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- [00:00]
A
Hello, you are listening to a premium episode of Blocked and reported for this one this week. We are going to Iran. But no, we are not going to be doing geopolitical analysis. We are not going to be solving the Israel US Iran conflict. Instead, we are going to be talking about Huda Katan. This is a global beauty influencer who made the mistake of dipping her toe into Iran discourse to listen to the entire episode and get access to our entire back catalog. That's hundreds of extra episodes. And also get access to our online community, our live hangout, and much more. Become a premium subscriber, a primo lockedinreported.org thank you and enjoy the preview. Jesse, what'd you think of my episode with Helen?
- [00:58]
B
Oh, man, was really good.
- [01:03]
A
You were such a hassle. You didn't listen to it, did you?
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B
I have had stuff going on, you know.
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A
How sure. Did you have a doctor's appointment?
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B
Actually, it's personal.
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A
Did you get that thing looked at?
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B
No, I. Not only did I not get the thing looked at, other things have sprouted up around it. It's everywhere. It's all over my skin. But anyway, thank you for asking. Thank you for doing the HIPAA violation on a live podcast. How was. How Helen. So this Helen Lewis is sort of an up and coming British journalist?
- [01:28]
A
Yes, she is. It was great. This was a very fun episode for me. Because you don't know this, but we. We spent a good deal talking about Lindy west, who is not like. I wouldn't say that Lindy is one of my locales. I have never looked her up on kiwi. Honestly, she probably doesn't even have a page on kiwi farms. But she's like local adjacent because she's on a polycule and everyone in a polycule is a personal for me. Not that I think there's anything wrong with polycules, you know, not all polycules. Some throuples, I'm sure are completely functional. They just tend not to be ones with any women in them. Anyway, it was a great episode. You should listen to it. But there was one thing I forgot to mention. This isn't going to make any sense to you, but it will make sense to our listeners. Aham.
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B
Her.
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A
Her. Let me just read you a part a page from the book and, and just set this up, Jesse, because you don't know what I'm talking about. Lindy and her husband, aham, they are now in a throuple. He moved in a. I don't know if she's younger, but certainly Smaller, skinnier woman into their home that they shared together. That actually, that's so that.
- [02:34]
B
Can I just say that's really weird that that's how it worked out. Like that they decided to go poly
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A
and the man has two girlfriends.
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B
Yeah, that's weird. Except would have thought it's just as likely for the woman to have like a hot younger guy moving. Yeah, super weird. Anyway, I'm just saying, I just want to say that's weird. That's my feedback. That's super weird.
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A
The one chick, two dicks arrangement I don't think has ever happened in history of polyamory. We also talked a little bit about the Lavery polyamory, which I enjoy because any way you look at it, either in terms of sex or gender, it's still one man, two women.
- [03:04]
B
That reminded me, I've been meaning to call her to get lunch and catch
- [03:08]
A
up now that you're in San Francisco. Okay, so. So Lindy and her husband and his girlfriend, who is now supposedly Lindy's girlfriend, although I am doubtful they all live together. But the book goes back into the early days of their relationship. So Lindy and Aham, they got together in like 2011 or something like that. They broke up after a few months and then they got back together. Lindy's dad died and he was really there for her and they got back together. But I need to, I need to read you this one section. The day Aham and I got back together in early 2012, we talked for hours. I cried for most of it. Oh. One thing I also should mention in that is that Ahama's black in broaching non monogamy. Aham said that he wasn't seeing anyone else and this wasn't about me. It was just a fundamental part of his ethos. He believed that monogamy was at its root, a system of ownership. I had to admit that perhaps I didn't feel it as keenly as a white person. So he needed to fuck other people because of slavery. But here's here. Okay, so
- [04:15]
B
that's so ballsy. I like Aham. I. This is, this is. I did not know Aham's name. I didn't know, but just having heard what I heard, I'm a big Aham guy, so.
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A
So. And she says this without any sort of irony, like famed feminist Lindy west, who, you know, you know, worked for Jezebel for years.
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B
Read that. Read that last sentence again.
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A
He believed that monogamy was at its root a, a system of ownership. I had to admit that perhaps I didn't feel it as keenly as a white person.
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B
As a white person.
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A
As a white person.
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B
That's amazing. Racecraft. I, I, Because I'm white, I didn't get that he had to have sex with other women.
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A
Yeah. You know, and the, the thing is, so, aha. People might think, well, you know, it sounds a little far fetched, but, you know, epigenetics maybe. Aha. Like the legacy of slavery. It's in his DNA and therefore he has to fuck other people.
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B
Okay. Okay. Richard Spencer. Although I don't know, I don't know if this is like a woke, like, oh my God, this is so confusing. Is it? This is intersectionally confusing.
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A
Yeah. So. But here's the thing.
