Warren Harding was the 29th President of the United States, serving between 1921 and his death from a heart attack in the Summer of 1923.

Harding famously proclaimed a "return to normalcy" following a frenetic period defined by severe economic downturn, race riots, anarchist bombings and labour strikes in the aftermath of the First World War. 

Though Harding’s presidency turned out to be relatively brief, two things remain highly interesting about Harding today. Firstly, despite being very popular at the time of his death, he is now frequently ranked as one of the worst presidents in American history. And secondly, his railing against progressivism, and desire to return the country to a more limited form of government, sounds eerily familiar to even the most casual followers of American politics in 2024. 

Why has Harding’s reputation collapsed so disastrously in the century since his death? Is this deserved? If Donald Trump intends to change American government in the fundamental ways he and his followers claim to, what can he learn from Warren Harding along the way? These are the questions at the heart of today's podcast. 

Olaf Scholz has been Chancellor of Germany since December 2021. Following the collapse of his government a few weeks ago, he seems headed for electoral defeat early next year. Where did it all go wrong?

As a character, Scholz is muted and impersonal almost to the point of being dreary - famously described as the “personification of boredom in politics” by Der Spiegel. Such qualities make a profile like this difficult, so today’s episode is more policy heavy than previous ones. But it does nonetheless achieve its principal aim in telling the story of a Germany that, nearing the midpoint of the 2020s, seems weary, directionless, and insecure. 

My returning guest for this conversation is Oliver Moody. Oliver is the Berlin Correspondent at the Times and Sunday Times, a post which sees him cover Germany, Scandinavia, Central Europe and the Baltics. IN this vein, Oliver will be publishing his first book next year; that book is Baltic: The Future of Europe, which seeks to uncover how this Northeastern corner of Europe will decide the course of the West in the coming years. 

Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for just ten weeks in 1960.

The brevity of Lumumba's time in charge reflects he difficulties of governing an enormous, ethnically diverse country deliberately underdeveloped by its former Belgian colonial masters.

But it was the fomenting rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union over Africa that had the largest impact on Lumumba's time as prime minister.

My guest today is Stuart A. Reid. Stuart is a Senior Fellow for History and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was previously an editor at Foreign Affairs between 2008 and 2024. He is also the author of The Lumumba Plot, which has just been released in paperback. 

Daniel Noboa has been President of Ecuador since November 2023. The youngest democratically elected state leader in the world, Noboa has had a highly tumultuous introduction to high office.

In January this year, violent crime in Ecuador, which had been increasing for nearly a decade, reached a terrible crescendo when two of the country’s gang leaders escaped from prison, and a series of armed attacks, including bombings, were inflicted on prisons, markets and TV stations. The result was a declaration of a state of emergency by Noboa’s government, only six weeks old at the time.

To try and fight these forces, Noboa has reached out to the US, painting himself as a defender of democracy. As you’re about to hear, the US has given Noboa some considerable leeway in how he has prosecuted Ecuador’s war on the gangs.

My guest today is Isabel Chiriboga. Isabel is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, where she contributes to the center’s work on the Andes, including on Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru. She is also a frequent opinion contributor, and her work has been published in Foreign Policy, Miami Herald, the National Interest, Global Americans, and the New Atlanticist.

Robert Fico has been the prime minister of Slovakia since 2023, and has served in that position three times since 2006. 

The thankfully unsuccessful attempt on Fico's life came at a time when the prime minister had become genuinely controversial internationally for the first time. This followed an increasingly erratic approach to the Slovakian media, pronounced lockdown and vaccine skepcitism in the aftermath of the pandemic, and opposition to military assistance to Ukraine - a country which shares a border with Slovakia. 

What you’re about to hear is that there was a time when Fico was a much more conventional politician. So why has he changed? Was he responding to changes at home in Slovakia - a country with a distinct political trajectory to its neighbours - or did the World change around Slovakia, with Fico looking abroad for inspiration?

My guest today is Dr Michal Ovádek. Michal is a lecturer and assistant professor in European Institutions, Politics and Policy at University College London, who primarily researches issues related to EU institutions, and the rule of law. As well as Fico, we discuss the post-communist transition in Slovakia, the origins of Slovak ambivalence towards the Ukrainian war effort, and associated Russophilia, and the cultural divide inside the country today. 

Nouri al-Maliki was Prime Minister of Iraq between 2006 and 2014, a tenure that makes him easily the country's longest serving post-2003 prime minister.

