What happens when curiosity keeps opening doors you never planned to walk through?

Hey, one more thing before you go, quick question.What actually shapes you into who you are today?Is it where you grew up, the choices you make, the people you meet, or the moments that seem insignificant at the time, but quietly change the direction of your life?Because sometimes the life we end up living isn't the life we actually planned.And sometimes the biggest turning points begin with something as simple as following your curiosity.So stay tuned.We're going to answer these questions and many more.I'm your host, Michael Hurst.Welcome to One more thing before you go.Today, I'm sitting down with Clifford Brown.His story takes us from the Columbia river to eastern Washington to UCLA Law School, from a successful career as a Beverly Hills attorney to giving up two thirds of his income to join usaid and ultimately to nearly three decades working across Latin America, Africa and Central Asia.He served as mission director in guinea and Sierra Leone, country representative in Kyrgyzstan.And deputy mission director for USAID's work on playing Colombia in Bogota.But behind all those titles is a much more interesting question.What made him choose that life in the first place?And that's where I, I would like to begin.Welcome to the show, Cliff.

Thank you for having me, Michael.Happy to be here.

Your life is, it's an amazing journey.That's all I can say.Very profound.And I think that you made a contribution to humanity in so many different aspects.I can't wait to tell it.

Well, thank you.I enjoyed your question because it makes me think deeply about, you know, the original directions I took.

We're going to get into that.Before we talk about that, though, before we talk about Law School, Washington, D.C. uSAID, I want to go back to where your story began.Can you take us back?When you think about growing up along the Columbia river in eastern Washington, what was the very first picture that comes to your mind that kind of gives you a good memory of where you came from?

You know, I was in a middle class family.My dad was an engineer.He worked for Bonneville Power, and I had a younger brother.Dad wanted us to work during the summers.And I guess the most vivid memory I have is he dragged me out into the farm country north of where I lived.It was three cities where the Snake river joined the Columbia, the Pasco, Coonac and Richland.They're the kind of the bedroom communities for what used to be the, the Hanford Atomic Works, but it's a very fertile farm area.So he took me out when I was, I think, 13.And he said, you get out of the car, go out there and stop that farmer, stand in front of his tractor and ask him for a job.And I was protesting and kicking and screaming, but he kept doing that all afternoon until I finally got one and he made us work.That was a big lesson.I've never forgotten that.And so one of the jobs I ended up having was I was a deckhand on a tugboat one year and that tugboat pulled up underneath the bow of an ocean going barge.And I looked up at that bow and I.They were taking pipes up to Alaska to build the Alaska pipeline.But anyway, I looked at that thing from way below it and I thought, damn, that's.That's gone.Places I'd love to see.So that was kind of the start of it.

What was that environment teach you about, like work, responsibility, independence.And before you all have kind of realized, you know, what you were learning at that time?I think that we all, you know, I started off my first job with the dishwasher, and then I worked, you know, worked my way up to cook, and I really enjoyed that.But I ended up in law enforcement.

Huge.

You know,.

You learn from everybody you work with, you know, and you learn about.I got fired from one of the first jobs I had.I was a stock clerk in a grocery store.When the guy said, I have to let you go, I felt sorry for him.I thought he couldn't afford me.But then I later figured out, no, the reason was I wasn't working fast enough.So, you know, you always learn things in any job.But I was exposed to so many different people, older people, mainly because I was a young kid when I was starting these jobs.But you absorb information in ways you don't even realize you're absorbing it.But I think what it gave me was an appreciation for the need to relate to your fellow workers and how important it is to smile and ask them questions.Everybody likes to talk about their own life and selves, and that's the way to get to know people.So I learned a lot just by being exposed to so many different people.

And you, you have a very diverse background in that, you know, the, between the, the farms and the grocery stores, the canneries, the tugboats you just talked about, you even work for the Union Pacific Railroad.And eventually you went to an oceanographic research vessel, which I kind of find fascinating.That's an extraordinary collection of experience.It gives you a well rounded, I think, opportunity to kind of learn different languages, different cultures, different opportunities and that kind of thing.All those Jobs in particular.Do you have one that stuck out that was favorite?

Well, I guess my last job with USAID is my favorite because I did it for longer than any of the others.But when I was a kid, yes, you know, the farm work was interesting.It gave me a lot of appreciation for what farmers have to go through.I mean, it's tough work, but the jobs that I certainly.The job on the Oceanographer changed my life.The oceanographic ship, that was the name of the boat, the Oceanographer.It was one of two vessels, large vessels, by the Coastal Rhodetic Survey.And.And the reason it did that, when it got to Chile, it left Seattle and it went down to Tahiti at first, and then it went way down in the South Pacific near where icebergs were.And then we had a medevac on Easter Island.We had to go there to wait for a plane to come out from Chile and take this guy in for surgery.And when we got to Chile, finally the officers came to the ship's office where I was working.They said, cliff, your cousin's at the gangway.And I didn't.I said, I don't have any cousins down here.Well, he says he's your cousin and he looks like you and talks like you.So, sure enough, I had a cousin that was in the Peace Corps, and I didn't know he was there.I never met the guy.I had all kinds of cousins that I've never met.Still do.But he was my first introduction to Latin America because he was standing next to the Chilean woman who eventually became his wife.And I had dinner with her father almost every day the week we were in Valparaiso, Chile.And that sort of fired my interest in learning Spanish.And that was very sort of a key turning point.I had already tried to study languages and thought, I'm hopeless.I can't do it.But I was so determined after that trip down there that I studied it when I returned to school that year on the ship was a break year.I dropped out of college for a year.And when I returned to school, I worked very hard, probably studied more Spanish than I did everything else.And then I was lucky.And I don't know this is fate or what, but I got a fellowship to go back to Latin America after college, and I spent another year in Latin America.And by the time that year was finished, I was very fluent.And when you start to use another language and really relate to people in it, it's almost like you've grown another soul.So that was what motivated me 15 years later, when I had a kind of a break in my law practice, I just stumbled on this job ad for aid, and I flew back to D.C. and interviewed with them.And when they showed me a world map on the wall with little pins all over the world, world, I said, what are those pins?He says, that's where our attorneys are.Something in me said, I gotta have this job.So that's how that happened.

