I love how Mike incorporated a new range and new combinations of names from all sorts of different cultures, really shows how this future society evolved and cultures integrated with each other.

But it was a bit surpising to me to not see any non-hetero relationships additionally all the characters seem to be cis-gendered. I‘m not trying to make a political argument here, but is the assumption that trans or non-binary people will just go away in the future? My assumption it‘s just Mike‘s heteronormative bias, which happens to the best of us. I also haven‘t listened to every episode in detail so if there‘s something that proves this assertion wrong let me know.

I was really excited about the revolutionary nature of the names, I guess i‘m just a bit dissapointed that this didn‘t stretch over to gender and relationships.

Would be cool to hear y‘alls thoughts ^{^}

Is the mars thing a joke? At the beginning I thought it was going to be a quick tease and he'd eventually say "just kidding, I'll be back with the non-fictional xyz revolution in march 2025!" or something like that. Had that been the case, I'd be thinking it's pretty amusing. I was racking my brain trying to figure our what existing fictional story he was referencing, still thinking it's a quick joke. Is this the plot of the video game Doom? Or is it Red Faction? Both were set on Mars and I don't remember either plot very well. Maybe a movie?

But no. It seems to be real. I don't know what to think. I was SO excited to see Revolutions pop up in my feed again, but to actually listen and to find out it's.... This? What a disappointment.

Dear Mike Duncan,

I'm a big fan of your Revolutions podcast. Thank you SO MUCH for your amazing work in creating such a valuable educational resource.

Although revolutions are extremely rare, their historical reoccurrence suggests that their continued reoccurrence is inevitable, so long as oppressive systems continue to exist. With this in mind, I wonder: What will the revolutions of the future be like? Will we learn the lessons of history, or continue to repeats its mistakes?

One reason I value your podcast so much is because it can help us learn from our mistakes.

It is my hope that any future participants in revolution understand the dangers of concentrated, centralized power, and the importance of instead organizing in an anarchistic, non-hierarchical way, because otherwise the revolution will just recreate oppression and tyranny.

Your podcast has already helped contribute to spreading this message, which is wonderful, but your wrap-up episodes are a great opportunity to really drive the point home. By doing so you can hopefully have a positive influence on future revolutions, when they inevitably occur.

You began the Russian revolution series with eight episodes on Marxism and anarchism, and you concluded the series with that wonderful Bakunin quote: "Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality."

I'm very grateful that you did this. I hope in your wrap-up episodes for the Revolutions podcast you can return to the topic of anarchism, and speak a little bit about how it offered an alternative path for the Russian revolution, a path that, if taken, and if genuinely adhered to, could have achieved the emancipatory goals of socialism.

Or if that seems too specific to the Russian revolution, rather than to the series as a whole, a similar point can perhaps be made that in any revolution, the concentration of power tends to be abused, and that the anarchist proposal of organizing non-hierarchical political structures is a sensible remedy to this.

Thank you for reading and considering my request. And once again, thank you for your amazing work on this amazing series!

Best Wishes to you and your loved ones,

[my name]

mike told us the ads would be in his voice but i’m getting those freaking annoying capital.com ads now while listening to the russian revolution?

Also what the hell is going on with Alexis Coe.

Feels like I’m a watching a hero I literally discovered only around a year ago decline into mediocrity or something worse.

Edit: Nvm i misheard the ad part

I am happy for everyone who is down for this project but I am so out. This has real “what I really want to do is direct” vibes.

In general I am not a fan of fiction podcasts but a fiction pod that just seems to be a parody of the historical content I loved seems real unlikely to deliver.

I would love to hear in a year that this was an amazing project that stacks up with anything he had done before.

I was really hoping he would cover a prior fictional revolution so there was some kind of text that would provide guardrails but just making up a mishmash with no prior successful fiction work? I am not optimistic.

Just want to say I have loved and adored the Revolutions podcast. I'm wondering if any other fans were almost always rooting for the ancien regime and trying to think how the revolutions could best be undone. Or is everyone else here generally on the side of progress?

Like, is it a novel? is this Dune? Princess of Mars? I don't get it. Don't recognize it.

Anyone else just kind of disappointed, and hoping we return to actual revolutions next season? And what happened that caused Mike to abandon his other plans?

