June 23, 2025 • 25 mins
What We Still Get Wrong About Learning from the Past
my email address gholamrezava@gmail.com
Twitter account is @rezava
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
What if I told you that despite all our books, all
our progress, and all ourwarnings, we still walk into the
same walls?
(00:20):
We say history repeats itself,but does it?
Or is it us repeating ourselves?
With new names, new flags, newtech.
But the same old blind spots.
We break things, then wonder howit happened.
We rush it, then blame the map.
(00:42):
And when it's over, we ask, whydidn't they learn from the past?
But that question, it's not justabout leaders and wars.
It's about you and me.
Why do we keep choosing thewrong people?
Why do we sabotage what'sworking?
(01:03):
Why do we ignore the warningsigns until it's too late?
Hi, I'm Reza Sanjideh, and thisis Philosophy of Life.
I had a conversation today withone of my old friends, whose
birthday it is, about our longshared history with the Iranian
revolution of 1979.
(01:24):
We both took part in it.
pursuing what we believed at thetime was the best path forward
for our country.
First of all, happy 64thbirthday.
You're a treasure of knowledgeand historical references.
And we did talk about how weshould learn from past mistake
and what went wrong.
(01:46):
It's about what we're doing withit now.
We'll look at how historymisleads us, how it teaches us
in riddles, not rules.
and why learning from mistakes,both global and personal, isn't
about being perfect.
It's about making bettermistakes next time.
(02:18):
We like to believe we're smarternow, that we know better than
the people who came before us.
that if we had been there, intheir shoes, we would have made
the right call.
But that is an illusion.
Hindsight gives us clarity thatthe past never had.
(02:43):
It edits out confusion, fear,ego, exhaustion, all the messy
human things people face in realtime.
Take the 1953 coup in Iran.
Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran's PrimeMinister, was one of the most
(03:03):
beloved political leaders inmodern Iranian history.
He nationalized the oilindustry, he stood up to British
imperial interests, and hebelieved, perhaps too
idealistically, that the UnitedStates would support democracy
in Iran.
During the failed first coupattempt Mossadegh trusted the
(03:27):
words of the American consul.
He was told, If your supportersgo home peacefully, the United
States will not allow any coupto succeed.
He believed them.
His people left the streets.
But only a few days later, thesecond coup succeeded.
(03:51):
With the support of the CIA andBritish intelligence, The
military overthrew him.
And with that, Iran was sentbackward.
Not just a few years, butdecades.
The dream of democracy wascrushed.
(04:12):
The brilliant mind who stoodbeside Mossadegh, people like
Dr.
Hossein Fatemi and others, wereimprisoned, tortured, or
executed.
Many Iranians still remember itnot just as a tragedy, but as a
betrayal.
A moment where trust, misreadintentions, and the failure to
(04:36):
act decisively changeeverything.
And yet, in the moment, thepeople involved believed they
were doing their duty.
They followed what they thoughtwas right, even as the logic
unraveled.
This kind of mistake isn't justpolitical.
(04:58):
It's human.
We do this in our own lives allthe time.
We act on unclear messages.
We assume someone else will fixthings.
We trust the wrong people.
We ignore our instincts.
(05:18):
Or we're simply too proud toturn back once we've already
committed.
We say yes to jobs we shouldn'ttake.
We stay in relationships thatdrain us.
We launch ideas before they'reready because we're chasing
speed instead of wisdom.
(05:38):
And later we ask, what was Ithinking?
The truth is, you were thinkingthe way most of us do.
imperfectly emotionally underpressure.
Just like those generals.
(05:58):
Just like the politicians.
Just like Mossadegh.
We want history to be aguidebook.
But often it's just a mirror.
It doesn't show us how to avoidmistakes.
It shows us how deeply human weare.
(06:19):
How we respond to power.
pressure, pride, anduncertainty.
And that's why learning fromhistory is so hard.
It doesn't hand us easy answers.
It hand us difficult questions.
