 good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German or Turk or Japanese, but anyone from any corner of the earth can come to the United States and become an American. Welcome back to A Nation of Immigrants, a bivocally talk show program featuring the life's diversity, inclusion of the immigrants. This show has been produced by Sing Tank Hawaii and the Kingsfield Law Office. Today, we are thrilled to have our good friend, Bob Buck, hi, Ari. Today, you are really in for good trade, because Bob Buck, hi, Ari, my apology, and is a really important immigrant. He is a, he's born in Canada to Persian parents. He moved to the United States as a young man who he served 15 years in Baker Field before getting his degree in international relations from the University of Southern California. He's been a movie and music video producer, taught high school sex education for parenthood and trained as a labor organizer. He went back to school to get his law degree from the University of Minnesota, where he is an high-junct professor at the University of Minnesota Honors Program and teaches law and skills. His legal work has covered FDA regulatory issues, tours, copyrights, trademark, and well as business startups. He also researches and lectures on modern architecture in Minnesota. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America, and he reports and hosts an interview show on college football. That's a very, very interesting, you know, bio, Bob Buck. Thank you. My fourth great welcome again to our show. I've been, you know, trying to schedule our show for a long time, and when we started this initial immigrant show, you are one of the first people we want to interview. And first of all, I have many questions for you, but please tell us where are you right now? Well, first of all, it's an honor to be on the show, and I wanted to thank you for letting me join you and talk about my experience. But before we get to that, yeah, no, so thank you for being accommodating. Today, when we're recording this, is the college football national championship at the top level, and that game is being held here in Los Angeles. So it's being held in about four hours and 30 minutes from now. So I'm just unplugging. I'm in the press box. You can see, yeah, so I am currently perched above the field in the in the press box. So thank you for your patience on that now that I got that plugged in. But yeah, no, they're everyone slowly getting ready to cover that. And it's one of the hats I wear is I occasionally cover college football, which is one of those things that I guess is part of the the experience and what what brought me to what I enjoy about living in the United States. Thank you so much. That's very, very cool. I believe people should have multiple identities. And that's why you're my favorite guest. You have multiple identities. Talented people are hard to define and you are hard to define. Obviously, you are a lawyer and you are a reporter and you are your teacher. But let's start with your childhood. How did you get here? And what your childhood looked like? You were born in Canada. And when did you started to become Bobak as today's Bobak? Boy, that's a great question. So when when I was, as I mentioned, I was born in Toronto, Canada. My parents had been immigrants multiple times. They were both born in Iran. And they moved to England, independent of each other. My mom went to boarding school there and stayed there. And my dad was already a physician. They went to do more postdoctoral work at the University of Liverpool and then stayed. So they met at the embassy in London because my mom's uncle was a charge de-affair at the time. And then from there, they married and eventually moved to Canada, where my dad was again pursuing even more additional postdoctoral fellowships to then settle in Toronto because they wanted, they're working in a big city. So after I was born, they moved to a small town called Stratford because they wanted to make sure it was a more family friendly environment they thought. And I think that's actually something a lot of immigrants think, like the smaller town, the more family friendly, standardized Americana, rather than staying in a large metropolitan area like a Toronto. And unfortunately, at the time, I, as an infant, did not deal with cold very well. So for my first several years in my life, I was getting sick all the time. So they decided to go somewhere hopefully a little warmer. And my dad at the time was a very in demand professional. So he applied all over Southern California and got offers in many places to practice. And from there, at age three, he select, when I was age three, he selected Bakersfield, the armpit of the state of California, where I would say were my formative years. As I like to joke, I served 15 years in Bakersfield before going on to college. And then, I mean, my family's still there. So I have a small family right now. It's just my mom. But so I'd say my formative years were growing up in Southern California, but specifically Bakersfield, which compared to some of the folks I've met of similar ethnic background in other cities, people from Bakersfield, we assimilated a lot faster because there were fewer of us. And it was just a bit of a harder city if you weren't of the, I would say the predominant ethnic groups. Thank you so much for sharing stories. Lovely. You, you were born in Canada. So you are dual citizens. Yes. Yes. Canada, United States. And I actually have a funny story about that. I do naturalize. I was so lazy because I really adapted being the American mindset. I didn't naturalize until I was 25. And actually 26, maybe I was at a law school by that point. Really, ironically, my citizenship interview was a guy I went to law school with, who was working for, well, I think it was, it was Homeland Security at the time, but yeah, whatever it was. But I just remember when I walked in, he's like, this is going to be a really fast interview. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Well, congratulations. We are lucky to have you in Minnesota and in the United States. Well, so you grew up, you as an immigrant kid, you grew up in Canada, in Toronto, and the suburb. So were you hanging around with a lot of immigrants kids? You know, not really, I would say particularly because Stratford was actually a smaller town, a little bit out of Toronto. It's its own little town. They're known for their little Shakespeare festival because they like to be like Stratford on and on, you know, in London. But moving to Bakersfield in particular, because we weren't in Stratford for too long, but in Bakersfield in particular, I would say we always had a mix of who we, who my family would integrate with or who would socialize with. So somewhere the Persian community, and that's understandable, particularly there were a lot of Persian doctors at that time who had immigrated, a lot of professionals, I'm sure engineers too, but there weren't as many in the circles we hung out with. Although in Bakersfield, there were a few because it's an oil hotbed. So we had a few petrochemical engineers who happened to be also Persian, more Iranian. And then from there, you know, as a community grew, there were more business oriented people who ran businesses, couple car dealership guys. But I would say it was always an even mix. Although, and I think this is something that you get when you're a transplant, even within a country, especially a larger country like the United States, like I moved from California to Minnesota 20 years ago. And I've always noticed the couples that I hang out with, predominantly at least one or both, were also transplants to Minnesota. Like my very good friend, he's from Minnesota, but his wife is from New York City. So you get a bit of, you get a bit of that kind of mix. So all that said, my parents being who they were and having lived around the world already a bit, I think they had already been able to. And also I should say my mom's side of the family was very, my mom's father was a poet and he was a head archaeologist of the Percipolis. So he was always entertaining when it was the Shah, whenever they bring the royal families that would visit the Shah to Shiraz to see the Percipolis, he would always leave the tour. And it's really funny because they weren't always like some European royal family. But my favorite was when I was a child, she showed me a picture. This is the king of Russia. And then when I was older, I'm like, there was no Russian king. It was Brezhnev. So they were used to mixing with all kinds of people. So when I moved to the United States, a lot of people compared to a lot of folks who were Persian would always confuse us because we don't quite look or sound like what I think preconceived notions are. When my parents met in London, even though it was an embassy function at the Persian and Iranian embassy, they were introduced to each other as Italians, like Dr. Hayeri and Neema Tavalleli, you know, rather than that Persian. And consequently, one of my favorite questions I get when I meet other Persians is they then ask me, oh, which half, you know, which half of me, you know, both, you know, so, you know, it's kind of a funny thing. I love it. I love it. What language did you speak at home? Oh, English. I tried Farsi and I never took to it. I'm awful with foreign languages. I joke that I speak one and a quarter language and that quarter is made up of a mixture of Spanish, Farsi and like a little bit of Japanese. Well, next question. So you are teaching the most popular course at the University of Minnesota. And my question to you is why are you classes so popular? Why there? So, you know, I'm teaching too. And all my students, almost single, every single one of them, they talk about you. You know, do you know Perfez Abobarga, Hayeri? So, of course, we went to law school together. And then after that, oh, he's fantastic, you know, tours, you know, adventure. Well, I can understand law and skill and can be far, but not that far. Because what's your secret? Make your course so successful? That's a great question. So I think I got lucky in two factors, work in my favor. And two things that perhaps are somewhat inherent to what I teach. Number one, especially with the law school class, I give it a pass because it's a mandatory class, so people have to be on it. But the undergraduate class, people have to want to take it. So I teach, you know, and law is always a popular course. I enjoy teaching law, I enjoy torts, which is the course I teach civil realms. And when I first taught the course, I taught it in a way I would like to be taught too. And I think that's what it boils down to. You respect your students. I always, the way I like to always open my class is I tell these undergraduates, and you know, some of them anywhere between sometimes even 17 all the way up to 22, I tell them, you know, I know more than you do, but I'm not smarter than you. So what I'm going to do over the period of the semester is try and get you, you closer to me. And I think they appreciate that and just talking to them like, like normal people and making class fun. I think that's an important thing without necessarily denigrating the material. But yeah, I don't know, I just, I like talking to people, I like talking to students, especially undergraduates who are full of life, law school, by the time I get them, it's hit them a little bit hard, you know, they've got that first punch. But by the time I love dealing with undergraduates and they give me life and I think we feed off of each other. So I think that helps. So I think what makes a class popular is so many people are interested in law. And luckily, I guess I have a max for talking to them at a level they appreciate. You always have a very long waiting list, you know, it's, it's very hard to get into your class. I don't think I can even get into, you know, it's always the waitlist is always full. And both you and I teach the undergraduate honors program, which is supposed to be the best of the best students, street A students, otherwise you cannot get into the honors program. And in my class, I do, I see very few