Kettensegen im Greis-Saal - Erstes Allgemeines Babenhäuser Pfarrer(!)-Kabarett

Egon Krenz under Erich Honecker was in roughly the same position as Prince Charles under Queen Elizabeth II: he spent most of his life lurking in the wings. Friedrich Merz, too, had to wait out an entire Angela Merkel - which felt like an eternity - before getting his shot at the chancellorship. Succession, it turns out, needs to be managed.

Catholics believe their priest received his professional qualification - ordination - directly from the Apostle Peter via an unbroken chain of blessings stretching back roughly 1,992 years. That sounds, of course, completely mad, which is why it gets dressed up as "apostolic succession" - because Latin used to be roughly as impressively mysterious as the word "algorithm" is today: something nobody really understands but everyone assumes must be enormously important. Papal elections are a fine illustration: elderly men are locked in a gaudily painted chapel and not let out until a chamberlain in a funny uniform burns the ballots together with potassium chlorate to produce "fumus albus" - white smoke.

Anyone smiling smugly at this is badly mistaken. Being old-fashioned is an underrated weapon - it could be the meteorite that smashes Elon Musk's Mars rockets to pieces. Who will succeed Donald Trump? Goofy? Or, for a change, an actual human being? The world doesn't have to keep getting more absurd just because it keeps spinning.

In its 17th programme, "Erstes Allgemeines Babenhäuser Pfarrer(!)-Kabarett" asks how much power lies in resisting the modern. If that makes you think of your grandmother's carbon footprint or the circumstances of your first French kiss - you're probably on the right track.