The same ones we're still facingtoday.
(06:41):
Just with different names,different governments, different
stories.
If history gives us so manywarnings, why do we keep making
(07:02):
the same mistakes?
Let's take one powerful example,the 1979 Iranian revolution.
After the 1953 coup removedPrime Minister Mohammad
Mossadegh, the Shah of Irantightened his grip on power.
At first, he was fragile.
(07:24):
a king in the shadow of Westerninfluence.
But over time, his rulehardened.
He eliminated political rivals,imprisoned opposition leaders,
and created a brutal,intelligent force called Sabak
that silenced dissent with fearand violence.
(07:46):
Prime ministers were removed orkilled.
Opposition voices were jailed,exiled, or worse.
And the people, hoping forreform, for dignity, for
representation, waited.
Years passed.
Then, decades.
Nearly 40 years of frustration,broken promises, and suppressed
(08:08):
freedoms.
But by the late 1970s, somethingbegan to shift.
The Shah's grip began to loosen.
His once iron-fisted rule grewhesitant, uncertain.
For a brief moment, we felt realchange was possible.
There were whispers of freedomfor workers, of independent
(08:31):
universities, of a more opensociety, and maybe, just maybe,
a true path to democracy.
We saw a door opening, but thencame the snowball.
The revolution gained momentum,and it didn't care what it
destroyed in its path.
Our hopes, our reforms, Ourdreams for peaceful evolution
(08:55):
were swept away in theavalanche.
The revolution came fast.
And at first it looked likeunity, like justice, like
possibility.
But underneath it all, many ofus saw something darker.
Religious fundamentalism wasrising.
Some warned of it.
(09:15):
Many felt uneasy.
But still, we pushed forward,hoping it wouldn't take hold.
We told ourselves this timewould be different, but we
ignored our instincts.
We ignored the signs.
And once again, history turned,but not in the direction we
hoped.
(09:36):
The result?
Another 40 years of oppression.
A government that fearedfreedom.
That silenced thought.
That stifled innovation.
That crushed dissent.
And so many left.
Some say...
Over 6 million Iranians now liveabroad, most of them educated,
(09:58):
most of them once full of hope,now raising families and
building lives far from thecountry they once fought to
change.
So, again, why do we repeat thesame mistakes?
Because we're not just rationalbeings.
We carry emotion.
(10:20):
We carry fear.
We carry memory, even when wedon't realize it.
And most of all, we carry bias.
Take confirmation bias.
Our brain's tendency to seek outonly what confirms what we
already believe.
Once we commit to a story, aleader, a cause, a movement, we
(10:45):
stop listening to anything thatchallenges it.
We protect the illusion.
even when reality is breakingthrough.
That's how bad ideas survive.
That's how good people gettrapped, not because they don't
know better, but because theydon't want to know better or
(11:07):
take groupthink.
The pressure to go along withthe crowd, you've seen it in
boardrooms, in parliaments, inrevolutions.
Even in a group of friendsplanning a trip no one really
wants to take.
Everyone senses something iswrong.
(11:27):
But no one wants to be the oneto say it.
Sound familiar?
It should.
It happens in politics.
In marriages.
In movements.
In regimes.
We don't repeat mistakes becausewe're foolish.
We repeat them because we'rehuman.
Because power clouds judgment.
(11:49):
because fear demands action,because pride refuses to admit
it was wrong.
History is full of people whosaw the disaster coming, but
felt powerless to stop it.
And it's full of people whobelieved they were on the right
path until it was too late toturn around.
(12:11):
And this doesn't just happen onthe world stage.
It happens in our personal livestoo.
You keep calling someone who'salready shown you who they are.
You keep investing in somethingthat clearly isn't working.
You keep hoping that if you justpush a little harder, this time
(12:34):
it'll work.
We don't always repeat historybecause we forget it.
Sometimes we repeat it becausethe emotional forces inside us
are stronger than the facts infront of us.
