Democracy feels like something we can take for granted, but few people are talking about how quickly it can unravel from the inside.

Around the world, authoritarianism is on the rise, not through invasions or coups, but through the slow erosion of institutions, elections, and truth itself. It's a pattern that has repeated across countries and decades, and one that's now playing out closer to home than many would like to admit.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of Twilight of Democracy, Autocracy, Inc., and Gulag: A History. She has spent her career studying how democracies fall apart, and what it takes to stop them.

We discuss:

• How authoritarianism took hold across Central and Eastern Europe
• The shared playbook autocrats use to consolidate power today
• Why democratic institutions are more fragile than we assume
• Whether America is following a path she's seen play out elsewhere
• What it will take to defend democracy before it's too late

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