Anne Applebaum: Nihilism in Sudan & Orbanism in the USA

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Audacy | Puck

Politics, News

4.8 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John welcomes Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum back to the show to discuss her new cover story in The Atlantic on the devastating civil war in Sudan. Applebaum—whose 2004 tome “Gulag: A History” won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and whose most recent book, “Autocracy, Inc.” comes out in paperback this month—explains how anarchy, greed, and nihilism have replaced the liberal world order in Sudan; the role that Donald Trump and Elon Musk played in the country’s downward spiral; and why the same forces are coming for the countries of the rich world next. She also lays out the evidence that Trump is bent on turning the U.S. into a bigger, badder, more authoritarian version of Viktor Orban’s Hungary. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:07.5	Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Heilman, a puck and Odyssey
1:12.0	Joint featuring lively in-depth conversations with the people who cruised the corridors of power
1:17.1	in America sculpting and shaping the ebb and flow of our politics and culture.
1:22.4	With everything that is going on in U.S. government, policy, economics, you know, immigration, child sex,
1:31.4	trafficking cold cases that are suddenly piping hot, it might seem a little discordant or even
1:37.5	just plain odd that the cover story of the September issue of the Atlantic is a 10,000-plus word
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