Booked Up with Jen Taub

51: Andrea Chalupa on DICTATORSHIP IS EASY

Booked Up with Jen Taub

Show Notes

Today Jen’s guest is journalist, filmmaker, author, and activist Andrea Chalupa. You know Andrea from her award-winning podcast Gaslit Nation that she founded with Sarah Kendzior. Fake populism. Demonizing the press. Scapegoating. Propaganda. Personal militia. All ingredients for a successful dictatorship and topics of their conversation.

Andrea and Sarah collaborated on the book we are discussing today called DICTATORSHIP: IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK. They describe DICTATORSHIP as “a wild ride showing the perks and pitfalls of becoming a dictator, and how to overthrow one.”

Part of the book focuses on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s genocidal famine in Ukraine in 1933. Andrea is also the writer and producer of the award-winning journalistic thriller that was produced by MGM called Mr. Jones that came out in 2019. Mr. Jones was directed by three-time Academy Award-nominee Agnieszka Holland (known for her work on Europa Europa; The Secret Garden; House of Cards; The Wire) and starring James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, and Peter Sarsgaard.

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