Welcome to The Unpopular View with Michael Brown.

On this show, our core argument—backed by Michael’s two Routledge books on land and climate in the Global South—is clear: foreign aid only lasts when it is appropriate, feasible, and negotiated with the people it serves, never when it's imposed from the outside.

Today, we test that rule against the ultimate test case: PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).

Joining Michael is veteran journalist John Donnelly, author of the new book Lifeline: The Untold Story of PEPFAR. John covered the AIDS epidemic in Africa for the Boston Globe, opened its South Africa bureau, and—as you'll hear in this episode—even became a key figure in his own book when he coaxed a stunning, on-the-record admission from the head of USAID.

In This Episode, We Explore:

• The Origin Story: How a small group in the 2002 White House bypassed African health ministries, sidelined USAID, and ignored urgent CDC warnings about building parallel healthcare systems.
• The 26 Million Life Benefit: How fast-tracked, top-down funding achieved staggering public health successes against HIV/AIDS.
• The Hidden Costs: What happened to local healthcare capacity? Did twenty-two years of parallel systems starve other critical treatments (like pneumonia and diarrhea) of funding?
• The Accountability Gap: Why nobody has truly "closed the books" on PEPFAR’s long-term institutional trade-offs—and why that should bother everyone in international development.

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