Hosted by Christopher Wurst · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 60 episodes
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Epic weekly tales from every corner of the globe. Forget politics, academia, or the office, these are "soft, powerful stories" told by those who lived them. Is what happens in Kinshasa really important in Kansas? Should an Idahoan care about the problems of an Indonesian? (The answer is yes, but...) SP/FS gives the human story center stage. People can debate the virtues of global soft power, but no one--from Osaka to Omaha to Ouagadougou--can deny the magic of these encounters. Each episode begins and ends in the United States—with a foreign adventure in between.
Christopher Wurst hosts SoftPower/FulStories, a society show with 60 episodes published.
As a young Peace Corps volunteer in Romania, Sean Cotter saw the reverence given to poets and philosophers and suspected he had found his people. But in the beginning, he couldn't even understand a child's spoken words.
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"I am interested in what it takes to be the happy endings that our elders have been waiting for." --Kao Kalia Yang Award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang's voice has always been there, even though it wasn't always obvious.
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Note: This is the second of a two-part episode. We strongly recommend you start with Part 1. Paul E. White's stories cannot be contained in a single episode. In fact, this is the second of a two-part episode in which nei
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Paul E. White's stories cannot be contained in a single episode. In fact, this is the first of a two-part episode in which neither progresses past his very first assignment, in Laos in the 1960s. From there, he went on t
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This is an episode about answering the call--whether it comes from a widowed father, a Maasai student, or a couple of guys named John F. Kennedy and Sargent Shriver. Diane Raleigh not only answered the call but also foun
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"You can't help people from a distance." - Sergio Viera de Mello When it comes to overseas experiences, Keith Mines has seen a lot, from a remarkable set of vantage points: from LDS missionary work to active-duty assignm
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If you are a six-foot-six white guy in Liberia, you are going to stick out--and Glenn Ivers did stand out. But, if you add to that infectious enthusiasm, humor, and maybe throw in a new soccer pitch, you might become unf
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"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them." --Paul Wellstone Her name in Ojibwe is Anisiiwiikwe , which means "woman made of stone,
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"Come as a visitor, not as a spy." -Zambian proverb "Eliza" is better known as Beth Jere, who is cheered in her old Zambian village and the surrounding areas for good reason. She was the first American her village ever k
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As a young man, Mike Tidwell traveled halfway across the globe to teach rural Africans a potential new livelihood. As with most Peace Corps volunteers, he found himself on the receiving end of the most prominent lessons.
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This special bonus episode of SP/FS features Troy University professor Michael Slobodchikoff, an expert on US-Russia relations. He pays particular attention to Russia's soft power efforts. In this fascinating conversatio
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Raised in a Ghanian-American family, Katherine Ntihmoah's parents instilled within her the idea that her only limits would be self-imposed. She took that to heart and has been expanding her limits throughout her life--wi
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"No human is more human than another human" -General Romeo Dallaire. John Berry's long overseas career, spanning the Peace Corps, USAID, and the United Nations, took him to nearly 100 countries, with positive benefits fo
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"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin Ka Vang was born in Laos and raised in Minnesota, in a world shaped by memory, migration, and the quiet weight
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Less than 24 hours after he graduated from college, Paul Barker was on a plane, en route to Iran, where he would spend the next five years as a Peace Corps volunteer, immersed in Iranian culture and history. And though h
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John Dinkelman--or "Dink" as he is known to countless current and former U.S. Foreign Service Officers--is something of a legend. He spent nearly four decades serving his country as a diplomat--and now he serves those sa
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As a child, growing up in South Minneapolis, Medaria Arradondo--or, "Rondo"-- was aware that the adults in his neighborhood were watching. They had the kids' backs, but their expectations were very high. Flash forward. A
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Claire St. Amant left her beloved Texas to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, halfway across the world. When she was finished, she was ready to return to Texas. But what she learned in between--in the classroom
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Even though her classmates may have recognized her as a future ambassador before she did herself, Kate Byrnes' swift ascent from the U.S. Information Agency to the Department of State to, yes, becoming a U.S. Ambassador,
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In the face of ICE's sweeping detention and deportation push, Minnesotans are responding not with panic or illegal action, but with a steady, deeply-rooted ethic of neighborliness--quietly organizing, opening their homes
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SoftPower/FulStories is hosted by Christopher Wurst. The show is categorised under society (culture) and has published 60 episodes.
SoftPower/FulStories has published 60 episodes.
SoftPower/FulStories regularly covers society, culture, places. It sits in the society category, with a culture focus.
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Episodes of SoftPower/FulStories average 35 minutes. a focused format where a clear narrative arc and tight preparation matter most.
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