Four years ago today, 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in the custody of Iran's morality police after being arrested over how she wore her hijab. Her death ignited the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising and, like the Green Movement before it, a brutal crackdown.

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Protest after protest, Iran's youth have taken to the streets for their freedom and their lives. Each time they have met fierce resistance from the regime, its clerics, and paramilitary forces across the country. They are beaten, imprisoned, disenfranchised, and killed. And each time, voices from outside Iran urge them back into the streets to face an unjust and unflinching regime.

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In this episode, recorded in September 2023 and re-edited for the fourth anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death, Tea Tapes co-founder Mona Nevins, who came to the US as a refugee, sits down with a fellow Iranian woman whose identity is hidden and voice disguised to protect her family in Iran. Mona remembers living through the 2009 Green Movement and the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan. She describes keeping the TV on around the clock while diaspora channels promised that change was days away. Then she asks a hard question: what happens to people inside Iran when those living comfortably abroad keep promising a freedom that never arrives?

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They also talk about the dreams women in Iran learn to bury, why a new generation refuses to obey rules that make no sense to them, and what they hope for their daughters.

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The views expressed by Mona Nevins are her own and do not reflect those of the U.S. Air Force or the Department of Defense.