Hi Admissible listeners, this is Tessa. We'll be releasing our 12th and final episode of this season very soon,

but I wanted to take a moment to talk about something that you may have heard about in the news.

A few weeks ago ago I woke up to the news that my friend Evan Gerskovic, a Wall Street Journal reporter, had been detained in Russia on

what are clearly false charges of espionage, and he could

face up to 20 years in a Russian penal colony.

Needless to say, this has been on my mind a lot, and if you're listening to this series, I think

you'll care about what's happening to Evan.

So I wanted to share a little bit about who he is and what's going on. I met Evan in a philosophy class over 10 years ago and I

liked him right away. He just seemed super smart and thoughtful and curious, we became friends and we got closer after college when we both moved to New York City.

And just to give you a sense of the kind of friend Evan is, I'm going to do something that would definitely

embarrass him and play a message he sent me on my 25th birthday.

So as everybody knows, Tessa has been a remarkable asset to the world for the past 25 years.

But as not many people know, if her middle name was Elba, her name read backwards would actually

be a remarkable asset.

So Ev here proposes on Tessa's 25th birthday

that she changed her middle name to Elba immediately so that every time her name read

backwards would celebrate her life as a remarkable asset to the world.

Love you, Tess, happy birthday.

Part of why Evan and I became such good friends in New York was because we were both falling in love with journalism.

Evan desperately wanted to be a reporter.

I remember one particular conversation we had over dinner where

Evan was actually expressing some guilt about wanting to be a reporter,

...