Hello, this is Meet the Writers.
I'm Georgina Godwin.
My guest today is a regular voice on Monocle Radio.
I might go so far as to add that he is my favourite contributor.
He's worked as a journalist and a geopolitical risk consultant.
He's lived in Miami and Moscow and now resident in London.
He was a former partner at Control Risks, a global specialist risk consultancy that helps organizations succeed in a volatile world.
As a fluent Russian speaker, he holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.
His book Zero Sum has been described as a tour de force exploration of the roller coaster story of Western capitalists and their misadventures in post communist Russia, chronicling the hope, the naivety and arrogance and folly in glorious high.
Readable.
Charles Hecker.
Welcome to Meet the Writers.
Georgina.
Thank you.
It's an absolute pleasure to be here.
It really is for me too.
And it's just I'm so, so happy that we that you're here and that you've done this book.
And we'll get into why I feel that way a little bit later.
But let's just start with you, because you are known to our listeners, you pop up on our radio all of the time because you're an expert at so many things Russia, but also geopolitical risk.
You're really great at, like, doing newspapers, newspaper reviews for us because you are across what happens in geopolitics.