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.