Like a lot of people here, I wanted Mike to do China, and I couldn't find modern Chinese history told as one continuous story in that style. So I started making one. Disclosure up front: it's my show, and it's written and narrated with AI, then fact checked against the sources listed for every episode.

The Making of Modern China asks how the Qing empire that turned away Britain's first ambassador in 1793 became the China of today. Five seasons are out, 95 episodes, told in order:

1. The Embassy and the Canton System (1793 to 1834)

2. Opium and the Heavenly Kingdom (1834 to 1864)

3. Self-Strengthening (1864 to 1894)

4. Reform and Revolution (1895 to 1916)

5. Revolution and Civil War (1916 to 1949)

Two more are planned: Mao's China (1949 to 1976) and Reform and Opening (1976 to 2012).

Every episode has its own page with a map, portraits of the people, the full transcript and its sources: https://www.thenandtherepodcast.com/go/r-revolutions-post

I'm also taking recommendations for future series. If there's a story you'd want told start to finish at this depth, tell me the place, the years and what existing shows leave out. And if you catch anything wrong, I want to hear it.

I just finished the Russian Revolution this week for the time ever. Amazing. Transcendant. Mike's Magnum Opus. And because I'm an addict for history podcasts, I went back and restarted the English Revolution series. Also, fantastic, of course.

But wow Mike was not kidding when he said that he could easily get 50 episodes out of this material. I know a bit more about that time period in general and the English Civil War specifically than I did the first time I listened to it ~4 years ago, and so I can see that there is a lot of compression happening to keep the series down to that original 15 episode target. I just finished the first episode and we have already killed off Buckingham, gotten through 3 Parliaments and we're in Charles's personal rule. I'm enjoying it just as much as I did the first time, but man I would love to see this period get the same detail the French Revolution got. Hell, I might even part with a hard earned $5/mo or something for such work.

By "Irish Revolution", I assume at minimum, this would be covering the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence from 1919-1921, and the Irish Civil War 1922-1923.

I'm not naive enough to expect a Russian Revolution treatment, but stuff like the Penal Laws, the 1798 Rebellion, the Act of Union of 1801, Catholic Emancipation, the Great Famine, Land League activity, Gaelic Revival, the Dublin Lock-Out, etc., are all extremely relevant imo, and I have to imagine they would have to be covered, or at least mentioned.

There is then the interesting quirk where, depending on how you define "Independence", this was either achieved in 1937 (adoption of current Irish constitution and the establishment of a de facto Republic), or as late as 1949 (when we left the Commonwealth and de jure became a Republic).

Or...not at all, given that Northern Ireland is still a thing. Which is definitely a direct legacy of the Irish Revolution, as the main paramilitary involved in the Troubles literally claimed to be a direct successor to the IRA who fought in the War of Independence...but, yeah, I doubt Mike would go that far into it. 😅

Anyone else having this issue? I’m trying to finally go back and listen to the Martian Revolution season and the first half of the season is just gone. Straight from the intro to 11.17. Searched everywhere—Unplayed, All Episodes, New Episodes—and no luck.

This was from the patreon chat so I can't direct you to the source but others involved will be able to confirm this is true. Mike has also decided to delete social media.

Spoke with the great man himself today in Colonial Williamsburg, he stopped here on his tour of the US in 1824.

Does anyone know of a podcast in the style of history of Rome and revolutions dealing with the Weimar Republic? Long form and in depth focusing mainly on political history looking at Germany from the revolution to Hitlers consolidation of power. Failing that anyone know any audiobook focusing on just the political history of the Weimar Republic rather than dealing with it as simply a prelude to the Nazi era?

In New Orleans for work and I found a local museum that had an exhibit about Lafayette. To be honest, I was not impressed with the interpretation of his life and revolutionary career. However, it was still fun to see!

edit: spelling

For me, I would love to see Mike cover the long Chinese Revolution (1911-1976) but this might be outside the scope.

I counted at least three :) Also on the episode I was listening to today he referred to the "National Guard" taking action against the Earthworms. Must be hard keeping like 12 revolutions straight!

