Afford Anything - The Surreal Business of War: A Reporter's Account of the Russian Economy in Chaos

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

#450: On the First Friday of each month, we roll out a bonus episode that’s totally different from what we usually produce. These bonus episodes are special, unique, and – we hope – round out a fuller, more multifaceted picture of what we think about. Today, I’m introducing you to a business and economics correspondent from Moscow who I’m honored to call a close friend. Her name is Andrea Palasciano. She’s covered business stories from Paris, Marseilles, Rome and Moscow. She’s fluent in Italian, German, Spanish, French, English and Russian. She’s covered stories ranging from diamond mining in Siberia to sleep deprivation. She’s close friends with Evan Gershkovich, the 31-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who’s currently in a Russian prison. Today is his 100th day behind bars. Andrea and I were both Knight-Bagehot Fellows and bonded during our year of immersing ourselves into deeply understanding how to tell better stories about business and economics. She joins me in this special episode to talk about the stories she’s covered, the sabbatical experience, and why it’s critical to understand how a bond works (!!). Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode450 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So on the first Friday of every month, we do a totally different episode from our norm. Today's episode is maybe the differentest of all. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. And that speaks to opportunity cost and it speaks to resource allocation. You've got a limited amount of money, time, energy, attention. So where are you going to direct it? becoming a wise allocator of resources, that is a lifelong challenge and practice. And that's what this show is here to help you explore and help you facilitate.

My name's Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. Typically, we are a weekly show with new episodes coming out Wednesday-ish. And normally on our weekly shows, we will either interview a guest about money, career, behavioral economics, investing, we'll either interview a guest around those topics, or we'll answer questions that come from you, typically questions around investing, budgeting, savings, debt pay off, midlife career moves, whatever is on your mind. But on the first Friday of every month, we do something completely different. Our first Friday episodes are our time to

experiment, to do things that are special, that are unique, to introduce you to different types of guests or different topics. And so today, I want to bring on a guest who gives an interview that is very personal, very meaningful, that I hope will resonate with many of you. So as you know, if you're a long-time listener, I spent this past year doing a, fellowship for mid-career business journalists at Columbia. One of my fellow fellows is a woman by the name of Andrea Palaciano. She is originally Italian, but has been an economics and business correspondent across Europe, including for many years, based out of Moscow.

She's fluent in six languages, which is stunning to me. I struggle to be fluent in one. And as a business and economics correspondent, she has been based not just out of Moscow, but also from Paris, Marseille, and Rome. And so some of the things that we cover in our interview are sampling of some of the stories that she covered, the diamond industry in Siberia, the brick economy.

We talk about cryptocurrency and the tech sector through the lens of how that played out in Russia and in Europe. Andrea was right there on the Russia-Ukraine border on the first day of the war. She shares her personal story of that as well. So this is a very special episode. Andrea is also a very close friend of mine. And she is also very close friends with Evan Gershowitz, the Wall Street Journal reporter who is currently in prison.

So I invited Andrea on to this very special First Friday episode so that she can talk about business and the economy, which is what she covered from Moscow, and so that she can share a bit more insight into what it really takes to cover business, to talk about what a bond is, or inflation, to truly understand the economy. She and I have both put our lives on hold in a sense, or our careers. She and I have both taken a sabbatical for a year so that we could deep dive into really understanding the economy at a deep level so that we can convey that to our audiences. And so in this upcoming interview, we talk about that as well. So without any further ado, this is a very special first Friday bonus episode with reporter Andrea Palaciana. Hi, Andrea.

Hi, Paula. Thanks for having me. Andrea, you have been a reporter at, and I know I'm going to butcher the pronunciation, the Agency France Press, and I'm going to ask you how to actually pronounce that in a moment. But you've been a reporter there for a number of years. Can you tell us what types of business stories did you cover

and how did that impact your readership? Okay, so I'm going to present. pronounce that for you. It's Agence France Press. So you had a very decent pronunciation. But like this short version is the AFP and it's one of those big old news agencies that have been around for almost 100 years or more. I would have to check that. But for a really long time, basically, along with Reuters and the AP and newcomer Bloomberg. So yes, I've been working for them for almost 10 years. I did not start out as a business reporter, actually. I started out as a general roving reporter in France and in Italy. And then I became a business correspondent when I moved to Russia.

