When Dialogue Becomes a Civic Architecture: Inside Mahdi Ahmadi’s Philosophy of Conversation

There are episodes of Cozy Corner that feel less like interviews and more like shared discoveries. The tenth episode of the special series on Persian conversation-based videocasts is one of those moments. In this conversation with Mahdi Ahmadi, the founder of Madreseye Azad Fekri (Azad Fekri School) and the mind behind Resaneh Azad (Azad Media), what takes shape is not just a discussion about media. It becomes a reflection on how dialogue can help a society understand itself. Ahmadi’s presence, shaped by twelve years of continuous work on public discussion, gives the episode a depth that feels rare in today’s media landscape. The result is a study of why conversations matter, how they must be designed, and why someone would dedicate more than a decade of their life to creating a place where conflicting ideas can be safely examined.

From Personal Confusion to a Public Method

Ahmadi’s journey began long before cameras and YouTube. In the early days he was a physics student at Sharif University who suddenly found himself drawn to fundamental questions about knowledge, society, and truth. People around him offered contradictory advice about what he should study or how he should build a life of thought. One encouraged him to stay in academia, another warned him against it. One told him to follow philosophy, another insisted he should pursue the social sciences. These opposing opinions created a kind of mental courtroom where he compared ideas in his head and imagined what would happen if he could place them in front of one another.

This personal confusion was the seed that grew into the first version of Azad. He created a format called lesson in dialogue. In that model two thinkers who disagreed on a topic would first present their views clearly, then engage in conversation in front of a shared audience. This structure was a way of pulling ideas apart so that their foundations could be examined. It was not entertainment. It was an attempt to illuminate the hidden complexity that exists underneath every opinion.

These sessions eventually grew into hundreds of encounters over nearly a decade. Around fifteen thousand people registered to attend. The format became both an intellectual practice and a method for handling uncertainty. For Ahmadi and his team this was never a commercial product. It was a lifeline for people who wanted to understand their world in a deeper and more responsible way.

When the World Changes, the Format Must Change

As the years passed two major shifts forced Ahmadi to rethink how the project should continue. The first was economic. Students, who formed the main audience for the early programs, could no longer afford to pay for them. The second was cultural. Public interest in dialogue grew rapidly, especially during the rise of platforms such as Clubhouse. Suddenly discussions that once belonged to small intellectual groups became accessible to a much wider public.

Ahmadi saw that the method he had developed should no longer remain behind a paywall. He wanted to open it to everyone. That decision led him to YouTube, where he rebuilt the project under the name Resaneh Azad. What began years earlier as a private attempt to bring clarity to his own questions became a large public platform that offers structured conversation at a time when societies need clarity more than ever.

Dialogue as a Tool for Collective Intelligence

In his talk with Cozy Corner, Ahmadi explains why dialogue is more than a form of communication. He sees it as a mechanism for helping societies think. When two experts lay out their views and then challenge each other respectfully, they expose the hidden assumptions behind their arguments. The audience is the one who benefits. Instead of adopting ideas blindly, viewers learn how to evaluate them.

This is why Ahmadi insists that the goal of conversation is not conversion. No one expects a fifty or sixty year old expert to abandon their worldview inside a studio. What matters is the process. When people see ideas tested through structured disagreement, they learn how to detect weak foundations early. In fragmented societies this ability is crucial. It prevents the rise of simplistic solutions that may feel appealing but collapse under examination.

The Hidden Craft of the Host

Many people assume that a host must be the most knowledgeable person in the room. Ahmadi rejects this idea completely. He describes the host as an engineer of dialogue. The host is responsible for understanding the shape of the arguments and creating the conditions in which two different paradigms can touch each other without collapsing into noise.

This involves a surprising amount of behind the scenes work. Ahmadi and his team track the evolution of five hundred to one thousand thinkers every year. They watch their public statements, monitor their intellectual networks, analyze their temperaments, and map out which pairings might produce productive disagreement. Some guests are too similar to generate useful friction. Some are too volatile to sustain a calm exchange. Others have complementary perspectives that can turn a two hour conversation into a masterclass.

A good conversation is not an accident. It is curated with the precision of a social experiment.