That's crazy cool, actually.Universe puts you in the right place at the right time.And how profound.You had a cousin that knew you were there, but you didn't know he was there.

Well, neither one of us.It was our mother's.My mom knew that my ship was going to Valparaiso, Chile, and his mom, they were in touch.And so anyway, the mothers wrote and said.His mom said, go meet Cliff.He probably said, who's Cliff?But anyway,.

That's pretty slick.That's pretty cool.Well, again, universe puts you where you're supposed to be at the right time.I think that's pretty cool, actually.Learning languages.I know you speak three languages now other than English, correct?

Right.Well, I'm three, actually.But I was certified as they sent me back to school to learn French and Russian.And I don't claim to be as good in either of those as I am in Spanish, but it was enough to talk to governments and whatnot.

You think that experience right there was what put your first thought about this difference?This is the world I want to be in?

Yes and no.It was certainly.It opened doors for me, the fact that I had Spanish, but in high school and also in college, I was on a debate team and the debate subjects in both, both in college and high school, related to foreign aid.So, you know, I didn't know what AID even was.It's kind of a cute pun.It stands for Agency for International Development, but when you shorten it, it's aid, as in foreign aid.In any event, when I.When I interviewed with the agency, it was.I thought it was going to be a chance to.And I was correct.It was a chance to think about things that.That I wanted to think about.I always had the notion when I was in private practice that I was kind of a mental prostitute.I was being paid to think about stuff that really wasn't my problem.And it wasn't particularly interesting to me.I mean, I enjoyed learning about capital markets and, you know, it was an intense exposure to the American business community.And I don't regret learning what I learned.But when I had the chance to and that's why I called the first book dilettante.I got to dabble in thousands of different topics because that's the nature of foreign aid.It's not just we're not handing out, you know, lollipops and medicine to people.We work in all kinds of things.It was, it was an amazingly varied subject matter that I got to think about.

It was this experience, if I can ask, please, did you, when you got involved with usaid, did you get involved with usaid, an attorney, or did you get involved on a deeper level?

Well, I was a legal advisor when I, when they first hired me and I was very lucky to get that job.I mean, there are very few people that get to do foreign aid law.It's under a hundred.And it's only useful if you're in the agency.Once you get out of the agency, it's totally useless experience.But I was able to, at the same time I was addressing some of the issues, the legal issues that come up to a foreign aid lawyer.I was also necessarily having to understand what the projects themselves were about.And the projects, as I said, spanned the entire range of human activity.And that's the part that I try to get into in my books about how varied it was.It wasn't just.Certainly the biggest thing to regret is the fact that the humanitarian work and the disaster assistance is no longer there.But we did everything that the US wanted to do overseas that didn't involve a military response and it wasn't something that diplomats were going to accomplish just by having meetings and riding cables, which is what they do.We brought contractors to town, we brought grantees to town.We, we cooked up these.Well, we didn't cook them up ourselves.We always had a lot of eyeballs helping us and a lot of other parts of the government were involved in our planning.But once we got involved in something, it went on for typically several years and it involved whatever the issue was.We can get into some examples of that, but it was very diverse.

Yeah, if you don't mind, I would love to get into some of those examples.You know, what your experiences were.Did you get to visit those little pins yourself that you were talking about?Those little pins?

Well, I became, I became some of those pins.I was posted in Nairobi.At first it was kind of crazy because I spoke Spanish.They sent me to East Africa.

Right, that's a good choice.Right.

Well, I eventually got back to Latin America, but that was a mind opening experience and I would, My job was regional, so I had to fly Around I was based in Nairobi, but I visited virtually all the countries in east and Southern Africa.And so, yeah, I visited the places where those.I lived in seven of them.And then later I retired from usaid, but I got bored in retirement and went back as a contractor in Peru.So I was in eight different posts with eight.But the first few jobs were regional, so I was always on the road, you know, visiting other missions, and I got to see the conditions in a lot of different countries and different projects.

You spent a lot of your time in El Salvador and Chile, as you had mentioned earlier, you spent a good portion down there.I mean, did that give you, I would say, an insider slash outsider look at the difference between these countries and the other countries that you were dealing with and the United States?And, you know, as a cop, I have to ask this question, because as a cop, we see everyone.We see the best people, we see the worst people, we see the best people at their worst.You know, we walk into poverty, hunger, abuse, you name it, in squalor of conducting.People live in caves because they had no place to live.Live in our car, live down by the river, you know, kind of a thing.They've lost their homes, you name it.But did you see something like that across the world to see the difference in.In what we have here and give you something, you know, maybe in more.