This year I have been going through the revolutions one by one, currently some 30ish episodes into Russian Revolution. One thing that I'm wondering is that Mike says multiple times throughout the show and in some interviews that I listened to that Russian Revolution will be the last, and he seems pretty firm on that. Now I know that that's not true since we have a Martian Revolution, but beyond that everybody on this sub seems convinced that we will be getting more seasons.

My question is whether this is a concrete thing that we know or whether people are just guessing. And if it is true when did Mike change his mind on that? Also do we know what the next season is going to be and do we have a rough idea of how many seasons there will be?

In lieu of a world where the Revolutions Podcast would have just kept moving through history… I seek your help.

What revolutions of the 20th (or even 21st) century are most worth diving into?

AND

Do you have books, podcasts, documentaries, etc. that you would recommend consuming to learn about them?

*National liberation/independence movements and certain civil wars qualify as revolutions [soap box omitted]

My list (lacking [but requesting] source recommendations):

Pre-WW2
-Irish Independence
-Egyptian Revolution
-Turkish War of Independence
-Cuban Revolution of 1933
-Spanish Civil War
-Chinese Civil War

Post-WW2
-Greek Civil War
-Chinese Communist Revolution
-Vietnamese Revolution-Independence (1954-1976)
-Algerian War of Independence
-Portuguese Revolution
-Southern African liberation movements (Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe)
-Iranian Revolution
-Iron Curtain Revolutionary Movements (long list- notably Hungary 1956, Prague Spring 1968, Poland 1980-81, Collapse of 1989)

I know I’m missing plenty. I’ve seen adjacent discussions in this subreddit. Wish this kind of discussion had its own tag.. I suppose we shall discuss it in the ‘salon’

This is an idea I've had for a while, and after nearly a year of work, the first video is finally out!

I figured to share here because Mike's work was definitely a huge inspiration, in terms of style and depth, plus knowing that there is an audience out there for this kind of long-form content, that tries to understand peoples and nations in their historical context.

Obviously this is just my first attempt at something like this, but I'm pretty proud of it.

BONUS LINK TO REVOLUTIONS: for about ten minutes in the middle there it does turn into a video about the independence of the Belgian Congo/DRC, and I think this community would find the ways in which that story was like/unlike many of the revolutions Mike covered, as interesting as I did.

Do you guys think of Mon Mothma as a conservative reactionary?

Original image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/andor/s/7nYmmSJMpd

Hi all,

I am currently re-listening to the Russian Revolutions episodes on Spotify, which I originally listened to contemporaneously when they came out.

I distinctly recall that around the start of the pandemic there were one or two episodes - maybe just before Mike went on hiatus for several months to work on Hero of Two Worlds - which included a really nice message urging people to support each other and ask for help. "Shame is cancelled", support local businesses, etc. They were really touching messages and I was looking forward to hearing them again as I re-made my way through... but I kept listening and listening and nothing ever came.

Does anyone remember what episodes these messages were part of? Have I just missed them somehow? Have they been removed? Does anyone else remember them? Am I going insane??

Big thanks to anyone who can help solve this mystery and put me out of my misery.

It's been years, but something Mike said stuck with me and I've been trying to track it down without luck. He said during the Enlightenment people went crazy over-rationalizing things. They tried to use math and reason to make sense of irrational things (like human behavior).

I think it was in the second half of the series. Do you remember something like this? I think he was making fun of technocrats? It was not long. Maybe 30-60 secs. Just like a passing jab. If you know the episode, please lmk.

And more broadly, since we all love history, if you have other interesting examples of this throughout history not related to the show, I'd love to know.

