The Hated and the Dead

Dec 01 2024 137 ep. 60 mins 158

The Hated and the Dead Podcast artwork

Kissinger said that ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad name. Each week, a guest and I discuss the life and legacy of one politician from recent times. Some are well-known, others obscure; all have left an indelible mark on our world, and often for the worse. Join me, Tom Leeman, in a journey through the corruptible and the controversial.

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EP133: Warren Harding

Dec 01 2024 76 mins

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 ou

EP132: Olaf Scholz

Nov 23 2024 74 mins

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 qual

EP131: Patrice Lumumba

Nov 16 2024 68 mins

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

EP130: Daniel Noboa

Nov 09 2024 63 mins

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 se

EP129: Robert Fico

Nov 02 2024 61 mins

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

EP128: Nouri al-Maliki

Jun 08 2024 66 mins

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

EP127: Sadyr Japarov

Jun 01 2024 69 mins

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

EP126: Jean-Bertrand Aristide

May 11 2024 68 mins

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

EP125: Keir Starmer

May 04 2024 51 mins

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 St

EP124: Afonso Dhlakama

Apr 27 2024 62 mins

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