What is an Iranian? Well, meet my brother-in-law, Amir Hosein, serving his mandatory two years in the Iranian military. He'd like you to know that his hobbies include playing the piano and fostering orphaned kiddies. Meet my husband. He prays five times a day, but I think his biggest insult to American society came when he tried to use two slang words in a sentence, told the jeweler he didn't want to buy the brooch because the duke had too much bling bling. Meet your terrorists. Or what the media, some people in American society would like you to believe our terrorists, but I'm here to debunk some myths. Let's start with the first one. Iran is pronounced Iran as in Iran down the street naked. No. Let's take this in two parts. Imagine that a green gummy spider has crawled down and landed in your lap. Your reaction is, eee. Imagine I've introduced you to my friend, Ron. Ron, two parts, eee, Ron. Put them together, Iran. Country that's bordered by Iraq to the west, Afghanistan to the east, home to about 74 million people, over 50 percent of them are under the age of 25. Known for its oil, pistachios, Persian carpets, and kitties. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, what's the difference? They're all brown. No. There's three main differences. Religion, Arab countries are mostly Sunni Muslims while in Iran they are Shiite Muslims. We have language. In Iran they speak Farsi and while it shares a lot of the same alphabet as the Arabic alphabet, it doesn't sound the same. And finally we have culture. In Iran they follow and embedded Zorashkian tradition. Myth number three. Women have burkas and have little status. I had my BFF knee and Miller do this little diagram to help out. There's three ways you can dress. One being the Chaudur which is worn by mostly religious women. It's from head to toe but notice that the face is still uncovered. The one in the middle they wear usually in professional settings or educational institutions. But mostly the last one, the Rousari, that covers your hair. With this said women push the limits as much as they can. Scarves are a freedom of expression and the more hair you can show the merrier. I bring this up because in Iran you have women in the parliament, pilots, captains of ships. There's a picture that I wanted to show you of many cousins there. In it you have an animation writer, a general practitioner, a dentist, and a fabric designer. All except the fabric designer are female. Myth number four. Iran only produces nut jobs. Imagine if Americans were judged based on what people saw of their politicians and government leaders. Well let's focus on these people instead. Shearing a body, a human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Christine Amonpoor, my favorite correspondent. We have presidents of Ebays, VP's of tech companies. Myth number five. Iran is a third world country where people ride camels. No. There was this whole thing called an Islamic revolution in this eight year war with a neighboring country but their leaders in nanotechnology, stem cell research, pharmacology, the list goes on and on and look it snows there. Their cars and a metro line. Myth number six. Iranian spend all of their time chanting death to America and protesting. Well yes and no. They protest oppression and you might have seen it recently with the green movement. I bring this all up so that you guys can maybe look at Iranians and Iranian Americans a little bit different. They're a complex people yes. There's no set Iranian or Iranian American just like there's no set Mexican or Norse, no set Norwegian. I wanted to end this with a quote from my grandmother but I realized he uses way too many sexual innuendo so I've taken this one instead. I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. It's funny that a book in elementary school put it all on the right words. We're just a bunch of boo rathles. Thank you.