Hello from the Heartland. My name is Jenna, and this is Smarter News, news when it matters and why it matters.

Our Smarter series features unique people who help us think and live smarter.

I'm really excited to speak to our next guest, someone who I've spoken with previously on

Russian-American issues. And what is an interesting time to also parallel to the times that we're

in. So before we get David's perspective on our current events and our current news cycle,

I want to just tell you a little bit about David.

David was born in Chicago.

He was educated at the University of Chicago and Oxford University.

And from 1972 to 1976, this is really interesting.

He was a police reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

And I want you to keep that in mind because he made a transition in

1976 to become Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times. And that was really key because

that was at the height of Soviet power. And David really spent a great deal of his career

in Russia and being a special correspondent, a writer, an author, a journalist to link the West

to what was actually happening inside the Soviet Union at a time that a lot of people didn't

have access.

And he continued to do that through the fall of the Soviet Union, which we'll ask him about.

And then in 2013, he was expelled. He became the first U.S.

correspondent to be barred from Russia since the Cold War, which is the title, David, I'm not sure

that you necessarily expected to have on your bio. But here it is. So was there something just

kind of broad, broadly speaking, David, did you always know that you wanted

to be a journalist? Did you always know that you wanted to be a foreign correspondent, go

...