And sometimes we repeat itbecause we never truly faced it
the first time.
(13:05):
We've all heard the phrase,history repeats itself.
But that's not exactly true.
History doesn't repeat.
It follows patterns.
The names change.
The technology advances.
The borders shift.
But the feelings, the powerstruggles, the fear, the pride,
(13:27):
the tribal instincts, they keepshowing up again and again.
Take the fall of empires.
Rome, the Ottomans,revolutionary France.
They didn't collapse only fromoutside attacks.
They decayed from within.
Inequality grew.
Corruption spread.
(13:47):
The system stopped serving thepeople, and the people stopped
believing in it.
Now look around.
Modern superpowers with bloatedbureaucracies.
Wealth gaps bigger than ever.
Citizens losing trust in theinstitutions meant to protect
them.
It's not the same story, butit's familiar.
(14:10):
Like watching a new movie withan old plot.
Think about censorship.
In ancient China, under the Qindynasty, books were burned to
erase inconvenient truths.
In Nazi Germany, literature wasdestroyed to control culture and
thought.
And now, in today'sauthoritarian regimes, it's not
(14:33):
fire.
It's algorithms, filters,firewalls.
It's not the same method.
But the goal is exactly thesame.
Control the story.
Silence the threat.
Different tools, same outcome.
Even in our personal lives, thepattern shows up.
You date someone new who remindsyou of someone old.
(14:57):
You change careers, but carrythe same fears.
You move cities, but yourinsecurities come with you.
You're not repeating your past,but the same emotion keeps
showing up in different clothes.
This is why learning from thepast is so hard.
because we expect the nextthreat to look exactly like the
(15:20):
last one.
But history doesn't work thatway.
It doesn't come back in uniform.
It comes disguised.
We look for the same mistakes,but they now speak in modern
language.
We expect the dictator to marchin with military boots, not with
a smile and a social mediafollowing.
(15:43):
We expect the fraud to look likea villain, Not a CEO in a
hoodie, so we miss it.
Until it's already inside thehouse, the real danger isn't
just forgetting the past.
It's misreading the pattern,expecting a carbon copy instead
of recognizing the emotional andpsychological blueprint
(16:07):
underneath it.
If we want to avoid the sameoutcomes, we have to stop
looking for identical signs.
and start paying attention towhat the behavior feels like,
not just what it looks like.
(16:32):
Take a look at the historicalfigures we admire.
Einstein, Gandhi, Steve Jobs.
None of them were strangers tofailure.
Albert Einstein faced rejectionfrom universities and had many
failed theories beforediscovering relativity.
Mohandas Gandhi led withconviction, yet stumbled through
(16:57):
difficult moments of politicalresistance and compromise.
Steve Jobs was famously firedfrom the very company he created
before returning to transform itand the world again.
What did they all have incommon?
They didn't let failure definethem.
They learned from it.
(17:17):
They adjusted and they keptgoing.
It's not about avoidingmistakes.
It's about how we respond tothem.
Let's break it down.
Acknowledge the mistake.
Be honest with yourself.
Learn from it.
What did it teach you?
Adapt.
What will you do differentlynext time?
(17:39):
Move forward.
Don't let it paralyze you.
History doesn't give us perfectanswers.
It gives us insight intoourselves, our biases, our
fears, our blind spots.
The value of studying historyisn't to say they should have
(17:59):
known better.
It's to ask, why did they thinkthat was right at the time?
And how do I avoid making asimilar choice?
The danger begins today.
when we refuse to acknowledgeour mistakes.
As individuals or as a nation,history repeats itself not
(18:22):
because the lessons aren'tthere, but because pride, fear,
and ego keep us from facingthem.
So here's the challenge.
How can we make better mistakesnext time?
What if the next time youstumble, you pause and ask,
what's the deeper lesson here?
(18:42):
What strength can I carryforward from this?
What if, as a country, we said,we won't make the same mistake
again, even if it means taking ahard, uncomfortable path?