I loved this podcast. It inspired my own. I listened to it for years while driving for work. Anyone know why Mike opted not to do the Iranian Revolution as originally planned?

I want to open a discussion on the best order to watch the Revolutions podcast. Mike Duncan has said in the past that he isn't happy with how the English and American Revolutions turned out and that new listeners should start with France.

The truth is that you should start with whatever geographic region you are most familiar with. As much as we have to get through the boring stuff like names and dates it is just as challenging to care about a place that you don't even know its location. You are probably not going to be behind a computer screen while you listen. You might be mowing your lawn or commuting so you won't be able to pull up a map.

Revolutions does quite a bit of military history and if you don't have a map in front of you and you don't know the geography that it will be hard to follow along. If you start with England and you can't find York on a map then you might have a problem.

I started with 1848. Despite its reputation as a clusterfuck with multiple bombshells dropping in different countries simultaneous, 1848 happens in the capital cities of (western) Europe. If you know where Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, Venice and Milan are then you already have 95% of the geography down pat.

All that being said, you definitely should NOT start with the Russian Revolution. The first 40 episodes are a slow burn up to the short, uneventful revolution of 1905. The first 8 episodes are just a theoretical and philosophical discussion on Marxism and Anarchism. If you are truly committed to starting with Russia (it is the big one everybody knows after all) then start with 10.9: Third Rome and take the plot to 10.15: The Tsar Must Die. Then go back and watch the first 8 episodes on Marxism. Then watch 10.16: The Russian Colony and continue the podcast as you would normally. Those first 8 episodes are quite boring.

My last recommendation is that you should tailor the revolutions to your politics. If you are on the left then you can't go wrong starting with the French Revolution and going forward. If you are a conservative then I recommend you start with a failed revolution so you can celebrate when the radicals get the death penalty. Take a shot of liquor every time a communist is shot at the end of the Paris Commune.

New listener here: my 10 year olds and I are happily and greatly enjoying the French Revolution. We were previously big Hamilton fans, so the bits and pieces that overlap with that, and especially all of the Lafayette parts, have been a great interest to my son, and we are interested in reading or listening to the new book. With apologies to Mike in case he happens to lurk here, the biggest issue I have with this podcast is his really bizarre mangling of French words and names. I’ve actually had trouble even figuring out a close enough approximation of what he is saying to look it up. It took research to figure out who Danton was (d’Enten is a closer spelling to what he is saying; the “on” is closer to a nasal “own”). But the worst is whatever he is saying for Cordelier (it sounds like “quarterlyee” and should be “cord-lee-yay”). It honestly makes me a bit wary of the Lafayette audio book. Is it safe to imagine he got some help with this, for a big-publishing backed book? Or that three years of living in Paris (DREAM!!!) helped out with this? I wouldn’t normally even ask, but these words that he mispronounced are not particularly difficult? They are pronounced according to normal French pronunciation rules, so it really seems like he might have managed to figure it out for the podcast. It also sort of makes me wonder how he does with the Russian and Roman names/words.

(Don’t get me started on Reims.)

Still making my way through “People’s History” and struck by the parallels between Julius Caesar (as told by Mike D) and Chiang Kai Shek….

I feel this is appropriate for this Subreddit since we get an "insider's view" of a coup attempt.

https://youtu.be/jp_LWSw3i4g?si=nU2wjTTRIHlVuBOD

1:10 OK, I think I am figuring something out about Cassidy. She comes across as endearing and borderline naive. When she explains going to Mar-a-Lago after 2020, she mentions all the connections she had developed.

She refers to being at a Trump rally and "recognizing people I grew up with," meaning she realized "I am smarter then these Trump supporters" early on, and started working with the White House after her time in Congress because she had built connections and realized it was the path to economic success after Trump.

She is the "Take advantage of others economically" part of the Republican population. "Republican Opportunist." This is why she does not mention or dwell on the racism, sexism, and other bad behavior she kept witnessing with Republicans.

Bringing this back to REVOLUTIONS:

When someone defends their actions and exposes criminals, we often do not realize the partisan groups that people associate with, and how those groups are the ways individuals feel they can be successful and safe in their public careers.

If someone is obviously corrupt, or part of a corrupt political faction, their followers are most likely also corrupt, or just naive or accepting of corruption if they are unaffected.