Trust as the Foundation of Meaningful Dialogue

Another theme that surfaces strongly in the Cozy Corner episode is the importance of trust. Guests must feel safe with the host. They must believe that the host will not misrepresent them, manipulate the conversation, or position them as targets. Ahmadi draws a clear line between neutrality and emotional detachment. A neutral host is not someone without feelings. It is someone who refuses to impose judgment and instead creates a space where the audience can decide for itself.

This trust does not come automatically. Over the years Ahmadi has experienced situations where guests questioned his credibility or background before speaking. He believes they were right to do so. Trust is built slowly and through consistency. Fairness, transparency, honest editing, and a refusal to ambush guests are all essential to this process. The result is a space where people can share real thoughts, not just rehearsed performances.

When Devotion Replaces Strategy

Throughout the interview Ahmadi speaks openly about how irrational many of his choices were. He took out loans he could not afford, purchased equipment that terrified him financially, and spent years operating with minimal resources. He remembers sitting on the curb in Republic Street, debating whether he should risk the last money he had on a camera. He recalls losing recordings to a hired team and deciding at that moment to learn production himself.

This level of devotion is not common. It grew from a mixture of obsession, restlessness, and a sense of responsibility toward public life. For Ahmadi conversation is not content creation. It is emotional release. It is a way of responding to crises that weigh on the country. When society faces issues related to water, foreign policy, or economic inequality, he turns to dialogue as his form of action.

Azad has survived because the audience sensed this sincerity. Donations that saved the project came from people who believed the team was working with genuine care. Without that belief the platform would have collapsed many times.

Reading Society from Within

One of the most fascinating insights in the interview is Ahmadi’s method for identifying topics. He avoids relying on direct audience polls or trend analysis. Instead he looks at his team. The team is intentionally diverse. It includes people from left, right, religious, non religious, younger, older, academic, and policy backgrounds. Their reactions to the world become the first signal of what matters in society.

If someone on the team arrives upset by a public issue, it is a sign that the topic is alive. When multiple members express concern about the same subject, Ahmadi takes that as a confirmation that the topic should become a program. The result is content that feels aligned with the emotional landscape of the audience, not because of algorithms, but because of human resonance.

Holding the Line Between Calm and Conflict

Ahmadi believes that long form audiences seek depth rather than chaos. He warns guests not to come expecting confrontation. A heated argument might produce a viral moment but it destroys the integrity of a two hour episode. A sustainable conversation needs rhythm. It needs calm. It needs two people who can challenge each other without turning the space into a battlefield.

This attention to balance explains why some Azad episodes feel like rivers that deepen as they flow. Guests build on each other’s points, clarify disagreements, and reveal layers that would not emerge in casual conversation. For Ahmadi these moments feel like striking water after digging through stone. When it happens the audience can sense it instantly.

Dialogue as Public Infrastructure

Perhaps the most powerful part of the Cozy Corner conversation appears when Ahmadi discusses the future. He does not see dialogue as media. He sees it as infrastructure. Societies survive when they have institutions that help them think. Markets help economic actors decide. Schools help children learn. Courts help communities resolve disputes. A platform like Azad can help a society process national issues and refine collective judgment.

Ahmadi dreams of amphitheaters where sixty or seventy people can attend live discussions. He imagines public spaces dedicated to civic thinking. He speaks about creating English language programs that enter global conversations about Iran. For him these ideas are not fantasies. They are possible futures for a culture of dialogue that continues to grow.

The Creativity Behind the Craft

When the conversation reaches its last moments Hossein Nasiri asks Ahmadi where he experiences his own creative peak. Ahmadi answers that it often happens during solitary walks at night. The city calms down and for a moment his mind can move freely. At other times creativity appears in positive conversations, in exchanges where criticism helps him refine an idea instead of tearing it down. In those moments time disappears. His mind becomes fully alive. This may be the clearest explanation of why he has dedicated so much of his life to dialogue. It is where he feels most human.

Conclusion

Mahdi Ahmadi is not simply a host. He is someone who has built a structure for public thinking through patience, sincerity, and an unusual level of personal sacrifice. Resaneh Azad is one of the few places in Persian media where disagreement is treated as a path toward clarity rather than conflict. Through carefully designed conversations Ahmadi shows that dialogue can become a source of collective intelligence. In a world filled with noise and fast reactions, he is building a space for slow understanding. And perhaps this is the true power of his work. He reminds us that ideas deserve the time it takes to unfold and that societies grow when they learn how to think together.

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