Learning from the past isn'tabout perfection.
It's about recognizing patterns,emotional, political, cultural,
(19:05):
and choosing a new response.
It's about realizing that everymistake contains a seed.
And if we face it honestly, wecan plant something better.
As Iranians, we now face acrossroads once again.
History is knocking, just likeit did 40 years ago.
(19:27):
Back then, we misread themoment.
We were divided, distrustful,hopeful, but unprepared.
And external enemies exploitedour confusion, setting us back
another generation.
Today we cannot afford that sameerror.
We have two kinds of enemies.
(19:49):
The external ones who seek toweaken us from the outside and
the internal ones, our fears,our divisions, our old wounds.
But here's the truth.
The external enemy is the onethat has always benefited when
we turned on each other.
They push us back.
(20:10):
I said because we are weak.
but because they fear what wecould become if we finally stand
together.
Right now, there's somethingworth protecting.
Our people, our potential, ourinnovation, especially in
technology, which we've builtthrough hardship, sacrifice, and
(20:32):
genius.
And yes, even if we havedifferences with the current
system, we must not let thosedifferences blind us to the
bigger picture Iran cannotafford to collapse again.
We must protect what we'vebuilt, not for government, but
for the next generation, for theIranian future.
(20:54):
This isn't about loyalty to onepolitical side.
It's about loyalty to ourcultural and intellectual
survival.
We must protect ourinfrastructure, our intellectual
capital, our unity, as difficultand imperfect as it may be.
(21:14):
So, what is the right decision?
To me, it's crystal clear.
We protect what we've built.
We protect Iran.
And we refuse to repeat the samemistake as we reflect on the
past, both personal and global.
Remember this.
History may not always be kind,but we still get to choose what
(21:39):
we do with its lessons.
Will we learn from the past, orwill we repeat it?
That answer is still up to us.
So, here we are.
(21:59):
We've walked through the ruinsof fallen empires, the silence
of censored voices, the echo ofpersonal regrets, and the storm
of national crossroads.
We've seen that history doesn'talways repeat itself, but it
leaves behind patterns,emotions, and consequence we
(22:22):
carry, whether we want to ornot.
If there's one thing toremember, it's this.
Awareness is the first steptoward freedom.
Because when you recognize thepattern, when you name the
forces behind your choices, youbegin to take your power back.
(22:42):
You are no longer a passivecharacter in a story written by
fear, ego, or propaganda.
You become the author again.
On June 13th, 2025, Iran onceagain faces a dangerous moment,
an external effort todestabilize our government,
disrupt our unity, and push usback just as they did before.
(23:08):
Many remember the coup of 28Mordad, August 1953, when Prime
Minister Mohamed Mossadegh wasoverthrown, but fewer recall
what came just before.
25 Mordad, August 16, 1953.
(23:29):
A failed first attempt at thatvery same coup.
It nearly succeeded.
And now, as we look at today'scalendar, This new attempt in
June 2025 falls dangerouslyclose to 25 Mordad once again.
That timing is no accident.
(23:50):
It's not a coincidence.
It's a signal.
History is whispering, remindingus that this second attempt
often comes quickly and quietly.
That is the challenge we facetoday.
And this time, we must be ready.
This time, we must not let themsucceed.
(24:13):
They want to divide us, toweaken us, to steal another
generation of progress andpotential.
But this time, we see it.
This time, we are not blind.
We've been here before, and wewill not make the same mistake
again.
You don't need to be perfect.
(24:35):
You don't need all the answers.
You just need the courage to askbetter questions, to choose more
mindfully, to fall and rise in anew direction.
We may not avoid every mistake,but we can stop making the same
ones.
We can stop ignoring the past,stop silencing our instincts,
(24:58):
stop waiting for someone else tospeak up, to fix it, to see it,
because now you see it.
Thank you for joining me foranother episode of Philosophy of
Life.
