Join us today for an in in-depth interview with Ace AT, who lived in Iran through war, sanctions, and economic collapse. He shares firsthand details on infrastructure failures like sinkholes and power outages, daily survival strategies, media consumption, social restrictions, and the realities of dating and family life. The conversation covers Iran’s unique cultural resilience, the rise of atheism and Zoroastrianism, challenges of leaving the country, and his new life in India. A rare, personal look at ordinary life in a place often misunderstood by outsiders. We hope you enjoy it! Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins:Hello. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we have Ace AT, the Iranian guy who is talking on Asmongold’s channel who was in... Lived his life in Iran, was in Iran at the start of the war. And, apparently, he says this is the first interview he’s had because with Asmongold, it was just reacts. And that that makes me so excited because whenever I saw his stuff, it really was fascinating for me to see into this different world. And, obviously, there’s a lot of stuff that we can’t talk about, but the stuff we can talk about is still super exciting. And the things that I wanted to focus on in this interview is I wanted to focus on what it was actually like before the war even just living in a country that is at the place that Iran is at right now in terms of water outages, electricity outages, a 300 fold inflation, you said, since the since Ace AT:3000. Simone Collins:3000. Yeah. Malcolm Collins:Since the revolution. how do you how do you relate to money? How do you relate to savings? How do you relate to perishable items when you can use electricity at any time? How do you, all of this is very interesting, but I also wanna focus on media. Like, what media did you grow up consuming? Games did you grow up playing? How did you relate to that? to create a picture of... For a lot of people, I think, like a normal human living in Iran going into all of this. Because Iran... Just to pontificate a little bit, Iran is a very interesting country for Americans to think about because they’re... Most Americans know Persian families or Persian, like, people who have lived in America for multiple generations. And so there isn’t, like, a specific... An ethnic animosity that you would expect and you would see in some wars or ethnic foreignness. and so the idea of, like, there’s real people in Iran actually doing stuff and protesting and all of that, that’s, something that I think, is really cool to to see. So first, what we were talking about before this that I was shocked about, we were talking about sinkholes because I prefer just like... Sinkholes are, like, a common problem in, like, the capital, and you can just, like, disappear into a sinkhole and, like, people die. I I forgot what it was, but, like, 20 people a year, I think it was. but you said, actually, like, a big chunk of the capital is over a sinkhole and could fall. Can you talk about that? Ace AT:Yeah. Sure. So, basically, the earlier time before the revolution, the capital was announced to be inside of Tehran. So while that happened, a lot of people started, like, moving towards it, and they were expecting a maximum amount of 15 to 20,000,000 people instead of the capital. But they said if it expands too much, it might decrease the stability of the sinkholes because the entire capital is surrounded by mountains. So the only way you can get out of the capital was... Is, like, by three or four roads that, like, leads out of the capital. Simone Collins:Wow. Okay. Okay. Ace AT:That’s why it’s basically... Oh my god. I can’t talk. Strategically? Oh my god. Okay. So back in the day, it was very difficult to attack that one per... Place. Simone Collins:That makes sense. Yes. So you have built in fortress. Yes. Ace AT:But back then, they didn’t really know about sinkholes and stuff. It just happened. So now the average, I think, estimate of the amount of people inside there is 40,000,000, which is, like, two times more than it’s supposed to be, and it’s shrinking a lot. Like, the the, like, the ground is going in Malcolm Collins:every year by year. I wanna provide a little context here. The reason why sinkholes have become such a problem in the capital and the reason the ground is shrinking is because there was a large reservoir under the capital of water. But because they are dealing with a massive water shortage, they drained the reservoir significantly. Yeah. So now there’s a giant hole under the capital. Simone Collins:Well, are there plans to, like, insert liquid into the Malcolm Collins:Are there plans to do anything? No. I don’t think there’s plans to do anything. So you said, like, 40% could just collapse one day? Ace AT:pretty much. If something like that happens more than I pretty much estimate twenty million people will get badly hurt to death even. The sinkhole is pretty terrible. The main reason is