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. Decades later, after great success as a journalist, an author, and a climate activist, he still yearns to teach people about the environment. Only now, he works closer to home. Much, much closer. As in, his own backyard...

SoftPower/FulStories uses first-person stories to explore why U.S. engagement in the world matters. Through conversations with diplomats, aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, authors and artists, influencers, businesspeople, and more, SP/FS highlights how soft power and foreign aid and assistance strengthen America's security, prosperity, and global standing.

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 conversation, he shares the history and distinct differences between US and Russian soft power. Our conversation goes from the Soviet Union to the modern day, and how Russia's most significant achievement may actually be the US pressing pause on its own soft power efforts. (Updated to include the implications of the US war in Iran.)

SoftPower/FulStories uses first-person stories to explore why U.S. engagement in the world matters. Through conversations with diplomats, aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, authors and artists, influencers, businesspeople, and more, SP/FS highlights how soft power and foreign aid and assistance strengthen America's security, prosperity, and global standing.

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--with Americorps, the U.S. State Department as a diplomat, and now at Indiana University's prestigious Hamilton-Lugar School of Global and International Studies, where she seeks to break down the limitations of the next generation of global leaders.

"Powerful Stories" is the Minnesota offshoot of SoftPower/FulStories, which uses first-person stories to explore why U.S. engagement in the world matters. Through conversations with diplomats, aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, authors and artists, influencers, businesspeople, and more, SP/FS highlights how soft power and foreign aid and assistance strengthen America's security, prosperity, and global standing.