The Unraveling of the Liberal World Order (Making Sense #429)

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Sam Harris speaks with Anne Applebaum about the erosion of democracy at home and abroad. They discuss the Sudanese civil war and the outside forces involved, America’s retreat from global leadership, the impacts of USAID cuts, gerrymandering, the integrity of U.S. elections, the capitulation of Republican representatives to Trump, tariffs, what a post-Trump world could look like, JD Vance as a potential successor to the MAGA movement, Israel’s actions in Gaza, and other topics.

Anne Applebaum is a historian, journalist, and staff writer at The Atlantic. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the SNF Agora Institute. She was a columnist for The Washington Post for more than fifteen years. She is the author of five critically acclaimed books: Twilight of Democracy, Red Famine, Iron Curtain, Between East and West, and Gulag, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She divides her time between Poland, where her husband is foreign minister, and Washington, D.C. Her latest book is Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.

X: @anneapplebaum

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