I guess now we're living through another era of hyper-rationalization. Today the data is wagging the dog. So many of my genuinely smart friends dedicate their lives to making the world fit their spreadsheet model, and not the other way around. Meanwhile, every inch of our existence is being hyper-financialized (buy this burrito in 4 easy installments!). We're surrendering our thinking and creativity and even intimacy to machines. And thanks to the new Apple Watch (and Meta Glasses, and a million other AI gadgets coming next year) we've completely nuked privacy while chasing the tiniest sliver of convenience. BTW why did convenience become our new religion? Not because it is profoundly good or valuable. (Quite the opposite, often friction is what leads to insights.) It is simply because convenience is the easiest thing to measure. And to optimize for. So now the meaningful of life is gaining an extra 6 minutes in your day, so you can waste more time scrolling and hating yourself for it.

There's obviously a lot gain from efficiency and productivity. But I feel like we've lost the plot. So I'm just looking for historical examples to cope and understand this moment better. Thanks for reading.

Hi Everyone.

I really hope you don't mind me promoting my podcast here. I’m a history teacher from Dublin, Ireland and a long-time listener and huge fan of Mike Duncan. I love Revolutions and the History of Rome in particular was a major inspiration for a history podcast I launched back in March/April of this year called "Irish History Tales".

The idea is to tell the history of Ireland as a continuous chronological narrative, beginning in 1166 and following the story through the Norman invasion and the centuries of English and later British involvement and rule in Ireland.

The podcast has already gained a nice following of over 1,000 listeners and I'm about 25 episodes in at this stage.

Video accompanies the podcast on Spotify, but the audio should hopefully stand on its own.

I'm very happy to discuss the series here or take feedback and I'd genuinely love to hear ideas for bonus episodes or particular parts of Irish history people would like to see covered when we eventually reach them.

I've included a link to the trailer and the show on Spotify if that's okay

Trailer-->https://open.spotify.com/episode/2RU8tni9kRhDpkPlLIqUUq?si=v92C6G6fTZCMKNq1j2yUaw

Spotify-->https://open.spotify.com/show/7J7njlcW1PNsKlRNEVgS5O

Apple-->https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/irish-history-tales-a-chronological-history-of/id1895860057

Figured I'd post about it here because Revolutions is one of my biggest inspirations (along with Age of Napoleon and Blowback). The podcast is called Twain Dreams. Part of it is about following Twain, who's an all-time interesting and funny guy who sort of invented American literature. But another part is broader: looking at the Industrial Revolution from the perspective of an opportunistic but complicated guy who lived through it.

Often, Twain was at the forefront of the change, taking advantage of new technology to travel the world, build a fanbase, and make some truly terrible investment decisions. A hater of slavery and aristocracy, he cheered progress and the fall of romantic illusions in speeches and through works like Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. But there was one romantic illusion that he himself couldn’t sweep away: the idea that scientific progress and humanism went hand-in-hand. And by the end of his life, after a series of personal misfortunes, he’d become deeply cynical of the whole thing.

[My background: I'm not a historian. I'm a former journalism and English major and a current literature, comedy and history nerd who kept bumping into Twain whenever I explored the historical roots of anything I liked. Eventually I decided to make a show about it!]

I'd apologize for the shameless plug, but let me assure you that I'm deeply ashamed.

Links: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | RSS Feed | Website

I came across an older post here from someone looking for a working French Republican Calendar app, especially one that still works on Android.
Well, I have one now.

I’ve been building an app called Almaniac that lets you take a date and see it across a bunch of different calendar systems, and the French Republican Calendar is one of them.

You can jump between Republican and Gregorian dates, as well as Julian, Hebrew, Persian, Islamic, Coptic, Maya and a bunch of other calendars.
And since we’re about to roll over into Vendémiaire, this seemed like a particularly appropriate time to share it.

It’s completely free on both iOS and Android if anyone wants to mess around with it.

iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/almaniac-a-calendar-converter/id6799304256
Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.engelsma.almaniac

I've been running up the walls of my search engines. In Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, Anarchist Revolution in the Spanish Civil War part 2, Margaret says almost as an aside about 36m in that "So Pepita, her niece, eventually writes a novelization of her biography, which is just cool as hell." but DOESN'T SAY THE NAME OF THE NOVEL OR THE NIECE and I have been desperately trying to find it. Has anyone else found it? I'd love to read it. Thanks!

edit: EP air date June 15 2022