The Unpopular View with Michael I. Brown
THEUNPOPULARVIEW
The Podcast challenging the Narrative dividing Boomers, Gen Z, and the Global South.
with Michael I. Brown
Latest Episode | Episode 24 | September 2, 2026
Soft Power: America's Misunderstood Investment | Dr. Samantha Nutt, War Child
THEUNPOPULARVIEW
The Podcast challenging the Narrative dividing Boomers, Gen Z, and the Global South.
with Michael I. Brown
Latest Episode | Episode 24 | September 2, 2026
Soft Power: America's Misunderstood Investment | Dr. Samantha Nutt, War Child
About the Podcast
Why does poverty persist after decades of aid? Why do development projects fail despite billions in funding? Why do policies designed to help communities often leave them worse off?
The Unpopular View tackles the questions most policymakers, activists, and institutions avoid. Host Michael Brown draws on 40+ years of work across 35+ countries to examine the realities of foreign aid, climate policy, corruption, resource governance, and economic development.
Rather than repeating familiar narratives, each episode tests popular assumptions against evidence from the field. The result is a candid exploration of what drives progress, what holds it back, and why many global solutions fail to deliver on their promises.
If you're interested in geopolitics, development, economics, and the forces shaping the modern world, The Unpopular View offers a perspective you won't hear anywhere else.
Meet the Host
Michael I. Brown
40+ years of experience in international development in diverse technical sectors in developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, South Pacific, South Asia, and the Caribbean. including natural resource management, community-based planning and decision making, community conservation, environmental compliance, strategic planning, NGO capacity building, conflict management, anti-corruption (and good governance), sustainable agriculture/livelihood and food security, pastoral production systems.
Episode List
Featured Reel
Latest episode
Soft Power: America's Misunderstood Investment | Dr. Samantha Nutt, War Child
Is foreign aid charity — or one of the cheapest instruments of power a country has? Dr.
Is foreign aid charity — or one of the cheapest instruments of power a country has?
Dr. Samantha Nutt, physician and founder of War Child, has spent thirty years working in Somalia, Sudan, eastern Congo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Michael Brown has spent fifty on land and natural resource governance in many of the same places. In this conversation they take on the questions the aid debate usually avoids:
— Should NGOs be working themselves out of a job — and why is it still so rarely national staff running them? — Being at the table isn't enough. Why local communities need leverage, and what happens to their voice without it — Is civil society making progress anywhere at war? — The resource curse, and whether the US–China competition over Congo's minerals changes anything for Congolese people — Aid as soft and hard power: something to fight, or something to accept? — Why gutting USAID isn't charity withdrawn — and what it has to do with the next pandemic — Can the current cynicism about foreign aid be overcome — and what's actually in everyone's best interest?
The Unpopular View challenges assumptions and takes positions many in the aid and development world don't like. Host Michael Brown is the author of Redeeming REDD+ and Climate Mitigation in the Land Sector of the Global South.
Dr. Samantha Nutt is the author of Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies, and Aid.
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