And that's where I was before we met. So I was in Moscow for five years. And that's where I got into business and economics journalism. So basically, we did business stories that would be of interest to a general audience abroad. So we were not necessarily writing for really specialized audiences. We were looking for anything in the business and economics sphere that would have an interest for people living very far away. And the area we covered was huge, or the area I covered was huge, because not only is there Russia, which is one of the largest countries in the world, 11 time zones, But also we have a big office in Ukraine. We have an office in Central Asia, in the Caucasus. And so the stories we wrote from that region where, you know, obviously there is still the consequences of 70 years of communism, of the Soviet Union. And those, you know, are still have an impact on the way the economic and political system of these countries work. But mainly it was just, you know, Russia, obviously, obviously, Now that the war has been going on for over a year, everything has changed. But in those five years, I was there, I covered oil and gas. I covered the diamond industry. So as an example of a really interesting story I did is I flew out to Siberia, to this region called Yakutia. And I did a story on the diamond mining industry, which was really interesting because everybody knows what a diamond looks like. And everybody at

some point in their lives is maybe faced with the question of whether to receive or gift someone jewelry and to see what the process is and how diamonds are mined and the whole economy around that. That was so interesting. So I got to see a lot of the places where commodities are produced and the way factories work. So I really feel like on a personal level I got a behind the scenes of how the economy actually works before we receive our consumer products or before we switch on the light or drive our cars. That was really interesting. And otherwise, general stories that would be of interest to an international audience.

Like, obviously in Russia, like issues of poverty were still quite prevalent. Even though there is no extreme poverty, there is a very large part of the population that is working poor. And so the fact that it's still very common in Russia, for example, for people to actually grow produce in their backyards because that is a big sort of saving. And some people actually cannot live without that. And so it was also really interesting to go beyond the big cities, big and modern and rich cities that are Moscow and St. Petersburg to actually cover the rest of the country that has a very different economic reality. Most of the people who are listening to this are American or Canadian, predominantly American, having covered business in Moscow in the five years leading up to the start of the war, what do you think that Americans should understand about economics in Russia? What is it that American should understand that we don't yet understand?

So one thing that was really surprising and interesting to me when I first started out in that job is that there were a lot of very intense economic ties, actually, between Russia and the U.S. And for example, once a year, there was the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. They called it the Russian Davos. It was more like a slogan than a reality. But certainly in the 2000s, when the Russian economy was booming, it was a really important meeting point for people from. all over their world. So I got to go every year to this forum and one of the largest delegations was always American. So the American business actors were there. They sent a lot of people from the U.S. A lot of Americans worked and did business in Russia still. So I was there 2017 to 2020. And, you know, I met a lot of Americans, certainly a lot less than, you know, before 2014 or in the 2000s, there were a lot of ties.

And I think when the war started and the West hit Russia with those unprecedented sanctions, I think we got to see how much unraveling there was to do because our economies were so connected. So that was maybe the first surprising thing to me. Another thing that I have thought repeatedly over the years is that Russia and the U.S. are actually more similar than you would think. they still consider each other to be the big foe, while also wanting to do business with each other in a way. All of what I'm saying is no longer valid the way it used to be because the war really reshuffled all the cards. But a lot of the behaviors are quite similar. And I think it comes from Russia's history of being like a superpower.

The U.S. has a similar history. And so I feel like that history is still visible in the way the country still is today and in the way Russians are. There is a bit of that big power mentality still in institutions and people in the country in general. You know, many of the people who are listening to this are index fund investors. And one really popular type of index fund invests in what are known as the BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China. do you see that grouping, you know, these are very different nations. Do you see that grouping as still cohesive today? Can Brazil, India, Russia, China be lumped together into the same index fund?

Does that make sense in the way that it might once have? Or did it ever make sense? Certainly, these countries have had a lot of things in common for many years, and it has made a lot of sense for many years. And what is interesting now is that since the war began, some of these countries have actually been drifting closer to each other. So like Russia and China have been strengthening their ties. India also to a certain extent has intensified its economic ties with Russia and China. So I think I don't know about Brazil, but certainly those three countries like India, China and Russia are going to have some convergence. in the next years that is going to be interesting. And so in this big redrawing of geopolitics that has economic implications, I do think that there is going to be a flurry of activity between those three countries.

You gave us an example of one of the types of stories that you covered, which was the diamond mining in Siberia. If you were back there today and you were specifically doing business and economic stories, what would you cover? Or what do you think are the interesting stories that are happening there, particularly what would interest a U.S. audience? When the war started, I was in Russia. I was in southern Russia close to the Ukrainian border. And then I traveled back to Moscow. And I stayed in Russia for about five months into the war before I joined you, Paula, here at Columbia. So I really got to cover the impact of the sanctions, the first impact of the sanctions. And also the way Russia response. to those first days, weeks, months, I found it really interesting to see those first days. The very first response there was from the West to Russia invading Ukraine, the first sanctions.

