How to Talk to People - How to Talk to People: What do we owe our friends?

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

The terms of friendship are both voluntary and vague—yet people often find themselves disappointed by unmet expectations. In this episode of How to Talk to People, we explore how to have the difficult conversations that can make our friendships richer and how to set expectations in a relationship defined by choice. This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smierciak. Special thanks to A.C. Valdez. The managing editor of How to Talk to People is Andrea Valdez. Be friends with How to Talk to People. Write to us at [e-mail]. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber. Music by Alexandra Woodward (“A Little Tip”), Arthur Benson (“Charmed Encounter,” “She Is Whimsical,” “Organized Chaos”), Bomull (“Latte”), and Tellsonic (“The Whistle Funk”). Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlantic.com/listener-survey. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to listen to additional episodes in The Atlantic’s How To series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure that they're using their new tools to change our institutions. their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think

about what might happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now. He had a bachelor party and half of his friends bailed last minute and he was talking about these friends and how one of them lived next to him. And I thought in my head, those are not friends. How is this guy defining friendship? Is this when I get on my soapbox? Yeah, yeah, you can get on your soapbox. So flaking. I hate it.

I think doing the thing where you just don't show up is really not cool. If you just think it happens organically, you're going to not have friends. Hi, I'm Julie Beck, a senior editor at The Atlantic. And I'm Becca Rashid, producer of the how-to series. This is How to Talk to People. Becca, I know it might seem strange to suggest that we don't know how to talk to our friends and we need a podcast to tell us how, but actually there are a lot of common conflicts and misunderstandings in friendship that often go unspoken.

Friendship can encompassed. many different kinds of relationships, but that means that sometimes friends have clashing expectations of what the friendship should look like. And they don't always talk about that explicitly. Like, flaking is a prime example of this kind of unspoken friction that can build up in friendships. What is it about flaking in particular that bothers you? It's not just that it annoys me, like, in a general sense when people flake. Like, I don't think anybody likes being flaked on. it's this sense that it has become so very normalized in our culture and it's just like a routine part of social life that you actually almost have to expect that like a good percentage of the time if you make a plan with somebody like that plan is going to change or get canceled and you can't rely on it happening.

I think we're a little too quick to be like if I am not an optimal tip top shit. shape to show up for you, then I won't show up. Or that we have to be like completely at ease, completely comfortable, completely like full of, you know, vim and vigor to hang out with our friends. Totally get it and I'm not upset if you lose your child care and you have to back out or if you get sick, things happen, life happens, and I think we can all be understanding. I think what bugs me is that it feels just completely fine in a lot of things. social circles to just cancel with no explanation or the reason is just I'm not feeling up to it today or I'm really tired from work. I think it's kind of part and parcel with a big premium that we

put on protecting our energy as like the greatest good that you need to protect your own bandwidth and your own energy. But I don't know if we should protect our energy at the cost of our relationships. There's a certain point where it just feels like, okay, do you care about this friendship? I think that Lizzie Post could help us with this. She is a great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post, who is a famous etiquette expert who wrote, you know, a well-known column about 100 years ago. And Lizzie is now the co-president of the Emily Post Institute, and she recently published the sort of updated centennial edition of Emily Post etiquette. There's definitely no shortage of, like, dating advice columns or even, like, parenting

advice out there. But I think what we wanted to find was some more etiquette tips or best practices for managing those tricky conversations and friendship, where expectations are less well-defined. And that's right up Liz exactly. I'm going to start with a big philosophical question. Okay. What do you owe your friends? We are such individuals, and just like in relationships, your love language might be different,

in friendships, your friendship language is different. So what one person thinks we owe a friend, another person might think, no, that's ridiculous, no way. So I think it's a very, very personal question, and that makes navigating those relationships that are our friendships a little bit more difficult and something that we want to. to pay more attention to to recognize that not everyone sees friendship the exact same way that we do. Something that I have noticed is that it feels totally normalized to flake-on plans. So, for instance, if you and I make a plan today to get drinks next Friday, I'm going to feel like when Friday

comes around, I'm going to feel a need to text you to ask, are we still on for drinks today? and it would not be strange for you to text me the day before or even day of to say, you know, actually something came up or I'm just not feeling up to it. Have you observed this too? Absolutely. I think to a certain degree, it's always been the norm that if you don't feel well or if an emergency happens, if you've got a stomach bug, that's understandable. That's not flaking out.