Introspect all the time I was.Well, and it started when that ship got to Buenaventura, Colombia.As a sailor, my version of a cheap city tour was to just jump on a city bus and just sit there until it got back to wherever I started.And that bus took me up into the hills over Buenaventura, Colombia.It was as there was a community up there as black as anybody you would ever find in Sudan.They were living in cardboard boxes, in barrels.It was the most intense poverty I had ever seen.I saw poverty like that later in Haiti, in Port au Prince, Haiti.But I was able to be in several places that fell apart very suddenly and unexpectedly.And that's one of the messages I'm trying to bring to people that are interested in the topic, is that I was in Haiti, for instance, the week after the government had called out the army and they literally shot people as they were standing in line to vote.And I saw the bodies on the side of the road, road as I was being shuttled into the embassy from the headquarters, from the hotel that I stayed in way up on the hill above Port au Prince.I was in Guatemala the very day that Jorge Serrano was The President, he was trying to do what they had pulled off in Peru, and he arrested the Supreme Court and all of the Congress people.And that didn't last, but it was crazy moment in Guatemala's history.I was, I was in Kyrgyzstan as the Deputy chief of mission.I was the acting deputy to the ambassador that day because the guy, the real guy, had gone on home leave and there were two rent a crowds that were fighting each other in front of the presidential palace.And they got over the fence and the president took off in a helicopter and went north to Kazakhstan and later Moscow.And the country's never been been the same since that revolution.And then I was in guinea the very day that Lassana Conte died.He'd been their president for over 20 years.And then factions in the military started fighting each other.So, I mean, each of these is a.Is a long story.But the fact is, I was forever smacked in the face with these differences between our own situation and what's going on in many parts of the third World.My fear now is that we're becoming so polarized ourselves that we're beginning to look like some of those places I live.

I agree with you in that regard.It's a shame watching what's taking place at the moment and what the possibilities are that could evolve those memories.I understand those memories, Those memories will touch your soul.

They do.

When you think about that, it's not just a memory.It's not on tv, it's not in a movie, it's not make believe.It's real.

Absolutely.No, it was more than touch.They grab your soul and they just stay and they continue to hold it.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.Can I touch back on you learning Spanish for a second, Learning the other language that you got?You know, I'm.I'm in the process of trying to reintroduce myself to French.I took four years of French in high school eons ago, and I thought, hey, this will be easy.I can remember all that.It took me a long time to even get through the first four or five lessons to go.I don't remember any of that, but maybe three words, right?You described learning Spanish as being like growing another soul.I love that phrase.What changed inside you when you learned to speak a language like that?Do you feel it changed your communication with those individuals differently?Did you see the world a little bit differently after learning those languages?

Some things are funny in that language that are not funny to you in your own.You just start to think differently because it's not just words.It's also the feelings they have.The people themselves are.There are subtle differences in the way they look at the world and each other and their relationships.And you start to feel those same feelings.I mean, I can't claim that I know exactly what it's like to have grown up as an Hispanic.But to me, when I'm speaking Spanish, I don't think about it, it just comes out, it flows out naturally.I don't have any.People have confused me for Argentinian.They know I'm not, say, Mexican or Central American.I'm too big for that.But sometimes they think, are you from Argentina or Uruguay or something?It's a very fun process, frankly.And also when it becomes a bridge, that's also a very cool moment.It's like I met a guy in Ecuador one time and he greeted me.We were both standing at some fence looking out over some touristic scene.And he just looks over and he says, buenos, which is short for buenos dias.And it turns out he was from Yugoslavia and his mother tongue was Croatian.Well, of course I didn't speak a word of Croatian and he didn't speak any English, but we were able to get to know each other in Spanish.And that's a very cool person process when that happens.Same thing happened to me in Zanzibar.I was sitting next to a guy on a hydrofoil boat that went out from Dar es Salaam to the island of Zanzibar.And he was an announcer for Radio Peking.Then those days they called it Peking instead of Beijing.But you know, we had enough Swahili between us that we were able to communicate for a whole hour.It's a very cool thing when you can start to do that with people that otherwise the barrier would be total.You just wouldn't have anything to say.

Yeah, that's pretty slick.I'm looking forward to that myself as I've really in, you know, kind of really deep dived into my French lessons.And, you know, I'm kind of really excited about doing it.I should have done it years ago when I first retired.I'd probably be really, really fluent now.But I got lazy.

I recommend Duolingo if you're trying to refresh yourself, because you can.It's a very good program.There's so many different things now that are available online that were not there.When I was learning Spanish, I had this dictionary that I literally wore out thumbing through the pages.Now if you get a Kindle and you're trying to read something in a language you Put your finger on the word and bingo.It translates it for you immediately.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Yeah.I didn't know about that.I didn't know that.I might have to play around with that for a little bit.It'd be kind of fun.You and I have something in common.You joked that chaos seemed to follow you around through what you just.We just spoke about.I can understand that.My guys.I was a sergeant at a team.I could invariably, at the end of shift, get the wrong stop.And the wrong stop turned into about three hours worth of work or four hours worth of work later.It never failed.Never failed.Did those experiences eventually make you more comfortable stepping into those uncertain situations?

No, it was, you know, all of the surprises were unique.Kind of one off.But I dealt with it as best I could.I mean, it helped to be part of the US Government.The embassy takes pretty good care of their people.I mean, I did lose.There were some friends who died in some of the places I was in.One lady went down in a helicopter in Nepal.Friend of ours was in a car wreck in Kazakhstan.Somebody that we knew fairly well.She had traveled with us to China.I was.But I was lucky.You know, I didn't.I was able to.I never got evacuated.I was in places where they had evacuated people either just prior to my tour or just after my tour.But where I was.I was never.I was never evacuated.

