Excitable Boy
Diplomat Chris Wurst, Tossing Mentos in the Coke Bottle of Diplomacy
When I met Chris Wurst, a U.S. diplomat, in Lusaka, Zambia, in 2006, the immediate impression was, unlike most Embassy folks, this is an Excitable Boy (taken from a song of the same name by Warren Zevon). Inside this man was a palpable sense of energy and enthusiasm.
He seemed to be jumping for joy, even while trying to keep his feet on the ground.
While many diplomats wear a poker face, Chris often wore an irrepressible smile.
“There’s a human being in there,” I realized, happy to discover a kindred soul who, like me, was bound by the rules and rigors of the U.S. government bureaucracy, but was also unable to suppress or stymie his individuality or to deny his creative instincts.
Chris was a public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy, promoting a good image of the USA abroad and hyping our imposing, six-foot-tall Ambassador, Carmen Martinez. Meanwhile, I was a nameless, faceless public health expert working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. (Don’t bother to Google it, as the DOGE has dismantled it.)
***
A shared love of music was the first thing Chris and I found in common. Wait, love is not a strong enough word. Fanaticism would be about right. I was a ’60s and '70s rock guy who later developed an appetite for African music; Chris was a ’70s and ’80s guru.
This passion for music led, unexpectedly, to getting a weekly radio show on a private station that broadcast from downtown Lusaka, the capital, on the Happy World of 5 FM. This unexpected shot at local fame may be what cemented our lasting connection.
***
Although he had a stellar career with the State Department, Chris retired early, in 2022, to settle in Slovenia with his charming Slovenian/choreographer wife, Kjara. (They had an understanding: she would follow him to his various posts around the world—tough spots like Milan, D.C., and Dublin—and then they went to Ljubljana.)
Settling down does not come naturally to Chris, who is more at home shaking things up. In the staid world of U.S. diplomacy, where the remedy for hot tempers is, in essence, to offer an ice-cold, bubbly glass of Coke, something to sip while waiting for tempers to calm, Chris tossed Mentos into the Coke bottle and shook things up.
BOOM!
As often happens in the careers of globetrotters, I moved on and lost touch with Chris. He retired somewhere in Europe, but I couldn’t imagine him sitting still for very long.
Then, Trump won the 2024 election.
Soon after Trump took office, he eliminated USAID programs for Africa, Asia, and the rest of the world and dismantled USAID, firing almost all the staff, without cause.
Worried former colleagues came out of the woodwork, asking, “What can we do?”
Soon, Chris jumped into action, proposing to host a new podcast which he titled SoftPower/FulStories, alluding to the fact that U.S. foreign aid is a form of “soft power,” which helps the U.S. build and maintain good relations around the world without resorting to “hard power” (military intervention). Chris hopes to explain foreign aid to Americans in a way that Aunt Deb and Uncle Bob can understand at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. Without uncles flipping over dinner plates a la Saturday Night Live.
Soft power is like taking a plate of cookies to your new neighbors as a welcome gesture, instead of knocking on the door, punching them in the face, and saying, “Never mess with me!”
Good luck with this task, Chris. Foreign aid is notoriously difficult to explain in a way that people can understand. It represents so many things, many of which are intangible.
It starts with the word “foreign,” which many of us associate with foreigners, people who speak a language many of us don’t understand, and whom some Americans think have “no business being in the U.S.”
That’s the unfortunate mood in the country, but Chris is going to try to change it.
Don’t believe me? Just wait. Tune in to SoftPower/FulStories starting Friday, September 5th (Details below). His lead-off podcast guest is a person nobody has ever heard of, me.
Chris is hard to resist. Check out this baby photo of him.
Chris was born excitable. “Hello, Ambassador? It’s Chris!”
He was once a “normal” American kid growing up in Minneapolis-St. Paul, until one day at the “repressive Theodore Roosevelt Junior High,” he looked around the classroom. While he was “not raised religious,” everyone else was a white Lutheran.
Nothing bad about that, but he realized that if he stayed there forever, his world would be all white, and probably almost Lutheran, until the day he died.
White like the refined white flour made at the Pillsbury flour mill in Minneapolis.
No doughboy, Chris wears his heart on his sleeve. He’ll spill his guts to anyone who asks.
Chris left the U.S. for a junior year of college in England, where he discovered many exciting things, including a lot of great new British music, and got a permanent dose of wanderlust
Having tasted British tea, he headed off to Africa after graduating from college. Unlike many people I interviewed for the blog, members of his family shared the travel bug. Before he was born, his mom was a stewardess (back when you could call them that) for TWA in NYC.
Chris landed in South Africa in the mid-1990s after Nelson Mandela’s long-overdue release from prison. Mandela then became the much-beloved President, who even forgave his cruel white tormentors.
At a private high school in Johannesburg, Chris taught world history. He also served as an election observer in 1999, when Thabo Mbeki took office in a smooth transition of power.
***
In 2006, he began his posting to Zambia as the Public Affairs Officer, a major promotion in his State Department career. This coincided with the start of the largest public health program ever funded by the U.S. government, PEPFAR, or the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, which successfully battled HIV/AIDS in Africa and Asia. This was his first time dealing with USAID, a respected global development and relief agency.