That's life happening and getting in the way of fun social plans. Yeah. But I do think that there is a larger trend of being much more willing to let the emotional, do I feel like it, play a factor in whether or not they end up committing to or actually following through on plans. Or, yeah, the sense that the plans that we make are not set in stone or what takes precedence is like just needing to do what's best for you. Well, and some people even say that it's like an insult to the friendship of getting together, that it's like, oh, hanging out with me sounds like a chore for you right now. And there are times where that's true. We get it. Like we all have learned that bandwidths like have capacities. I get it. I don't know that we need to be leaning into that like every week. Yeah. And I mean, I've been told that I am too curmudgeonly about this. Like I remember planning a party. And sort of complaining to someone about how I couldn't really plan, like, how much food to buy or anything, because half of the people who responded yes to the invite wouldn't show up. Yep. And the person told me that I was being unreasonable that I needed to accept an account for the fact that this is just part of social life.

I would not have been pleased if I had been told that by a friend to just expect that 50% of my guest list isn't going to show up for a party that they said. they would come to, I would let friends know, like, as we talk about entertaining styles and preferences, I mean, these are things friends can talk about. And you also get to be you. You're creating your own entertaining style. You're creating your own adult life in this world. And it might be something that you find you really value in friendship is cultivating a group of friends who really stick to their plans. Yeah. Some of it has to be just sort of the deep-seated, like, childhood fear of throwing a party and nobody comes, right? I have that too, yes.

I mean, if something happens often enough, is it just not rude, but just the way that things are and we need to just deal with it? That's a great question. The place where this one doesn't check that box for me is that there's enough people like you and me out in the world who don't appreciate this, who don't see this as a good trend, you know what I mean? This idea of committing to things and canceling very last minute for effectively no reason other than just not totally feeling up to it, even though there's nothing wrong with you. I think that this is something that's frustrating a lot of people.

The same way, people, for a good 20, 30, 40, 50, I think even my great great grandmother was writing about it. So we're going to go ahead and say 70 years. People have been annoyed at the fact that people don't RSVP well. There's always going to be a couple of friends who no matter what show up really late. There's always going to be someone who's your most likely to cancel. There's also always going to be the person most likely to always show up, you know, the person most likely to offer to bring something or to surprise you, you know. Like there's the good stuff too.

Yeah. We should give those people a medal. They just, they have gold stars. Becca, there was a really interesting study that I saw a while back where the research asked people how they would approach different conflicts with friends versus with a romantic partner. And generally, like, people expected that you would actively address a problem with a romantic partner. You would talk about it. You know, they say, like, never go to bed angry. But they found that there was more of a culture of passivity in friendships, that people were more likely to say nothing and just kind of

hope the issue went away on its own or kind of quietly put some distance in the friendship rather than talking about a problem. Passivity in my own approach to friendships comes from a fear that being too direct may come across as aggressive or asking for too much. It makes my desire for a deeper connection with friends, especially in adulthood, feel needy or childish or sometimes even a bit inappropriate or like overstepping. Okay, so can we talk about how to practically handle these situations? Like, if a friend flakes on me, how should I respond? Right now, I feel like my only option is to just say, okay, I understand. I often feel resigned to polite acceptance as well. I think that this is one of those things where in the moment, that really is the best thing you can do,

because if they're canceling really last minute, like within the day of the party, you've got things you're busy doing and you've got other guests that you have to focus on. So in some ways, it makes your own life easier to take that kind of etiquette, high road route and say, oh, you know, I'm really sorry to hear that. If you change your mind, feel free to come, you know, especially if it's that I just don't feel like it. You know, hey, if you find after an hour, you've rebounded and you're ready to come on over. I mean, is there a way to respectfully say that it bothers you or would you even recommend doing that? This is something that I might do at a different time. It might be one of those things where you find a good moment where you're talking about your friendship. A moment will