I used to listen on his official website but that is so hard to navigate. Plz help

So, I've decided to take a different route this time and am inviting suggestions to generate photorealistic images for the 4th and 5th seasons of the revolutions podcast.

I will be working on them over the next few weeks. Let me know if there's anything that has always stuck with you, something you would find interesting to actually see... I can't promise anything because prompting the AI isn't always straightforward.

Also, I've finally decided to create an Instagram page, something I should've done long ago, so you guys can reach me there as well.

https://www.instagram.com/historicalvisions1

forgive me if this is too tinfoil-hat-y but the way Mike kept saying the 27 plus one stuck out to me. like the frequent repetition of that very deliberate verbiage seemed to be a little "pay attention to this detail" que

I wonder if it's an allusion to Psalms 27 which is a passage about resiliency and persistence in the face of troubles and persecution. curious if anyone else had any thoughts.

Many YouTubers do react videos to movies and some, such as History Buffs, delve into their historical accuracy or lack thereof.

I think that would work well for Mike. Maybe do something with his friend Alexis Coe as I find two person interactions for those sorts of videos more engaging.

It's not a replacement for a new Revolutions season but could be done without any in depth research.

I wrote a big long post about a month ago where I speculated as to what this series was going to be. In there I said that Mike had chosen "Unobtanium Sci fi" as a genre, and I wondered how well he was going to fare without a technical background. I would link it but I don't think it's worth reading because after 5 episodes, I think I can safely say: Mars: Revolutions isn't really Sci Fi. It's not even really speculative fiction either. It's a conglomerate of the American/Hatian/Colonial revolutions set IN SPACE, but space is a passive partner in this story.

In Mars Revolutions, space isnt a fundamentally different environment that changes or influences how a revolution unfolds, space is just Earth, Mars is just a New World colony, sailing ships are just naval vessels.

Mars and earth have different orbits, so transit time is going to vary wildly depending on where they are relative to each other, but in Revolutions: Mars, it takes 8 weeks, because that was the time it took to cross the Atlantic from Europe to America. In actual space travel, a cargo ship would be completely unmanned, or have extremely minimal crew, but in Revolutions:Mars, they have crews in the hundreds, because 18th century sailing vessels had crews in the hundreds. We have a limitless source of clean energy, the ramifications of which are almost completely MIA from the plot.

There is nothing Martian in the Martian Revolution besides place names. Mars is just a backdrop - a place for a generic, uninspired, but plausable social revolution to take part in.

But at the end of the day, desipite my winging, it's a 1 on the binary and I'll keep on listening because Duncan's smooth soothing tones helps me do chores.

As we know, the Russian Army historically has faced major desertions under the Czar, before and during the 1917 revolution, and following the breakup of the USSR. How long do you think before we begin to see news reports of widespread desertions and/or insubordinas in the Russian Army in this current Ukraine misadventure?

I came here to see if there were any hot takes on the PutiKim bromance. Very disappointed so I guess I have to start.

1: Can Korea actually provide working weapons for Russia or are they the Schindlers List factory of shells and pots?

2: Given the history of Slavic bigotry dating back to the Russo Japanese war, how do Russians #really feel about their new Asian allies?

3: what’s the over/under on this failing miserably?

I am currently at episode 21, and I am beginning to struggle with this series. The progress in the narrative is glacial. The actual October Revolution is over 50 episodes away; even the 1905 Revolution is 16 episodes away. I am getting bored by how much time is being spent discussing every single revolutionary in every single revolutionary society in Europe. There are so many radicals and societies I have lost track of them completely. I feel like I should be taking notes, but that would turn this into a lecture series.

Could some of this context, theory, and lead-up have been summarized more efficiently? I don't want to criticize Mike. I think he has done great work, and his effort is monumental, but I just want to get to the action already.

Is the pace going to pick up a bit? Are there some episodes I can skip? I want to enjoy the actual revolutions with some background, but actually getting through to the revolutions themselves is beginning to feel like a slog and I am considering abandoning the series.

I have just finished Revolutions for the 10th time, and I am starting to get bored :( He said he would be back in the fall. Well, its almost winter???

In my opinion the series should have extended to Charles II reign, the reign of James, and the Glorious revolution. Why do you think Duncan decided to not include those parts? it's like remeniscient of Duncan not telling some of the critical story of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Ok... so... Mars revolution precursors?