And, you know, the way the ruble crashed and the way the Russian Central Bank responded. And then the way all of a sudden, just a few weeks before the start of the war, I had been at Moscow Stock Exchange, they were having a big launch or like a big rebranding. had this podcast that had millions of listeners every week. And there was a sense of, you know, wanting to do more, wanting to be more modern. And then a few weeks later, the war started, and the Moscow Stock Exchange essentially closed down. I have never witnessed a medium-sized stock exchange just closed down. It's hard to describe. I mean, people who have been covering this kind of economy for decades have seen these things happen, especially.

in Russia, but to me it was certainly like really extraordinary. And then when they did reopen the stock exchange, it was so controlled that it was essentially not a real stock exchange anymore. You know, also what was really fascinating was the whole debate about whether Russia was going to default on its debt, you know, and Russia claiming that it was an artificial default because all of their funds were frozen abroad and all of the payment systems were not working anymore. and so they did have the money, but they couldn't pay it. Those debates unfolding, I thought, were extremely interesting. And to a U.S. audience, I think it was just interesting to understand what is a country defaulting

on its debt and what happens when a country defaults on its debt. And what does it mean both for the people who are owed money and who maybe are holding Russian debt and for the country itself? So all of these things, to see them unfold in, real time, that was like just incredibly thrilling and interesting. And then I got to cover the beginning of Russia turning its economy around to turn it into a war economy essentially. And that is also something that seems to be out of a history book, right? When when factories who were producing maybe, I don't know, kitchen appliances all of a sudden switch gears and start producing

things that are needed for the war effort. So to see all of that was really, obviously, I want to really say, because it's important to say that I was really shocked and heartbroken and it was incredibly upsetting because, first of all, it was just incredibly shocking and awful to see what was happening in Ukraine and the people dying and, you know, so much destruction. But also, I had been in Russia four or five years and I had seen sort of Russia try to make its economy better. And then overnight all of those years of efforts, also the efforts of various business communities to build ties, like, were all of a sudden wiped out overnight. So there was just a big sense of destruction in general. Can you tell us, and we'll link to some of your stories in the show

notes as well, but can you tell us about some of the other stories that you worked on? So one project that I worked on for a fairly long time in 2021 was a podcast, a long-form podcast, about how this huge wave of repression swept over Russia. And in hindsight, we see that it was all a prelude to the war. But back then, we didn't have all of those ways of understanding what it meant. And so we started out with the main opposition figure in Russia, Alexei Navalny being poisoned. while he was on a plane with a nerve agent, a military-grade nerve agent called Novichok. He was then flown to Germany. It was like out of a movie, you know?

Being like in the newsroom covering that story felt like it couldn't be real life. It was just too crazy. And I remember being on duty that night when he was flying from Russia to Germany and was he going to make it. So we did a whole podcast series about that. moment in time. And one of the episodes was about corruption in Russia. So we went fairly deeply into the Russian state and economy we're in at that moment in time. And because this opposition figure, Alexei, had built a whole career exposing incredible corruption at all levels of the state. And at the very, very top level, we really told this story of how, you know, this opposition figure got like

hundreds of millions of views on his YouTube investigations, for example, about this incredibly lavish billion-dollar palace that he was accusing Putin of having built on the shore of the Black Sea, obviously with the money of Russian people. And so we tried to show like the scale of corruption in Russia. And while it's an incredibly rich country in terms of natural resources, obviously oil, gas, diamonds, copper, Russia has pretty much everything. The country is so huge, you know, 11 time zones. But still, the population is kept in a state of working poor, as we said earlier, millions of Russians just get by. So nobody dies of hunger, but people have to survive in a way. And to see that contrast was really striking. And it's also something a lot of people didn't know. in those years about Russia, because, you know, you see either some really backward images of people still living like it's the Soviet Union, or you see glossy videos of Moscow. Moscow is a very modern city. Another thing that I really enjoyed covering was the Russian tech industry because it was

very advanced. I'm using the past tense because I feel like it's not comparable to the way things are now. But for example, there was what they called the Russian Google and Amazon all in one, this company called Yandex. And it was a pretty exciting story because they had managed in Russia and in the former Soviet Union to be the number one in front of Google for maps, for the search engine, for pretty much everything. And so that was really interesting to cover because I don't think that there are a lot of companies doing the same things. thing in the world, obviously in China, but I thought that was always pretty interesting. And, you know, I got to cover sort of self-driving cars in Russia and all of these, like, super

futuristic things that were happening. You had like little robots delivering food around Moscow. You had facial recognition to pay for the metro, so you would just like walk through the metro gates. You wouldn't have to flash your card or anything because you recognize your face and you could go through. Clearly behind that, there is like a huge. huge surveillance apparatus. But on the technology aspect of things, Russia was very futuristic in a sense, or, you know, like everything from paying your taxes to dealing with any kind of administrative thing, booking doctor appointments, anything could be done just on apps. You know, it was a 24-7 city. You could get a manicure at 3 a.m. And so all of these things that

you don't necessarily think of when you think of that part of the world and that are in a sense. like similar to the large American cities. So yeah, I did a lot of that. Obviously, in a place like Russia, it's impossible to just cover business and not cover politics. So I was doing also a lot of sort of political coverage. And for example, one story that I remember covering is Russia had this like really robust and excellent media landscape that was both had some kind of a historic tradition, but also after the end of the Soviet Union really thrived. And so, there was this newspaper that was the equivalence of maybe the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. It was an excellent newspaper called Viedemosti. It had been co-founded by also Western media and Russia.