Luckily.Luckily.I mean, I've listened to some other episodes that you've been on where you talk about how close things were and at times, and that you get your phone calls that they.They know where we live type thing you need to get.Yeah, you kind of need to get out of there.That in itself, I'm sure, was probably kind of harrowing.And.And that, again, touches your soul from that perspective, not knowing and the uncertainty and, you know, there's not necessarily a line that people stand behind.It's a line that gets crossed all the time.

No.And I have great respect for law enforcement.People that do that kind of work, they've got to have a tough skin.We toughened up, too, to a degree, but probably not to the same kind of situations you were in daily.

Oh, every journey, everybody's.Every journey that we take as individuals are unique to ourselves.There may be similar paths that we walk, but we all take from it.You know, we all take from it what our soul will accept, our body will accept, our minds will accept.And I enjoyed my career, but also enjoying retirement.

Me too.

Exactly.It's one of those things you went to UCLA Law School, correct?

I did.I followed a girlfriend down to la and I only applied to two law schools.And when I got accepted in both USC and ucla, but UCLA didn't want a big deposit like USC did, so that's where I went.

That makes a good.That's a good decision.You became managing editor of the UCLA Law Review and a commercial business lawyer, then a partner at Irvin, Cohen and Jessup in Beverly Hills.On paper, obviously, you built an exactly kind of a career many people spend their lives trying to achieve.But then that again, something happened.If you don't mind, if we could backtrack just a little bit.You had the bankruptcy Pepsi case that you mentioned in your book and in some other interviews I had listened to and you had some time on your hand.You saw an advertisement that you responded to in 1987 is when you joined USAID.Right.

Probably saw the ad in 86 because I started with aid in January of 87.So the offer was extended late in 86.Must have interviewed with them in the summer of 86, I think.

From there.I have a question.You gave up roughly 2/3 of your income to do this, right.What did you know then that.Let me get this question right.I had it in my head a second ago.What did you know then that made giving up 2/3 of your income feel like you were doing the right thing?

Well, I was young enough and foolish enough to think that I had enough savings and I could go do something that was more fun.I mean, that's the short answer.A longer answer is that I, I had never really been fully committed to commercial law.The reason I stayed in it as long as I did is that at the last case I had, I was working for the little guys and I was working for non union labor of Continental Airlines.I had a creditors committee, the first such creditor committee that had ever been appointed in the US to represent the sales agents and the baggage handlers and all the non union people.The bankruptcy was basically a war between management and the unions that represented the pilots and the flight attendants.But anyway, I ended up representing the little guys and that was enough of an inspiration to continue to stick with it for the about three and a half years the case took to resolve.And so another guy in the firm got credit for the whole case and I had created it.He got the credit because when the phone call first came.It's a long story.I do talk about it in the first book, but I had already told the firm, look, I'm out of here.I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I'm out of here.And then the firm said, well, look, how about if you just work on an hourly basis for a while?So I did that and then it became kind of fun.I wasn't pressured to bill 2000 hours a year and I actually started to enjoy it.But all of a sudden I saw this ad and then I did what I did.The real trick was persuading my wife to come later because, yeah, she was a practicing attorney then too, and she gave up 100% of what she was working on.So.But the, the other side of that coin is that when we got to Nairobi, we lived like colonials, way better than we lived in LA because you know, the cost of living was so low, the housing was on the government and we had a driver, we had a live in cook and a cleaner and gardeners and guards and you know, and also at 5 o' clock I go home and I wouldn't have to take my work up home with me in my head.And we got local holidays, we got American holidays, we got homely, we got R and R. It was a pretty good deal.So.

Much better than a corporate 9 to 5 and plus 9 to 5 plus I should say all those extra hours and yeah, that's pretty cool.I guess at that point you kind of went, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, huh?

I thought fate had, fate had made that decision, you know, several times in my life.I think that, you know, there are some guardian angels are looking out for me and pushing me in one direction or the other.When I got that fellowship right after college, that was my only game plan.I didn't know I was going to win it, but that was the only thing I applied for and I happened to win it.So then when I went to la, like I said I was.It was just a matter of following a girlfriend.We ended up marrying other people, but it was, it was faded.I think that I would get that, get involved in that particular bankruptcy when I did and then later see the ad that I saw.So I, and then end up working in a field.That took me back to those days when I was debating foreign aid as a high schooler.So I tell my, the other thing I didn't say is that at the time I left Nairobi, I didn't know I'd eventually have another family.So I have three more kids now than I had at that time.I don't know if I'd do it all over the same way.But I don't regret what happened.

You know, I think what I've learned, at least in my.My lifetime, is that if that old cliche, if you could go back and do it again, would you change anything?And I don't think it would, because if I would, I may not be where I'm at today with what I know today, because it was a different path.It might take me on a different path completely.If there was another version of you from that perspective, another version of your life sitting right there, you could have remained successful with more money, your more predictability, probably very comfortable life from a lawyer's perspective.But it seems to me that your exchange gave you kind of a better quality of life from deep down inside.Right?

I think it was better for me to have more spare time.And I had more spare time working as a junior lawyer and then even as a junior partner in a commercial law firm.The first 10 years of my career, I took literally two vacations that involved more than just say, a long weekend.Twice in 10 years, I was able to take a week off, but I was working virtually every weekend.We were working 12 hour days.When I was doing securities work, sometimes it would be 16, sometimes it would be all nighters.It was very hard work.I mean, it paid well, but it was very hard work.