Until next time, stay curious,stay awake, and never stop
(25:20):
learning.
And above all, try to makebetter mistakes.
What if I told you that despite all our books, all
our progress, and all ourwarnings, we still walk into the
same walls?
(00:20):
We say history repeats itself,but does it?
Or is it us repeating ourselves?
With new names, new flags, newtech.
But the same old blind spots.
We break things, then wonder howit happened.
We rush it, then blame the map.
(00:42):
And when it's over, we ask, whydidn't they learn from the past?
But that question, it's not justabout leaders and wars.
It's about you and me.
Why do we keep choosing thewrong people?
Why do we sabotage what'sworking?
(01:03):
Why do we ignore the warningsigns until it's too late?
Hi, I'm Reza Sanjideh, and thisis Philosophy of Life.
I had a conversation today withone of my old friends, whose
birthday it is, about our longshared history with the Iranian
revolution of 1979.
(01:24):
We both took part in it.
pursuing what we believed at thetime was the best path forward
for our country.
First of all, happy 64thbirthday.
You're a treasure of knowledgeand historical references.
And we did talk about how weshould learn from past mistake
and what went wrong.
(01:46):
It's about what we're doing withit now.
We'll look at how historymisleads us, how it teaches us
in riddles, not rules.
and why learning from mistakes,both global and personal, isn't
about being perfect.
It's about making bettermistakes next time.
(02:18):
We like to believe we're smarternow, that we know better than
the people who came before us.
that if we had been there, intheir shoes, we would have made
the right call.
But that is an illusion.
Hindsight gives us clarity thatthe past never had.
(02:43):
It edits out confusion, fear,ego, exhaustion, all the messy
human things people face in realtime.
Take the 1953 coup in Iran.
Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran's PrimeMinister, was one of the most
(03:03):
beloved political leaders inmodern Iranian history.
He nationalized the oilindustry, he stood up to British
imperial interests, and hebelieved, perhaps too
idealistically, that the UnitedStates would support democracy
in Iran.
During the failed first coupattempt Mossadegh trusted the
(03:27):
words of the American consul.
He was told, If your supportersgo home peacefully, the United
States will not allow any coupto succeed.
He believed them.
His people left the streets.
But only a few days later, thesecond coup succeeded.
(03:51):
With the support of the CIA andBritish intelligence, The
military overthrew him.
And with that, Iran was sentbackward.
Not just a few years, butdecades.
The dream of democracy wascrushed.
(04:12):
The brilliant mind who stoodbeside Mossadegh, people like
Dr.
Hossein Fatemi and others, wereimprisoned, tortured, or
executed.
Many Iranians still remember itnot just as a tragedy, but as a
betrayal.
A moment where trust, misreadintentions, and the failure to
(04:36):
act decisively changeeverything.
And yet, in the moment, thepeople involved believed they
were doing their duty.
They followed what they thoughtwas right, even as the logic
unraveled.
This kind of mistake isn't justpolitical.
(04:58):
It's human.
We do this in our own lives allthe time.
We act on unclear messages.
We assume someone else will fixthings.
We trust the wrong people.
We ignore our instincts.
(05:18):
Or we're simply too proud toturn back once we've already
committed.
We say yes to jobs we shouldn'ttake.
We stay in relationships thatdrain us.
We launch ideas before they'reready because we're chasing
speed instead of wisdom.
(05:38):
And later we ask, what was Ithinking?
The truth is, you were thinkingthe way most of us do.
imperfectly emotionally underpressure.
Just like those generals.
(05:58):
Just like the politicians.
Just like Mossadegh.
We want history to be aguidebook.
But often it's just a mirror.
It doesn't show us how to avoidmistakes.
It shows us how deeply human weare.
(06:19):
How we respond to power.
pressure, pride, anduncertainty.
And that's why learning fromhistory is so hard.
It doesn't hand us easy answers.
It hand us difficult questions.
The same ones we're still facingtoday.
(06:41):
Just with different names,different governments, different
stories.
