What Keeps Tyrants in Power? with Marcel Dirs...

Thomas Cromwell helped Henry VIII break with Rome, reshape government and establish the Church of England. A century later, his distant relative Oliver Cromwell helped defeat a king, establish a republic and became Lord Protector. Both men are usually remembered as exceptional co ...  Show more

Europe’s past is not past. The borders of vanished empires still surface in election results. The European Union and Nato face a world in which Russia is aggressive, America is less dependable and Europe’s own ability to act remains fragmented. Here in Britain, the political argu ...  Show more

What does it take to get rid of a dictator? How do these tyrannical figures cling onto power - and how does this power warp their decision-making? Can they ever know when someone is telling them the truth, when everyone around them lives in fear? To find out, Gavin Esler speaks t ...  Show more

Why are so many autocrats germaphobes? Why was the truth so dangerous for Soviet engineers? And what can salami reveal to us about the mind of Vladimir Putin? This is the first of two special episodes in partnership with HBO's new series "The Regime". Tim Harford investigates rea ...  Show more

Sam Harris speaks with Timothy Snyder about his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe. 

Sam Harris and Anne Applebaum discuss the nature of modern autocracies and how democracies fail. They discuss the power of ideas, why autocracies seek to undermine democracies, cooperation among dictators, how Western financial experts and investors have enabled auto ...