Yeah, sometimes you have to, you have to look outside that box.I mean that you, if you hadn't answered that ad advertisement, if you hadn't been put in that position to where you were at, you know, you, you would have probably been there and yeah, you would have been stuck in that rut.

Hard to say.I, I have to.I'll take the lawyer's excuse and say I don't answer hypothetical questions.Your honor.I don't know.

Yeah, this is.We'll call this.This is a creative opportunity to create your own.See, you spent two years, Washington, D.C. also before you went to Nairobi, and from there, much of your next 27 years were spent overseas.Latin America, Central Asia, Africa.At some point, did international work stop feeling like a career choice based on what we just spoke about?Is there a point in that where it stopped feeling like a good career choice and thought started feeling something like more like who you were, or did it still feel like a job to you?

It was at some point less interesting because the problem seemed to be repetitive.And I may have been happier if I just stayed as a legal advisor, but I did what a lot of people do.I was, I didn't.They wanted me to come back to Washington D.C. and head up the litigation for the agency.And I felt, no, I've been there and done that.I don't want to come back and do litigation.It's just another version of what I used to do.So at that point I switched into management.I had an opportunity to stay overseas in Central America and become a project manager.And at first that was fascinating work and you know, and I again, I enjoyed the variety of everything I was doing.But as I moved up in the managerial system, my problems became more personnel related and the challenges were basically dealing with difficult people at times.And that was not as fun as just answering the questions.When they came to me with a legal issue and I could answer it, yeah, the pay was a bit better, but it was more responsibility and it wasn't as fun.So in 2009 we had a, a little boy, 18 month old baby and he lost his medical clearances.Now they offered me a job teaching at the War College.And I don't know what would have happened had I taken that job.But I said, no, I'm old enough to retire.I'd like to go back and try practicing law again, but this time I'm going to do it on my terms and just do it in a small town instead of in a big law firm.So that was why I, that was a, that was a turning point and that was the decision I made.I said I'll pass on that job teaching economics at the War College.God knows what have happened, what would have happened had I taken it.But that was when I got off the, the, the treadmill with USAID and I went back to my hometown area and I took the LA bar exam.I had to take it twice because I flunked it the first time to taking it cold turkey after 30 years later from law school.But I eventually got my ticket to practice there and then it wasn't what I expected.I was representing because I was able to represent indigent Hispanic women or people from the former Soviet Union.But those cases were too emotional for me.Quite often they were battling over child custody and doing things.It was completely different work from commercial work.But I found that, no, I think I'd rather go back to aid.So I had a chance to go to Peru as a contractor and not as a senior manager, but as a sort of a technician in the alternative development office.And I thought, well, that sounds good.Plus, Lima was a place I always wanted to.I had visited before, but it struck me as a very pretty city to live in and it's right on the ocean.It's like a Latin American version of Los Angeles.And so I took that job and, and then my wife came and we had two girls that were born there.So they're, they just turned 12 a few weeks ago.

Very cool.Very cool.I just did an interview with the guy that did a, a brilliant film called Mastura and his family's from Lima and he shot.Recreated 1950s Lima in order to, to shoot this movie.It was pretty slick and I got to learn a lot about that.So I, I understand from just from verbally and watching the film and critiquing the film and the fact that he recreated that environment, it gave me an appreciation of the architecture and the art and the people and, and the food.

It's something to die for.

Piqued my interest.It really did.In fact, it inspired me so much that we had to find some restaurants here in the Phoenix area that serve food like that.Just like that.Which I thought, you know, hey, this is pretty slick at the.Expand our environment without leaving the state at the moment.

I think Machu Picchu should be on everybody's bucket list if you got to go up and see Machu Picchu before you die at some point.It's one of the world's most mind bending experiences.To look down at the river.

I, I could imagine.I, you know, we've watched some different documentary programs and on there including I think Josh Gates with Expedition Unknown has, has gone up there.I, I don't know if my.I'm walking, but I don't know if my disability would allow me unfortunately to climb up to Machu Picchu.It looks like it would be a little tedious.

They'll take you up there in buses and yeah, there were people up there that, that needed assistance when I visited several times, but.Well, twice, not several.But I know that they can, they have accommodations.The tourist business.Tourist infrastructure in Peru is surprisingly well developed.

Really.Well, I'm sure probably because of a lot of that, I'm guessing.Plus they have a lot of other stuff that's really interesting across Peru and is that part of South America?Anyway, things like the language.Discuss me a little bit here.Your language acquisition.You're entering different cultures through their words.I think that.Did that help you?Let me, let me rephrase this.Excuse me one second.I'm sorry, I gotta.Okay.We often romanticize international work.The travel, the countries, the diplomatic environments and things like that.But there is there, there's always a cost, right?What does spending decades overseas ask of you personally?Did you know?What do you miss?What did your career take from you that people looking at it from outside would never see?

Well, the big downside to me has been the fact that compared to my compatriots who stayed in one place, I don't have the support system that most people in the States have at my age.I don't have a lot of colleagues that I grew up with and worked with for the entire duration in one place.My, my former colleagues and my best friends are scattered around the world and so are my two oldest kids for that.I have a daughter and two grandsons in Switzerland and I have a older son who's in Bogota, Colombia.So that is the downside that I tell people about, and I'm now telling my three kids that are still with me that you can forget about the Peace Corps, forget about going overseas.You can go to any college you want as long as I can drive there in 30 minutes because there's plenty of them around here.And I'm sticking to that story.I don't want them to leave me.

