Interested in becoming a tyrant? There are rules, and the playbook for a rise to dictatorship starts with one of history's most brutal: Adolf Hitler.

31 min . 2021-07-09

You've secured your place at the top, but maintaining power means watching your back. Nobody did that better or more ruthlessly than Saddam Hussein.

27 min . 2021-07-09

When keeping your population under control, is it better to be loved or feared? Idi Amin certainly thought he knew the right answer to that question.

28 min . 2021-07-09

Through public relations spin, revisionist history and censorship. Soviet autocrat Joseph Stalin found a certain flexibility with the truth useful.

27 min . 2021-07-09

Free speech? Right to assembly? Rebel-turned-dictator Muammar Gaddafi realized that civil liberties had to go when reshaping society. But he got soft.

26 min . 2021-07-09

Seizing power is hard, but keeping it is harder. In North Korea, the Kim dynasty unlocked the secret to ruling forever: They declared themselves gods.

30 min . 2021-07-09