Back in America

Stan Berteloot
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Interviews from a multicultural perspective that question the way we understand America

  1. Who Steps In When America Walks Away?

    6D AGO

    Who Steps In When America Walks Away?

    Clifford Brown was a partner at a Beverly Hills law firm when he saw a newspaper ad that changed his life. He gave up most of his income, left his house over the ocean, and joined the U.S. Agency for International Development. For the next 27 years, he worked in Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Guinea, and Peru. In this conversation, Cliff describes bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, a practice where young men abduct women and force them into marriage. His own wife's older sister was kidnapped. Later, after Cliff spoke out against high-level corruption involving electricity smuggling, his wife was abducted at gunpoint outside a hair salon in Bishkek. We talk about what USAID actually did beyond humanitarian aid: creating agricultural industries that supplied American grocery stores, training accountants in post-Soviet states, building court systems across Latin America. A law called the Hickenlooper Law prohibited the agency from telling Americans about any of it. Cliff spent twenty years fighting his own agency's lawyers over whether the U.S. government could fund translations of Quranic texts that prohibit suicide, to counter radical Islam after 9/11. The lawyers said no, citing excessive entanglement with religion. His argument: it's legal to fund a bullet but not a conversation about scripture. The Washington Post covered his case in 2009. We discuss what USAID got wrong, including the failed counter-narcotics programs in Colombia and the democracy-building efforts that went nowhere in the former Soviet Union. And we talk about what fills the vacuum when America steps back, with China building railroads and mines across Africa on loan terms that countries cannot repay. On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order pausing nearly all foreign aid. By July 1, USAID officially ceased to exist. More than 80 percent of its programs were terminated. Cliff describes the sadness of watching colleagues lose their pensions overnight, and a former staff member from Kyrgyzstan now working in a grocery store deli. Clifford Brown is the author of Inside USAID: An Odyssey of Foreign Assistance. He writes at cliffordbrown.substack.com.

    28 min
  2. Your Heartbeat Can Convict You

    MAR 12

    Your Heartbeat Can Convict You

    A man's house catches fire. He tells police he ran through the flames saving his belongings. Then detectives pull the data from the pacemaker in his chest. His own heartbeat tells a different story. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, a former public defender, and the author of Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance. In this conversation, he walks us through the criminal cases, the legal gaps, and the surveillance infrastructure that most Americans don't know they've already built around themselves. We talk about Google search histories used as confessions, smart home cameras that become prosecution witnesses, Palantir's expanding role in immigration enforcement, and what happens when the definition of "criminal" shifts but the data trail stays the same. Ferguson proposes something he calls the tyrant test: design your privacy protections by assuming the worst possible leader will have access to your data. He argues it's not a thought experiment. It's the logic the country was founded on. Book: Your Data Will Be Used Against You (NYU Press)https://nyupress.org/9781479838295/your-data-will-be-used-against-you/Guest: Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School

    37 min
  3. A Pastor Joined the FBI. Then His Kids Came Out.

    MAR 6

    A Pastor Joined the FBI. Then His Kids Came Out.

    Eric Robinson spent twelve years in Christian ministry before leaving the pulpit for the FBI. For twenty-four years, he served as a special agent and SWAT operator, working counterterrorism, human trafficking, crimes against children, and public corruption. He also raised two transgender children inside one of the most conservative law enforcement cultures in the country.In this conversation, Eric talks about planting a church built on grace instead of judgment, why his two-year stress headache vanished the day the Bureau accepted him, and how buying a sandwich for a woman facing a trafficking charge helped him rescue a fifteen-year-old girl. He describes what his body did during a deadly force encounter, what his SWAT teammates said when he told them about his kids, and why he moved from "hate the sin, love the sinner" to just loving. We end with the Constitution, ICE, Christian nationalism, and whether the institution he gave his career to still resembles the one he joined. Eric's book, Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI, comes out this fall.Find Eric on LinkedInFollow Eric on Instagram

    33 min
  4. Delphine Horvilleur: "People Whisper to Me What They're Afraid to Say Out Loud" (in French)

    FEB 26

    Delphine Horvilleur: "People Whisper to Me What They're Afraid to Say Out Loud" (in French)

    Recorded on February 25th at the Alliance Francaise in New York, this special French-language episode features Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur in conversation with Emmanuel Saint-Martin at an event organized by French Morning. One of France's very few female rabbis and a bestselling author, Delphine opens up about the firestorm she faced after speaking out on Gaza, the death threats from both sides, the blind spots that trauma creates, and why the art of disagreement may be the most urgent skill of our time. She shares a stunning street encounter with an Iranian woman during the Israel-Iran war, reflects on the Talmudic roots of real debate, and answers a member of the audience who tells her directly: you lost me. Raw, personal, and deeply relevant to anyone trying to hold onto complexity in an era of noise. Wiki Page

    1h 7m
  5. I'll Always Be French. Now I'm Also a US Citizen.