Imagine that, like Western media going to Russia to co-found a newspaper. And then there was a takeover, basically, by one of the oligarchs that ran one of the biggest oil and gas companies. And, you know, there was this hostile takeover. And the newspaper was gutted. And it, became like a shadow of what it was. And, you know, you got to see how business and politics are intertwined very, very deeply and how they spill over in every sector of the economy. Another story that I remember doing a few weeks after the war started is, maybe some listeners know what Alada is, a lota car. A lota is like the cult Soviet car. L-O-T-A? L-A-D-A-D-A. L-A-D-A. Yeah.

So, you know, in all over Europe, there are like still clubs of nostalgic people. And so this car was the car of the Soviet Union. And it has this humongous factory on the River Volga. One of these factories that power a whole city, like everybody who lives in that city has something to do with the factory. I think at the height of its production capacity, like tens of thousands of people work for this factory. And then, you know, Renault Nissan, the French auto giant, stepped in and was part of that operation. And when the war started and the sanctions were announced, people were wondering what is going to happen. Is this French-Japanese car giant going to stay in Russia and keep producing cars in this big factory?

You know, so we went to try and tell that story and how, you know, every time there were sanctions or there was some economic hardship a whole. city and a whole region suffered. So it was so interesting to see how geopolitics then had really, really specific consequences for a town of hundreds of thousands of workers. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in payments technology built to evolve with your business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses of any size.

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Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R-com. Sale ends December 7th. I know in Ukraine there was a big crypto scene. Do you know does it still? And did Russia have one slash does it? So I would have to check on where things are right now. Obviously, the whole crypto landscape has changed so much.

But when I was there, it was all still flourishing. And so, yes, there was a big crypto scene in Russia as well. A lot of people in the Soviet, in the former, Soviet Union, or in back then, there were a lot of very highly educated people. And so in general, the post-Soviet populations are hackers, you know. For example, the co-founder of Google was Russian, right? Sergey Brin. And there are, you know, even in Silicon Valley, there are a lot of people from Russia, Ukraine. So it is a country with a very robust internet culture and programming culture. So, yes, there was a lot going on. And, you know, in Siberia,

for example, where it's cold and energy is really cheap, there were those, you know, mining farms. And so you had people who were, you know, growing their vegetables back then who turned to mining cryptocurrency because it was so much more lucrative. So there was a lot of that. The Russian Central Bank was pretty strict on it, though. And they were pretty early on. They took measures to, they didn't harness cryptocurrency in the way a lot of people thought Russia would. They had a very serious central banker. She's still in place. Now she's obviously working to prop up the Russian economy in the war.

But for many years, she was killed as a very successful central banker. And she, you know, took a lot of the measures that a number of countries took a bit later. She was taking already. And, yes, definitely. And, you know, what comes with that is that a lot of crypto scams and a lot of, like, the fishing scandals and all of that, a lot of that, a lot of that came from Russia and Ukraine as well. You were there right at the Russia-Ukraine border on the day the war began. Can you tell us about that experience?

Yes. So for Weekster had been that huge military buildup at the border. And we could see it on satellite imagery. The U.S. was warning the world that it was all happening. And so we went down with a little team, a video journalist, a photographer, and myself. We packed flag jackets into our car and we were in the city of Tagan Rock, which is on the border to Ukraine in the south of Russia. We just went to see what was going on to see this military buildup up close. We drove around the border for hours and days and we were in the little villages and we saw all of these tanks and all of these soldiers just waiting.

And they didn't seem to know what was going on or how long they were. would wait or in which direction they would have to go once the wait was over, whether they would be going back home or going into Ukraine. And so it was this surreal experience of driving around. There were obviously a lot of checks everywhere. You couldn't get too close to the border, but you could get reasonably close and you would see this eerie scene of like dozens of tanks just waiting in villages. We knew something was going to happen because there had been a number of signs, there had been a number of speeches from Putin, but on the night it actually happened, I remember going to sleep in my clothes because my editor called me and said, listen, get a few

hours of sleep, but try to be up very early. I'd like 3 or 4 a.m. something is going on. And so I did get a call from him at like 4 a.m. saying it's starting. Get out there. And so in our hotel rooms, we were already in our clothes, so we just literally grabbed our backpacks, went down to the lobby. And I will never forget, like, there was like Putin on TV announcing the start of the invasion. And there was the little lady, the little Russian lady, she must have been in her 60s, who was the night receptionist. And she was there. And I was like, I remember. I remember arriving downstairs at 4 a.m. and telling her it's starting. You know, the invasion is starting. And she, you know, wasn't another channel or, like, had it on mute. I don't really remember. I remember the first thing she said to me. It was like, it's probably fake news. And then she sort of, like, tuned in on the volume was off. So she switched it back on. And we watched the speech together. And she, couldn't believe it, but it was there. It was on screen. It was the man himself was saying it,

