SP/FS BONUS: The Art of Giving a Dam (Skip Waskin)
This is less a bonus episode than it is a bookend. (We recommend you start with Episode #13.) Last time around, Skip Waskin barely survived his first-ever USAID assignment in then-Zaire. Flash forward, and he is now leading U...
# 13 - Skip Waskin
Skip Waskin's long career at USAID involved leading some of the Agency's largest and most important missions, including Russia and Afghanistan. But these illustrious roles almost eluded him — because he almost didn't make it ...
SP/FS BONUS: "This. Is. The. Voice. Of. America." (Steve Herman)
Steve Herman had a notion — already as a child, discovering the magical "SW" button on his grandmother's radio — that broadcasting somehow lay in his future. He began his career early and settled into a long tenure as a forei...
#12 - Reverend Jennifer Butler
Reverend Jennifer Butler sensed as a young person that she might need to leave her community and her known world in order to find herself. She did. And then she did. And in finding herself, she has also found ways to help cou...
#11 - Michael Varga
This episode is inspirational. Nothing has come easy for Michael Varga. In the Peace Corps, he had the toughest assignment in an already difficult country. As a diplomat, he faced huge challenges. And now, in retirement, batt...
SP/FS BONUS: Soft Powerful (Under-Told) Stories (Fred de Sam Lazaro)
Journalist Fred de Sam Lazaro created the Under-Told Stories Project more than three decades ago, bringing stories from some of the most remote parts of the world into the living rooms of PBS NewsHour viewers and classrooms o...
About the Host
Christopher Wurst
Christopher Wurst is the producer and host of the weekly podcast/radio program SoftPower/FulStories, which uses first-person narrative stories to highlight U.S. soft power efforts around the world for the past 60+ years. Previously, he served more than two decades as a U.S. diplomat, primarily as a cultural and press attaché, in seven countries across four continents—including Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, Zambia, India, Pakistan, and Guatemala. As the Senior Advisor for Innovation in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Cultural and Educational Affairs, he produced and hosted the award-winning podcast 22.33, utilizing storytelling to convey the positive impact of international exchange programs. In 2013, he was nominated as the Cultural Expat of the Year in Slovenia; in 2008, his team won the Global PEPFAR Public Diplomacy Award. He also received numerous Meritorious and Superior Honor Awards. Before joining the Foreign Service, he taught high school history and literature in Minneapolis and South Africa. He was a guest writer for the TV comedy show Mystery Science Theater 3000, where he also made his national television debut as a Moleman from outer space. As a photographer, he has had exhibitions in four countries. He currently splits his time between the United States and Slovenia, where his wife, Kjara, is a choreographer. Rex, their beagle-Aussie mix and Good Trouble rally veteran, has chased sticks in 10 different countries.