Democracy is under siege around the world in 2022, while authoritarianism is on the rise. To analyze this urgent reality, we have gathered three expert authors in the field: historian STEPHEN KOTKIN, one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of Russian history, whose masterwork is a biography of Joseph Stalin; YASCHA MOUNK, an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and one of the world’s leading experts on the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism; and BEN RHODES, political commentator and Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama for eight years. In a wide-ranging discussion moderated by JUDY WOODRUFF, anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour, they will discuss everything from Ukraine and Putin to their other major causes of concern and their causes— if any—for optimism.