so it was not fake news. In the meantime, then my colleagues arrived, and we drove off to the same villages and to the same points at the border where we were on the day before, and all of the tanks were gone. You know, all of the tanks we had seen the day before just waiting around were gone, because they had gone into Ukraine. It was incredible. surreal to see on TV the images of Kiev being bombed. We could literally not believe it. And on the Russian side, it was quiet. It was eerie. We got continuously checked by police. So there was, everybody was very nervous, but it was quiet, you know? So I think we didn't sleep for days. We just went around reporting the first protests, the very first protests, were incredible because, so we were in this

town in southern Russia close to the border, and this town called Rostov, and it's a medium-sized city, actually, it's not a town, but, you know, there was going to be a protest. There were more policemen than regular people on this square where the protests were supposed to happen. People assembled, and they were standing alone. just looking at each other, trying to sort of find kindred people that were also there to protest. But people did not assemble. Nobody chanted. Nobody even talked. They were literally just people on their own standing around just to be there. It was just incredible that the fear was so strong and that people still came out and stood there was really quite something. And then, you know, everything started to become so

difficult. I mean, working in Russia was already difficult, but it, you know, went to another dimension because even at that protest, anybody we talked to, we had to be extremely careful because we would see that the police would immediately go up to the people we had spoken to to ask them what was going on. What did they tell us? Who are they? So while in Ukraine, bombs were falling, people were dying. In Russia, this like fear and tension. swept over the country, or at least where I was. And we stayed for a number of days. A lot of the stories we did were about, first of all,

the first refugees, quote-unquote, arriving, you know, the first wounded soldiers, but also what did people know? You know, a lot of the people who live there on the border didn't actually know what was going on. What they knew was what they saw on Russian TV, where obviously they got fed the official propaganda. So that was really also so interesting and so heartbreaking to see that people believed that it was probably the right thing to do because they didn't know. They didn't know the truth. And then obviously they had close to the whole airspace of all of the regions of Russia that were close to Ukraine. So we couldn't fly back the way we had arrived. And so we took the train back to Moscow for over 20 hours. And we made it back to Moscow. And I saw the city that I had seen before the war started.

And now the war had started, and on the surface, everything seemed normal. And yet there was this, like, history-changing thing had happened. And, you know, in the following days, I started to see the little things that had changed. And I remember keeping a diary those days, but it was crazy. Like, my whole team, like my colleagues, we were all in a state of shock. And yet working the hardest we had ever worked in our lives and sleeping very little. and we would all do these things where we got on the wrong buses or I would order coffee and then like just let it go cold in front of me

because I forgot that I ordered coffee. I would just, you know, try to open my front door and I couldn't open it and then I realized I was on the wrong floor. You know, like it was, I don't know how to describe the tension of those first days. And then obviously most of the people I knew started leaving, Most of the British and American journalists, I think all of them left in those days. And so there was literally the sense of we didn't know what was going to happen. And then those fake news laws were announced, which criminalized journalism essentially,

even more than it already was the case. And at that point, it became a very personal decision for each and every foreign journalist, not even to speak of the Russian journalists who, you know, we had to decide. What do we do? everybody had to decide, do we stay or do we go? And so I stayed with a number of my colleagues for about five months until it was time for me to come to Columbia. Where am I at you, Paula? I was actually at that moment going to transition into talking about our experience at Columbia, and I'll do that in a moment, but this is a perfect opportunity to talk about one person who made the

decision to stay. Right. So in those first months, 90% of American and British journalists left. And a lot of European media stayed. So I stayed for five months. And then I came to Columbia. And then slowly, slowly in the fall of 22 and early 2023, people started trickling back in. Foreign journalists started to trickle back in.

And one of the journalists who returned to Russia was Evan Gershkovich. he's a 31-year-old journalist. His parents left the Soviet Union in the 70s and moved to the U.S., and so he was born in the U.S., but he had a passion for journalism and for Russia. And I met him almost as soon as I moved to Moscow in 2017-2018, and back then he was working for the Moscow Times, and then we worked together at AFP for a year, and then he started working for the Wall Street Journal. So, you know, we were in the same friend circle. We went to the same parties. We had the same life. And then, you know, once I was here, Columbia, he returned to Russia. And as some of the listeners may know, he's now in prison in Russia. His trial is ongoing. And, you know, we don't know what's going to happen to him. There is a tradition of having these political ponds to exchange. And we have seen what happened to Brittany Griner.