I understand that.

What I did to my own parents, I mean, my mother was worried about me everywhere I was.I'm not going to.I don't want my kids to do that to me.So.

Well, and I think they pick safe places, at least the ones that have Switzerland seems pretty safe.

That's true.And the boy's happy in Bogota, although he's back here temporarily right now, but.

And you said you had five kids.

I do.I have a boy who's a sophomore at the University of Maryland.He, he's 19.I think he's still in bed.He may not have gone up to his first class, but then I got two 12 year old twin girls.They were the ones born in Peru.They don't speak a word of Spanish and they're both taking French now, which puzzles me.But that's what they wanted to do.

French is the language, right?I mean, I came back to it after.Yeah, I came back to it after what?50 Years?52 Years.So, you know, it.I think it just, it's one of those, just you drawn to it.

Yeah.Spanish is a super useful language in this country.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.She had several opportunities that if she had spoken fluent Spanish that she could have went up, you know, got a promotion and, and then some different things than what she's doing now.But you know, she's, she wants to learn Italian instead.She said if I learn a language, I want to Learn Italian, which is.I mean, we have Italian.My side.We have Italian in the family anyway, so it would have been beneficial because she could speak with them.Some of them are very, very fluent in Italian.So I think that was part of her choice.Your career is taking you to places where history wasn't something you read about.You were standing in it like a Guinea, Sierra Leone, Kyrgyzstan, Colombia, and many other places in between.As a mission director to New guinea and Sierra Leone, country representative in Kyrgyzstan and deputy mission director for USAID role, you weren't simply observing those events.You were kind of making decisions.And inside of them.Do you think from a human perspective, those experiences kind of changed you the most?Maybe not professionally, but personally.My podcast, I try to kind of explore how we as individuals evolve and we change and we move into where we feel more comfortable with, from not only work perspective, but environment perspective to where we end up in life, basically.

You know, they certainly formed a worldview that I have.I've become much more aware of how similar we are to people in all of these other countries.And yet.And yet I'm also similar.Sensitive to how fragile the social consensus is.And that is a major concern.I just saw it fall apart so quickly in so many places, and it made me appreciate more the need for governments to speak more about values.I have a problem with this, as you may have picked up in your research.You're certainly quite well prepared.Michael, you know more about me than a lot of the hosts do.But one of the issues that I, early on, I didn't understand, what is the problem?Somebody came to me and said, you know, they're saying prayers in this building that we built.I said, so that's good for them.What's the problem?And some lawyer put it in this education officer's head that it was a problem to say a prayer in our building.And I thought, that's crazy.That has nothing, nothing to do with the First Amendment.It's not restricting the exercise of religion in the US it's not a law respecting the establishment of religion.Why should that have anything to do with the First Amendment?But in fact, USAID had written a rule that said we're not going to get near it.If it's got anything to do with theology, we're not going to get near it.And the last example I struggled with was in the University of Montana, came to me when I was in Kyrgyzstan, and they wanted to translate portions of the Quran that discourage people from.Well, they say they don't just discourage it.They Say suicide is a sin against Allah and you can't do it even if you're just doing it to yourself, let alone if you're taking out, you know, several other people in the process.And I thought, well, this would be a great idea.We need to trans.They can't read the.This Arabic.They'll recite these Arabic prayers.They don't know what they're saying.Let's translate it into Uzbek.Let's translate it into Kyrgyz.And the lawyers in Yesid and I had been one.They were telling me, no, we can't touch it.It's got.It has something to do with values and theology.So we're in this crazy situation now where it's legal to take US Government money and finance, you know, weapons and you can shoot somebody, but you can't.You can't just point out that whatever they're believing is that they think justifies a suicide bombing is, in fact, mistaken.And it's not something that their own faith sanctions.In that sense, that changed me.I am now an advocate for a much more liberal approach to the separation of church and state.I'm not talking about trying to convince people about what whatever the Supreme Being is or is not.But government needs to talk about values.They need to make sure schools do that, and they need to do it in a consistent way.And if that means re examining some of these scriptures, well, so what?I mean, let them do it.They need to get into the topic and talk about it.And that's become a theme now that I'm pushing when I'm doing podcasts like these.I make the point also that I think these national borders now need to be re examined.I think that it's a habit, much like monarchy used to be a habit.And when Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense during the time of our own revolution, he said monarchy is a habit.Humans have to get over it.There's nothing divine about the right of kings.And I now think that national borders themselves are a bit of a habit that humans need to take another look at, because what they've enabled is extremely large militaries that will be responding to the whims of one person.And the war in Ukraine was started by one guy.Putin.The war in Iran was started by one guy.Well, maybe two if you count Bibi Netanyahu, but it was started by one guy.And you might see that.You might see that happen in Asia.If Xi Jinping says, we're going to take Taiwan, that's a huge military responding to the desires of one guy.None of that would be possible if we didn't have these large militaries surrounded by these borders that enable those militaries.And if we were more like the Swiss system.And I know a lot, little bit about it since my daughter, oldest daughter lives there.Every little canton in Switzerland makes its own rules about who becomes a citizen of the country.And I know my daughter started the process when she lived in Bern.Then when she moved to Wildersville in a different country, she had to start all over.They didn't care what those people in Bern had decided about her citizenship.So eventually she did it.She became a Swiss citizen.She's also still a US citizen for that matter.But these borders are enabling crazy things to happen.And foreign aid, the area I worked in for almost three decades wouldn't even be necessary if you had, if you had open borders.I realize that is politically nuts, it's not going to happen in my lifetime.But I think eventually it ought to happen.

