Resources

Views on foreign aid have rarely been this polarized — whether American taxpayers should fund health, education, governance, agriculture, and conservation programs aimed at uplifting the poorest of the poor, and, in conservation's case, protecting planetary resources for everyone. This conversation doesn't resolve that debate, but it grounds it: a development professional's account of four decades in the field — a World Bank rangeland project vilified in Graham Hancock's "Lords of Poverty", a Mali irrigation project that worked because farmers wanted it, an NGO program shut down after seven years of success "because we can," and a $20M initiative that began as an 8-country program, was already whittled down to 4, and then died outright when a D.C. bureaucrat used a (purposeful) mix-up with Kazakhstan as the reason to deny it moving forward. The verdict: appropriateness and feasibility, not funding levels or good intentions, determine whether aid succeeds. This of course considers whether the governance framework is enabling to begin with.

Michael and guest Emily Brearley — a former World Bank economist and author of Aid Inferno — agree on the goal: aid needs a real social contract to work at all. Where they differ is on scale and on the fix, especially whether big-vision programming at scale is worth attempting in the first place. Both agree the pre-DOGE aid model hasn't shown evidence of working, and that whatever comes next has to change. This is Segment 1 of 3: what's gone wrong, and what could come next.

Michael's own arguments are laid out at greater length in Redeeming REDD and Climate Mitigation in the Land Sector of the Global South: Making it Work for People and Planet. Emily's case is made in Aid Inferno.

Segment 1 of 3. Coming next: Segment 2 — Can Aid Scale? — weighing the small, proven Mali project against the big, negotiated institutional model. Then Segment 3 — Can Aid Be Fixed, or Should It Be Scrapped? — two competing paths to a possible new social contract.

00:00 The Central Rangelands project and Graham Hancock's critique 01:44 Mali: motor pumps, ownership, and why farmers made it work 02:37 Seven successful years, shut down "because we can" 03:08 Founding Innovative Resources Management 03:39 From 8 countries to 4 to zero — the "Kazakhstan" excuse that killed it for good 04:09 Verdict: money isn't the problem — appropriateness is 04:49 Introducing Emily Brearley, former World Bank economist and author of Aid Inferno

This 21‑minute segment begins where many Americans first heard about sepsis recently: the tragic death of Kyle Busch and the sudden attention on a disease most people rarely think about. From there, we widen the lens to ask a harder question: where is sepsis actually killing the most people, and why?

Dr. Niranjan "Tex" Kissoon and Michael Brown walk through the numbers and the lived reality with particular focus in the Global South:

Maternal deaths remain shockingly high, with the US and UK still seeing maternal mortality as a leading cause even with far more resources.

In low‑resource settings, a mother and newborn are an inviolable dyad—if the mother dies or is gravely ill in childbirth, her baby faces an extraordinary risk of dying within the first year.

Neonatal sepsis alone accounts for roughly three million cases a year globally, with at least 180,000 deaths and likely more.

A 2020 Lancet study shows that about 85% of sepsis cases and deaths occur in Sub‑Saharan Africa and South Asia.

We explore how poverty, malnutrition, malaria, anemia, and tuberculosis create a “perfect storm” for sepsis, and how fragile health systems—no transport, out‑of‑stock antibiotics and fluids, and too few staff—turn treatable infections into mass casualties. We also connect sepsis to antimicrobial resistance: the untreated and undertreated infections degrading the very drugs US ICUs depend on.

This is a long, narrative episode: part personal field anecdote, part data‑driven global health conversation, and part agenda for realistic, low‑tech prevention and public health solutions that could save mothers and newborns at scale. #MaternalMortality

Part two of a North-South dialogue with Koffi Kouakou examines critical minerals, China's role, Western assumptions, and whether Africa can turn resource demand into leverage rather than another extraction cycle.

The American offset model lets the United States outsource the visible costs of mining, emissions, standards, and consumption while preserving a cleaner story about itself. This episode connects copper, carbon, supply chains, and geopolitical risk.

America needs copper and strategic minerals for energy, defense, and industrial resilience, but its own permitting and political choices often block the mines it says it needs. This episode examines the contradiction between clean-energy ambition, resource dependence, and policy reality.