she was exchanged, so we don't know what's going to happen to him, but it's been months already, and obviously we all know what's going to happen in court is probably going to be sentenced to something like, you know, decades in prison. So that has been really, really sad and hit very close to home, and all of his friends and former colleagues are, we are just feel power, I don't know. Sorry. We organize a big event here at Columbia and a number of other things to talk about him, to make sure people don't forget about him, to know he was and is this amazing person and how precious and important it is to have journalists on the ground covering the most difficult stories. And, you know, journalism is so fragile and so precious and independent information from a country like Russia. is so precious. And, you know, he was doing an incredibly important job. And now, you know, we want our friend to be back home and back with his friends and family and able to do his job. And so the uncertainty is really hard to deal with. And obviously, you know, he was just doing his

job. So, yeah. What can we do? What we can do is to not forget about Evan. to read the news, to be interested in the war and what's going on in his fate, and to really cherish quality journalism and support journalism and journalists because we take it for granted until something like this happens. And so, yeah, just keep thinking about it. Oh, and you can actually write to him. A bunch of people have organized to translate his letters,

because everything needs to be translated into Russian. But online, if you type his name, you'll find the web, page where you can write to him in prison. And we'll link to that in the show notes. Yes. But I mean, you know, journalists are taking huge risks. I have another colleague, Arman Soldin, French journalists who died in Ukraine. He was also the same age, 31, 32, who died doing his job.

He was with some very dear colleagues of mine. He worked for AFP too. So obviously this war is devastating for, you. you know, millions of people, but also for the journalists trying to cover it. Well, I hope he gets our letters. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have to keep those letters coming because that's a real lifeline to receive letters and to know people are thinking about you.

We'll return to the show in just a moment. How has it felt, you know, you've started this whole new life. You're in New York. You're literally on the opposite side. of the world from something that you so recently left, how has that felt? It was very surreal. I remember when I first got here, it was good to take a break because, you know, it was such a high-intensity job in such complicated conditions that it is really important to take breaks. But also it did feel in the beginning, I was like, what am I

doing here? You know, my beating hard is still with this story. And here I am doing something completely different. And I felt both so, so lucky to get to do what we did at Columbia, but also so, like, I was checking my phone day and night. I was checking in with my colleagues. I was worried. And I felt I had that feeling that the life I was living was not as meaningful because I wasn't doing my job the way I used to. And obviously, that was the strong feeling in the first months. And I think I was still processing and dealing with all of that. And then I adjusted and I put things into perspective and I understood that I was where I was meant to be and that I would be back and that I would resume my work as a journalist in my coverage of this story. But I've stayed very connected to the whole story and to all my colleagues and friends in Russia and Ukraine.

So the first weeks were a little rocky. And eventually I settled in and I met all of you guys. and it has been truly one of the most enriching and fun and mind-expanding years of my life. So I am so, so happy that I did this. And to clarify for people what we are doing, because I think a lot of the long-term afford-anything audience has had the impression of like, wait, did you just enroll in grad school? What is it? But the program that we're doing is actually a bit different. Tom. I'll let you explain it. So Paula and I, along with eight other people, so there were 10 of us in total, were selected for this fellowship called the Knight Badget Fellowship. And it's a program for mid-career business journalists to come to Columbia. And the big draw, obviously, is that you don't have to pay, but you also get a generous stipend. And so essentially it gives you a year to take off.

from your job to go back to school and to learn new things and to really sharpen those business and economics skills. So we spent the year here. There were a number of different ways to do what we did. Yupala chose to get a master's degree here at the journalism school and business journalism. I chose what they call the MBA track. So I spent most of my time at the business school doing the first year of the MBA. And then I had the option to finish my MBA. So that's what I'm doing right now. the MBA. I don't know. Like, I mean, how lucky were we? How lucky are we? It's incredible to be back in school. And it also made me feel like when I first was in school as a student, I didn't appreciate it enough. And now that, you know, back then when you're in an undergrad,

all you want to do is live, right? You want to live. You want to meet people. You want to experience things. And only half of your brain is, or at least for me, only half of my brain was actually really present for studying. And now that I've, like, lived for 10 years, learning and being in university just like, wow, it's amazing. And I wish I could go back and do undergrad again with the same mindset because it gave me so much more than I remember it giving me the first time around. And since you were doing the first year of the MBA, your courses were very math-heavy. You know, you were taking, I mean, I took accounting, like for the MA in Business Journal. you're supposed to take accounting and corporate finance. But you took like what that plus,

I mean, what else? And as a journalist, how does that tie in? You know, as a business journalist, how does that tie in? Yes. So you're right. I took the whole business school core. And so it's corporate finance. It's statistics. It's microeconomics, macroeconomics, accounting, capital markets and investments. And when you first start doing it, you're like, why am I learning statistics exactly? Why am I learning how to price a bond? And then as you go along, all the pieces of the puzzle come together. And you're like, all of these stories I was writing, I did understand it on a superficial level. Now I actually understand it. I actually understand what a bond is and how it works and how it's priced and, you know, how capital markets work. So it just gives me, like, when I read

business stories and when I will hopefully soon write them, the depth of the understanding of what is going on is really different. And I mean, this year has been such a roller coaster in terms of business news, right? All the bank news, the crypto news. And it was really riveting to be in the business school with people who have skin in the game, you know, and who are, working in those industries or want to work in those industries and see it unfold from the inside in a way and have those professors who've been working in the field for decades explain things to you. That was so much fun. That was just so much fun. I have like no doubt in my mind that it's going to make me so much better as a business journalist, but also just as a general consumer of