present itself and you can say, hey, you know, I got to be honest, that's actually something that I will cop to. I feel hurt when that happens. This sort of no worries if not culture, this is a phrase that I hear a lot and find myself using and then hate myself for using a lot, which is, It, you know, it feels hard or burdensome to ask friends for help or ask them to show up for us in some type of way. So, Lizzie, would you mind, like, pet sitting my cat while I'm out of town? But no worries if not. So just immediately giving you an out. Yeah.

Yeah. It feels like an etiquette thing because it feels like I'm being polite and deferential, but is being polite really equal to not asking each other for anything? It's more so acknowledging that this person might really want to do you a favor and be there for you, and you want to let them know it's truly okay if they can't. I think a lot of that is about removing pressure for people. And that, I think, is polite. Like, I can find politeness in that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's very situational. Maybe I just got broken up with. I'm so upset. And I'm like, Lizzie, can you please talk? But no worries if not. But then, like, there are some worries if not, you know? I also just feel like I don't understand why you would think of showing up for a friend as a burden. I think a lot of it is that it can be.

If you have a lot going on, if you're going through a lot, sometimes adding that moment of someone else's need that isn't a partner, that isn't a child, that isn't a parent, you know, they don't live with you, that it can feel like something you don't have. the capacity to do at the same time. It's amazing to see what you actually still have in your reserves when you attempt a moment of giving and generosity when you feel like you don't have anything. I think what I really like about modern friendships is the willingness to ask if it would be okay to lean on someone. That's something I don't always think has been a part of things. I don't know that in Emily's day, when things were really hard, just how much you got to lean into a friend the way we lean into them now. I'm Anne Applebaum.

Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new. tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats.

We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next. The new season of Altocracy in America, available now. I think what stuck out to me, Julie, about our conversation with Lizzie is how this balance of sort of the American mainstream culture of individualism and the voluntary nature of friendship is a tough thing to balance.

And it's hard to know what to ask of our friends. Totally. I mean, the thing about friendship, right, is that it's purely an entirely. defined by choice. So what our friendship looks like and what obligations we put onto each other are things that we as friends have to decide within every single friendship. And etiquette can be a really helpful framework for thinking through this or that specific situation, but I think a lot of people could benefit from broader, bigger conversations about the foundational issues of their friendships. Like, how intimate is this friendship? What do we want our role in each other's lives to be?

What do we expect from each other? Like friends are friends because they choose to be, not because they got a marriage license, not because somebody gave birth to somebody. You choose to be friends, and so you choose to show up for each other. And when we live in a culture that's so individualistic, like you said, we can default to that kind of you do you and we'll just give each other what we can, when we can. Having any sort of understood obligation to one another can be hard.

If you're expecting something different than your friend is expecting, just getting on the same page about what this friendship is and the level of expectation that we have of each other, it can be tricky. I had a friend who was coming back from Mexico and she was arriving at like midnight. Marissa Franco is a psychologist and the author of the book Platonic. And this is a friend I really wanted to get closer to. And I know that, you know, going out of your way to help someone in a time, a great way to get closer to someone. Hot tip. Yeah, hot tip. But I'm like, oh my gosh, I hate staying up late.

I'm a morning person. I go to sleep at like 10.30. Do I want to pick her up? I've got to pause this conversation I was having with Marissa Franco for a second. Because while we were talking, I found myself thinking about Lizzie Post's etiquette advice. And I actually think that sometimes we can be too polite to our friends. Like, maybe we're hesitant to even ask in the first place whether they can pick us up at the airport. And that sort of over-politeness, I think, can hold us back from having deeper friendships.