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B
So.
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A
Totally valid. Yes, totally valid. The body keeps the score. The thing is, Aham is not actually the descendant of slaves. His father was like a Nigerian who, like, it's like a sort of. No, well, it's like an Obama story. Like, I think maybe a Nigerian academic who like briefly came to the us Impregnated a white woman and then left her. So he, so Aham is not, that's not actually that, you know, ADAs, as they say, but he still, he still feels the legacy of ownership.
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B
Did you say the the body keeps the score is totally valid?
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A
Do you think I'm, do you think I. Do you think I think that the body keeps the scores valid?
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B
That. Give me another good one for the book club. That is so awesome. Especially because this is a book that just came out, right? I know, because I listened to the episode.
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A
It's actually not out yet. It's not out until the 10th, I think. The 10th. And it will do, it will do better. Better than my book?
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B
Well, I mean, that's apples. I wouldn't, I wouldn't beat yourself up over that. But in 2026. That's such like a 2016 thing to say. I didn't feel it as keenly as a white person, but yeah, the book,
- [06:20]
A
Helen, you would know this if, if you listen to the episode, Jesse. But book is really, it is written as though we're still in the midst of the great awokening. Like, yeah, that's what I was saying, really. And you know, books take a long time to publish. It's possible this was written, you know, before everything crashed and burned, but it is, it is written as though nothing has changed. And it, you know, Lindy west, considering sort of who I assume she spends her time with, she might not know that the awokening is over.
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B
Can I, can I do something that our listeners hate, but there's a reason for it, which is you're gonna, you're
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A
gonna look it up on. On chat. You're calling Chad.
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B
No, I would never do that. I asked Claude, so I pasted that segment you just read into Claude, and I said, if you were the author, psychologist, what would you say about the highlighted bit? Actually, can I just have you read the. Read. This is the very, the very first thing Dr. Claude said. And I think this is important because I hope Lindy is listening to this and, and will hear it.
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A
I'm sure she is. She's a primo. This is a rich moment psychologically. A few observations. The racial framing is doing a lot of work here.
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B
That's in bold. That's a subhead. The racial framing is doing a lot of work here.
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A
The author essentially accepts. Accepts Aham's framing that her discomfort with non monogamy is. Is a white failing, a lack of political consciousness rather than a legitimate. This is a subtle but significant form of emotional manipulation, whether intentional or not. It reframes her boundaries as privilege rather than preference, making them harder to defend. Dr. Claude.
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B
Yes, Claude is. Claude is based.
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A
Claude is trad.
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B
But that's like, actually good. That's like what. That's like literally what a good psychologist would say there.
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A
I think that's also what a good feminist would have said.
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B
That's crazy. And she just. She's just completely unironically.
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A
Unironic. Completely unironic. All right, okay. So anyway, Jesse, you should listen to the episode, and I apologize to our listeners for that oversight. We. We really should have mentioned it in the first episode.
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B
Yeah, you really should have, but I'm glad I got to talk about it. What else are we going to talk about today?
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A
So obviously the big story of the week is the war in Iran and the killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah. I'm all right. I'm going to try to pronounce this correctly once and then I'm going to pronounce it incorrectly the rest of the show. Khamenei.
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B
I mean, you. Come on, you're. You of all people. You don't need to do the gutter. Just say Khamenei and no one cares. So. So this episode, we're going to talk about sort of the geopolitical realities of the new Middle East.
- [08:47]
A
We are going to be talking about Iran, but because this is blocked and reported, we're going to find the dumbest, most online angle possible. So we're going to talk a little bit about the response, the online response to what's going on in Iran. And most of the show is going to be about what happened when a global beauty influencer decided to dip a toe into Iran discourse.
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B
Who is the influencer in question?
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A
Her name is Huda Katon. And calling her a mere beauty influencer is a bit like calling Genghis Khan a soldier. She's the head of a mass massive beauty empire. She started out as a makeup artist and blogger back in 2010, and her blog grew really popular. She started her own beauty line called Huda Beauty, and it really took off when Kim Kardashian gave her fake eyelashes a seal of approval. And in fact, if you're trying to conjure a mental image of Huda Kittan, just imagine Kim Kardashian. They really look alike. Her beauty brand has 57 million Instagram followers. Her personal Instagram has 5 million. Her little sister Mona, she used Huda as a launching pad for her own perfume brand, which has become one of the biggest perfume houses in the world for Gen Z. So she's a really big deal. But before we get back to her, we have to do just a little bit of a history lesson. You ready for this, Jesse?
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B
I am ready. Let's do it.
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A
So, as everyone surely knows, back in the 1970s, Iran was a monarchy led by the Shah, which is the Persian word for king. And in fact, Iran had been a MARQUEE for, like, 2,500 years, all the way back to the days of Cyrus the Great. A large number of dynasties had come and gone in that time, and there were periods of foreign conquest, but the last dynasty was led by Muhammad.