If history gives us so manywarnings, why do we keep making
(07:02):
the same mistakes?
Let's take one powerful example,the 1979 Iranian revolution.
After the 1953 coup removedPrime Minister Mohammad
Mossadegh, the Shah of Irantightened his grip on power.
At first, he was fragile.
(07:24):
a king in the shadow of Westerninfluence.
But over time, his rulehardened.
He eliminated political rivals,imprisoned opposition leaders,
and created a brutal,intelligent force called Sabak
that silenced dissent with fearand violence.
(07:46):
Prime ministers were removed orkilled.
Opposition voices were jailed,exiled, or worse.
And the people, hoping forreform, for dignity, for
representation, waited.
Years passed.
Then, decades.
Nearly 40 years of frustration,broken promises, and suppressed
(08:08):
freedoms.
But by the late 1970s, somethingbegan to shift.
The Shah's grip began to loosen.
His once iron-fisted rule grewhesitant, uncertain.
For a brief moment, we felt realchange was possible.
There were whispers of freedomfor workers, of independent
(08:31):
universities, of a more opensociety, and maybe, just maybe,
a true path to democracy.
We saw a door opening, but thencame the snowball.
The revolution gained momentum,and it didn't care what it
destroyed in its path.
Our hopes, our reforms, Ourdreams for peaceful evolution
(08:55):
were swept away in theavalanche.
The revolution came fast.
And at first it looked likeunity, like justice, like
possibility.
But underneath it all, many ofus saw something darker.
Religious fundamentalism wasrising.
Some warned of it.
(09:15):
Many felt uneasy.
But still, we pushed forward,hoping it wouldn't take hold.
We told ourselves this timewould be different, but we
ignored our instincts.
We ignored the signs.
And once again, history turned,but not in the direction we
hoped.
(09:36):
The result?
Another 40 years of oppression.
A government that fearedfreedom.
That silenced thought.
That stifled innovation.
That crushed dissent.
And so many left.
Some say...
Over 6 million Iranians now liveabroad, most of them educated,
(09:58):
most of them once full of hope,now raising families and
building lives far from thecountry they once fought to
change.
So, again, why do we repeat thesame mistakes?
Because we're not just rationalbeings.
We carry emotion.
(10:20):
We carry fear.
We carry memory, even when wedon't realize it.
And most of all, we carry bias.
Take confirmation bias.
Our brain's tendency to seek outonly what confirms what we
already believe.
Once we commit to a story, aleader, a cause, a movement, we
(10:45):
stop listening to anything thatchallenges it.
We protect the illusion.
even when reality is breakingthrough.
That's how bad ideas survive.
That's how good people gettrapped, not because they don't
know better, but because theydon't want to know better or
(11:07):
take groupthink.
The pressure to go along withthe crowd, you've seen it in
boardrooms, in parliaments, inrevolutions.
Even in a group of friendsplanning a trip no one really
wants to take.
Everyone senses something iswrong.
(11:27):
But no one wants to be the oneto say it.
Sound familiar?
It should.
It happens in politics.
In marriages.
In movements.
In regimes.
We don't repeat mistakes becausewe're foolish.
We repeat them because we'rehuman.
Because power clouds judgment.
(11:49):
because fear demands action,because pride refuses to admit
it was wrong.
History is full of people whosaw the disaster coming, but
felt powerless to stop it.
And it's full of people whobelieved they were on the right
path until it was too late toturn around.
(12:11):
And this doesn't just happen onthe world stage.
It happens in our personal livestoo.
You keep calling someone who'salready shown you who they are.
You keep investing in somethingthat clearly isn't working.
You keep hoping that if you justpush a little harder, this time
(12:34):
it'll work.
We don't always repeat historybecause we forget it.
Sometimes we repeat it becausethe emotional forces inside us
are stronger than the facts infront of us.
And sometimes we repeat itbecause we never truly faced it
the first time.