And with her airport example, Marissa offered a sort of straightforward framework for figuring that out for yourself. And Julie, I literally had to ask myself, would I do this for a romantic partner? Because of the ways romantic partners have monopolized what my brain associates with, like, deep love. So I had to ask myself that question. And when I did, I said, yeah, I would pick her up. I would pick up a romantic partner at the airport. Marissa is someone who's thought really deeply about how our culture encourages us to put friendships last on the priority list. And that can lead to us being weirdly overly polite to our friends like we're putting ourselves last before even talking about whether that's what we both really want.

She and I talked a lot about the communication challenges that can happen if you want friendships to be more central in your life. The model of friendship that we have is just so threadbare, more threadbare than it feels like it's ever been, that it's just, this is just someone who we go to once a month happy hours with. Yeah, it's so interesting to me to see the way that friendship is defined by flexibility in a way that no other relationship is. There's no specific role a friend has to play in your life. If I introduce you to somebody and I say, this is my friend Marissa, that could mean anything from we've known each other since the day we were born and have never been apart to, oh, we get coffee at work sometimes. Every friendship is different and it has to be designed by the friends themselves. And of course, that endless possibility is a strength of it. But do you think it can also be overwhelming to people?

Yeah, definitely both things. it's something that I love about friendship because it's like whatever need I have I can get met through friendship. Like we could be platonic life partners or we could hang out twice a year. But the slipperiness of that is that I think a lot of the times there's conflict in friendship because this is my understanding of friendship versus yours. You're like friendship is trivial and not something to put a lot of effort in and good vibes only. and I'm like friendships are deep and sustaining and profound relationships for me. And if we have that different view of friendship, you're not going to show up at times when I really need you.

And you're not going to expect me to get upset because if I had your expectation, I might not have gotten upset. I was talking to a friend's husband and he had a bachelor party. And half of his friends bailed last minute on his own bachelor party. Everyone had to pay $1,000. No. Yeah. Awful.

$1,000 to go to his bachelor party for like two nights. And he was talking about these friends and how one of them live next to him. And I thought in my head, those are not friends. How is this guy defining friendship? Like that is not how I define friendship. And so that made me think of the difference between good friend versus good company. Good company, I like you as a person. We enjoy our time together.

We have good conversations. Good friendship. A friend is it someone you is. invest in. It is a commitment. It is, I'm showing up in your times of need. It is, I'm doing things that sometimes might inconvenience me because I'm thinking about how much they'll mean to you. It is, I'm going to celebrate your successes. It's, I'm going to follow through with what I say that I will do to the extent possible. It's, I'm basically considering you and I'm considering your needs. And I think in a lot of our culture, we're stuck on good company and we haven't gotten to good

friendship. How do you set those expectations in a friendship when it is a voluntary relationship? With communication, like I've had to tell friends, for example, I would love to hear from you more. I notice I'm often the one here reaching out. Would you be open to that? And it's taking that risk, right? Because it is a risk. Because that could lead them to say, this person expects too much. I'm a back away. But it could also lead them to say, yeah, I'm going to show up and I'm going to reinvest. and I'm going to make sure Marissa feels like she's in a reciprocal friendship. It's also okay to like just talk about it in a more up front way. Like I went on a retreat with some friends.

I guess it was like a series of questions that went around in regards to like how do we support each other as friends? And one of the questions was like, do you like when friends show up last minute at your house? It's a helpful question to ask, you know? Like sometimes I'm in your neighborhood. I'm like, should I reach out? Should I not? If I don't ask, I might assume no. and then there's a misopportunity to connect.

So, yeah. The showing up last minute, well, first of all, I feel like that's something that always happens on TV shows, right? Like on the O.C, they were always just walking over to each other's house to have a serious conversation without ever, like, calling to say, I'm coming over. And it feels very unrealistic. And at the same time, I do have a friend who lives around the corner, who will sometimes text me, like, I'm walking by your place.