    FEB 23

    I'll Always Be French. Now I'm Also a US Citizen.

    A French teenager arrives in Iowa for a year as an exchange student. He falls in love. He spends the next 25 years in France building a career, a family, a life. Then in 2016, his wife gets a job offer in the US, and they move back with their three teenage daughters. What he discovers is that America changed, but more importantly, so did he. This is the story of what makes America fundamentally different. It's the only country where you can truly become something new while keeping everything you were. You can't become French, no matter how hard you try or how long you stay. But you can become American. And that distinction changed everything for Stan. In this episode of Back in America, Stan reflects on the gap between the America he remembered and the America he came back to. He talks about green cards and citizenship, about raising multicultural kids caught between two worlds, about voting for the first time, and about the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of something France could never offer: the chance to belong by choice rather than by bloodline. If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to become a citizen, what you gain and what you keep, this conversation answers it. What You'll Learn: The difference between a Green Card and US citizenship (and why both matter)What the naturalization process actually requiresHow America's immigration model fundamentally differs from countries like FranceWhy Stan's journey proves that you can be two things at once

    32 min
  6. "They Thought I Was White on the Phone": From Shoe Shiner to Master Craftsman

    12/28/2025

    "They Thought I Was White on the Phone": From Shoe Shiner to Master Craftsman

    "What we take for granted is opportunity. Opportunity is just the door being open. Once it's open, you're going to have challenges. But the door is open." Meet Norman Randolph, from Randolph's Shoe Care Service in Hightstown, New Jersey, the man who sees your soul through your shoes. From repairing a diabetic woman's shoes in an emergency to navigating racial perceptions in corporate offices, this episode explores the life of a man who built a legacy with his hands. In this episode: Why the condition of your heels reveals your personality. How he turned a 70/30 split with dry cleaners into a passive income empire. The incredible story of the "Gumball Machine" that proved humanity transcends class. Why "Old School" responsibility is the only marketing strategy you need. An episode for anyone who wants to know what it takes to walk through the door when it finally opens.

    29 min
  7. Can Europe Catch Up in Tech? Oliver Coste Says Change This Law

    11/12/2025

    Can Europe Catch Up in Tech? Oliver Coste Says Change This Law

    Recorded live in New York City, this Back in America conversation goes straight at a taboo: employment protection for highly paid engineers. Tech entrepreneur and author Oliver Coste argues that strict dismissal rules in countries like France and Germany make it slow and costly to stop failing projects, which blocks the pivots that fuel disruptive innovation. Coste contrasts Meta’s rapid post–ChatGPT restructuring with SAP’s constraints, explains why Europe dominates incremental industries but lags in high-failure-rate tech, and lays out a flexicurity fix modeled on Denmark and Switzerland. We dig into profit dynamics, brain drain myths, and what happens to Europe’s economy by 2030 if nothing changes. If you care about Europe’s next decade, this one is blunt, data-driven, and hard to ignore.

    39 min
  8. World Correspondence Chess Champion Jon Edwards on Playing Alongside AI and the Search for Truth

    11/05/2025

    World Correspondence Chess Champion Jon Edwards on Playing Alongside AI and the Search for Truth

    Dr. Jon Edwards, ICCF Grandmaster and the 32nd World Correspondence Chess Champion, lays out how elite players win by working alongside AI. He explains why openings run on massive databases, how seven piece tablebases end many debates, and where humans still outplay engines in long, fixed pawn structures. Edwards walks through a months long plan to shift a single pawn, the kind of patient maneuvering neural nets miss. He shares the tech behind his home server, training custom neural nets on top correspondence games, and using ChessBase with open databases. We talk Princeton, Bell Labs, and a Sicilian idea that jumped from correspondence boards to classical prep. Edwards closes with fast learning tactics, why a broad liberal arts education still matters in the AI era, and a clear stance on truth in a noisy world. Wikipedia Teach Yourself Visually Chess

    23 min
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About

Interviews from a multicultural perspective that question the way we understand America

Information

  • Creator
    Stan Berteloot
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2024 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Back in America

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