(13:05):
We've all heard the phrase,history repeats itself.
But that's not exactly true.
History doesn't repeat.
It follows patterns.
The names change.
The technology advances.
The borders shift.
But the feelings, the powerstruggles, the fear, the pride,
(13:27):
the tribal instincts, they keepshowing up again and again.
Take the fall of empires.
Rome, the Ottomans,revolutionary France.
They didn't collapse only fromoutside attacks.
They decayed from within.
Inequality grew.
Corruption spread.
(13:47):
The system stopped serving thepeople, and the people stopped
believing in it.
Now look around.
Modern superpowers with bloatedbureaucracies.
Wealth gaps bigger than ever.
Citizens losing trust in theinstitutions meant to protect
them.
It's not the same story, butit's familiar.
(14:10):
Like watching a new movie withan old plot.
Think about censorship.
In ancient China, under the Qindynasty, books were burned to
erase inconvenient truths.
In Nazi Germany, literature wasdestroyed to control culture and
thought.
And now, in today'sauthoritarian regimes, it's not
(14:33):
fire.
It's algorithms, filters,firewalls.
It's not the same method.
But the goal is exactly thesame.
Control the story.
Silence the threat.
Different tools, same outcome.
Even in our personal lives, thepattern shows up.
You date someone new who remindsyou of someone old.
(14:57):
You change careers, but carrythe same fears.
You move cities, but yourinsecurities come with you.
You're not repeating your past,but the same emotion keeps
showing up in different clothes.
This is why learning from thepast is so hard.
because we expect the nextthreat to look exactly like the
(15:20):
last one.
But history doesn't work thatway.
It doesn't come back in uniform.
It comes disguised.
We look for the same mistakes,but they now speak in modern
language.
We expect the dictator to marchin with military boots, not with
a smile and a social mediafollowing.
(15:43):
We expect the fraud to look likea villain, Not a CEO in a
hoodie, so we miss it.
Until it's already inside thehouse, the real danger isn't
just forgetting the past.
It's misreading the pattern,expecting a carbon copy instead
of recognizing the emotional andpsychological blueprint
(16:07):
underneath it.
If we want to avoid the sameoutcomes, we have to stop
looking for identical signs.
and start paying attention towhat the behavior feels like,
not just what it looks like.
(16:32):
Take a look at the historicalfigures we admire.
Einstein, Gandhi, Steve Jobs.
None of them were strangers tofailure.
Albert Einstein faced rejectionfrom universities and had many
failed theories beforediscovering relativity.
Mohandas Gandhi led withconviction, yet stumbled through
(16:57):
difficult moments of politicalresistance and compromise.
Steve Jobs was famously firedfrom the very company he created
before returning to transform itand the world again.
What did they all have incommon?
They didn't let failure definethem.
They learned from it.
(17:17):
They adjusted and they keptgoing.
It's not about avoidingmistakes.
It's about how we respond tothem.
Let's break it down.
Acknowledge the mistake.
Be honest with yourself.
Learn from it.
What did it teach you?
Adapt.
What will you do differentlynext time?
(17:39):
Move forward.
Don't let it paralyze you.
History doesn't give us perfectanswers.
It gives us insight intoourselves, our biases, our
fears, our blind spots.
The value of studying historyisn't to say they should have
(17:59):
known better.
It's to ask, why did they thinkthat was right at the time?
And how do I avoid making asimilar choice?
The danger begins today.
when we refuse to acknowledgeour mistakes.
As individuals or as a nation,history repeats itself not
(18:22):
because the lessons aren'tthere, but because pride, fear,
and ego keep us from facingthem.
So here's the challenge.
How can we make better mistakesnext time?
What if the next time youstumble, you pause and ask,
what's the deeper lesson here?
(18:42):
What strength can I carryforward from this?
What if, as a country, we said,we won't make the same mistake
again, even if it means taking ahard, uncomfortable path?
Learning from the past isn'tabout perfection.