immigrant students, international students, how many international students or immigrant students you'll have say that the fourth generation or second generation in your classes. Well, first, I should say your class is also very popular because I hear about it as well. I was very jealous of your topic, because you were more eminently qualified to teach it than I ever would be as a graduate of the renowned Beijing Film Academy. But at the same time, so but enough may I apologize, I'm going to go back to your question. So I would say I have gosh, and I think some of it is a product of the demographics of the University of Minnesota itself. Although it does have a very large international student body, I think a number of them tend to be in the graduate programs rather than the undergraduate. And in the under honors system, I would say typically out of a class of 19 or 20, I would get maybe one per semester, sometimes two, sometimes none, but an average of one. And I always wondered if that is more product of the demographics that draw upon when they're building the undergraduate student body from the population of the state of Minnesota. Yeah, very similar to my class. Thank you for answering the question. Now you are in the bigger field and tell us a little bit about your reporting work. How did you end up as a reporter and call it football reporter and a host? That is a great question, because that isn't something that people look at me and think that I cover. Most people ask me if I'm a musician, they don't expect that I cover college football. And those are just, you know, funny things how things work out. I went to high school, didn't really care about sports that much, because I think of my parents. My dad was an orthopedic surgeon. He had to fix people who broke themselves up. So he said, you know, don't do the contact sports and do something else. And I was a fat kid, so it made it easy for me to just find video games, I guess. But I was good at theater, I was good at debate, I was good at all those things that in some ways end up naturally leading to perhaps law as a profession. And then from there, um, what happened was I chose my college and that's what changed everything. I ended up going staying, staying fairly close to home two hours away. I moved down to Los Angeles and went to the University of Southern California, which is a very major football power. Historically, it always is. I mean, this very year, we won the Heisman Trophy. We, like I did anything, you know, but the school won the MVP player. So I was always a good sport when I would go to school events. If it was popular, I'd give it a try. And I remember I went to my first game and I'm like, this is amazing. I had no idea who the other team was. They were Florida State, they were exceptional, but at the time I was naive to all of this. And then I got hooked. So then as a lawyer, over time, I realized, you know, still set, we learned in law how to actively listen, how to ask questions, how to put together a story, especially if you're writing a brief, the fact pattern is extremely important. And that ability to write that in such a way is something, and I'd known several journalists who had started in the field of law as well. And I decided, you know, maybe that would be something that would translate, well, and it did. And so far that has been something I've enjoyed since 2015. And then, gosh, last year, we decided to add an audio portion to it. Again, I think I'm somewhat fortunate to have a voice that's good for radio, and a face that is somewhere in between TV and radio. So I was able to get a few colleagues of mine who helped me with the college football stuff to join in, and we're able to make it serious. I mean, we're able to bring on guests of all stripes, had coaches, athletic directors, other reporters. And it's been something that has been, I always joke, I take my hobby very seriously, I treat it like a drop. And that, again, leads me to this, the national championship game, the highest possible level of any football game you've been covering the college football field. And this is my third time covering it. Very cool. Thank you so much. You know, I'm not a sport guy. And I know little about sport. And my colleagues stopped inviting me to the Timber Wolf and the Twins games after they figured out that I'm completely ignorant of all the basics. So, but I admire people who are really, really into the sports. But now let's turn to your other side, your other identity. And you went to USC, one of the best film schools in the United States. Honestly, when I was after graduate from college, I applied for graduate school at USC, NYU, and a few other, you know, film schools. And I got admitted by NYU, but I got rejected by USC. So I'm pretty upset about that. But anyway, then both you and I went to pretty good film schools. And you're still very much into film. So my question to you is who is your favorite filmmaker, film or tour? That's a great question. I mean, I always wonder if my answer to this is a bit of recentism, but I like two directors in particular. I like Wes Anderson a lot. I always like his style. I like his mise en scene, his ability to kind of assemble beautiful sites and interesting, complete package. But also Dennis, I'm going to butcher the name, but Dennis, you know, the director of such films as Sicario, Arrival, Dune, Bladerunner. I love his vision. I love the fact that he is so seriously committed to making things not only blending digital and real, but his commitment to telling a story and his resistance to falling to some of the easier pop culture things that some directors do and kind of lessen the impact of the film. He really commits, I think, to the complete production. And I'd say right now, those two are the ones I tend to gravitate the most and I will see anything they make. Cool. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And who is your favorite author, shall we say, or intellectual or writer? Yeah, no, that's a great question. So as far as authors are concerned, I have a great variety and I appreciate a great variety. I mean, I tend to gravitate towards Shakespeare is probably the best. I feel silly kind of defaulting to that, but I felt like he's the one who gave us so much of the fundamental approach to drama in the modern sense and the complexity of emotions and fully rounded personalities and characters that so much and what we do now is owed to him and both as a playwright and as a literary figure. Well, I am a little bit surprised to hear the answer and it's Shakespeare. So now I'm going to try to wonder if you are actually a conservative, masquerading as a liberal. When we were in law school together, you let the bar review right every week and you have this poster all over law school and a bar review and it's a pun. When we talk of the bar in law school, we mean the lawyer's bar, but actually you mean bar. Drinking review, it was fun. I think I win only once the bar review. You guys drink too much. I can't do that, but it's very fond memories. I really appreciate you took the initiative. Now we are getting to the end of our show, the time just flies. We always end our show with two generic questions to our distinguished guest. One is if time travel permitted, if you were to give some advice to yourself in your 20s, what would you say to yourself, a younger you, Bobak? Oh gosh, if I were in my early 20s giving myself advice, I'd tell myself to have more fun. I would do so many more things that I then I already have done and I did a lot of things and you went over it quite well to be introduction to the show. But your early 20s are your opportunity to go and do things and do more things because things like law school, things like graduate school, they'll always be there. Well, that youth and that freedom you have, that it's something where I would travel more. I probably end up traveling a lot more and trying to maybe perhaps even a few more things than I already had. Thank you, very wise. And the second question is, is there any particular book, article, movie, documentary you're enjoying at the time really want to share with our audience? That's a really tough question. Now, I would say, gosh, I mean, I don't read as many novels as I would like. So I'm more of a newspaper reader, an avid newspaper reader in New York Times, anything else I can grab my hands on. So I almost tell people, like, if you really want to broaden your mind, if you really want to become a fully formed person, pick a good newspaper, like a Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, this nowadays, but you know, pick something like that and just read it consistently for several months. If you don't already do that, because if you can do that, you'll find yourself broadening your mind and finding yourself and not just in whatever niche you're in now, but allow yourself to broaden yourself as a human being and learn more about what's going on. And I mean, every section, read it all just so that you have a better, more complete understanding of how the world works. Thank you. Very nice. I have one question only for you. And this question is very profound and really eager to hear your answer. Where we are going? What's your prediction for 2023 going forward? I listened to Yan Braemer and Preet Bharara yesterday. And then I read a lot of political pundits, economic analysts. I think that generally speaking, people are pretty pessimistic. And some people even prepare for a nuclear war or an economic collapse in certain parts of the world. And that if China collapse, they will bring the war down, economy down. And if Russia collapse, and it definitely will have some consequences, some of the desire, some of not desire. And I'm not going to put you in a position to say something and to analyze something very politically sensitive. But I do want to hear from intellectuals because I think the intellectuals are the backbone of the nation. I don't totally trust the politicians. I don't totally trust the financial analysts, but I trust intellectuals. So I want to hear you thoughts on the current affairs and your prediction on where we are going in the coming years. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I personally am not a cynic in a lot of ways. I am an eternal optimist. So what I think is things don't always necessarily, but at the same time, it's moderated. I don't think things go as bad as people expect or as good as people expect. I think things even out now, obviously, we're dealing with terrible things like war, like definitely economic uncertainty. And I do think the economy is going to certainly dip a bit. But I think all in all, things end up more or less staying the same and gradually getting better. That's my hope. I think when you actually look, sure, things go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, but they slowly kind of keep going upwards in a trajectory. So I think whenever I look at things, whenever I talk to students about the future, I always encourage them to feel that there is a reason for optimism and a reason to keep playing the game, to keep being part of it and being encouraged that things will go well and to be patient. That's a good advice. Now I know why your students love you. So you're always attentive, very thoughtful, considerate and always encourage the students to maximize their potentials and keep a very positive attitude toward their lives and toward the war. I really appreciate that. Well, we are ending our show just right on time. Again, we have our good friend, Bobak Hai-Eri, lawyer, lecturer, reporter, live from Bakersfield, live from Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Los Angeles to joining us. I really appreciate your time and what a wonderful American story and even you are two cities. But I think that finally you have the opportunity to interview our favorite immigrant. Thank you so much for everything, Bobak. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasant conversation and I enjoyed it so much. Well, good luck with your reporting and enjoying the game. Thank you. Take care. Aloha. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.