Lots More on the Protests and Financial Crisis in Iran

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:07)

Joe, do you like Persian food?

Tracy Alloway (0:09)

Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.

Joe Weisenthal (0:11)

Yeah, I make, I'm very proud of this, if I say so myself, a mean gourmet sapsi. I actually don't know if I'm pronouncing it wrong, but supposedly it's the Iranian national dish, and it's a sort of like beef stew with spinach and a bunch of different herbs in it. So it's really green. And then with kidney beans, it's delicious. And the thing I like about it is you can make it and then store it, freeze it, and it actually gets better over the next week or so.

Tracy Alloway (0:40)

This is my idea for a restaurant, which is just like make food and then put it in the fridge for overnight and then serve it cold. Because I think like every dish is better, like after a night in the fridge, somehow like all the flavors come out. It's like, why don't we just make this to the default eating? I did a deadlift.

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

I am both the most popular trader and most successful trader at Citadel.

Tracy Alloway (1:04)

Fed is going viral.

Joe Weisenthal (1:06)

Barges.

Tracy Alloway (1:07)

This is an after school special, except.

Joe Weisenthal (1:08)

I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

Black gold.

Joe Weisenthal (1:15)

These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

Tracy Alloway (1:18)

No, I think that in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the Odd Lots podcast. One day, that person will have the mandate of heaven.

Joe Weisenthal (1:28)

How do I get more popular and successful?

Tracy Alloway (1:30)

We do have the perfect guest.

Joe Weisenthal (1:34)

You're listening to Lots More, where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now.

Tracy Alloway (1:38)

Because even when the Odd Lots is over, there's always Lots More.

Joe Weisenthal (1:42)

And we really do have the perfect guest. So I'm a big fan of Iranian food. I always wanted to go to Iran and actually try it.

Tracy Alloway (1:51)

Yes.

Joe Weisenthal (1:51)

And it makes me sad that I haven't been able to do it. And with recent events, terrible events in Iran, we've had anti-Islamic or public protests that have reportedly left thousands of people dead. I'm not going to say the specific estimate because it's changing all the time. And also there's not that much transparency at the moment because the government has shut down the entire Internet. But it's just sad.

Tracy Alloway (2:16)

Look, I know very little about Iran.

I also feel like in my professional career, there are multiple rounds of this, big protests, et cetera. Is this the moment? Regime change. And to your point, which you say, like there is very little that I trust when I see it reported. I am extremely skeptical. Oh, tonight was the biggest set of protests we've had in years. There's never been a protest. Look at which city this is. I'm sure there are well-informed people talking about this.

I don't have the heuristics to know. Generally, I don't know who is well-informed, what is actually signal versus what is noise. But obviously, yet another sort of extraordinary development unfolding here in 2026

Joe Weisenthal (3:00)

Maciej, what have you been hearing?

Maciej Wojtal (3:02)

So I agree that it's difficult really to tell what are the actual facts. For sure, there's been a lot of deaths and it's horrible and it's tragic and it's definitely in thousands of deaths.

But at the same time, there's complete blackout. What works right now is the actually outgoing landline calls, but with limited time. So for example, one of my analysts who is actually in London at the moment, he's able to speak to his parents when they call him, and then the call gets interrupted quite quickly, but at least he can hear from them. We weren't actually sure for quite some time whether the stock market was working or not because of the blackout, because it was not possible to even to read any news from the official news agencies in Iran. So everything was down, including from what I've read, including even the internal domestic internet network in Iran that is very controlled. This was also down. Even ATM stopped working for a moment, I think just one day, brief moment, cash transfers for working, bank transfers. Apparently, the local Uber equivalent called Snap was working all the time. However, GPS was not working properly, so it was difficult to locate the driver and so on. So exactly what you said, it's difficult to understand exactly what is going on.