Do you want to come down? I think something that I've observed is, is a sort of strange politeness or formality in the way that people sometimes interact with their friends. For example, we text to set up a time to call instead of just calling. Are we just avoiding inconveniencing each other? Why would that be such a worry? Yeah, I think a lot of the times we fear imposing. We fear or burdening people, but the biggest burden we play can sometimes be our silence because we want it to be polite. And yeah, I think people think this is me not imposing. This is me trying to respect or understand a friend's boundaries. But the thing is we don't actually ask what they are. What I tend to see is it's more from a place

of this friend doesn't want to hear for me or this friend will be burdened by me. So it's the kind act for me to do less. Let me not reach out when they're going through all this grief because they probably want their time alone. You know? What I think, so one thing, things I always talk about with making friends is assume people like you because it's going to trigger a set of behaviors, warmth, openness that is going to make that more likely to be true. But I also think the more we assume people like us, the more intimacy that we have with them. So the more we assume, they're just going to want to hear from me on the phone. I don't have to set up this time to call.

I'm assuming that you love me. I teach a class on loneliness. And one of my students is like, I just think if I had to go to the hospital and the middle of the night, like, who could I call? And I'm like, how would you feel if one of the friends that you made reached out to you in the middle of the night because they needed help with going in the hospital? He says, I would feel totally honored that they picked me. And the problem is, when it comes to our glitchy brains, when we're predicting how we come off, we tend to be a lot more cynical and negative than what is the truth, especially with asking for help from friends. I get really

nervous about it and I take myself through that exercise where I'm like well what if this friend asked me for the same thing how would I feel that's probably the more accurate outcome yeah is there a sense that we feel like we need to be deferential to everything else that our friends have going on in their lives to the degree that we deprioritize ourselves before they have a chance to deprioritize us yes I think that's right you know there this theory basically arguing that we operate along two poles of protecting ourselves and protecting their relationship. And there's a lot of people who are often in this place of protecting themselves by not reaching out and being overly deferential, not being vulnerable, not initiating,

but they don't often realize that there's a cost to all that self-protection, which is your relationships. I feel like to some degree there's a feeling that we're supposed to opposed to just accept whatever it is that our friends are able to offer, that the highest value or the truest truth is that everybody needs to do what's best for themselves. And I think that's so Stars and Stripes American. I don't know if it's that way everywhere. But I think maybe it would be helpful if you can explain what individualistic boundaries are and what the boundaries you're seeing that you think are overly self-focused look like. Do you have examples?

Yeah. I think the self-focused boundaries look like in a sort of overarching way. I'm going to fulfill my needs no matter what your needs are, which looks like, hey, you know, if you call me really upset at 10 p.m., I'm not going to answer. Or, hey, like, I don't need to make time for you because at this time in my life, I'm very, very busy. to me setting a boundary as a communal act. It's like I set this boundary for myself so I can invest in our friendship in the long term and not get burnt out. And it's, I'm going to consider your needs when I set this boundary. And it's almost like I'm going to set this boundary and also

offer an offering. Like, oh, I'm not free to talk at that time. What about another time? Or even like, you know, I'm not free to come to that, but I'm rooting for you and I'm supporting you. Sometimes it's just the affirmation. That's the offering. Do you have a sense of why you think that is a genre of boundaries that's become popular? Is it sort of self-care, the sense that this is self-care and I need to put my own oxygen mask on before I can put on yours? Yeah, I think about for a lot of friendship behaviors, there's an emotional incongruency. What I mean is that your experience of this act is very different from your friends in a way. way that you're not always privy to. So you might set this boundary thinking about, oh, I'm really

busy and this is going to benefit me. But when your friend receives that boundary, they're feeling like I'm so alone and I have no one in this moment where I really, really need someone. And so there's just this, I guess, this disconnect between our two emotional worlds in that moment. Because if we're only thinking about our reality, it makes a lot of sense. But when we think about our co-realities, our reality and the other person's reality, then we might realize that even if this act benefits us, the cost for our friend are far greater. You know, when you have a healthy relationship,

what happens is you begin to include them in your sense of self. So there's a disconnect happening when you're willing to completely upset and let down your friend to meet your own needs. And that's kind of what I'm referring to with these individualistic boundaries, which is like, I'm going to get 100% of my needs met, even if zero percent of your needs are going to be met.