Maliki became Iraq's head of government in the maelstrom of Iraq's sectarian civil war, following the 2003 US-UK invasion of the country. Today’s is a story of the collapse of the Iraqi state, and the highly imperfect efforts to rebuild it made necessary by the liquidation of virtually all of Saddam Hussein’s institutions by the United States within a matter of weeks.

The level of hubris displayed by the US both before and after the invasion is extraordinary, and on perhaps no issue did the US not do its homework to a more embarrassing degree than the difference between Sunni and Shia muslims. Indeed, President Bush is reported to have been surprised on finding out in 2003 that Iraq had two different kinds of Muslim living in it.

My guest today is Renad Mansour. Renad is a senior research fellow and project director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House. He is also a senior research fellow at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, and a research fellow at the Cambridge Security Initiative based at Cambridge University. He is also the co-author of Once Upon a Time in Iraq, which has also been made into a BBC television series. 

Sadyr Japarov has been the President of Kyrgyzstan since 2021. Japarov's rise to power came after his country had experienced three revolutions in 15 years, in a part of the World unused to political upheaval.

Today's episode investigates whether the three Kyrgyz revolutions, so unusual for Central Asia, have benefited the country's development. On the one hand, they sent a message to national and regional elites that their people had a voice, and were willing to use it. On the other, Japarov has made political hay out of the disorder visited upon Kyrgyzstan as a result of 15 years of turmoil, and is now rolling back democratic freedoms in the country.

My guest today is Bruce Pannier. Bruce is a Central Asia Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a longtime journalist and correspondent covering Central Asia. He also writes Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s blog, Qishloq Ovozi.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was President of Haiti three times between 1991 and 2004.

A lightning rod for hope and democracy on his election in 1990, the overall course and tone of Aristide's political career was set remarkably early on in 1991, when after just eight months in power, Aristide was removed in a coup.

As you’re about to hear, Aristide’s reformist agenda never recovered from the 1991 coup, and his time in power can be interpreted as the overture to Haiti’s present crisis. It is one of the most crushing stories I’ve covered on this series, but my guest also provides hope in the form of stories about the enormous cultural and communal wealth of Haiti and its people.

That guest is Rosa Freedman. Rosa is Professor of Law, Conflict, and Global Development at the University of Reading, and has published extensively on the United Nations, international human rights law, sexual exploitation and abuse in conflict, and Haiti. 

Keir Starmer has been the leader of the UK Labour Party since 2020. This makes him Leader of the Opposition, and - if the polls are to be believed - Britain's next prime minister.

Amid a revolving door of prime ministers, Brexit, and the pandemic, Starmer’s rise from leader of the weakest Labour Party since the Second World War to being in poll position in the race for Downing Street has taken many by surprise. It’s also left a public clamouring for more information about who this man is, what makes him tick, and what he believes in.

This podcast tries to assess the validity of the conventional wisdoms that have grown up around Starmer. Starmer will face many challenges if he ever becomes prime minister, so it’s important to think about who he is, before the demands of Downing Street swamp him.

My guest today is Tom Baldwin. Tom is a British journalist who has worked for the Times and the Sunday Telegraph as political editor; he was also a senior political adviser to Ed Miliband when Miliband was Labour leader. Tom has also written Keir Starmer: The Biography, an unauthorised but authoritative account of the man himself. More recently than that he has also co-authored England: Seven Myths That Changed a Country and How to Set Them Straight.

Afonso Dhlakama was the leader of RENAMO, Mozambique's main opposition movement, for over forty years until his death in 2018.

Dhlakama’s story, and the Mozambican Civil War at large, are notable for two reasons. First is the regional and international dimension of the war. Mozambique's FRELIMO government courted support from communist powers such as East Germany but also became welcome in Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street.

Secondly, the two sides in the Civil War have actually come to an agreement in the early 1990s, having participated in a fifteen year civil war which claimed the lives of perhaps a million people. Does this make Mozambique a democracy today? Probably not. But its elites have at least accepted that they need to engage in some kind of inter-party horse trading.

My guest today is Alex Vines. Alex has led the Africa Programme at Chatham House since 2002, and his wealth of experience working on issues related to Africa is immense, having appeared on the UN Panel of Experts on Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, chairing the former. He was also a UN election officer in Mozambique in 1994, and has authored many works related to the country.