of news and in general, like, a human being in the modern economy. I just feel so much more knowledgeable. I mean, accounting, oh my God, you know, I feel like it's a language and it's the language of business. And now that I actually know how it works, I do feel so much better, actually. It was a little painful in the moment, but now that we've done it, I'm really, I'm really happy I did it. Yeah. How did you deal with all of the pressure. I mean, you know, we've just talked about one very high pressure, one very different kind of high pressure, high stakes environment, which is obviously being in war. This is certainly,

you know, you're coddled and safe, but at the same time, there's a lot of intense psychological pressure. So one thing that I have not mentioned on this podcast yet, I guess, until now, is during our year here, there was one student at Columbia. Right around winter break, he he committed suicide. He jumped off of the top of a residence hall. And it's a particular residence hall that you and I walk by every Tuesday when we go to our fellowship dinner.

He was a student athlete. So that adds, I think, another level of pressure. You know, you've gone from one high pressure situation to a very different kind of high pressure situation. How have you dealt with that? So I guess I went through different stages I think in the very beginning, as I was telling you, I had this impression that what am I doing here, this is not what really matters. And obviously, I don't stand by that statement. It was just like my immediate response to arriving in a totally different reality from where I was. So initially, I was like this pressure here that's not real. And then eventually it caught up with me, of course. But I think it really helps to be older when you go back to school because you do realize that yes, there is. pressure, but you're much better equipped to put it into perspective than when you're an undergrad

student. And, you know, we have lived through some things. And so we know that, yes, there is some pressure and it's meant to, you know, make us work harder, make us better. But we have also been out and about in the real world. And we still, I mean, I feel like we were able to put things into perspective, where at least I was and going through it with 10 other people who are, you you know, the same, we have a similar sort of approach to coming back to school. That really helped also to go through this thing together and to talk about how strange it is after having work for five, six, seven, ten, fifteen years to be in this environment again. And what pressures you need to take seriously and what pressures you can see through as being maybe not totally

necessary. Speaking of which, did you, because you mentioned, you're one of ten, so nine other people in this fellowship who are all mid-career, were all well-established, did you feel any imposter syndrome, either when you were accepted or when you read the rest of our bios? I can tell you when I got my acceptance letter, or when I read everyone's bio, mine was listed at the very bottom, and I was convinced that I was at the bottom because I was the least impressive, like inverted pyramid style. And someone had to point out to me, they're like, Paula, it's alphabetical. Well, if it was alphabetical, I was probably, you know, like right before you. I was the penultimate. Yes, obviously, like when I first read the bios, I was like, oh my God. I mean,

look at you, Paula Pans. It was very humbling. And I think we had the first weeks where you know, we still, you know, had a bit of that facade up. But then we had, we got to spend so much time together that I feel like those masks fell away pretty soon. And then everybody was just a really lovely human being. And I ended up forgetting about all of that. But it is true. In the very beginning, I was like, wow, these people are so impressive. And I think a decent amount of us have had this thought of like, do I really belong here? And I do remember at one point, Robert, our program director said, each and every one of you is here for a reason. We picked you because we were impressed by you and you belong here and you're where you should be. And so that was, you know, that was one of

those moments where I think we looked at each other and we're like, yeah, you know. And also, yeah, you know, like bios are just the window dressing, right? And then you discover the people. And And we were talking about how it's so much easier to make close friends when you're a teenager, you're in your early 20s, and it becomes much more difficult. You know, you still meet people. You make friends. But to make really good friends after, I don't know, the age of 30 or 25, I don't know, it's not that easy.

And I think the way it works is that you need to be spending a lot of time with people doing something. And that's exactly what we did this year. We literally just ran into each other every day multiple times a day just because we were all gravitating around these few buildings. We were all living close to each other. Like some of us lived in one residential building and it felt really like being on the sitcom friends. No way we would run into your friends all the time. And oh wow. I mean to like finish this program not only with, you know, this fabulous degree and all the connections and the knowledge, but also with like nine new best friends.

like I'm the richest person in the world. Yeah, no, this was so much fun. Yeah. And certainly one thing that I learned this year was in the past when I've heard people talk about working 12, 14, 16 hour days. I've never quite believed them because I've always thought, like, even if you wanted to, how could your brain actually sustain that? And what I've realized is when you're around your friends, you know, and when you're doing it together, it doesn't, you know, Yes, it's work, but like, that is what sustains you, like, physically sitting next to people while you're working and having somebody just look over and be like, hey, can I borrow your phone charger? Right? Like, that is so meaningful. Yeah, and especially after the pandemic, right, where we got to do so little of that. You're absolutely right, Paula, there was this, like, energy of everybody trying their best. And, I mean, I remember with two other people.

