Why are so many autocrats germaphobes? Why was the reality so harmful for Soviet engineers? And what can salami divulge to us concerning the thoughts of Vladimir Putin?

Tim Harford, host of the Cautionary Tales podcast, examines the true tales behind the HBO collection The Regime. Within the first of two particular episodes, Tim investigates real-life dictatorships and the social science that explains them, drawing on insights from recreation concept and psychology.

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Additional Studying

The dialogue of salami slicing drew from Thomas Schelling’s guide Arms and Affect, and How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Statistics on public opinion about democracy come from the OSF Barometer. John Simpson wrote for the BBC about his expertise on the Crimea checkpoint, with our different sources on the 2014 annexation together with Radio Free Europe, Brookings and the Monetary Occasions. Richard W Maass discusses salami techniques and Crimea within the Texas Nationwide Safety Evaluate.

The part on germophobia was impressed by Randy Thornhill and Corey L. Fincher’s guide The Parasite-Stress Principle of Values and Sociality, together with research together with The Psychological and Socio-Political Penalties of Infectious Illnesses and Associations of political orientation, xenophobia, right-wing authoritarianism, and concern of COVID-19. Studies concerning the oddly germophobic behaviour of varied dictators got here from sources together with the New York Occasions, ABC, The Guardian, Enterprise Insider, VOA and UPI. The Ceausescu part, particularly, drew from The Life and Occasions of Nicolae Ceausescu by John Sweeney, Kiss the Hand You Can not Chunk by Edward Behr, and reporting in Harpers Bazaar.

The definitive account of Peter Palchinksy’s life and dying is The Ghost of the Executed Engineer by Loren Graham. Steeltown, USSR by Stephen Kotkin relates what occurred to Magnitogorsk. Amy Edmondson’s concepts are totally explored in her latest guide The Proper Type of Unsuitable. On the Soviet census, see Andrew Whitby’s The Sum of the Folks.