Revolutions (podcast)

Revolutions is a podcast created by Mike Duncan which first aired on 15 September 2013. Each season is dedicated to one revolution.^[1] It followed a narrative similar style to his podcast The History of Rome, but the shorter time periods for each season allow greater detail for individual events. Each series follow a mostly chronological approach with one or two episodes at the beginning dedicated to the pre-history of the revolution and its causes, sometimes highlighting when and how the revolution could have been avoided.

Initially, Duncan planned to limit his podcast to 12-15 episodes per revolution, but he ran over that self-imposed limit with the English Civil War and the American Revolution and decided to give up on it for the French Revolution, which ultimately ended up being 54 episodes not counting supplementals. Supplementals are special episodes not counted in the normal number of episodes and of varying length compared to roughly half-hour normal episodes – some of them focus in depth on a particular topic or person, while others are verbatim reproductions of historical texts such as the United States Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen.

Duncan drew inspiration for the Revolutions podcast out of a deep personal interest from his teenage years, "When I was really getting into history when I was a teenager, the American Revolution was my favorite period of American history. I spent a whole period of time being really into the Russian Revolution."^[2]

Seasons

1. English Revolution, aired September 2013 to January 2014 (16 episodes, 4 supplementals)
2. American Revolution, aired February to May 2014 (15 episodes, 2 supplementals)
3. French Revolution, aired July 2014 to November 2015 (55 episodes, 5 supplementals, 1 PSA)
4. Haitian Revolution, aired December 2015 to April 2016 (19 episodes, 1 supplemental)^[3]
5. Spanish American wars of independence, aired June 2016 to February 2017 (27 episodes, 1 supplemental)
6. July Revolution, aired March to May 2017 (7 episodes, 5 supplemental)^[4]
7. Revolutions of 1848, aired July 2017 to April 2018 (33 episodes, 0 supplemental)
8. Paris Commune, airing from May 2018 to June 2018 (8 episodes, 0 supplementals)
9. Mexican Revolution, airing since August 2018
10. Russian Revolution, to air in 2019

Tours

As he had done with The History of Rome podcast, Duncan has run a series of tours to accompany the podcast which visit historical sites mentioned on the show.^[5]

Reception

Benjamin Wittes, after hearing the first two episodes of Revolutions, called the podcast "informative, engaging, told in Duncan's usual easygoing, somewhat comic style that packs a lot of history into relatively brief discussions".^[6]

Book

Mike Duncan plans to write a book on the life of the Marquis de Lafayette titled Citizen Lafayette.

References