The communal boundary is to protect the relationship. The individualistic boundary is to protect yourself. So, Marissa, I've been reporting on friendship for a long time. And when we're discussing kind of how do we make friends and how do we maintain those friendships, I feel like the conversation often stops at this very simplistic platitude of friendship takes work. And that's very vague in general. also wondering with your perspective as a psychologist whether you see anything kind of dicey about suggesting that friendship is labor? I think so. I mean, what are all our associations with work?

Like negative, something that we have to do, something that we need to get compensated for to be able to do. And I think when we use those capitalistic terms for friendship, we not only are applying that term, but the web of associations that we add to that term, the baggage of all of those associations. So I like the idea of friendship taking effort rather than friendship taking work. What I want to convey is that in friendship, we're going to be inconvenience. In friendship, we're going to do things that we don't want to do. In friendship, we are going to have to go out of our way and take initiative and be proactive and all of those things. And I think those all fit into the realm of effort. But when we say work, it's almost like it's something that we don't

want. I mean, I don't think most people's intentions are usually bad. It just seems like some of the norms in our culture are steering us towards undermining our friendships without maybe realizing it, where if it is something that you really want to prioritize that in your life, it feels a little bit like swimming against the current. It does. It can feel like unrequited love a lot. But I will say there's also sub-communities, like queer communities, where it's a lot more common for people to put a lot more value on friendship. And there's talks about asexual communities. There's talks about platonic life partners. I think queer communities are the pioneers of friendship and could teach hetero people a lot. I don't know if you've heard the term relationship anarchy, but it's

no. Can you explain it? It's this idea that we don't need to use. It's this idea that we don't need to use what society has told us as our guideposts for the value that we place on different types of relationships, we can choose what resonates most with us. And my choice is, I want to value, again, friends as much as a potential spouse. Like, that's the hierarchy that I would want in my life in the larger anarchy framework. If you start from a place of anarchy, where would you want friends to be in your personal valuing system? So when I was out of town for a week last week, Julie, one of my best friends texted me saying, okay, I'm going to be full, needy boyfriend when you're back.

And we hadn't been talking for a week or so because we were both too busy. And I just thought it was so nice that she sent that little note. And the first thing I thought was a lot of times when we're trying to express to friends, how much we miss each other or love each other or need each other, it's kind of as if we only have the language of romance to express that. And sometimes we use the language of love that we understand through romantic partnerships to express that we have that need for our friends at all. Right.

Like it was very cute and sweet that she said that. But also, like, you don't have to minimize wanting to hang out with your friend by, like, pretending you're acting like a needy boyfriend. Like, you are allowed to miss your friend also. Right, totally. No, that study I referenced earlier that was talking about a culture of passivity, it was sort of focusing on conflict. But I would venture to say that there's kind of a culture of passivity in the good times as well, you know, where friendship is too often like a relationship of convenience or we'll go with the flow and I'll see you when I see you. And it's hard to actually keep up a friendship if you're being passive in that way and you just expect it to come effortlessly.

Right. And I genuinely don't know how a lot of my friendships would function if we didn't put in that quote unquote work. Because, you know, two of my best friends live outside of the U.S. And we are in different time zones and don't catch each other easily. And usually one of them tries to call me super early in the morning my time, which half the time I can't even pick up the phone. It's just emblematic of that sort of small gesture you can make for a friend. and it shows me that, you know, they tried to catch me, and if they could, they would be on the phone with me right now.

And do you feel like that, quote-unquote, work and effort that you put in to try to catch each other in different time zones is a burden to you? No, not at all. It's the smallest, you know, gesture of love that we could sort of show each other and takes almost no effort. Yeah, that's why I think it's so strange that it's like, oh, the work of friendship is some hard or negative or burdensome thing. Like, you're so happy to see that missed call, and I'm sure she was so happy to call you. That's all for this episode of How to Talk to People. This episode was produced by Becker Rashid and hosted by me, Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank and Claudina Bade.

Fact check by Anna Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smerciac. The managing producer of how to talk to people is Andrea Valdez. I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid.

And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next.

The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.