of our program who were also at the business school, we had this intense accounting camp. We were trying to teach ourselves accounting. And so we had this crazy spreadsheet called remedial accounting. We mapped out like every single moment of like free time that we had. We would meet up and like go through some accounting concept and scribble it on the white board. And I think from the outside, we looked totally nuts. But, you know, we would do accounting for hours and hours and hours. And how is that possible. I think, as you said, when you're doing with people and you have the same goals and there's an element of playing too, it flies by. And even though, like, I felt like it was painful in the moment, that accounting camp that we did with these two other people, Ryan and Vivian, that was just

so much fun, you know, I would go back and do it again. Yeah, so I think you're right. I think being in this environment is great. And going back to school, going back to grad school, does give you that extra shot of energy and of this feeling that you can do things, you can do new things, you can try out new things, and you can become really good at something, and there is no one set path, and you can learn and meet new people and change your life, basically. We're approaching the end of our time. Are there any final thoughts, messages, anything that you'd like to leave this audience with? I guess, this fellowship? personally it gave me this confidence and energy boost and really gave me the impression that I

could do anything that I set my mind to and that it was there was this new thing I wanted to learn. I could do it. And so I think that is really cool, you know, to think that at any point in time in your life, you can learn something new, you can do something new. And it doesn't have to be at an Ivy League institution. You can buy a textbook, find a YouTube channel. decide to learn this new skill and just do something you've been wanting to do for a while. And maybe also one message that I've been trying to spread, you know, at the business school and with people who are working business is quality journalism is so important to the economy. Just know that there are people studying really hard to produce the best possible business coverage.

Journalism is a battered sector, but I want to be confident that, there will be better times. And yeah, I think the business world has a role to play in that. And send Evan your letters. Oh, yeah, and send Evan your letters. Imagine somebody is, this young man is sitting in the cell and is going to receive your letter. He will, and he will read it. I think that's, you know, a really powerful thought.

So if you feel like you have something to say or even if you just want to say hello, you should go right to Evan. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Andrea. There is one major key takeaway that I would like to highlight as we wrap today's episode. As I was listening back to the episode, these words that Andrea shared really struck me.

And before I play these words, I want to cue up the idea that what she's talking about right here is the importance of, from her perspective, perspective, it's for her the importance of really deeply understanding the topics that she covers, economics and business, right? How crucial it is for her to have a very, very deep understanding of it so that she can convey it to you. And here's what she says. It's microeconomics, macroeconomics, accounting, capital markets and investments. And when you first start doing it, you were like, why am I learning statistics exactly? Why am I learning how to price a bond? And then as you go along, all the pieces of the puzzle come together. And you're like, all of these stories I was writing, I did understand it on a superficial level. Now I actually understand it. I actually understand what a bond is

and how it works and how it's priced and, you know, how capital markets work. So it just gives me, like, when I read business stories and when I will hopefully soon write them, the depth of the understanding of what is going on. Now, the reason that struck me is because in the modern world of personal finance influencers, in this world where we receive information about personal finance from Instagram and TikTok and Reddit forums and podcasts and blogs, we read substacks, we read substacks, We go on Facebook forums. And there's nothing wrong with necessarily receiving information from those mediums.

Those mediums are simply vessels for communication, right? They are vehicles through which people communicate. So the delivery vehicle by itself does not inherently negate the value of what is being said. In other words, just because a piece of financial advice comes from TikTok, the fact that TikTok was used as the delivery vehicle does not have any bearing on the quality of the message that is being delivered. It's perfectly wonderful to turn to blogs, podcasts, substacks, newsletters, social media, to learn about personal finance, about the economy, about investing. I think these are wonderful delivery mediums, but it's incredibly important, more important than ever, to be cautious about who your teachers are. And to make sure that if you are receiving knowledge and information from a journalist or an influencer or a content creator, you want to be incredibly judicious about who you listen to, right? The onus is on you to make sure that you are listening to somebody who is informed and who takes that job, that job of being incredibly well informed, who takes that job seriously.

Because in an environment where there are low barriers to entry to mass communication, the burden of responsibility falls on you, on every individual to make sure that you are being incredibly thoughtful about who you. you read, who you listen to. There's a quote, I think it originally comes from James Clear, who's been a former guest on this podcast, and he says, I'm paraphrasing, but it's something to the effect of when you follow somebody online, you are choosing your future thoughts. So choose wisely. That is the major takeaway that I want to leave you with. Thank you for tuning into this very special first Friday bonus episode.

We also just released a normal episode, a standard episode yesterday. If you haven't heard it yet, we released an Afpala and Joe episode. So this is a two episode week. Make sure you give that a listen if you haven't heard it yet. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please drop us a note. If you are subscribed to the show notes, just hit reply and tell us how you felt about today's episode. Please, if you're not subscribed to the show notes, please subscribe. free afford anything.com slash show notes. Thank you so much for being part of this community.

Remember to leave us a review in your favorite podcast playing app and to share this episode with a friend or a family member. And again, afford anything.com slash show notes is where you can subscribe to our show notes. Thank you again for being part of this community. My name is Paula Pan, and I will catch you in the next episode.