It's about recognizing patterns,emotional, political, cultural,
(19:05):
and choosing a new response.
It's about realizing that everymistake contains a seed.
And if we face it honestly, wecan plant something better.
As Iranians, we now face acrossroads once again.
History is knocking, just likeit did 40 years ago.
(19:27):
Back then, we misread themoment.
We were divided, distrustful,hopeful, but unprepared.
And external enemies exploitedour confusion, setting us back
another generation.
Today we cannot afford that sameerror.
We have two kinds of enemies.
(19:49):
The external ones who seek toweaken us from the outside and
the internal ones, our fears,our divisions, our old wounds.
But here's the truth.
The external enemy is the onethat has always benefited when
we turned on each other.
They push us back.
(20:10):
I said because we are weak.
but because they fear what wecould become if we finally stand
together.
Right now, there's somethingworth protecting.
Our people, our potential, ourinnovation, especially in
technology, which we've builtthrough hardship, sacrifice, and
(20:32):
genius.
And yes, even if we havedifferences with the current
system, we must not let thosedifferences blind us to the
bigger picture Iran cannotafford to collapse again.
We must protect what we'vebuilt, not for government, but
for the next generation, for theIranian future.
(20:54):
This isn't about loyalty to onepolitical side.
It's about loyalty to ourcultural and intellectual
survival.
We must protect ourinfrastructure, our intellectual
capital, our unity, as difficultand imperfect as it may be.
(21:14):
So, what is the right decision?
To me, it's crystal clear.
We protect what we've built.
We protect Iran.
And we refuse to repeat the samemistake as we reflect on the
past, both personal and global.
Remember this.
History may not always be kind,but we still get to choose what
(21:39):
we do with its lessons.
Will we learn from the past, orwill we repeat it?
That answer is still up to us.
So, here we are.
(21:59):
We've walked through the ruinsof fallen empires, the silence
of censored voices, the echo ofpersonal regrets, and the storm
of national crossroads.
We've seen that history doesn'talways repeat itself, but it
leaves behind patterns,emotions, and consequence we
(22:22):
carry, whether we want to ornot.
If there's one thing toremember, it's this.
Awareness is the first steptoward freedom.
Because when you recognize thepattern, when you name the
forces behind your choices, youbegin to take your power back.
(22:42):
You are no longer a passivecharacter in a story written by
fear, ego, or propaganda.
You become the author again.
On June 13th, 2025, Iran onceagain faces a dangerous moment,
an external effort todestabilize our government,
disrupt our unity, and push usback just as they did before.
(23:08):
Many remember the coup of 28Mordad, August 1953, when Prime
Minister Mohamed Mossadegh wasoverthrown, but fewer recall
what came just before.
25 Mordad, August 16, 1953.
(23:29):
A failed first attempt at thatvery same coup.
It nearly succeeded.
And now, as we look at today'scalendar, This new attempt in
June 2025 falls dangerouslyclose to 25 Mordad once again.
That timing is no accident.
(23:50):
It's not a coincidence.
It's a signal.
History is whispering, remindingus that this second attempt
often comes quickly and quietly.
That is the challenge we facetoday.
And this time, we must be ready.
This time, we must not let themsucceed.
(24:13):
They want to divide us, toweaken us, to steal another
generation of progress andpotential.
But this time, we see it.
This time, we are not blind.
We've been here before, and wewill not make the same mistake
again.
You don't need to be perfect.
(24:35):
You don't need all the answers.
You just need the courage to askbetter questions, to choose more
mindfully, to fall and rise in anew direction.
We may not avoid every mistake,but we can stop making the same
ones.
We can stop ignoring the past,stop silencing our instincts,
(24:58):
stop waiting for someone else tospeak up, to fix it, to see it,
because now you see it.
Thank you for joining me foranother episode of Philosophy of
Life.
Until next time, stay curious,stay awake, and never stop
(25:20):
learning.
And above all, try to makebetter mistakes.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.