I'm with you on that.I agree with you in that respect.I think that we need to start understanding that we are all human beings.We're all connected.We all have the same needs, the wants.We all still have the ability to interact with each other at such a level that we can communicate, educate.We have humanity, compassion, empathy, and take care of each other.So I agree with you 1000%.I think that it unfortunately has gone into A, A, it's not going in the direction it really should be going.I think that we are reverting back many, many, many, many years then and it's just the wrong direction.But that's a whole, that would be a whole nother two hour conversation or longer.

That's a fact.That's a fact.

So is there anybody you met during these years that those whose story is.I'm all about storytelling.Whose story really stuck with you, stayed with you and why?Because you traveled, I mean, 27 years of traveling to all these different countries and dealing with all these different countries.Is there something that really stuck out to you and has stayed with you and stuck with you and connected your soul?

You know, there was a guy, his name is Aaron Williams and he was a one point the head of the Peace Corps.But when I first joined aid, he was my neighbor and we would carpool together.The guy would take me back and forth.He, he was the youngest public school teacher ever in the Chicago public school system.He's a black guy and he's got a photographic memory.He can recite to you Stuff that he.He read 20 years ago.And he can recite it to you word for word.He's just a brilliant man.Anyway, Aaron once was riding to work with me and I was telling him the story about one of my jobs.I was the only white guy on a railroad maintenance gang with the Northern Pacific Railroad.And I'm telling him this and telling the guys in the car that, yeah, I was the only white guy there.And Aaron turns his head around and he says so?And so.He made me feel about 2ft tall because obviously he had been in many situations where he was the only minority person in the room.And Aaron was the mission director in South Africa.And he met Nelson Mandela when he got out of jail.It's his theory that maybe Elon Musk was still there in South Africa when AID was supporting the anti apartheid movement.And we were in a big way.We supported a lot of these black NGOs that fought for the end to apartheid.And his theory is that perhaps the reason the Agency was that Musk was so adamant about feeding us into the wood chipper is that he had a bone to pick with usage.I don't know one way or the other.But anyway, my moments with Aaron have stuck with me.He's a very dedicated guy.He's retired now.It gives me a chance now to mention that the book that was written called into the Wood Chipper, it's way better than my books.And it's the story of how the agent was destroyed.The author is a guy named Nicholas Enrich.And I highly recommend it to people who want to understand, you know, why they.Or what they did.Not why they did it, but what they did when they.When they ended the agency.Because.And that moment was what inspired me to get busy and finish my own stories.

Yeah.Which I think is important for Matt.I mean, thank you.And if I ever have the opportunity to have a conversation with that individual, I would tell him the same thing for at least opening the.The door for opportunity, for better understanding of what took place and what happened and.And everything.Because obviously, I think that I agree with you and with him with all of that, in respect to how it was done and that it.It really shouldn't have been done.Very disappointed with it.The Inside USAID and Odyssey of Foreign Assistance is your book.I'm curious about what writing the book did to you, because there's a difference between remembering your life and actually sitting down and putting it on paper like you did.

Well, much of it had already been written.I just hadn't put it together in publishable form.And I was inspired to do that in February of 2025 when they called us a bunch of crooks.I mean, we were the opposite of crooks, you know, and it was just a silly charge.The idea that we were stealing money out of our own budget is crazy.We had so many eyeballs watching everything we did that I don't even.I don't even want to dignify it with a more lengthy response.It was just a nutty accusation.But it was enough to inspire me to finish writing the.Putting the stories together and also adding some context about usaid.I've had so many opportunities to talk about it now.I realized that I really ought to come out with a second edition that answers the other questions that I didn't answer because I've been asked a lot of them.But I tried to give a sense of what it was like to work inside the agency.Now, obviously, I wasn't in it when it got destroyed.So that's why this other book is a lot better tale.It doesn't deal at all about, you know, what, what was going on overseas.Well, you know, in a very limited fashion, it was all about what was happening in D.C. and what I'm also, I need to learn more about how much of the Agency I know.It's a very tiny part, but I don't know exactly what they've retained and put in.In State Department because some of it is still going, but.But not all of it by.Not 95% of it is done.

And you don't hear.I mean, I don't hear.I'm a new town, you know, you don't hear anything being done with USAID at the moment.You don't hear they've gone here, they've gone there.Especially even with all these disasters that have been taking place.The floods.

Oh, that's right.

Nepal and the earthquakes they've had across the world and things like that.You don't ever hear of any aid from the United States going to them in any form.

I did hear that they were sending, at first it was half a million dollars to Nepal somehow.And then the figure a couple days later, it was a couple million dollars.I don't know.The Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance was part of USAID and it had depots, material depots all around the world where they could very quickly deliver supplies typically needed in these circumstances.Portable toilets, water, shelter, food.They don't have those depots anymore.I don't know what they're doing with their assistance, but they're funneling it through the State Department and they may have picked up some of the people from OFDA when they, when they took that on, but it's, it's certainly not the well functioning machine it used to be.

