

I mean, that's how subliminally I remember him as a child who was first becoming aware of the news is I just thought of him as a loser.

But that's a terrible war for Iran, isn't it?

And indeed for Iraq.

I remember I mentioned this stay in Hamadan in Iran, where I met the old Shah's officer who loved disco dancing in Chelsea.

But I remember watching, there was a football match on.

I think it was a British football match, English football match.

And at halftime, instead of, you know, pundits coming on and analyzing VAR or whatever, they showed main war veterans of that war kind of displaying their, you know, their injuries and their amputations and things.

And I mean, if that's what you're getting even in sports programs.

What a constant trauma.

Most notably being the obligation of women to wear hijab.

Land of contrasts.

Well, you mentioned they also have more gender reassignment operations than anywhere else in the world.

I mean, I think that appeal to nationalism is a particularly Iranian thing.

The sense Iranians have of themselves as belonging to an incredibly ancient civilization, because it's true, is much more pronounced than it is in most other Muslim Arab countries.

Because Iran is the country that doesn't Arabize.

Unlike Egypt or Iran.

Plunging right back in time.

And it will end with the destruction of the city that was, in the opinion of the Romans, their greatest and most dangerous enemy.

So that will be the fall of Carthage.

Yeah, he was in many ways.