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B
Wait, can I. Can I see if I remember these dates? Because I actually took a couple courses on Middle east stuff in college. I think it's all that's left because of the video game in 53. 1953, I think. I did not check this. There was a CIA coup.
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A
Yeah.
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B
To remove a democratically elected leader. Was that Mosaddeh?
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A
Yes.
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B
Reinstall the Shah.
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A
Yes. So Pahlavi was installed with the help of CIA and MI6 in the 1950s. And many people saw him as a Western puppet who was out of touch with the common Iranian. And at the same time, wealth inequality was on the rise. The country was quickly modernizing. Segments of the population was becoming. Were becoming more and more secular. Like, you see photos of tehran in the 60s and 70s of, you know, women walking around in miniskirts with beehive hairdos. This was that era but the Shah was widely disliked by both leftists and ultra conservative Islamic clerics because the leftists saw him as an imperial puppet and the clerics opposed modernization.
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B
And we should just say you did. This is not. This is just stuff you knew, like you didn't have to research for this episode.
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A
I told you I had a Persian girlfriend, right? What do you think?
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B
This is what we talked about.
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A
Yeah. And then in the late 70s, there were several events that led to the collapse of the monarchy. So the Shah and his government had been cracking down on dissent. There was a terrorist attack at a cinema that killed hundreds of people. The terrorists were actually Islamists, but many people blame this on the government. There were protests. The Shah declared martial law in a curfew. There were more protests. And security forces opened fire at a demonstration, killing dozens of people. This became known as Black Friday. There were nationwide strikes. The economy was in crisis. And then in 1979, the Shah fled the country, supposedly on vacation, and never returned.
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B
Oh, God, guys, I forgot that I had scheduled this all inclusive resort. Gotta go.
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A
It's a cruise. It's a cruise. You can't control the time. And then after that, a referendum abolished the monarchy and created the Islamic Republic, which had two leaders, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, and Ayatollah Ali Kamani.
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B
This is.
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A
It's confusing. Who has been in power ever since, or was until this week. But now he's dead.
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B
Oh, did I. I think I. When I was like, just pronounced him like that way, I probably pronounced comedy versus. Yeah. And I think people know this, but like the Iranian Revolution of 79, and even I know this as certified dumb person, was just like a signal event in Middle Eastern history because Iran is this ancient regional power and this was a huge moment and also created a very large international diaspora. Did it?
- [12:53]
A
Not exactly. And after the revolution, it didn't take long for the Ayatollah, who was a hard line cleric, to introduce Sharia law. So women's rights were eroded. No more miniskirts and beehives. The look of the decade, or decades really was the hijab. It was made mandatory in public. And I think 1983, the penalty for not properly wearing your hijab was public lashing, fines and even imprisonment. And the leftists who had welcomed the end of the monarchy were imprisoned, tortured and killed in mass executions by the thousands. So around that time and before, many Iranians fled the country. And now there is a huge diaspora in North America, Europe, Australia, elsewhere Exact numbers are hard to come by. But we're talking about millions of people and I'm going to generalize a bit here, but the Iranian diaspora tends to be highly educated, entrepreneurial, and they are disproportionately successful, maybe because it takes a certain degree of privilege or wealth or just internal resilience to flee your own country and make a home across the world. But they tend to be very politically engaged with what's going on back in Iran.
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B
Right. So I mean, this is like, this is sort of, maybe not Venezuela level, but this is a basket case country with like a pretty crappy economy. And it's seen by the west as like this troublemaker that propping up Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and just not, not a good neighbor is, is the story.
- [14:14]
A
Yeah. So Iran is one of, has one of the weakest currencies in the world. So the government, the Iranian government would say that this is entirely due to Western San and that critics, its critics argue that this is more about corruption, incompetence and spending money propping up Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis rather than actually doing anything for the country. The middle position is that the sanctions exacerbate economic mismanagement and corruption. So everything's basically fucked. And anyone who lives in a city with a large Iranian diaspora will know that the Iranians who fled and now their children absolutely hate the Islamic regime. So houses and businesses in Iranian neighborhoods often fly the historic flag. So that's one with this ancient lion and sun emblem. That's not the flag of the current government. And the diaspora tends to be fiercely in favor of the overthrow of the supreme leader and the Islamic regime, which, to be clear, has not actually happened yet. Yes, the Ayatollah is dead, as are dozens of others in the upper echelon of the Islamic Republic. But as of we're recording this on Tuesday morning, there's no new central government and Islamists are still in charge and still control the military and the police. There are an estimated 150. All right, that's it. That's all you get to find out what happened to Huda Katan and Huda beauty? Join us blockedandreported.org.