Anne Applebaum: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Atlantic staff writer specializing in authoritarianism, the Soviet Union, and the decline of democracy. Author of Gulag, Red Famine, Iron Curtain, and Twilight of Democracy; married to Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski.
What this episode covers
Anne Applebaum argues the post-1945 liberal world order is breaking down, driven both by autocratic powers (Russia, China, Iran) and by democratic backsliding inside the United States. She walks Steven Bartlett through the five core tactics autocrats use to dismantle a democracy: corruption, attacks on elections, politicizing the civil service, controlling information, and deploying state violence. She draws direct parallels between these tactics and current US events under Trump, citing kleptocracy, gerrymandering, voter-ID restrictions, pressure on media and universities, and the militarization of ICE. Applebaum rejects historical inevitability, insisting democracy's survival depends on the choices and civic participation of citizens today. The conversation closes on the role of truth-seeking journalism, polarization, algorithmic reality bubbles, and her own motivation for the work.
The guest's own work
Gulag: A History
Anne Applebaum
“if you're looking at my books, you know, I wrote three history books. I wrote the Gulag book.”— Anne Applebaum
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
Anne Applebaum
“I wrote a history of the Ukrainian famine. I wrote a book this is this is a book about how the Soviet Union took over Eastern Europe.”— Anne Applebaum
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe
Anne Applebaum
“So that book Iron Curtain is about it. I've written a lot about Ukraine and what happened when the Russians occupied eastern Ukraine.”— Anne Applebaum
Twilight of Democracy
Anne Applebaum
“that book Twilight of Democracy was a description I mean it starts with a description of a party I gave and then the book is about how people I knew had changed.”— Anne Applebaum
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival
Sir John Glubb
“this 2000 250 year figure which is famously popularized by a British historian called Sir John Gub in his essay the fate of empires and the search for survival”— Steven Bartlett
The End of History and the Last Man
Francis Fukuyama
“if Frank Fukiyama actually had in his famous book about the end of history, he had a description of well, what happens if we have two”— Anne Applebaum
Big reveals from this episode
- Claims the US has, for the first time, a national paramilitary force in ICE: masked, in combat uniforms, not subject to normal police restrictions.
- Likens Anthropic's clash with the US government to Hungarian-style state harassment of companies that refuse to cooperate.
- Notes Trump's net worth reportedly went from $2.3 billion to $6.5 billion in two years, calling a sitting president running businesses 'completely new in American history.'
- Says the breaking point for Europe was Trump threatening to invade Greenland, with Denmark actually planning to blow up Greenland airports and shoot down US planes.
- Argues Trump misjudged the Iran war because nobody around him dared tell him it was a bad idea.
- Engages with the theory that the US, at 250 years old, is in the 'age of decadence' collapse stage of empire.
- Forcefully rejects historical inevitability: 'What happens tomorrow is completely dependent on what we do today.'
- Reveals a 1992 New York Times wedding announcement and that her husband is now the Polish foreign minister.
Worth remembering
- Map-makers no longer count the United States as a full 'liberal democracy,' only an 'electoral democracy.'
- Autocracies historically last far longer than democracies, which have been rare and mostly short-lived.
- America's founders studied the fall of the Roman Republic and Athenian democracy while writing the Constitution to make it last.
- The happiest countries on earth (Finland, Scandinavia) combine democracy, stability, wealth, and low corruption.
- In Canada and Denmark, citizens now use apps to scan supermarket products and boycott anything made in the USA.
- Viktor Orban lost power in Hungary after 16 years; with two-thirds of parliament he repeatedly rewrote the constitution for electoral advantage.
- Proposed US voter-ID rules could disenfranchise women (69 million have birth-certificate names that don't match their married names) and the 60% of Americans without passports.
- Putin has cut Russian access to Western social media; Russian Instagram influencers lost their audiences overnight.
- Sir John Glubb's study found empires from the Assyrians to the British shared a roughly 250-year lifespan across stages from pioneers to decadence.
- Bartlett: 'You have to join a tribe or you get killed by one', on the pressure podcasters face to pick a political side.