Yeah.Which is again, extremely, extremely disappointing to that and so many other agencies that were.Yeah, again, a whole different conversation.Taking FEMA the way it did, the Federal Aviation Administration, etc.So many things were cut here that should not have been cut.And then people are suffering now.You know, again, I'm a compassionate individual.I've walked into places as you have.I've walked into poverty.I've walked into people losing everything that they've had.I've experienced working several floods in my life, as well as fires.We were living at Woodland Park, Colorado, when the Hayman fire was within four miles of our house.We were lucky enough to have other colleagues of mine, law enforcement colleagues that helped me to unload everything in our house into trailers and move it down the mountain so that we, if it did hit our house, wouldn't have destroyed it.But we had friends of ours that lost everything that they owned and they were kind of just left with nothing.And it.So yeah, I, I, I have a place in my heart for that.And I think it's just, I have other words that I won't say on the podcast because just.But you, I'm sure you understand me.Why do you think it was important?Do you think for those reasons alone, it was important to preserve your experiences within that book?What motivated you to write the book?

Well, you know, there's a phrase we often used in development called leaving some tracks in the sand.We wanted to know that our projects would be effective and sustainable.I wanted a record for my kids and grandkids, and that's what promoted me to, I mean, initially inspired me to write the stories, but, you know, there were lot of funny events and I thought, well, maybe this will be of interest to other people who are, you know, would be interested in hearing the stories of somebody who was in that agency for as long as I was.So I collected them.I was trying to get the thing published through a mainstream publisher at first, and I had several houses that were interested, but they all said it's going to take at least a year, a year and a half, and I wanted it on the street.So I went ahead with another, quicker version that was my own client.Anyway, that's why the book's out there.And I know my oldest daughter read it and Said, way to go, dad.It helped her understand her own background.So that alone was enough to make me happy about it.

Well, I think you're leaving a legacy and you're educating people as well at the same time.Leaving a legacy, educating people, hopefully inspiring them and giving them opportunity to have a better understanding and maybe take action.So I think that's a good thing.I could talk for a while, about another hour, but I know we gotta go.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to.I got to pull a plug at some point.I gotta go pick a girl up in a bus stop.

Don't want to leave her at the bus stop.Would be a good thing.Speaking of legacy and remembrance, we've talked about the choices that shaped your life, and I'm wondering about the ones that almost didn't happen.I asked this of everybody on my show.The opportunity you almost missed, the sign you almost didn't see, and the road you almost didn't take.Was there a moment in your life that if you'd gone the other way, everything that followed might have been completely different?

Well, I think the moment I mentioned when they offered me that job at the War College, that would have been a very different career path.Had I stayed with the Agency, I know I would be.Would have been bumped up into a more senior level later.It would have been D.C. based.And the reason I wasn't excited about it at the time, it was in 2009, and the 2008 Great Financial Crisis had just happened, and I didn't have a graduate degree.I don't have a graduate degree in econ.And you had central bank presidents and you had Nobel Prize winners telling each other they were idiots because they didn't understand why this happened so fast.And nobody understood it at first.And I was supposed to teach a bunch of young soldiers at the War College who had twice the energy and half the age.And it just seemed, no, that's going to be a little too daunting.But I have looked back and wondered, had I stayed with the Agency at that point and decided to teach, it would have opened up a number of different opportunities to me.But on balance, I did what I did.And.

Well, I think if you hadn't gotten much, I think that what the universe puts you where you were supposed to be at the right time.And I think that you.

I think that's right.I think that's right.Like I said, the guardian angels are up there.Fate.Fate is watching.

Yeah, I agree with that.Let's tell everybody how to get a hold of you how to find your books.

Well, the website is cliffordhbrown.com the H is important just so you don't end up looking at a black jazz trumpet player with my name.He passed away in the 50s in Pennsylvania somewhere, but that's not me.But that, that website has links to both the books and also to a substack where I do some.I published a few articles on other topics that go beyond what's in that.Either of those books.So the substack is.The link is on that webpage, but it's.It's cliffordbrown.substack.com.There's no H in that one, which is my mistake.But so if people are interested, they can, they can go to either of those sites.

And I'll make sure that that's in the show notes.Everybody has a way of connecting with you just by clicking on it.That way they can kind of reach you that fast.I always have one more question.This is one more thing before you go.So before we go, any words of wisdom for anybody else partaking of the same journey?

Learn a language.I think that's my wisest piece of advice I can give anybody.I think it'll help make the world a smaller place.

That's profound.I'm doing that right now.So you're inspiring me to get back with it.

Way to go.

Yeah, exactly.Cliff, thank you very much for taking the time with us.I really appreciate you sharing your journey, your words of wisdom, and the opportunity for us to be educated, motivated and inspired.I look forward to another conversation when your next follow up book comes out.

Thank you.I've enjoyed the talk.Michael, thank you.And good luck with the podcast.

Thank you.Thank you.Maybe we spent too much time believing that.That our lives are supposed to make sense while we're living them.We look backward and draw a straight line.Like law school led to this, the job led to that.That decision led to the next.But real lives rarely happen that way.Sometimes the life begins with a river.A job you didn't expect, a ship going somewhere you've never been, a language that changes the way you see the world, or an advertisement you almost didn't answer.Sometimes the moment that looked like detours turn out to be the road that we're supposed to be on.What I take from this conversation is that the life we eventually recognize as our own may not be the life we planned originally.It may be the life we were curious enough to follow.So that's a wrap for today's episode.I hope you found inspiration and motivation and a few new perspectives to take with you.If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to like, subscribe and follow us.Stay connected.You find a subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite listening platform.In the meantime, this is One more Thing before you go.So have a great week, have a great day, and thank you for being part of our community.So until next time, I'm Michael Hurst.Thanks for listening to this episode of One More Thing before you Go.

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