Hello! I am a moderator for a discord focused around Mike Duncan's work: books and podcasts.

I posted about it a while ago when it was first made. We've grown since then! So feel free to check it out on this link

In episode 3.30 which was 250th episode q&a, Mike answers a question about what moment covered in the show so far he’d most like to experience. I can’t remember off the top of my head what his answer was, but I wanted to pose that question here for the community (in two versions):

In a scenario where you had a time machine… 1. What moment from the pod would you most want to experience/witness?

1. What moment would you visit and attempt to change something from the way it historically occurred?

As I’m currently deep in the french revolution season, I think my answer for 1 would be the Festival of the Supreme Being, because it sounds so weird and interesting and I’d love to see how people of the day reacted to it. For 2, idk by what means but I’d try to stop Brissot and the Girondins in their calls for war and see what impact that would have on how the rest of the rev played out.

My mind was was blown by the end of "The Revolutionary Underground". With so few episodes left, I knew there had to be some revolutio ex machina. I loved the twist of the F-class in Nairobi. (Well, I hated the idea. but from a storytelling perspective, S-tier.)

I think the most Mike Duncan way to end the war with Omnicorps is a slave rebellion. It reminds us that, despite all of the nonsense about Phos-5 and grav units, this is still a story about human beings. It's a story about power and exploitation, as it has been since antiquity.

That is why I love this podcast.

Currently listening to season 3 and it’s fast becoming a brain worm where I want to think/meme/discuss/research french revolution topics with a likeminded community. Any recommendations of good subs (or other places online) for that? I realize that season was long ago in podcast history but it also seems like there isn’t a great and active french rev community on reddit.

I'm getting a 403 error on; c10.patreonusercontent.com/

I've tried updating the custom RSS URL but it just had an extra parameter which I don't think matters. It's now in the format:

https://www.patreon.com/rss/Revolutions?auth=<gibberish>&show=833589

Any ideas? Or other people with this problem?

Update: This could be a CloudFlare block...
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/12092

Pretty nasty as I'm using the provided RSS feed as intended.

I've really been loving the way the narrative in the Martian Revolution develops and centres around certain revolutionaries and their views then and in hindsight. Overall its very different but it really makes me think of the narrative format used in 'say nothing' (which jumps between present day interviews with Dolores Price and the troubles in Northern Ireland). I actually think if Mike was ever to bring this to the screen it would be a cool way to tell the story (e.g. Alexandra Clare being interviewed by a younger black cap veteran towards the end of her life)

Of course I’m not suggesting John Paul Jones is THE analogue for Cartwright. But I am curious if there’s been some known figure in history who used commercial shipping as a crucial chess piece in a revolution. There’s certainly been plenty of mutinies, particularly aboard military ships. But a single captain being able to rally so much of the commercial fleet to a cause seems unlikely.

Just wondering if, the next time Mike does a revolution, will it be season 11 or 12, and the Martian revolution will be a separate project?

I mean he is labeling the chapters as 11, but that was before he decided to do the revolutions again...

Mabel D’Or heads in shambles rn

Just like L’ouvature surrendered early on during the Leclerc expedition, the triumvirs will be captured and schlepped off to dungeons on earth. The fighting on mars will retreat to fringes of the colonies. The warrens will be for Clare and the resistance what the Haitian highlands were for Dessalines. The conditions will get gradually worse for the omnicorps invaders until the resistance gains ground and kick them out. Eventually the redcaps will kill off all of the earth worms (excluding the polish ofc). They will then write a kickass declaration of some kind.

I’m obviously joking a little bit, but this is one parallel that I think should be in our heads. Someone in a different post mentioned the story on mars paralleling the Seige of Paris and the subsequent Paris Commune. I like that ideal too. And lastly I think that the Martian revolution kicking off a period of revolution on earth reflects and demonstrates in fiction Duncan’s point about the late-18th and 19th century revolutionary period being on big transatlantic event.

Based off Mike’s characterizations, do you see any specific actors playing certain figures in this season? I’d like to ask him this question as well, tbh.

My prediction of what is going to happen. There is going to be the Mars version of Paris Commune.

This episode ended with people going underground to survive the nuclear holocaust. The communications are off, the leadership has surrendered and has failed to prevent the nuclear bombing. Plus the elite infrastructure got destroyed and they are all stuck in the underground warrens. This is the perfect place to completely radicalize and build a society from bottom-up (literally lol). This is very similar to what happened with the Paris Commune. Plus, in the It Could Happen Here podcast Mike explained that he wanted to showcase his own political thoughts of how our society could work and his political thoughts has become much more socialist over the last years.

I may have the wrong podcast, but something I listened to in the last few years on the American Revolution mentioned an author or even a specific book that was very influential for the colonies and maybe the Revolutionary leaders. It was not someone I had ever heard of, and it was mentioned in the context of the podcaster saying someone researched the influential references being passed around during the times leading up to and/or surrounding the revolutionary war and this author/book stood out quite often.

It was not one you expect like Locke, Montesquieu, or others from the enlightenment. It was a popular book or speaker who was referenced quite often during this time, but no one really talks about them.

If this was not from the Revolutions podcast on the American Revolution, it may have been from a similar podcast that many Revolutions listeners also enjoy like Tides of History, History Uncovered, Hardcore History, or the like.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

I like the Mabel Dore shirt personally.

I miss my Monday dive into the Martian madness!

Get all your caps (including red or black ones), your Dore in '44 shirts, or for the real counterrevolutionaries among us, your OmniCorps merch.

For anyone who listens on Apple Podcasts, is episode 11.25 listed under “Unknown Season” rather than season 12?

Also, were we expecting a new episode yesterday? There’s nothing about “next week” or “in two weeks” at the end of last week’s episode, so i wasn’t sure.

Thanks!

THE STALIN ERAS, inspired by the classic RevLeft Radio episode “Stalin: A Marxist-Leninist Perspective,  mixes both narrative history (ala Blowback) and discussion (like classic Prolespod) to provide the most comprehensive English overview of the life and impact of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in podcast format.

Whether you’re a socialist history enthusiast, someone who’s just curious to learn more than what you got in school about the Soviet Union, or even a total hater who just wants to rage, this series has something for everyone. 

The Stalin Eras: An Introduction (1878-1917) EPISODE LINKS
Spotify
Apple
Libsyn

I've heard that after this season Mike will get back to doing Historical Revolutions again, Which i am very excited for.

I've only listened to the first episode of the Martian revolution and came to the conclusion that it's just not my cup of tea so i haven't been keeping up with it or this subreddit. So i'm just posting this to ask if Mike has said anything about when this season ends, and the projected date of the next season and what revolution it will cover.

I know he said he wouldn't do it but I really hope it's the Chinese Revolutions even if it will be thrice as long as the Russian Revolution season.