because the water shortages that kept happening inside of the country, and we we had drought for, like, two, three years. It was it was bad. So as... If you looked at the map while the, like, clouds tried to come inside the country, they instantly dissipated. From Turkey or from anywhere tried to come inside of Iran, instantly vanished. So we... Nobody knew why. It was just happening. And because of that, we had a massive drought. All of the lakes just completely went dry. We had a very massive lake on top left of the country, and that is almost completely depleted. Malcolm Collins:This giant lake that’s just gone. I mean, part of it was due to the overbuilding of dams during the revolutionary period. Yeah. And and they’re trying to rebuild the capital in the Southern East section. Right? But I think that’s mostly a pipe dream. Do you do you... I mean, is that gonna happen? Or Ace AT:Maybe. I have no clue what exactly the government is planning to do because it’s very... I’m sorry, but it’s very disorganized. I I can’t lie. They just do whatever it’s, like, necessary for that one specific thing, but don’t care about whatever repercussions that happen afterwards. Malcolm Collins:Oh my god. Okay. Simone Collins:So... Although that’s... You could say that pretty much about any government now. Ace AT:You want me to give you an example? Malcolm Collins:Yes. Give... Ace AT:Basically, there was a river. Right? There was a river that was artificially made near the capital. And what happened was it started smelling very bad. Ugh. And people wanted to fix it. And the governor said, well, that’s gonna cost too much. We’re not gonna fix it. So because of that, they use the water that was going to that artificial lake to the stadium of football. Because of... They... Because they didn’t fix that, now the stadium was smelling very bad. And now they said, now you have to fix the stadium and the lake. And they said, okay. We’re not gonna do that. It’s too expensive. So they connected another lake to both of them to try to fix it. Instead, that lake got corrupted as well. So it’s Simone Collins:been very bad. So... Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wait. Malcolm Collins:How did they come... Hold on. I I need to understand the logistic. How did they... And why did they think it was a good idea to connect the lake to Simone Collins:the stadium? Flush it out. Ace AT:Because, when you’re trying to clean stuff out and, like, keep the grass and everything always healthy and stuff like that, they need a lot of water. So they were trying to connect it with like that so they can be a little bit more lazy, you know, but also cost efficient. Simone Collins:But Oh, but it’s just sort of, like, Malcolm Collins:drain it, like, use it for stadium purposes, and then that Yeah. Drain the the bad lake. Okay. Yeah. That Yeah. That is horrible. so I wanna know more about, like, daily life in terms of how you... And keep in mind, some things may feel normal to you that would be... That that that they’re going to be the most interesting things to other people in terms of how they’re different. So I wanna focus on, like, what it’s like when you have the regular water shortages or water is being cut off regularly or electricity is being cut off regularly. How does this change how you relate to things like what’s in your refrigerator or how you get food or how you think about, you know, showering or anything like that? Ace AT:So, basically, our government sometimes, thankfully, announces that they’re gonna be doing that through a SMS or from the application. For example, for electricity, it’s called. And with that, it shows you that, hey. From this specific time to this specific time, we’re gonna... You’re gonna have the power outage. So Yeah. We can, like, pretty much, decide what you’re gonna do. So the power outages inside of the country, whenever it’s whenever it’s a hot season, it’s from two hours to four hours long. But, usually, when it’s not a hot season, they just randomly cut it without announcing anything. Oh. And it usually lasts, like, two to three hours. In terms of water, water goes out with electricity because our country doesn’t have, like, a system where no matter even if the water Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Water on top of buildings. Ace AT:The pumps. Yeah. They they need to have, like, an electric pump to push the water up the apartments. And when the electricity goes out, the water goes out with it for three to four hours. So when they announce it, you can pretty much, like, handle everything. But when they don’t, you just have to, like, I guess, go to a location where there is water or electricity. Other than that, we... Me and my mom usually go to malls, so we can just use the air conditions inside of the mall until two to three hours passes, and then we can go back home. But other than that, yeah. Simone Collins:When we when we lived in Peru, they would sometimes do this too.