While in Zambia, when he wasn’t busy escorting the Ambassador to visit USAID projects or to meet with visiting dignitaries, Chris was still a very busy guy. Under his leadership, the Embassy won a prestigious global PEPFAR public diplomacy award. Based on his love of music, he began working with local musicians to promote themes like AIDS prevention.
However, like many talented people, Chris became a victim of his own success, promoted to higher and higher positions, until, as Acting Deputy Chief of Mission in Dublin during COVID, the doors closed. His job became tedious, with little room for creativity.
***
At that point, with little or no joy left in his dull official duties, Chris made the life-changing decision to retire early to Slovenia with Kjara. Like most retirees who set out to work on a dream house, they bought a fixer-upper. A one hundred-year-old farmhouse.
However, like other retirees with grand plans, Chris and his wife ran into the nightmare of red tape, rules, and regulations that govern renovations of historic buildings in Europe.
The question was not if Chris would find a new project, but what and when.
***
Life went on largely as normal under the Biden administration, and people tuned out.
However, American politics immediately took a dark turn in 2024 with the re-election of Trump on a platform to shut our borders and to slap tariffs on our trading partners from all over the world. This was not soft power, but a slap in the face to our friends and allies, declaring war on the world.
Across America, moans of agony arose. Many of us lost hope. Enter Chris Wurst. America, fear not, Chris is back, and he’s got Mentos!
He said it was time to take action.
“I knew how to do public diplomacy and podcasts. I had a (large) network of experienced people I could tap (as podcast guests)… Under the circumstances, “Retirement (would) seem hollow if (I did not do something) that might make a small impression on people.’”
Still a diplomat, Chris says the podcast will not hit people over the head with a barrage of facts, but will share stories of positive human connections made by Americans working overseas, deploying “soft power,” and telling stories even dubious listeners might relate to.
This is an ambitious goal for any podcast. Some people might scoff, but we’re talking about Chris, who, if not tethered to the ground, floats exuberantly above it.
Let’s leave it to Chris to pack a figurative pile of Mentos into the giant, warm bottle of Diet Coke that is American public opinion, and watch the fireworks as it erupts.
You may want to stand back. Tune in starting this Friday, September 5th
(2) Instagram Main logo of SoftPower/FulStories
#1 - Carl Henn First episode, featuring yours truly
***
My mind drifts. Time for me to wax philosophical about the potential of this podcast…
There is, I believe, within each of us, a certain amount of ferment, fizz, or foam. In most of us, the fizz fizzles over time, slowly, gently, at a steady rate. An effective agent of change can liberate all that stored energy in a moment of kind, conscientious, cosmic catharsis.
This is what I hope our dear, excitable boy will accomplish. He will encourage us to rise up, to shout from the rooftops that we are brothers, that our struggle is shared, and to demand that America’s wish to help “others” be made manifest once again.
Personally, I would like to see silent people shoot out of the shadows into the sunlight, and demand that our nation restore the foreign aid we give to help strangers. Isn't it better to lie down to sleep at night, knowing we tried our best to help others?
Is it too much to suggest we follow our better angels, rather than join an angry mob, possessed by its own demons, running through the streets of our nation in bloody pursuit of "others," screaming at them, "You don't belong here! Get out! Go home!"
Join Chris each week. Pop a Mento into the bottle. Be the best person you can.
(For more about Chris’s diplomatic career, scroll to the bottom.)
**
What can you do?
I encourage all of you who worked overseas, providing American foreign aid, to create eruptions of public kindness. Share with Americans what you know and how you know it.
Tell others that foreigners are not bad. In fact, anytime we go abroad, we become foreigners. What does that mean? It does not mean that you are bad or a criminal.
To be foreign is simply to be different from the people around you, not only by what you do or say, or how you look or sound, but by accident of birth. How can that make you bad?
In closing, dream big, act with kindness, explain with patience, and bear with the inevitable misunderstandings that we will encounter as we reach out to those who hold different or opposing views. We can make a difference, patiently, one person at a time.
Everyone who reads this post, consider taking the following actions
1—Follow SoftPower/FulStories
2--“Like” SoftPower/FulStories
3—Rate or review the podcast
4—Share it with family/friends
Be the Mentos!
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P.S. Additional information Chris provided about his career.
In 200, Chris headed off to Chennai, India. After the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, which caused over 20,000 deaths, he took the lead in enabling the media to report on the disaster. In October 2005, after a devastating earthquake hit Kashmir, killing 87,000 people, he helped international media reach remote sites receiving U.S. aid.
After Zambia, Chris took postings in Europe, then returned to the U.S. Along the way, he resorted to snapping pictures of himself with VIPs like Michele Obama, First Lady of the U.S., at the World’s Fair in Milan, and hanging out in Parma, Italy, with Patti Smith, rock’n’roll icon and a major source of inspiration to Chris to go see the world.
In Parma, Italy, he presented rock singer Patti Smith, a longtime musical hero of his, with the Consul General’s Award for Cultural Diplomacy. He described her as “one of the people who most inspired me to escape my suburban upbringing (to go see) the wider world.”
In Slovenia, Chris continued to use music for diplomacy, organizing huge programs around Bob Dylan [volunteerism] and REM [climate change]. In Milan, he was the Public Affairs Officer during the 2015 World’s Fair, where he met Michelle Obama at the USA pavilion.
We will spread the word and check out Chris. Thanks for sharing his story.